Read Online A Violent End at Blake Ranch by Terry Shames - Free Book Online Page A

times a week. Did you meet Nonie?”
    â€œI did. Just once. Can’t say I had much of an impression of her. I met her, and right afterward she excused herself and took off upstairs to her room. They said she was a little shy and didn’t want to be around people too much.”
    â€œBesides John, did you get the impression that the family was upset with her being there?”
    Moffitt considers. “I’d say of them all, Adelaide was the most disturbed about it. It’s like she didn’t know what to do with the girl. Now whether that was because the situation upset John, or because Adelaide herself had a problem with her, I couldn’t tell you.”

    â€œI have to go up to Rollingwood and find out more about Nonie’s last weeks there,” I tell Ellen Forester that night. It’s the third time she has asked me to dinner at her house. She’s a pretty good cook, although it’s always a vegetarian meal. I like the food fine, but the other two times I ate at her house, when I got home I felt like I had to rustle up a roast beef sandwich. No wonder she stays so petite.
    â€œThis is the most awful story,” she says. She’s preparing the meal and has relegated me to a stool at the counter. I tried to get her to let me help, but she says it makes her nervous to have someone else working in the kitchen with her. A lot of things make her nervous, which I blame on her ex-husband. He’s a big brute of a man who treats her like she’s worthless but doesn’t seem to want to let her go. Ellen won’t say much about him, but I gather that she took a lot of bullying from him, if not outright abuse, before she finally got the courage to leave him. She moved here to Jarrett Creek after her divorce and opened an art gallery where she also gives art classes. After she moved here, he continued to hassle her, which brought him unwanted attention from the Jarrett Creek police a while back.
    â€œThe Blakes are a strange family,” I say. “After what happened between the two sisters, it seems like they closed in on themselves—although I think they were not exactly friendly before that.”
    â€œYou said none of them works. That would be horribly boring. What do you suppose they do with their time?”
    â€œCharlotte has a five-year-old, and John Blake, the daddy, has some health issues that seem to keep the family on their toes. For all I know they have hobbies that keep them going, but I don’t know what those might be.”
    She nods. “A five-year-old could be a full-time job. Do you have any idea where they get their money?”
    â€œSomeone told me that Adelaide came into some money, but I knew her mother, and she never had anything she didn’t earn.”
    â€œI don’t know how you even begin looking for who killed that poor woman,” she says. “If someone in the family did it, they’ll protect each other. Are there clues? I’m serious. How do you figure these things out?”
    She tilts her head at me. Her face is serious and full of wonder, and I suddenly feel a pleasant sense of warmth that I haven’t felt in a long time. She’s so different from Jeanne, and Jeanne was the love of my life. But Ellen is a genuine, fine person. She’s stood firm against her ex-husband; determined not to be bullied by him any longer, determined to be her own person. I admire her and I like her. And at this moment with her looking so intently at me, there’s a little more than that. I’d like to put my arms around her while I tell her what she wants to know.
    But I don’t feel free to make a move yet. Our relationship has been full of little conflicts. Maybe I’ve been a little too forward in handling her ex-husband. Maybe she still loves him, despite what he’s done. Or maybe she isn’t attracted to me the same way I am to her.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?” she says. “You have