Read Online Nothing but Gossip by Marne Davis Kellogg - Free Book Online Page B

Colorado Rockies and their bid for the pennant. One more win and everyone was sure they’d go all the way to the Series. I flashed my badge.
    “Good morning, Marshal,” the older patrolman said. “Did Chief Lewis clear you in?”
    “Sure did,” I lied.
    “Fair enough.” He signaled for his partner to back their car far enough for me to pass.
    “Thanks,” I said and headed down the gravel drive. Wade’s Eldorado was visible in one of the bays of the four-car garage, while a white forensics van and another squad car were parked at the front door. Directly behind them sat a bright red Jaguar XJR-S convertible, its passenger seat stacked with expensive canvas luggage.A uniformed patrolman was eyeing the car enviously.
    “Good morning,” I said. “Nice wheels.”
    “Morning, Marshal.” He smiled. “Too rich for my blood.”
    The Gilhoolys’ gray-pine front door was open and just inside, a gigantic, wildly ornate, white-wrought-iron Victorian birdcage sat in the entry hall like a snowbound jail cell, a stuffed bald eagle perched on the bird swing. The more I saw of this place, the worse it got. The house was quiet. Wade was nowhere in sight.
    “Ridiculous thing, isn’t it?” A cultured English accent startled me from behind, and I turned to see a tall, tan, handsome man, whose ruggedness reminded me of Richard’s, but whose sea-green eyes had a Me Tarzan–You Jane attitude that made me feel like a heifer at a cattle sale. An old scar curved down his cheek, from the corner of his eye to just below the corner of his mouth, which was chiseled and square, and he was rakishly dressed in khaki safari gear, meticulously tailored to show off his flat stomach and tapered waist. Knee-high, tight leather boots strained over his muscled calves. I felt as if I were looking at Indiana Jones. He was too glamorous to be true.
    Two heavy-looking, oversized canvas ski-carriers, same style as those in the Jag, were slung over his shoulders, and he put them down with a solid clunk and stepped forward.
    “Kennedy McGee.” He extended a knotted, rough hand. The Great White Hunter.
    “Lilly Bennett.”
    “Pleased to meet you. It’s you who was at the party last night with all the police and whatnot.”
    “Yes,” I answered, curious about what was in thecarriers. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet. Are you leaving?”
    Kennedy nodded. His face hid a million secrets. “I’m just on my way up to hospital to see Alma before I make my way to Jackson. I have a client there. They have a large ranch outside of town.”
    “Everybody in Jackson has a large ranch outside of town,” I said.
    “Yes.” He smiled uncertainly. “Quite.”
    Here’s the deal with ranches around here: If you’re an actual Westerner, as I am, you consider anything up to a hundred acres a yard and anything between a hundred and five hundred acres a farm or feedlot or something like that. It’s possible to have a small ranch with a thousand acres, but you’d better have some pretty fine real estate and some pretty fine cattle or sheep on it to call it a ranch, and even then, you call it one with an aw-shucks attitude: “It’s really too little to call it a ranch,” you apologize. “We just call it that. It’s really more of a small property.” From there you move on up into real ranch territory until you get to spreads like the Circle B, which at two hundred thousand acres is bigger than some national forests. There are only a handful of places like ours left in the country, so I don’t expect everyone’s ranch to be the size of ours—anything over a couple of thousand acres is certainly respectable ranch property—but when I come across outsiders (usually New Yorkers) who say they have a ten-acre ranch in Jackson, I can’t help laughing right in their faces because they sound like idiots and they’re just parroting what their stupid developers and
People
magazine have told them.
    “May I ask what’s in the ski bags, Mr.