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“I got tired of it,” he said, eyeing her as she continued her work at a fever pitch. “I thought you weren’t due back for another week.”
The housekeeper nodded. If she noticed his impatience, she didn’t comment. “I wasn’t. But I heard about Black Magic and decided to cut my vacation short.”
“He’s been found.”
“That’s what Curtis said, but I didn’t want to let Denver and Tessa down.”
Colton grinned in amusement as he hung his hat near the back door. “We were surviving.”
With a frown, Milly motioned to the cluttered counters and spotted wood floor. “Looks like you could use a little help—a woman’s help. Tessa spent all last fall remodeling this house, the least you could do is keep it up while she’s gone.”
“I’ll remember that,” Colton replied, noting the freshly painted cupboards, tile counters and polished oak parquet floor. Between his sister-in-law’s hard work and Denver’s financial help, the old farmhouse had taken on a fresh luster.
“Do!” Milly said with mock severity as she placed a cup of coffee on the counter near Colton. “So tell me all about Black Magic. The way I heard it from Madeline Simpson, you think he was stolen again.”
“That’s right,” Colton allowed, blowing across his cup before explaining the events of the past three weeks. Milly didn’t stop scrubbing and shining every pot and pan in the house as well as the countertops, refrigerator and light fixtures. She listened to him, interjected her own two cents when appropriate and never once sat down.
“Well, all’s well that ends well,” Milly finally said when Colton had finished. She washed her hands for what had to be the tenth time, then wiped them on her apron.
“If it’s ended.”
“You don’t think it’ll happen again!”
“I hope not, but we don’t know for sure, do we?” he replied, his eyes narrowing.
“I suppose not,” Milly said absently. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, surveying her work. The appliances and brass-bottomed pots gleamed. “But I wouldn’t be thinking Ivan Aldridge was behind it, you know.”
Colton raised a skeptical brow.
“It could’ve been anyone around here. There’s a lot of good will and friendliness in ranching,” she said thoughtfully as she poured herself a well-deserved cup of coffee and added a spoonful of sugar. “But there’s a lot of jealousy and envy, too. All the ranchers in these parts lost money a few years back. Winters were bad, crops ruined and some of the stock froze to death. But this place”—she gestured grandly to the house and beyond, through the fields—“managed to get by. Barely, mind you. When Denver returned, he was fit to be tied—claimed Tessa and Curtis had run the ranch into the ground. But he soon found out that she’d turned the corner, forced McLean Ranch into the black when some of the other ranchers, Bill Simpson, Matt Wilkerson, Vince Monroe and the like, were having trouble keeping the banks from foreclosing.”
“Seems as if they all made it,” Colton observed.
Milly frowned. “By goin’ further in debt.”
“Including Aldridge?”
She shrugged her big shoulders. “Don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Cassie got herself through college and veterinary school somehow, and that’s not cheap!”
“Curtis seems to think Aldridge is the most likely suspect.”
Milly’s steely brows quirked. “So now you’re listening to a Kramer!”
“He’s family.”
“You didn’t always think that way.”
“I was wrong,” Colton admitted, thrusting his jaw out a bit.
“Yes you were, and you might be again. Just because there was a feud between the families, doesn’t mean that Ivan’s going to do something about it. Leastwise not anymore. And as far as what Curtis thinks . . .” She snorted. “He’s as stubborn as a bull moose.” Colton thought she was so agitated that she might spill her coffee as she raised it to her lips and took a sip. “Well,” she finally co
nceded, “I suppose we’re all entitled to our opinion.”
“Even me?” Colton asked, his eyes glinting with amusement.
“No, you’re the one person on this ranch that doesn’t count,” she teased, then chuckled to herself. “By the way, I found something earlier—now where’d it go?” She reached into the closet and pulled out a shoulder bag containing his 35-mm camera with a wide-angle lens. “This yours?”
Colton nodded, accepting the bag.
