“Thanks, Gramms.” Abby sweetly smiled back. “But you still aren’t getting any more M&M’s.”
Estelle’s smile faded and she snorted. “Don’t buy the peanut ones anymore. They get in my dentures.”
“Good. Don’t eat them. Now, outta here. The girls are waiting for you.”
Gramms hesitated. “You’re sure you don’t want me to stick around and help you?”
“Nope. I’m just going to putter around a bit. Maybe take a nap before dinner. I made a casserole. Enough for three nights. Later maybe I’ll have time to bake a batch of cookies for your bridge club meeting on Sunday.”
Estelle frowned. “There’s something very wrong with this picture. It’s Friday night. You should be going out.”
Abby gently took her grandmother by the shoulders, faced her toward the door and walked her out of the room. “I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing.”
“Taking care of me?”
Abby grimaced at her grandmother’s weary tone. “Don’t say it like that. You hardly need a baby-sitter. I’m just a homebody, Gramms—I always have been. You know that. Now, go have fun. But don’t stay out too late.”
She hesitated again, and Abby had to give her another nudge before she grabbed her patchwork purse off the hall table. “You know I’ve loved staying with you here in your daddy’s house, don’t you, honey? And how much I’ve treasured our time together?”
Abby reared her head back at her grandmother’s serious tone. “You’re not leaving me and getting married or anything, are you?”
“Oh, good Lord, no.”
Abby had been teasing. Sort of. Gramms could be awfully impulsive at times. “Nothing’s going to change,” Abby assured her, realizing she was probably worried about their time together being upset by Abby’s job. “You’re not losing a granddaughter. Hopefully you’ll be gaining another mayor in the family.”
Oddly, Gramms didn’t look pleased. She merely stood motionless for a long moment, staring back with an uncertainty that made Abby uneasy. “Well, I’d better go. You know how I hate being late.”
“Gramms? Is there anything you want to tell me?”
She pushed open the front door and paused. “Just that I love you. And there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for you.”
Despite the lingering summer heat, Abby walked out onto the porch, watched her grandmother climb into her car and waited until the blue sedan had disappeared behind the hedges of pink oleander that lined the end of their driveway.
The feeling that something wasn’t right stayed with her long after she’d returned to her room, selected an outfit, decided on a hairstyle, taken a nap and had some dinner. But it wasn’t until she went into Gramms’s room to get her laundry basket that Abby understood why she’d felt uneasy.
Gramms’s closet was half empty. So were her drawers. On the center of the handmade quilt that covered her bed was an envelope.
Heart pounding, Abby lunged for it.
She tore half the note along with the envelope and had to piece it together. When the message became clear, Abby let out a shriek that shook half of Bingo.
2
IT HAD ONLY BEEN AN HOUR since Max stepped off the Bennett family’s private plane and onto Nevada soil and already he hated Bingo and everything associated with it. The desert was not his idea of a good time. It was hot, dusty and he didn’t give a damn what the pilot said, Max knew he saw a friggin’ scorpion. So what that they’d still been forty feet from the ground. A scorpion was pretty damn hard to miss.
From the back seat of the hired car, Max eyed the passing landscape with disdain and suspicion. Scorpion or not, he had no use for anything smaller than a kitten that had four or more legs. He shook his head. How could Aunt Lily have left Boston for this place?
Of course Boston didn’t have legal brothels.
He smiled, thinking of the events of the past twenty-four hours. The Bennetts had gone bonkers over Aunt Lily’s bequest. Normally when he asked for use of the family plane, he’d get a lecture. Not this time. His parents had coughed it up so fast it was a joke. They wanted him to hurry and wash his hands of the place. He’d really have hated telling them that he was thinking about keeping it to supplement his trust fund. So he hadn’t.
“How much longer before we get there?” Max asked the driver, and like the two other times he’d asked, the man sighed.
“About fifteen minutes.” The man muttered something under his breath, then added, “Don’t they teach you boys how to tell time back east?”
At the man’s insolence, Max gave a startled laugh. “Yeah. They even teach us manners. What’s your name?”
“Herbert Hanson.” The man shook his head and from under the battered tan cowboy hat he wore, his black eyes met Max’s in the rearview mirror. “You must be one hardheaded son-of-a-gun.”
Max snorted. “I’d ask how you arrived at that conclusion except I have a feeling that’s unnecessary.”
“If they taught you manners, you weren’t listening too good. I introduced myself to you when I picked you up, son. But you were too busy shooting your mouth off about how you’d ordered a Lincoln Town Car.”
Very few people could render Max speechless. Herbert Hanson’s brassy dressing-down had him dumbstruck.
“I’m sure you’re used to getting what you want,” Hanson continued, “but out here in Bingo, folks are plumb grateful to get what they need. This old Caddy will get you there safe and sound,” he winked into the rearview mirror, taking some of the sting out of his words, “in the next thirteen minutes. You can count on that.”
A dozen sarcastic remarks flew through Max’s head, including one that would make old Herbert think twice about getting a tip. But the man had hit a nerve and Max decided to leave it alone.
He stared out the window in silence, wondering how long it would take to get his business wrapped up and get the hell out of Dodge. There was only one motel in town and he certainly wasn’t expecting much there. He’d had a difficult enough time getting picked up. There was no limo service in Bingo. Herbert was the motel manager’s uncle and he’d agreed to run Max around to supplement his retirement income.
A good reason not to tick off the old guy, or Max could end up without wheels. And scorpion territory was not the place to be hotfooting it around.
Of course he could always stay at the Swinging R Ranch. After all, he owned the place. The thought made him cringe, and he had to remind himself that brothels were legal here in certain parts of Nevada. Hell, it probably boosted the local economy, supplied jobs, kept women off welfare, provided college tuition.
He shoved a hand through his hair. None of this reasoning made him feel better. He’d never been forced to evaluate his position on prostitution, legal or not, and he sure as hell didn’t want to do it now. Not when he was almost broke. Still, the idea that a woman ever had to make a living on her back made him squirm. Great time for him to develop a conscience.
On the near horizon, the flat dusty terrain gave way to a handful of buildings. He glanced at his watch. That had to be Bingo. Taylor had warned him the town was small, but he’d figured a population of nine-hundred-and-two required more than a ghost town.
From behind his dark glasses, he squinted at the sign coming up on the right. It said, Welcome To Bingo, and below it, Population nine-hundred-and-two. Except the two was crossed out and five was etched in.
“What do you people do? Count cows and horses?” Max asked.
Herbert