Ty parked, went into the attorney’s office and was ushered immediately into Frank’s conference room. The new donor they were expecting was a rich farmer from the panhandle and hadn’t arrived at the office just yet. But Frank was waiting for Ty, sitting at the far end of a conference table that was big enough to seat twenty.
Frank stood and shook his hand. “Sorry about your great-aunt Lucille Steele, Ty. But she was rather advanced in age, wasn’t she?”
Ty nodded and took a seat. “Yeah. And she died peacefully in her sleep. We should all be so lucky to go that way.
“But I do wish I could’ve talked to her one last time,” Ty continued. “I had an interesting experience with a gypsy while I was there and I would’ve loved to ask Lucille what she knew of her. Now I guess I’ll never know.”
“Interesting? You want to talk about it?” Frank sat down in his chair again and leaned back.
“Not much to say. She was a strange old lady who gave my cousin a book and gave me a mirror…then she just disappeared. I don’t know her reasons, but it feels wrong.”
“You want me to have a private investigator do a little digging? Maybe try to find her?”
“I guess so. I can give you the very few things I know about her later. But it really doesn’t seem terribly urgent now that I’m home. At the moment, I want to talk about the new assistant for fund-raising you hired while I was gone.”
“Merri? I think she’s the answer to all your problems. We were really lucky to get her.”
“That’s just it, Frank. How did we get her? I hadn’t been able to get so much as a nibble on anyone who was qualified and would also be willing to relocate this far out in the sticks. I was about to give up.”
Frank smiled. “Between us, we have now come up with five different women to take that job. And none of the first four worked out due to circumstances beyond our control. I was talking to…”
“Just a minute. It sounds like you might know why the other assistants quit. Do you?”
“I have a good idea,” Frank admitted. “In a couple of the cases I managed to conduct cursory exit interviews and checked with outside sources.”
He studied Ty for a minute, then continued. “It seems that most, if not all, those women had marriage and not employment in mind when they agreed to take the job.”
“Marriage?” It suddenly hit him what Frank must mean. “You mean to me?”
“Well, your picture has been in several of the state-wide Texas magazines as an eligible bachelor. Think about it. You’re filthy rich. Single. Good-looking…in a rough-and-tumble sort of way. Why wouldn’t a woman want to take her best shot at that?”
It took Ty a minute to get enough of his powers of speech back to make it clear why not. “I never gave any of those women…or anyone else for that matter, the impression that I was looking for a wife. I’m not.”
He fought to bring his voice under his command. “I have no intention of getting married. Not now. Not ever.”
Frank raised his eyebrows. “Never? That sounds like a broken heart talking. You want to tell me the story?”
“No.” It had been ten years since he’d given a single thought to his old college flame, Diane, and to what a fiasco becoming engaged to her had been. And he didn’t want to think about it now, either.
Instead he shifted the conversation back to the original question he’d had when he walked in the door. “I want you to explain why and how we found Merri Davis…and I want you to assure me that she won’t be like all the others. I want to know absolutely that she intends to stay in Stanville and doesn’t have designs on me.”
“I think you can tell by looking at her that she isn’t like all the others,” Frank said with a smile. “She’s refined and all business. You would do well to take some lessons from her in how to behave around donors. I believe she’s got the sophistication and the congeniality you lack. Try to absorb some of it, will you?”
Yeah, maybe. But there was still something about her that didn’t sit right….
“Anyway,” Frank continued, “I had been telling my old friend Jason Taylor—you remember the Taylor family from here? He’s been my best friend since grade school, even though he’s a hotshot attorney out in L.A. now.”
“Yes, I know of him. His mother and Jewel were best friends when they were girls. But what does he have to do with…?”
“Jason and I still talk a couple times a month. I’ve been keeping him up on local goings-on. Over the last year or so, I’ve told him of our utter frustration at not being able to hire a responsible…and qualified…person for the fund-raising position.
“Then a few days ago, Jason called and said he had the perfect applicant for the job and she would be willing to start immediately. I waited until she actually arrived and settled in before I called you about her.”
“Yes, yes. I don’t mind that you hired her without consulting me first. That she’s right for the job and is prepared to stick with it is all I care about.” Ty shifted and rested one of his booted feet against the other knee. “So tell me her background.”
“Jason told me he’s known her family since he moved to L.A. They must’ve been neighbors or something. He says he’s known Merri since she was a kid, and that she is a very serious and sober young woman who has experience with fund-raising. She took nonprofit management courses in college and has decided she wants to have a career in development. Her main ambition is to help those less fortunate.”
“Does she come from money?” Ty knew the suit and the shoes she wore looked expensive, but she still seemed so wrong in those clothes that he’d imagined she must’ve bought them at a consignment shop.
“I don’t think so. I believe Jason would’ve mentioned it. What he did say was that she didn’t care about the money. All she needed for a salary was enough to get by—which, as you are well aware, is not all that much in Stanville.”
Ty nodded in agreement. “Right. So again, I have to ask, why would a single young woman be willing to give up her friends and her family in order to come to a backwater town with almost no social life to speak of?”
“Who knows?” Frank shrugged and grinned. “I got the impression that she didn’t have much of a social life back in L.A. Maybe our friendly town will be all the high life she needs or wants.”
Ty didn’t think so, but finding out her true motivation was fast becoming a challenge. It was what made him push her and test her this morning, he knew. But he tried not to think of his own true motivations.
The woman simply fascinated him, and he refused to consider how dangerous that might really be.
“I always liked your great-aunt Lucille,” Jewel told Ty as she wiped down her kitchen counters. “Ever since she gave you the money to go to college and then to buy your first piece of property, I thought she was special, even though she wasn’t blood kin to me. I’m sorry she’s gone. So, her funeral was well attended?”
Ty opened Jewel’s refrigerator door and stood absently inspecting the contents the same way he had ever since he’d been a five-year-old kid. “The funeral was huge. I never realized my father’s side of the family had so many relatives. I guess I’m just used to you being the only one on my mother’s side.”
He bent to check the bottom shelves. “It seems that Lucille had some strange friends. I ran into a weird gypsy who gave me what she said was a magic mirror.”
“What? Was it a joke?” Jewel walked over, reached around him and pulled out the milk carton.