“Never heard of you.” She started to turn away.

“But you have heard of Laura Beaumont.”

She stopped and turned back toward him, eyes narrowing. “Everyone’s heard of that one,” she said.

“Mind if we sit down? This is my friend Dulcie Hughes.”

“Never heard of her either,” Nina Mae said but waved them into the two available chairs. She lowered herself to the edge of the bed and looked from one to the other with an intent gaze. “Friends, huh?” She chuckled.

“Can you tell us about Laura Beaumont?” Dulcie asked.

“What’s to tell? She’s dead.”

“We’re trying to find out who killed her,” Russell said. “You have any ideas?”

“Lots of ideas. Could have been a jealous wife. Could have been a jealous lover.”

“Like John Atkinson?” Dulcie asked, lowering her voice.

Nina Mae smiled sagely. “So you already know about John. He’ll be doing whatever Midge says till his dying day.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t imagine anything worse.

“What about Ben Carpenter, John’s ranch manager? Was he one of the men?”

“John thought so. He fired Ben, sent him packing. Couldn’t have been a worse time with Ronda pregnant and then when she lost the baby...” Nina Mae wagged her head sympathetically. “Ben had wanted that baby so bad. It changed him for the worse, Ronda losing that baby. Ronda had her son from her first marriage, Tinker, but Ben and the boy never got along.”

“I heard Laura’s little girl played with a friend at the creek. Was it Tinker?” Dulcie asked, her heart in her throat.

Nina Mae nodded.

Tinker, the friend. The boy who’d tried to protect her. And the cowboy Dulcie had seen her with at the restaurant. Did he know Jolene was Angel? Is that why he’d asked her out?

“Tinker took that little girl’s death hard. Before that he’d been such a good boy, but after, he was in trouble all the time. Before that, he idolized Ben. After...” She shook her head. “There was a time I thought the two of them would kill each other.”

Tinker and his stepfather? “That must have been hard on Tinker’s mother, Ronda,” Dulcie said.

“Ronda loved Ben and stuck by him although I wouldn’t have,” Nina Mae said.

“We’ve heard that Laura might have fallen in love and was breaking it off with the others,” Dulcie said.

Nina Mae’s sharp eyes shone. “Funny you should say that. I heard talk that it was John, but I always figured it had to be Ben. Then again it was that hot, dry spring so that rainmaker...”

“That’s quite enough,” snapped an elderly woman from the doorway.