He glanced toward the counter, where she was picking up her order and smiling at the female clerk.

Maybe it was an act, he mused. Maybe she pretended to be nervous toward a man when she was stalking him. The problem with that theory was that she hadn’t come near Jake since the party. In fact, when she left the café, she went the long way around to the front door, so that she wouldn’t have to pass the table where he was sitting.

He finished his coffee and took the cup back to the counter. “You make good coffee, Cindy,” he told the new employee, who was a married grandmother.

She grinned at him. “Thanks, Mr. McGuire. My husband runs on black coffee. He’s a trucker. If I couldn’t make it to suit him, I’d be in divorce court in no time,” she joked.

“Fat chance. Mack’s crazy about you,” he chuckled. He glanced toward the door. “The happy divorcée doesn’t eat with the common folk?” he added.

“Oh, you mean Ida,” she said. She grimaced. “She doesn’t go out much. She lives near us, you know. One night I heard her screaming and I called the sheriff’s department. I was afraid somebody might have broken in on her. Cody Banks, our sheriff, was working that shift and he went by to see what had happened.”

He frowned, just waiting.

She sighed. “He said she was white as a sheet and looked as if she’d seen a ghost. She told him it was an old nightmare that she had from time to time and she apologized for disturbing the neighbors.”

“Nightmares.” He shook his head. “Who’d have thought it?”

“I went over to see her the next day, it was Sunday, on my way to church, to apologize for calling the law. She just smiled and said she didn’t blame me. She apologized, too, for making a fuss.”

“Did she say why she had the nightmare?” he asked.

She shook her head. “She mentioned something about her second husband making a threat. He’s involved in some illegal stuff, I gathered, and she’s rich.”

“Did she get rich by divorcing him?” he asked with a grin.

She shook her head. “Her first husband had the money. The second…apparently he married her for what she had. Nobody knows much about it.”

“Did she move here recently?” Jake asked. “I don’t mix much with local people, even though I have my ranch and I still own the feed supply store here. I’m away on business a lot.”

“Her grandparents were from here. So was her mother. In fact, she was born here. But when her father got a good paying job in Denver, they moved away. She was in fifth grade.” She drew in a breath. “It was just after Bess Grady killed herself.”

“My best friend had a crush on the Grady girl. He took it hard,” he commented, not going into details. Like Cindy, he’d gone through school here. He hadn’t always been rich. “What about Ida’s parents?”