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Daniel sighed. “I don’t want to believe that any of the other officers had anything to do with the drug-trafficking issue.”
“I sense a but on the end of that sentence.”
He smiled ruefully. “But there are a couple of men I don’t completely trust.”
She leaned forward and he caught a whiff of that lilac fresh spring scent that had once driven him half-mad with desire for her. It still affected him on a visceral level, evoking unwanted memories of the night they’d shared.
“Who don’t you trust?” she asked.
He watched her lips move and remembered the fiery kisses they’d shared. He mentally shook himself and focused on the topic at hand. “I don’t want you to think that I’m some kind of snitch, but you do have a right to know potential problems within the department.”
She took a sip of her coffee, her eyes dark and unfathomable over the rim of the cup. “Give me names,” she said as she lowered her cup back to the table.
“Ray McClure. He was very close to Walker, but insists he had no idea what was going on when it came to the drugs flowing in and out of town. He also seemed particularly eager to point a finger at Bo for the murder of Shelly.”
“I’d already identified him as an issue,” she admitted. “He’s lazy and borders on insubordination. Do you think he might have had something to do with Shelly’s murder?”
“I doubt it. I think he was just following Trey’s lead in proclaiming Bo guilty in order to please Trey and to not have to do the work of a real investigation.”
“Who else?”
Daniel thought of all the men he worked with on a daily basis. “Randy Fowler isn’t somebody I’d trust to have my back. He works the night shift and he recently moved his mother into a fairly pricey nursing home in Jackson. He’d bitched about the cost for months before he moved her, but now suddenly he’s not complaining anymore.”
“Was he particularly close to Walker?”
Daniel shook his head. “Not that any of us noticed, but he and his wife were friendly with Jim Burns.”
“Is there anyone else that you can think of?”
“Not really. I’ve worked with these men for years, and in most cases I grew up with them. Ray McClure is a local. He was a surly and lazy kid who never changed. As far as Randy Fowler goes, he isn’t a local, but was hired in from Tupelo about six years ago. He keeps himself a bit distant from the other men.”
He took a drink of his coffee and eyed her intently. “Are we ever going to talk about that night in New Orleans?”
She froze and a faint pink color filled her cheeks. “I was hoping we wouldn’t.”
“I think we need to. I feel like there’s a snapping gator between us in the room every time we’re together,” he replied.
She took another sip from her cup and carefully set it back down on the table. “That night in New Orleans was completely out of character for me. I had recently lost my partner to a domestic altercation gone bad. I didn’t want to be at the conference in the first place. I went to the bar to be alone and drown my grief in booze.”
“And then I showed up.”
For the first time since the day she’d arrived at the station in her official capacity, she smiled. The beauty, the memory of that smile punched him in the stomach.
“Yes, and then you showed up and you were charming and easy to talk to and suddenly you looked better than the booze.” Her cheeks flamed a deeper pink. “It was a wild, crazy night that shouldn’t have happened.”
“Why did you use the name Lily?” he asked.
“My mother called me Lily from the time I was a little girl. Mom’s name is Rose and she always told my father he had two beautiful flowers in the family. But it didn’t take me long working in law enforcement to realize that people took me far more seriously as Olivia, which is my legal name. So I stopped being Lily and became Olivia and I named my daughter Lily.”
“I have to admit I thought about you over the years. I wondered what had happened to you, if your career had taken off and if you’d found love.”
Her eyes radiated surprise that was quickly masked. “It was only a month after that conference that I married and then got pregnant immediately. Phil was a great husband and father.”
“Tell me more about him.” Daniel said, wanting to know what kind of a man had captured her heart.
She leaned back in her chair and her features softened. An irrational stab of jealousy raced through Daniel. “Phil owned a small but successful restaurant. He had a huge heart and he loved me beyond reason. Even after my daughter, Lily, was born, he encouraged me to pursue my career. Along with my mother’s help, we made a good team, me working law enforcement and him running his restaurant, and then he had a heart attack and died.”
“Are you hoping to marry again?”
“I’m open to the possibility. I had a great husband and I know how good marriage can be, but if it doesn’t happen I’m good alone with my mother helping me raise Lily and my career that consumes me.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“She just turned four.”
“I’m still attracted to you.” The words fell from his mouth before his brain had fully formed them.
She cast her gaze away from him and out the nearby window where darkness had fallen. “I’m only here temporarily and I’m your boss. Any kind of a personal relationship between us would be completely out of line.”
She looked at her wristwatch and then grabbed her purse. “Speaking of my mother and my daughter, I need to get home.” She stood and looked toward the garage door. Daniel had a feeling she was escaping from the conversation rather than simply deciding it was time to go home.
Daniel got up to walk her to the door. “If it’s any comfort, nobody knows about that night. I never mentioned it to anyone and have no intention of ever talking about it.” He opened the door and punched the button inside to raise the garage door on the side where she had parked.
“I appreciate that. I’m here to do my job, Daniel, and nothing more.” She stepped down the stairs to the garage floor and hurried to her car.
When she’d driven out and away, Daniel closed the door and returned to his chair at the table to finish his coffee. At least they’d talked about it, he thought.
However, she’d said nothing to tamp down a simmering desire that had grown inside him from the moment he’d seen her again.
More importantly, she’d told him all the reasons why they couldn’t and shouldn’t get involved again, but she hadn’t said the one thing that would have shut him down permanently.
She hadn’t said she wasn’t attracted to him and in the omission of those words, he held on to just a little bit of hope that he would have her in his bed once again.
* * *
OLIVIA HAD A restless night. Both Lily and her mother had been asleep when she’d finally gotten in. She’d gone into Lily’s room and kissed her sweet, sleeping daughter on the cheek and then had zapped a plate of leftover meat loaf that her mother had made for dinner.
By ten thirty she was on the futon, but sleep remained elusive as she played and replayed her conversation with Daniel in her head.
She hadn’t wanted to talk about that night. She hadn’t even wanted to think about it. She had spent far too many nights while married to Phil thinking about that single night of madness with Daniel.
Phil had been in love with her and she had loved Phil, but she hadn’t been in love with him. He was a good, solid man and she’d been the best wife she could possibly be to him during their marriage. But it had been the one-night stand with Daniel that had haunted her dreams.
She was awakened the next morning to kisses being rained on her face and the scent of bacon filling the air. “Mommy, you didn’t kiss me good-night last night and so you have to kiss me a zillion times this morning,” Lily said. She was a vision of little-girl innocence in her pink cotton nightgown and with her dark hair sleep tousled around her head.
“I think I can manage that,” Olivia replied. She grabbed Lily and pulled her onto the futon with her and then proceeded to deliver kisses all over her daughter’s face and neck.
Lily’s giggles rang out, sweet music to Olivia’s ears.
“Okay you two...breakfast in fifteen minutes,” Rose said. “Lily, you can help me set the table while your mother gets ready for work.”
Olivia took a fast shower, dressed in a pair of tailored black slacks and a white blouse and then joined her mother and daughter at the table for bacon and pancakes.
Breakfast was always a joy when the three of them shared it together. Rose had been a loving, nurturing mother to Olivia and once Lily was born, she’d become beloved Nanny and had watched Lily whenever Olivia and Phil were at work.
Rose was a wonderful mix of common sense and naïveté. She had a good sense of humor and a fierce love of her little family. She believed the world was a good and happy place, and Olivia never brought the evil she worked with home to share with her mother.
Many times over the years Olivia had downplayed the danger she’d faced at work in an effort to protect her mother from worry.
“As usual, a great breakfast, Mom,” Olivia said.
“It’s always good if it’s got syrup,” Lily quipped and used her tongue to capture an errant dollop of the sweet goo that had escaped onto her lower lip.
“Are you going to be late tonight?” Rose asked.
“You’d better be here to kiss me good-night,” Lily exclaimed.
“I kissed you while you were sleeping last night. Besides, you know how it works. If I’m not here to kiss you good-night, then Nanny gives you double kisses,” Olivia replied.
“And I think I gave her triple kisses last night,” Rose exclaimed.
Minutes later Olivia left the house and headed for the station. She hoped the issue of her and Daniel’s previous encounter had been laid to rest, for she was depending on him to accompany her as she interviewed some of the key players in the two-year-old murder case of Shelly Sinclair.
So he’d thought about her over the years. His words had surprised her. She’d always figured she’d been nothing more than a slight blip on his radar. A sexy guy like him had to have had plenty of hookups before and after that night they’d shared.
Of course it didn’t matter if he’d thought about her or her about him. It didn’t matter if he was still attracted to her and she was attracted to him. Nothing would ever come of it.
She wasn’t a young, vulnerable woman anymore. In fact, she rarely thought of herself as a woman. She was a mother, but she was also a law enforcement official. She wore those titles much more easily than that of simply a woman.
It was nine o’clock when she and Daniel left the station and got into her car to drive to Claire Silver’s small house on the swamp side of town where she lived with her new husband, Bo.
“Bo moved in with Claire when his family home was burned down by the high school coach who had become Claire’s frightening stalker. They got married a couple of weeks ago,” Daniel said.
“I read the file on Claire’s stalker, Roger Cantor,” Olivia replied. She’d been grateful that there was no awkwardness between her and Daniel. It was as if their conversation the night before had never happened, and that was the way she wanted it. In fact, the tension between them that had been apparent since they’d first seen each other had dissipated.
Daniel guided her to a renovated shanty much like where Olivia was staying. “They’re my neighbors,” she said as she pulled her car to a halt in front of the house. “I’m staying five houses down in the bright yellow place.”
Daniel had called ahead to let Bo and Claire know they were coming, and Bo opened the door before they reached it. “Daniel,” he said in greeting and then held out a hand to Olivia. “Sheriff Bradford, it’s nice to meet you.”
Bo McBride had a firm handshake and clear blue eyes that appeared as if they wouldn’t know how to hide a secret. His dark hair was long and slightly shaggy and his features were well-defined and handsome. “Please, come in,” he said and gestured them into a small living room where a petite curly-haired blonde woman stood at their appearance.
Further introductions were made and then the four of them sat at the kitchen table where Claire offered them something to drink and they declined.
“I’m glad you’re reopening the case into Shelly’s murder,” Bo said.
“News travels fast around here,” Olivia replied drily.
“The small town gossip mill is alive and well,” Bo replied and then frowned. “I was basically run out of town on a rail in the weeks after her death because of nothing but gossip. Sheriff Walker made it clear that I was guilty and it was only because they couldn’t find evidence that I was still walking around free. It destroyed the life I’d had here.”
Claire placed a hand on Bo’s arm. “Bo couldn’t kill anyone, especially not Shelly, who he loved with all his heart.”
Olivia pulled out a small pad and pen from her purse. “I need you to tell me everything you can about that time. I want names of the people Shelly was close to, ideas you might have as to who might have wanted her dead...anything that will guide us as we dig into this case.”
For the next hour, Bo talked about his long-term relationship with Shelly. He was honest about the fact that he wasn’t sure if Shelly ever would have married him, that she had longed for a life away from Lost Lagoon. But, Bo’s successful business was here, along with his mother, and he had no desire to leave the small town.
Both Olivia and Daniel asked questions and not once did Olivia get the feeling that Bo was hiding anything from them. He confessed to them that he still owned Jimmy’s Place, that at the time of the murder many of his customers had turned away and that was when he suggested to his best friend, Jimmy Tambor, that he take over as manager and rename the place.
For almost two years following Shelly’s murder, Bo had built a new life for himself in Jackson, coming back to Lost Lagoon only in the dead of night on the weekends to visit his mother, whose house Jimmy had moved into to help care take of her.
“I came back a couple of months ago when my mother passed away and while I was here I met Claire.” He covered her petite hand with his and smiled at her lovingly. “She convinced me to stay in town and fight for my innocence, but then her life was in danger and my sole concern became keeping her safe.”
“So, you haven’t done much investigating on your own into Shelly’s murder,” Olivia said.
“If you’re asking me if I know who killed Shelly, then the answer is no. I’m no closer to knowing today than I was on the night she was murdered,” he replied. “All I know is I didn’t do it and I’m as eager as anyone to get the killer arrested.” His eyes blazed fervently.
“So, what did you think?” Daniel asked Olivia once they were back in her car.
“I’m mostly a facts-only kind of person, but my gut instinct says that he’s being truthful,” she replied.
“How about we grab a hamburger at George’s Diner before we head back to the station?” he suggested. “It’s not too far down the road from here.”
Olivia glanced at her watch. It was just after eleven. “All right,” she agreed. She’d eat a quick lunch and be back in her office by noon to check in on things there and to write up a complete report on the interview with Bo and Claire.
Daniel pointed the way, and before long she was parked in front of the small building with a huge sign on top that read George’s Diner.
“It doesn’t look big enough to be a diner,” she said as they got out of the car.
“I told you it’s really just a glorified hamburger joint. Most people order and take out. There are only five stools at a counter inside. George has everything from fried gator to shrimp scampi on his menu, but most people come here for the burgers. It’s a dive but he makes the best burgers you’ll ever wrap your mouth around.”
The interior of the small establishment was empty and held the gamy odor of the swamp and hot grease. “We’ll eat in the car,” Olivia whispered, finding the variety of cooking smells unpleasant.
At that moment a big man lumbered out of what she assumed was the kitchen. Jowls bounced as he greeted them with a smile and slapped two menus in front of them.
“I heard there was a new sheriff in town.” His deep voice resembled that of a croaking bullfrog. “George King,” he said. He swiped a hand on his dirty white apron and held it across the counter to her.
Olivia shook his hand and mentally thought of the small bottle of hand sanitizer she kept in her purse. “Sheriff Bradford,” she replied as she shook his thick, meaty hand.
“So, what can I get for you two? I got some fresh gator meat in this morning,” George said.
“No gator,” Daniel replied. “We’ll take two of your special burgers and a couple of sodas to go.”
“Got it.” George disappeared back into the kitchen area.
“Did he know Shelly?” Olivia asked.
Daniel smiled. “Everyone knew Shelly. Why?”
“George is a big man with big hands. It would have been easy for him to strangle a young woman and then toss her into the lagoon.”
