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“I don’t need you to go over what you found again at Harriet’s home, Molly,” he said quietly.
The relief that crossed her face was nearly painful to see and more in keeping with her quiet blond prettiness than her barely veiled antagonism. “Then, I…I don’t understand what you do want,” she said. “I’ve already told you everything I know.”
“Tell me what you don’t know.”
She looked at him, her eyes shadowed. “Shall I make up things, then? Is that the kind of law enforcement officer you are?”
“No, I don’t want you to make up anything. Look.” He sat forward, resting his wrists on his knees. “Sit down. Relax. Please,” he finally added.
She slowly sat. Tugged her dress down closer to her knees again, as if she knew he had a hard time not looking at them. He could have told her that her smooth, lightly tanned calves and trim ankles, clad in tiny white socks were just as much a distraction, but figured it wouldn’t help the situation. She already looked at him as if he were something to be scraped off her shoe.
“There’s got to be something we’re missing,” he told her. “Harriet obviously had a private life that nobody knew about. She was four months pregnant at the time of her death. She didn’t get that way by Immaculate Conception. And from everything that her sister, Louise Holmes, has told us, it doesn’t seem as if Harriet was likely to have been artificially inseminated.”
Molly’s cheeks went pink, and for a minute he was in danger of losing his train of thought.
“You think the father of her baby killed her?”
Tessa Madison, the clairvoyant who’d been brought in by Harriet’s nephew, Colby, had gotten the sense that Harriet was resisting an abortion. But Holt was more interested in physical evidence than psychic impressions. He didn’t discount them, but a jury wasn’t gonna convict on “feelings.”
He rubbed his forehead, wondering at that moment why the hell he’d ever believed moving to Montana would be a lifesaver. “I think that there was more going on in Harriet’s life than some people knew. Look at the way she had an ex-husband turn up.”
“I read in the papers that Warren Parrish isn’t a suspect, after all. He had an alibi or something, didn’t he?”
Holt had liked Parrish a lot for the crime. But facts were facts and there was no way Parrish could have killed his former wife. “The more I find out about Harriet,” he said, “the more complete a picture I can create of her life. The better I understand Harriet, the better I’ll understand her murder.”
“I can’t think there is anything that would make murder understandable.”
“Understandable. Not condonable.”
“Do you have any other, um, suspects?”
Not one we can find. “I can’t comment on that,” he said.
For the first time, her lips twitched. “How wise of you, considering I’d hotfoot it right to the newspaper office to give them a scoop for the Monday-morning edition. Or worse, I might run immediately over to the Calico and blab your report.”
“The news at eleven has nothing on the speed of the Rumor grapevine.”
Her eyes met his in shared humor for the briefest of moments.
Even then it was too long.
He pulled his small notepad out of his pocket and deliberately thumbed through the pages. The humidity and heat was even having an effect on the thin pages. In some places his ink was smudging.
Harriet’s writing had been smudged during the last moments of her life as she sat at her desk, he reminded himself grimly. She’d used only what she’d had available to her to leave behind three scrawled initials—a novel and her own blood. “Did Harriet keep a journal? A diary?”
“I told you before that I never saw one.”
“Then you can tell me again.”
Her shoulders visibly stiffened. “Why does this feel like an interrogation?”
Holt looked at her. “Trust me, Molly. If I were really interrogating you, you’d know it.”
Her lashes swept down, and color suddenly rode high on her velvety cheeks. “It’s you,” she said suddenly. “I don’t like you.”
He’d been a cop for more than fifteen years, and he had a fair ability to read people. Maybe that’s why he could see that she was more surprised at the soft, fierce words that had escaped her lips than he was at hearing them. And for a moment he let himself focus on Molly Brewster. Not as an irritatingly inconvenient component of his investigation but as the puzzle that she was, all on her own.
Oh, yeah, she was surprised at the words that had popped out from her mouth. She was also bracing herself, as if she expected him to slam her in the hoosegow for speaking her mind.
“It’s good to say what you feel.” He picked up the lemonade and finished it off, wondering why his suspicious nature had taken that moment to step back in favor of wanting to put her at ease. It was just more evidence that when it came to women, his instincts were all messed up.
Her smooth forehead crinkled slightly. “Is it? I suppose you make a habit of doing so.”
Now that was a laugh. “A diary, Molly. Or journal. Think about it. Did Harriet doodle on her desk pad at work?” Tessa had gotten some strong impressions when she’d been near Harriet’s desk at the library. “Did she keep phone messages tucked away in a file? Confide in you over coffee on Monday morning before the library opened? Anything?”
“Harriet drank grapefruit juice in the mornings at the library, not coffee. And you already went over her office for evidence. Between you and the sheriff when he did it, you two practically tore the office apart. I even had to have some screws tightened on her desk because you’d worked the side piece loose.”
He stifled an oath. She was secretive and she didn’t like giving simple, straight answers. Well, hell, no wonder he wanted to take her to bed. She was like every other woman he’d had the misfortune to want. As far as he was concerned, it was like some cosmic joke on him. The only women he was attracted to were the very women he couldn’t afford to trust. The kind that ended up putting him through a wringer before they were through.
The case, he coldly reminded himself. Concentrate on the case.
“Other than the morning when you went out to check on her, had you ever been at Harriet’s house before?”
Her lips firmed. He waited, wondering if she’d have the nerve to lie, even though her face plainly showed it when she did. “Yes,” she finally said.
“How many times?”
Her shoulders shifted. “I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Just after I moved here.”
“Why?”
“To go over some details.”
“Personal details?”
“No!” She wouldn’t look at him. “About the job at the library.”
“How did you get the job?”
“Harriet offered it to me.”
“After you’d been banished to Rumor?”
“I wasn’t banished! Rumor is a haven, not a prison.” She’d jumped to her feet again.
A haven from what? “So you applied for the job after you moved here?”
“No.”
“Then how did you get it? Apply by mail, phone, fax, email?”
“I met Harriet at a conference and she offered me the job.”
“Just like that.”
Her teeth were clenched. “Just like that.”
“So, at this conference, did you two hang out together? Hit happy hour with the rest of the ladies?”
“I didn’t hang out with Harriet. And I seriously doubt she ever once went out to a happy hour.”
He sat back, hitching his ankle up to his knee and lazily tapped the notepad on his bent leg. “Why?”
“She wasn’t like that.”
Frankly, based on his brief encounters with Harriet Martel before her death, he had a hard time seeing her as a barfly. She’d been brusque, albeit helpful enough, when he’d gone into the library for some reference material. Not until she’d died and he’d begun investigating her murder had stories of her quiet, kindhearted actions come to light to help counteract the image of the solitary woman. In her mid-forties, Harriet had been strong-willed, opinionated and not immediately personable, though she’d done a lot of kind things for other people.
“How do you know she wasn’t like that?”
“I worked with her!”
“Yes, you did,” he agreed softly. “Yet you expect me to believe that you and the victim didn’t once have any kind of conversation that verged on personal matters. That she never confided in you, that you never overheard her confide in someone else. Come on, Molly, the library isn’t that large. Your office even connected with hers.”
She looked away, her jaw set. But it was too late; he’d already seen the sheen in her eyes that turned them from barely there blue to glistening aquamarine. He pushed to his feet and moved around until he could see her face.
Between him, the two chairs and little table and the rail around the porch, she had no place to go, and he instinctively kept from crowding her any more than necessary. “What are you afraid of, Molly? Do you suspect someone yourself? Just tell me. I’ll protect you.”
Her head suddenly went back, and the part of him inside that hadn’t turned to stone long ago went cold at the expression in her eyes.
“The last thing I need is a cop vowing protection.” Scorn practically dripped from her tense body.
“Are you saying that you do know something? Molly, you can voluntarily help me or not. Either way, I’ll get at the truth. Whatever you’re hiding will come out.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“That’s no threat.” He lifted his hand, narrowing his eyes a little when she jerked back. He continued the movement, swiping away the spider that was busily spinning a line of web straight toward her shoulder. “I always find my man. Or my woman.”
Her lips parted. “Is that some sort of, of, suggestion that I had something to do with Harriet’s death?” Her voice rose a little.
“You did get a promotion.” He waited a long beat, letting it sink in. “People have killed for less.”
“You’re vile.”
“I’m a deputy sheriff, ma’am,” he said flatly. “And there could well be a murderer right here in Rumor among us. If your sensibilities are offended, that’s just too damn bad. Murder is a vile business.” And if it took manipulating the jumpy, sexy woman into finding the murderer, then that was also too damn bad. There wasn’t much that Holt believed in anymore. But he did believe in justice.
She moved suddenly, brushing past him despite the lack of space. It left him feeling even more scorched than from the afternoon heat. “You are just as hateful as every other cop it’s been my misfortune to know.” She shoved open her door and disappeared inside.
The door slammed shut so hard the glasses on the little table rattled right along with the windows in their panes.
He picked up his glass and sucked down the lone, remaining ice cube as he studied the other glass. The one she’d used. It was still more than half-full.
There was a small, faint pink glisten smudged on the rim of the glass. She’d put gloss on her lips before she’d come out with the lemonade.
How many other cops have you known, Molly Brewster? And why?
He didn’t believe for one minute that she was guilty of murdering her boss, or even conspiring to have her killed. He did know, right down to his bones, though, that she was hiding something.
And he needed to know what it was in case it had some bearing on the investigation.
Right now, the only strong suspects they had were Lenny Hostetler, whose whereabouts where unknown, and the father of Harriet’s baby, whose complete identity was unknown.
Lenny had cause to be angry with Harriet because she’d helped his wife and children escape his abuse, and Darla Hostetler, said now-ex-wife, had strongly confirmed her belief that Lenny was more than capable of murder.
And the father of Harriet’s baby? Who knew what kind of motive he might have had, if any. Maybe Tessa had been right, and the guy wanted Harriet to end the pregnancy. Maybe he’d been so desperate for that to happen that he’d been willing to kill the mother in the process.
Holt sighed and set down his glass. Without second-guessing his reasons, barely touching the rim of Molly’s glass, he scooted it to the edge of the table. Then, with one finger at the bottom edge, and the other on the top rim, he smoothly tipped the lemonade into his empty glass.
In the SUV that served as his patrol vehicle, he grabbed a fresh paper bag from the evidence kit in the back, and bagged the glass right along with the fingerprints on it that Molly Brewster had unwittingly left him.
Chapter Two
I t was dark by the time Molly remembered the glasses she’d left on the front porch. She’d been so furious with Holt Tanner and his insane suggestion that she’d had something to do with Harriet’s death that she’d spent the entire afternoon and early evening pummeling the earth in her tiny backyard.
She had the great makings for a garden by the time exhaustion finally forced her to stop. Of course, if Molly’s sister had been around, she’d have wryly pointed out that planting a garden in Montana during the last harsh gasp of summer was probably a fruitless venture.
Rinsing off her gardening tools, Molly stored them in the little storage shed and headed around the side of the house, intending to get the glasses. There were some times that she missed her sister so badly, she ached with it.
If she could only call Christina. Hear her sister’s voice. Molly would feel better about the path she’d chosen.
But she didn’t dare call Christina. Nor could she email her sister, or send a letter, or do anything at all that might possibly provide a trail back to Molly’s location. It was safer for her, and certainly safer for Christina and her family, for things to remain just the way they’d been for the past eighteen months.
Which meant that Molly had nobody with whom she could share her worries. Nobody with whom she could vent her frustrations that she could even find a man in law enforcement remotely attractive. Not after all she’d been through with Rob.
Rounding the corner of the house, Molly went up the porch steps and grabbed the glass from the table. She didn’t want to track mud from her shoes through the living room, so she started back down the porch steps to return to the back of the house and the entrance there that led into a tiny mudroom.
Just as she reached for the wooden screen door, though, she stopped cold. One glass.
She held it up to the light, gingerly peering at the glass as if it had turned into a snake.
The glass wasn’t a snake, though. A certain deputy sheriff was.
No doubt in her mind at all that Holt Tanner had taken the other glass, she snatched open the screen door and grabbed her purse and car keys from where they were sitting on top of the washing machine.
Less than five minutes later, she’d driven up Main Street and pulled into the small parking area near the sheriff’s department. It was after eight o’clock in the evening and there was no earthly reason why she’d know that Holt Tanner would be at the station. But there he was. Just walking out the door, the light from inside shining over his dark hair, making it gleam like onyx.
