Lady Killer

“He sure does mind well,” he remarked, and she made a dry sound that might have been a laugh.

“He’s been on his best behavior since…all this happened.” She said it without much expression in her voice but couldn’t keep the shadows of everything she’d been through in the recent past from flashing across her face.

Couldn’t keep it from Tony, anyway, because he had an eye trained to notice such subtleties. The tension in her facial muscles made his own ache.

Gently, not wanting to distress her more, he finally asked the question she’d already offered to answer. “What happened here?” When she didn’t reply immediately, he said, “I promised I wouldn’t write or photograph anything about it, and I won’t. But you’re right-I would like to know.”

He’d meant to leave it there, but she finished for him as if he hadn’t. “Whether you’re in the company of a killer or not?”

She crouched down beside him and put her face close to the wire and her fingers through it, and the cougar licked her fingers and butted her head up against the wire like a house cat wanting to be petted. Tony heard a peculiar rumbling sound, almost a vibration felt in his bones rather than heard, and with a small sense of wonder, he realized the animal was purring.

With her eyes closed, Brooke fought to gain control of her emotions, wondering why it seemed so tempting to give in to them here, now, with this strangely charismatic and imposing man. She drew in a breath and began.

“I was late getting home from town…”

He listened intently, not interrupting, and when she was through with her story, she stood up, and so did he. She looked down at Lady, who, at some point during her narrative had flopped down at the base of the fence and was lying stretched out with her back to them, close enough to touch through the wire. She seemed completely relaxed except for the tip of her tail, which twitched now and then.

“She seems to have accepted you completely,” she said with a small laugh, because she was in suspense, wanting to know how he was going to respond. Because she needed so badly to be believed. “For her to turn her back on you like this, it means she trusts you.”

“What can I say?” he said, showing that incongruous dimple. Then he cleared his throat, and his voice was abrupt, almost harsh. “Mind if I ask you some questions?”

She shrugged and spread her hands. Not saying the words, but thinking, What does it matter? Feeling gray and dismal and hopeless.

“I guess what I don’t understand is how they think you could have done this when your-excuse me-when Duncan was already dead when you got here, and Daniel is your witness to that fact. What? Do they think he’s lying to protect you?”

She threw him a look, feeling faint touches of warmth and light that were like the first rays of the rising sun on a frosty morning.

“No, actually.” She tried to smile and couldn’t even manage irony. Fear was a cold chill in her belly and a brassy taste in her throat when she swallowed. “They think I set it all up before I left, before Daniel got home from school. They say I asked Duncan to meet me here, somehow lured him into the compound, shot him with the tranq gun, let Lady out of her cage, then went to town to do my shopping. That I never meant for Daniel to be the one to find him, which only happened because the guy at the feed store had lost my order and I was late getting home.”

He was frowning, his tawny eyes intent in a way that reminded her oddly of the cougar’s eyes.

“So…do you have a tranq gun? The one you’re supposed to have used?”

She hissed out a breath. “I do have a tranq gun. Did. And that’s weird, because it’s gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean? Like-lost, stolen…”

“All I know is, it’s missing. Duncan bought it for me when Lady got big. He was afraid she might attack Daniel- or me, I suppose. He kept it in the tack room, in the barn, so it would be handy in case…in case Lady ever went berserk, I guess.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and laughed thickly. “Ironic, huh?” She sniffed and, after a moment, went on. “Anyway, I told the police-uh, sheriff’s department detectives, you know-where it was, and they said it wasn’t there. They had a warrant and searched the whole place for it, and so far they haven’t found it. Which, as far as they’re concerned, only proves their theory, that I did it before I left for town, took the gun with me and disposed of it somewhere on the way.”

“I don’t know,” Tony said in a slow and thoughtful way. “It all sounds pretty circumstantial.”

“Yes. But don’t forget, I also have motive. Duncan was contesting our custody agreement. He wanted full custody of Daniel. And this being a county in which the good-ol’ boys system governs just about everything, he actually might have won.” She struggled again with the smile. “And don’t they always suspect the husband or wife first? Especially-” she drew a shivering breath “-when there’s nobody else to suspect. I mean, who else could it be, right?”

She looked at him, and he looked back at her, not saying anything. She thought he looked shaken. Because he thinks I’m a murderer? Or because he sees, as I do, how hopeless it is…

“So,” she said when the silence had stretched as far as it could, “do you still want to do your story when the odds are I really am a cold-blooded killer?” To her own ears her voice sounded as thin and brittle as she felt. As if the wrong word would shatter her into a million pieces. She watched him closely, waiting for it…

But he only said, “Okay if I come back tomorrow? Looks like Lady’s okay with me, so I don’t see why I can’t start shooting.” He wasn’t smiling, but it seemed to her-she wasn’t imagining it?-that his eyes were kind.

She let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Tomorrow’s fine,” she said, not smiling, either. But once again she felt it-that faint touch of warmth.

“I don’t think she did it,” Tony said to Holt at the diner that evening. He had just put in his order for the deluxe Black Angus cheeseburger and was trying not to think about all the stuff his sisters had just been preaching to him about bad fats and red meat and cholesterol. He shook his head and reached for his beer. “But I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to stay objective on the subject.”

Holt leaned back against the booth’s red plastic upholstery and draped one long arm along the top edge of it and gave him a narrow-eyed gaze that reminded Tony of Clint Eastwood-minus the stump of cigar. “Why’s that?”

Tony shrugged. “Well, shoot, man, she’s my best friend’s baby sister. Of course, I want her to be innocent.”

It was enough of a reason to give Holt, but in his heart he knew it wasn’t the only one.

He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t get the lady out of his mind. Images kept flashing through his head like snapshots in a slide show: a work-worn hand resting on the head of a huge, shaggy fawn-and-white dog; laugh lines at the corners of smoky blue eyes filled with tears; a head with spiky blond hair shooting every which way out of a haphazard ponytail, leaning against one side of a chain-link fence, with a mountain lion’s head butting against it from the other; a pair of long, slim legs in blue jeans just inches away from his shoulder, folding up to lower a long, slim body down next to him, so close he could feel the heat of it.

Okay, so he was aware of her as a woman. He liked women. Especially beautiful ones. But he’d never had one get into his head like this one had, not in so short a time.

He drank beer, paused, then frowned and said, “The thing is, it doesn’t look like she could be. I mean, it all points to her being the only one who could have done it. Circumstantial, sure, but add to that a good motive and the fact that she’s the ex-spouse-I mean, hell, I’d have arrested her.”

“But you don’t think she did it.”

“No, I don’t. Call it a gut feeling, I guess.” At least he hoped it was his gut he was feeling, and not some other part of his anatomy, the one known to be considerably less reliable in its judgments.

“Well, okay then,” said Holt, and then they both leaned back to allow the waitress-a buxom, fortyish woman with shocking red hair-to deliver their dinner plates.

“Thanks, Shirley-looks great,” Holt told her with a wink and a smile, and she smiled back at him, gave her fanny a little wiggle, said, “Eat up, hon. You need some meat on your bones,” as she winked at Tony and sashayed off.

“Okay, so let’s go from there.” Holt picked up a bottle of steak sauce and studied his plate for a moment before applying generous amounts to his burger and passing the bottle on to Tony. “Let’s assume she didn’t do it. So…who did?” He picked up his burger, bit into it, looked at Tony and raised his eyebrows as he chewed.

Tony gave a bark of laughter without much amusement in it.