Holbrook threw him a look and made a dismissive gesture. “Of course it isn’t-I’m sure that’s why she gave it up so easily. Look, if the lady’s got one gun, she can have others. You haven’t found the gun-you said it was a Colt 45, right?-the one that shot Jason. Have you?”
Tom Daggett jerked to attention. “No, sir, that’s right. Not yet, we haven’t.”
“She could easily have gotten rid of it-hell, it could be anywhere out there.” The senator made a wide, furious sweep with his arm, then gripped the arms of his chair and leaned toward Roan. “Look-her blood was on Jason’s shirt, wasn’t it?”
“Appears to be,” Roan said, with a glance at Detective Fry. “We won’t know that for certain until the DNA results come back. But look, she’s admitted Jason assaulted her that night. That’s not in question.”
“And she went and got her gun and came back and
“Evidence?” suggested Roan, and earned himself a steely, narrow-eyed glare.
“I want that woman brought in for questioning,” the senator went on in a soft and dangerous voice. “If you’re not willing to do it, Roan, I’m sure these fellas here’ll be glad to.”
Detective Fry coughed and looked down at his feet. Roan wasn’t sure he knew what hackles were, but if it was another word for temper, he could definitely feel his rising.
However, he showed no outward signs of annoyance as he rocked gently in his chair and said with meticulous courtesy, “Sir, I have every intention of questioning Miss Owen further, particularly in light of what we’ve found out-or rather, what we haven’t found out-today. However, I’d prefer not to drag the lady out of her shop in the middle of a Saturday afternoon and leave a bunch of this town’s female citizens with their hair all gunked up with chemicals.” He peered pointedly at his watch. “I figure she ought to be closing up in…oh, about fifteen minutes, which is when I expect to be there. If that’s okay with you?”
Roan brought his eyes back to Cliff Holbrook, and he wasn’t surprised to see the older man’s complexion had darkened considerably. It had grown unnaturally silent in the room, as though the other four people in it had faded into the woodwork, leaving him and the senator to face each other alone.
“I want to go with you when you pick her up,” Holbrook growled, head lowered and eyes burning-more angry bull, now, than wolf.
Roan shook his head and said firmly, “Sorry, Senator, I can’t let you do that.” He rose and reached for his hat. “This is my job. I’ll deal with Miss Mary Owen.”
“Alone?” Holbrook’s voice sounded hoarse and strained. “Shouldn’t you at least take some backup?”
Roan gave him a crooked smile. “Cliff, this isn’t Ma Barker we’re dealing with. Besides,” he added with pointed looks at his deputies, “these folks here have plenty else to do. Tom, Lori, don’t you have a murder weapon to find?” As the two deputies snapped to attention, he nodded at Ruger and Fry. “And if you gentlemen wouldn’t mind, I think maybe a trip to Coeur d’Alene might be in order.”
He got their nods of agreement, settled his hat on his head and nodded at the senator, then briskly took his leave. Nobody was more surprised than Roan when Clifford Holbrook sat in his chair and let him go without another word of argument.
Chapter 5
Mary was sweeping up after her last client when the light seemed to dim around her, as though a cloud had passed in front of the sun. Then the glass front door to her shop slapped open and Sheriff Roan Harley stepped inside, politely removing his hat as he closed the door behind him.
Her heart thumped like an alarmed rabbit and fear fisted in her stomach, but she gave no outward sign of that as she called out, “Be with you in a minute,” and went on carefully coaxing snowdrifts of crisp gray-white hair into a dustpan.
Oh, but even without looking she could feel his presence, jarring and alien, too much rawboned masculinity for such a cozy, pink, feminine place. And she could feel him watching her. When she straightened, dustpan in one hand and broom in the other, awareness bloomed warm in her cheeks, and she touched an unsteady hand to smooth back the strands of hair that dangled limply around her face.
And once again, as it had the night before when she’d first seen the sheriff of Hart County through her latched screen door, she was conscious of a strange sense…not of deja vu, exactly, but more as if she were seeing a double exposure…the vibrant flesh-and-blood man standing before her, and the memory of a much different man, one from a life she’d put behind her long ago.
Right now, today,
Against that image, blurring it like rain cascading down a windowpane, the memory:
Then the sheriff straightened and she moved toward him and the memory shimmered into nothingness.
“Miss Owen,” he said in his soft, grumbly voice, nodding his head toward her in an awkwardly formal way that was oddly attractive in so self-assured and masculine a man.
“Sheriff,” she said, returning the nod. And for some reason she found herself gazing, not at his face with its probably un-characteristic shadowing of beard stubble, but at his thick sunshot hair, with the imprint of a hatband molded into it. Her fingers tingled with the urge to plunge into it…burrow through it…fluff out and smooth away that telltale cowboy’s furrow. The hairdresser in her, she told herself. Except that hairdressers weren’t supposed to think of how that hair would feel, were they?
She forced her lips into the shape of a smile, and the twinge of pain that action caused was an acute reminder of why this man was here. She touched her lip and asked, “Did you come to give me back my gun?” Knowing he hadn’t. Her heart was beating as if she’d been running hard uphill, beating so fast it made her chest hurt.
He didn’t return her smile. “’Fraid we’re going to be needing it a while longer.” His sky-blue eyes studied her narrowly, and there was a hardness in them that hadn’t been there before. “I’m going to need to ask you a few more questions, too, if you wouldn’t mind coming down to the station with me.”
“Would it make any difference if I
The sheriff kept his face impassive. He stood tall and arrow-straight now, a commanding presence, but completely relaxed, with his feet a little apart and his hat held casually in both hands. “No, ma’am,” he said, “I don’t believe it would. I guess it’s up to you whether you want to make it easy or hard on yourself.”
“Are you arresting me?” And how was she able to ask it so calmly, while deep in the pockets of her smock her tightly clenched fists felt like chunks of ice?
He made a small dismissive gesture with his hat. “Ma’am, like I told you, I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
“I can’t imagine what I could tell you that your deputy hasn’t found out already, over at the courthouse,” Mary said pointedly.
The sheriff acknowledged that with a hint of an ironic smile. “News travels fast.”
“It’s a small town,” Mary said. “And Miss Ada’s a good customer-and friend-of mine.” Anger was beginning to seep through her veil of calm. Anger and a bitter sense of irony.
“Well, for starters,” the sheriff drawled as he folded his arms on his chest and seemed to take root and grow immoveable as a ponderosa pine, “I’d sure like to know your real name.”
