guessed she was at least a hundred pounds overweight. Standing side by side, the Valentines looked like the living embodiment of the number ten.
Like her husband, Myra hadn't asked a lot of questions. After the most basic introductions were made, she had hustled Jeffrey and Sara into the guest bedroom with the kind of efficiency you'd expect from a high school English teacher, fetching Sara a towel and washrag, briskly changing the bed so they would have fresh sheets to sleep on. When Jeffrey had volunteered to help, she'd given him a scowl that made him feel like he'd been caught passing a note in class.
The shower turned off. Noises came from the rest of the house. Pots and pans clattered together. A radio was switched on, the sound down low. In the bathroom, a hairdryer whirred. Sara didn't move. She had always been a heavy sleeper. She'd told him once that it came from her grueling internship, where catching sleep was a competitive sport.
Two years ago, she'd slept through a hurricane while he'd anxiously stared out the windows, waiting for the oak tree in the front yard to come crashing down on the house.
Jeffrey stood up, stretching his arms over his head, feeling his spine creak as it tried to align itself to something other than the shape of a folding chair. There was a dull throb in his head and he could still smell smoke from last night's fire on his skin and hair. He could smell Sara mixed in there somewhere, too, and his body stirred at the thought. If he'd been just about anywhere else in the world but Jake Valentine's house, he would've climbed back in bed with her and done something about it.
Instead, he laid out some fresh clothes, putting them in a neat pile on the edge of the bed, so desperate for a shower that he could almost feel the warm water on his back. At the motel, Sara had just shoved everything into the suitcase. Now, Jeffrey folded her shirts, smoothed down her jeans so they wouldn't wrinkle.
The front door opened and closed and Jeffrey went to the window again, peered out through the blinds. He'd thought Jake Valentine was sneaking out, but he saw the gangly young man standing in the front yard, hands on his hips as he surveyed the street like the lord of the manor. The sheriff was wearing a ridiculously short red velour robe that stopped a few inches shy of his knees, and when he bent over to retrieve the morning paper, Jeffrey winced at the sight of the tighty whities cracking a smile.
Valentine tucked the paper under his arm as he walked over to the car parked in front of his house.
He was wearing brown loafers and socks with the robe, and his footprints left their mark in the grass as he walked toward the neighbor's car. He checked the backseat where Jeffrey assumed the drunk was still sleeping it off, then looked up and down the street again before heading back to the house.
Jeffrey closed the blinds, not wanting the light to wake up Sara. When he turned around he saw that he was too late.
She was on her side, watching him. 'How'd you sleep?'
'Like a baby.'
'Babies don't tend to sleep sitting up in metal chairs.'
'High chairs?' He smiled at her dubious expression, sat beside her on the bed. 'You okay?'
'I'm better,' was all she allowed. 'What're we doing?'
He took her hand. 'You still sticking around?'
'Yep.'
He wasn't happy about her staying, but he'd be stupid not to use her. 'I was hoping you could tell us something about our drop-in visitor from last night.'
'Boyd Gibson?' Sara sat up, leaned her back against the headboard. 'Do you think Jake will ask me to do the autopsy?'
'I'd bet money on it,' Jeffrey told her. Valentine would want to keep tabs on Sara and Jeffrey, and there was no better way to occupy their time than by sticking them at the morgue all day. What the sheriff probably wasn't planning on was that Jeffrey had no problem leaving Sara alone at the morgue.
She asked, 'Do you want me to do the procedure?'
'Might as well,' he answered. 'Maybe something will turn up.'
She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. 'Like Lena 's fingerprints on her knife?'
She could've kicked him in the face and he would've been less surprised.
Sara explained, 'The handle is very distinctive. I've seen her with it before.'
'I'm sorry,' he apologized, knowing he should have told her hours ago. 'I guess I didn't want to think about how it might have gotten there.'
'I don't want a marriage where we keep things from each other. We did that one time before and it didn't work for either of us.'
'You're right,' he agreed, feeling even shittier since she was letting him off so easy. He felt the need to apologize again. 'I'm really sorry.'
She offered, 'It could've been self-defense.'
'Nice try,' he said, giving a dry laugh. It was hard to make a case for self-defense when the victim had been stabbed in the back. 'You think you'll get anything useful from the body?'
'You know I hate to make predictions,' she prefaced. 'But, from what I saw last night, it was pretty straightforward: knife in the back, blade through the heart, death probably instantaneous.' She shrugged. 'Does it really matter if he was hit in the head before he was killed, or what he had for his last meal?'
'What about a tox screen?'
'It'll take months to get results back, and even when we do, what can it tell us?'
'Nothing new,' Jeffrey admitted. 'We know he's a white supremacist by the tattoo. We know he was in the bar before it burned down because we saw him.'
'Do you think he set the fire?'
Jeffrey shook his head. 'It looked to me like the fire started from the outside. Besides, I'm certain he was looking for something in that bar when we saw him. He sure as hell didn't want to leave there without it.'
'Drugs might explain his behavior.'
'But not his motivation,' Jeffrey pointed out. He tried to think through his day, pin down things he could do that would actually move them toward his goal, which was finding out what exactly Lena had stumbled into and trying to help her find her way out. 'I want to go by Hank's house and see if I can find anything.'
'Drop me off at the morgue first and I'll start the autopsy.'
He had to try, 'If you left here around one, you'd be back in Grant in time for supper.'
'Or, I could find us another hotel to stay in,' she countered. 'I remember seeing a town with more than a bar and a post office about half an hour from here. Maybe they'll have something.'
'You know I don't want you here. I mean, I do, but I-'
She shushed him. 'I know.'
The hallway floor squeaked, but this time, whoever it was didn't go into the bathroom.
Sara pulled her knees to her chest, straightened the blanket so it covered her, just as a light knock came at the door.
