“And you girls.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever remarry?”
“No, ma’am. He never has.” And never would, Miranda suspected. He’d loved her mother a great deal.
“A pity. A man shouldn’t spend his days alone. Neither should a woman, for that matter.” She shot an eagle-eyed look toward Knight. “You married, gorgeous?”
“Uh, no. I’m not.”
“Good thing. That means you’re available.” The older woman grinned mischievously at Miranda. “I’ll fight you for him, honey girl.”
“No, no, that’s perfectly ok. Knight here has a cranky attitude. He’s better off with a woman who can control him.”
Now, now his cheeks turned red.
Miranda considered it. For one fourth of a second. Being with Allan Knight. When he scowled right at her, she stopped. Nope. That was never going to happen. No matter how pretty he was.
“Now, you’re a Talley of Masterson County, little girl. I don’t doubt you’re up to the challenge. I know exactly what your kind is like. That little nurse cousin Dixie of yours gives me fits on a weekly basis.”
Dixie worked at the hospital and nursing home when not working at the diner. She’d been the one to let them in the building a few moments ago. “Maybe. Ms. Tanner—”
“Colleen. I’m too old to be anything but who I am. Who’s this person you have questions of?”
“Pauline Caudrell Beise,” Knight said quietly. He had shifted to stand behind Miranda’s chair. Miranda looked up at him.
Yep. No doubt he was using her as a physical buffer between himself and the older woman.
The question was why. Why did he find Colleen Tanner so frightening? She was a harmless woman who had lived a full, interesting life in Masterson County. Not like she was after Knight’s virtue or anything.
Well, maybe she was, but Knight could probably outrun her if he really tried.
Before she left for St. Louis, Miranda would make a point to interview Colleen for the book she was writing about life in small towns. Miranda had personal recollections from more than fifteen people now. It would be her second collection—she’d studied small towns for her thesis, too.
She was more than charmed by Colleen. Knight was most definitely not.
“What do you want to know about that old prune-faced bag of bones?”
Well. That was not something Miranda had expected to hear at the moment. “You didn’t get along?”
“No one got along with that controlling nincompoop. Always thinking she was the boss—even when she wasn’t.” Coleen snorted, rubbed a boney knee, shot an admiring look at the breadth of Knight’s shoulders, and then turned back to Miranda. “You got to understand something. The factory was the only place you worked, if you were anybody around here. Unless you were a Masterson or a Talley, or one of that crowd. Ones with the education to go places, they were.”
Miranda wasn’t ashamed of her family heritage. The Talleys had been some of the Masterson founding families. It was something she and her sisters and cousins took great pride in. “Go on.”
“Well, it was a regular soap opera around the factory. All this talk about who was screwing around with so-and-so, who was selling drugs to get others high, which Tyler was going to get arrested on the weekend.”
Miranda just waited. She knew how to effectively interview. There were many different types of interviewees. Ones like Colleen Tanner were best to leave alone and let them get to what they needed to say. Some people were just natural storytellers. This woman was one of them.
“Yes, I remember when she and that family of hers first disappeared.” Faded green eyes narrowed as she looked from Knight to Miranda. “So, tell me, what’s the real FBI doing here, asking about old pruny-ass Pauline? She the body that was found a month or so back? Always knew she’d come to a bad end.”
They hadn’t released Helen’s name to the public yet. Just the fact that the body of a woman had been found within the county. As far as the citizens of Masterson knew—with a few exceptions such as Nate Masterson—the remains had yet to be identified. That was information they were going to keep quiet until it was absolutely necessary to release. Of course, most people knew exactly where the body had been found—rumors burned fast through Masterson. “No, ma’am. Pauline was not the woman we found.”
“How’d she die?”
“The woman was killed by a blow to the head,” Knight said in his always-somber tone. “Her body was found on the Beises’ property. We’re trying to gather details of what was happening in the Beises’ lives before they left Masterson.”
“Drama, drama, and more drama, no doubt.” Colleen snorted, then smacked her hands against her lap. “Always arguing over something.”
“Pauline?” Miranda asked.
“Pauline and that man of hers, Pauline and those sons of hers, that mother of hers. Pauline and that boyfriend of hers, too. Now, there was a real winner. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if the body wasn’t Pauline’s mother. Those two were always going on about something. Usually about that eldest girl of hers. Pauline despised that girl, and her mother was the exact opposite. Well, the girl and that oldest boy. What was his name again?”
“Lesley.”
“Yeah, that was it. An oily piece of tuna fish that one was. Had to watch him around my granddaughters. They are all about your age.”
“Yes, he had some social struggles.” Miranda tried to put it as nicely as she possibly could. But Lesley had had a reputation. One of his own making. Troublemakers tended to stick out around Masterson. And they always had.
“That’s being mealy-mouthed about it.”
“Pauline was the subject of that gossip?” Knight asked, suddenly. A bolt of sunlight came through the window just as Miranda looked up at him. It hit him straight on the left side of his face. He flinched. His ever-present sunglasses were in his breast pocket.
The sunlight made the scar look rough and mean, made the man look dangerous. Like someone you didn’t want to mess with. Not that he needed a scar to look like that, though.
He shifted
