The Maverick: The Maverick / Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress. Diana Palmer
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got a weak spot, Jones. Even you.”
“I have no weak spots,” she assured him.
“No social life, either,” Grier murmured. “I heard you tried to conduct a postmortem on a turkey in North Carolina during a murder investigation there.”
“It met with fowl play,” she said, straight-faced.
Both men chuckled.
“I have to get to work,” she said, becoming serious. “This is a strange case. Nobody knows who this guy is or where he came from, and there was a serious attempt to make him unidentifiable. Even with DNA, when I can get a profile back from state—and don’t hold your breath on the timetable—I don’t know if we can identify him. If he has no criminal record, he won’t be on file anywhere.”
“At least we don’t get many of these,” Kilraven said quietly.
Jones smiled at him. “When are you coming back up to San Antonio?” she asked. “You solved the Pendleton kidnapping and helped wrap up the perps.”
“Just a few loose ends to tie up,” he said. He nodded at her and his boss. “I’ll get back on patrol.”
“Brady’s wife made potato soup and real corn bread for lunch. Don’t miss it.”
“Not me, boss.”
Alice stared after the handsome officer. “He’s a dish. But isn’t he overstaying his purpose down here?” she asked Cash.
He leaned down. “Winnie Sinclair works for the 911 center. Local gossip has it that he’s sweet on her. That’s why he’s finding excuses not to leave.”
Alice looked worried. “And he’s dragging around a whole past that hardly anybody knows about. He’s pretending it never happened.”
“Maybe he has to.”
She nodded. “It was bad. One of the worst cases I ever worked. Poor guy.” She frowned. “They never solved it, you know. The perp is still out there, running around loose. It must have driven Kilraven and his brother, Jon Blackhawk, nuts, wondering if it was somebody they arrested, somebody with a grudge.”
“Their father was an FBI agent in San Antonio, before he drank himself to death after the murders. Blackhawk still is,” Cash replied thoughtfully. “Could have been a case any one of the three men worked, a perp getting even.”
“It could,” she agreed. “It must haunt the brothers. The guilt would be bad enough, but they wouldn’t want to risk it happening again, to someone else they got involved with. They avoid women. Especially Kilraven.”
“He wouldn’t want to go through it again,” Cash said.
“This Sinclair woman, how does she feel about Kilraven?”
Cash gave her a friendly smile. “I am not a gossip.”
“Bull.”
He laughed. “She’s crazy about him. But she’s very young.”
“Age doesn’t matter, in the long run,” Alice said with a faraway look in her eyes. “At least, sometimes.” She opened the door. “See you around, Grier.”
“You, too, Jones.”
She walked into the hardware store. There at the counter was Harley, pale and out of sorts. He glared at her.
She held up both hands. “I wasn’t even graphic,” she said defensively. “And God only knows how you manage to help with branding, with that stomach.”
“I ate something that didn’t agree with me,” he said icily.
“In that case, you must not have a lot of friends…”
The clerk doubled over laughing.
“I do not eat people!” Harley muttered.
“I should hope not,” she replied. “I mean, being a cannibal is much worse than being a gardener.”
“I am not a gardener!”
Alice gave the clerk a sweet smile. “Do you have chalk and colored string?” she asked. “I also need double-A batteries for my digital camera and some antibacterial hand cleaner.”
The clerk looked blank.
Harley grinned. He knew this clerk very well. Sadly, Alice didn’t. “Hey, John, this is a real, honest-to-goodness crime scene investigator,” he told the young man. “She works out of the medical examiner’s office in San Antonio!”
Alice felt her stomach drop as she noted the bright fascination in the clerk’s eyes. The clerk’s whole face became animated. “You do, really? Hey, I watch all those CSI shows,” he exclaimed. “I know about DNA profiles. I even know how to tell how long a body’s been dead just by identifying the insects on it…!”
“You have a great day, Ms. Jones,” Harley told Alice, over the clerk’s exuberant monologue.
She glared at him. “Oh, thanks very much.”
He tipped his bibbed cap at her. “See you, John,” he told the clerk. Harley picked up his purchases, smiling with pure delight, and headed right out the front door.
The clerk waved an absent hand in his general direction, never taking his eyes off Alice. “Anyway, about those insects,” he began enthusiastically.
Alice followed him around the store for her supplies, groaning inwardly as he kept talking. She never ran out of people who could tell her how to do her job these days, thanks to the proliferation of television shows on forensics. She tried to explain that most labs were understaffed, under-budgeted, and that lab results didn’t come back in an hour, even for a department like hers, on the University of Texas campus, which had a national reputation for excellence. But the bug expert here was on a roll and he wasn’t listening. She resigned herself to the lecture and forced a smile. Wouldn’t do to make enemies here, not when she might be doing more business with him later. She was going to get even with that smug cowboy the next time she saw him, though.
The riverbank was spitting out law enforcement people. Alice groaned as she bent to the poor body and began to take measurements. She’d already had an accommodating young officer from the Jacobsville Police Department run yellow police tape all around the crime scene. That didn’t stop people from stepping over it, however.
“You stop that,” Alice muttered at two men wearing deputy sheriff uniforms. They both stopped with one foot in the air at the tone of her voice. “No tramping around on my crime scene! That yellow tape is to keep people out.”
“Sorry,” one murmured sheepishly, and they both went back on their side of the line. Alice pushed away a strand of sweaty hair with the back of a latex-gloved hand and muttered to herself. It was almost Christmas, but the weather had gone nuts and it was hot. She’d already taken off her wool jacket and replaced it with a lab coat, but her slacks were wool and she was burning up. Not to mention that this guy had been lying on the riverbank for at least a day and he was ripe. She had Vicks Salve under her nose, but it wasn’t helping a lot.
For the hundredth time, she wondered why she’d ever chosen such a messy profession. But it was very satisfying when she could help catch a murderer, which she had many times over the years. Not that it substituted for a family. But most men she met were repelled by her profession. Sometimes she tried to keep it to herself. But inevitably there would be a movie or a TV show that would mention some forensic detail and Alice would hold forth on the misinformation she noted. Sometimes it was rather graphic, like with the vengeful cowboy in the hardware store.
Then there would be the forced smiles. The excuses. And so it went. Usually that happened before the end of the first date. Or at least the second.
“I’ll bet I’m the only twenty-six-year-old virgin in the whole damned state of Texas,” she muttered to herself.
“Excuse