Scene of the Crime: Bachelor Moon. Carla Cassidy
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asked.
“I doubt it.” Daniella sat in one of the chairs at the small oak table and wondered what was taking the sheriff so long. “Macy has always been one of those unusual kids who loves to sleep. Bedtime has never been a problem with her.”
As he sat in the chair next to her, she was over whelmed by myriad emotions. “I’m so sorry that this has happened,” she said. “This isn’t business as usual for the bed-and-breakfast.”
He smiled, and once again she was struck by his handsomeness. “I didn’t think you arranged this scene strictly for your guests’ entertainment,” he said.
“I just can’t believe this is happening.” She felt sick, as if she’d never be able to dispel the vision of Samantha from her brain.
At that moment a knock came from the front door, and Daniella steeled herself not only for the investigation to come but also to deal with Sheriff Jim Thompson, who she thought was a cranky incompetent.
She was grateful for Sam’s presence just behind her as she opened the door to let Jim inside. “I hope this isn’t some sort of wild goose chase,” he said as he stepped into the foyer.
“I doubt if the dead woman beneath the tree on the side of the house considers this a wild goose chase,” Sam replied.
Jim drew himself up to his banty-rooster height and narrowed his eyes. “And you are?”
“Sam Connelly. I’m a guest here.”
“Jim, she’s been stabbed,” Daniella said. “It’s Samantha Walker.”
Jim’s grizzly gray eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “There’s going to be hell to pay with the mayor. Point me in the right direction and let’s get this investigation underway.”
They were all silent as they walked through the kitchen and Daniella pointed out the door. Sam followed Jim outside while she remained in the kitchen, the horror of the situation back in the center of her brain.
She sat at the table and closed her eyes, but instead of thinking about poor Samantha Walker she found her head filled with thoughts of Sam Connelly. Maybe because it was easier to think about how hot he was instead of how dead Samantha was.
And he was hot. It wasn’t just the fact that his tight jeans showcased slim hips, long legs and a tight butt, and his shoulders appeared wide enough to shoulder any trouble that might come his way. His electric blue eyes held a keen intelligence and a whisper of darkness that was daunting but also intriguing.
She frowned and rubbed the center of her forehead where a headache attempted to blossom. Something about Sam Connelly struck her on a strictly feminine level, made her remember that she was not only a healthy woman with desires, but also a very lonely woman.
The loneliness had grown more intense over the last year, when she’d finally given up ever hearing from her husband, Johnny, again. Sure, she had Macy and Frank and Jeff to fill some of the empty spaces in her life, but they couldn’t take the place of warm arms wrapping around her in the middle of the night, of that special smile that passed between lovers, of those moments of knowing you were in somebody’s heart, in their very soul, as they were in yours.
She mentally kicked herself. She didn’t know anything about Sam Connelly other than that he was from Kansas City and he’d paid for his accommodations here in advance with a major credit card. She didn’t know what he did for a living, what kind of man he was at heart, or if he had a significant other somewhere.
She got up from the table, moved to the back door and peered out. Sam and Jim stood to one side. Several other deputies had arrived, along with Dr. Earl Stanton, who in addition to his private practice, also worked as the coroner in the area.
Poor Samantha. Who could have done something so terrible to her? Certainly Samantha hadn’t been particularly well-liked by a lot of the people in town, but she hadn’t deserved this.
Murdered.
She’d been murdered. The horror once again struck Daniella like a fist in the pit of her stomach. It was like a nightmare, and she desperately wanted to wake up.
As she saw Sam and Jim start in the direction of the house, she backed away from the door. Both men looked grim as they came back into the kitchen.
“Earl thinks she was killed sometime early this afternoon at another location then left here,” Jim said. “Did she come out here to talk to you?”
“No, Samantha and I had no business with each other, and she rarely acknowledged me when we’d bump into each other in town. I can’t imagine why she’s here,” Daniella replied.
For the next thirty minutes the sheriff asked her questions about her activities that day, about how she had discovered the body and if she’d seen anyone unusual lurking about the place anytime in the last couple of days. She had no answers for him.
Finally he was finished with her. Within another thirty minutes the body had been removed, and everyone was gone except Sam and Daniella, who once again sat at the kitchen table.
“The sheriff didn’t act like you’re one of his favorite people,” Sam said.
“Five years ago my husband disappeared, and I not only made myself a nuisance to Jim, but at one point I called him an incompetent jerk who should be waiting tables instead of working investigations.”
“Ouch. So, is he incompetent?” Sam asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought he was when I was trying to find my husband, but that was just my personal opinion. I know he’s retiring at the end of the year, which will be a good thing.”
“Macy said her daddy got lost.” Sam leaned forward in his chair, his gaze intent as he gazed at her. “What happened to him?”
She could fall into those blue depths if she allowed herself. She reminded herself that even though he’d been a support, he was simply a guest who would be gone within two weeks.
“I wish I knew,” she answered. As always, thoughts of Johnny brought with them a faint edge of grief and a whisper of unresolved anger. “Five years ago he left here to drive into town to get diapers for Macy and he never came back. At first I thought maybe he’d been involved in an accident, but when I called Jim nobody had reported anything like that. I called Jeff, Johnny’s best friend, to see if he’d heard anything from him. He hadn’t, but he made the rounds of all the bars and hangouts in town looking for Johnny.”
How well she remembered that night. As the hours had worn on with no word from her husband she’d been frantic with worry, certain that something terrible had happened to the man she loved.
She swallowed hard to dislodge the lump that rose in the back of her throat. “When twenty-four hours had passed I went down to Jim’s office and filed an official missing-persons report. Jim told me he’d check around but that it wasn’t against the law for a husband to leave his wife.”
“Were you and your husband having marital problems?”
It was a personal question but Daniella didn’t take offense. Somehow, in the last couple of hours that passed with the investigation of a murder, between them had arisen a strange, false sense of intimacy.
“Johnny and I were high school sweethearts. We got married on the day I turned eighteen, and we shared the dream of buying this place and turning it into a successful bed-and-breakfast. We were married four years when I got pregnant with Macy. That same year my mother died, and we used the money from her life insurance policy to buy this place. Macy was two months old when we moved in, and for the next two months we painted and scrubbed and did everything we could to get this place ready to open.” She realized she was rambling, telling him more than he’d asked for, but it seemed important that he know the details.
“Things were good,” she continued. “We had the baby we wanted and were on our way to seeing our dream come true, and then he was just gone.”
“Was