The Sheriff Of Heartbreak County. Kathleen Creighton
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met him, yes.” Then she added with a note of quiet reproach, “But sheriff, you know that, or you wouldn’t be here. I also know he was found shot dead this morning.” She paused again, and her mouth twitched briefly with a small, bitter smile. “This is a very small town.”
He acknowledged that with a nod and a wintery smile of his own. He glanced down, shifted the position of his hat on the table, then returned his gaze to her. “So…you mind telling me when the last time was you saw him?”
Her lips tightened again, impatiently, this time. “I’m sure you know that, too. I saw him last night, at the Last Stand. He…spoke to me while I was waiting to pick up my to-go order.”
“The way I heard it, he did a lot more than speak to you,” Roan drawled, and now for some reason he was noticing her skin, wondering why he hadn’t noticed before how clear and pale it was, almost translucent, not like most of the women he knew, whose skin, once they passed infancy, got to showing the effects of sun and wind and cold dry weather pretty quickly.
Noticing, too, the way hers changed color with her emotions, the same way his Susie Grace’s did. And when she shook her head and looked away, he didn’t miss the faint pink blush that washed across her cheeks.
“He came on to me. It wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t a big deal.” But she swallowed. He didn’t miss that, either.
“What about when he followed you out to the parking lot?”
Her eyes snapped back to him, the pink in her cheeks deepening to crimson as he watched, and he felt a stab of inappropriate delight that a woman her age could still blush.
“You mean you don’t know that, too?” Her voice was low, barely above a whisper, but he could almost see her body vibrating with emotions fiercely contained, and behind the unattractive glasses she wore, her eyes had come alive. They seemed to shimmer now with green-gold fire. “Didn’t your witnesses tell you?”
He leaned toward her, making his voice as soft as hers, just sort of friendly. “No, but I think I can guess what happened. I’ve known Jason Holbrook for a long time, so I know what a—pardon me, ma’am—what a sonofabitch he can be. And Jason had a laceration on his lip the coroner says is a bite mark. Buster, over at the Last Stand, says when Jase came back after seeing you outside, his mouth was bleeding and he was cussin’ mad. It doesn’t take a genius to figure things out, does it, Miss Mary?” He ducked his head, cajoling her with kind eyes and a wry smile. “So tell me—the truth, now—are you the one that bit him?”
She looked away, made a sound, cleared her throat and finally spat it out—and that was what she reminded him of—a cat spitting. “He…grabbed me as I was getting into my car.” Her folded arms tightened, and revulsion thickened her voice. “He…kissed me. He wouldn’t stop when I tried to push him away. So, yes…I bit him.” Again her eyes lashed back at him, as if to say she wasn’t one bit sorry about doing it, either. And this time he knew the green-gold fire in those eyes was defiance.
Ignoring another of those strange disturbances in his midsection, Roan leveled a gaze at her and waited. It had been his experience at times like this that silence was more apt to provoke further revelations than questions. It didn’t work in Miss Mary Owen’s case, though. She stared back at him and didn’t give an inch.
He leaned toward her once more, stooping down a little the way he normally did when he spoke to women—a habit he’d developed when he’d first shot up to where he was a good bit taller than most of the girls he knew. When he remembered this woman was darn near as tall as he was, he straightened up again. “And was that absolutely the last time you saw him?”
She didn’t answer, but the fire died out of her eyes as he watched, leaving them that dull and lifeless gray.
He persisted, his voice gentle again…persuading. “Mary? Did you see Jason after that? Did he come back a little later on…follow you home, maybe?”
She looked away, still not answering, though he could see her throat working. He stepped closer to her and reached toward but didn’t quite touch the bruise on her jaw. He felt a stab of almost physical pain when she flinched. It was either the pain or the surprise of it that made his voice harden. “Did Jason do this to you?”
She edged away from him and turned…picked up a perfectly clean dish from the countertop and put it in the sink. “No—nobody did it. I—it was just a stupid accident. I tripped on the steps—the porch light was burned out, and I…fell.”
That told him one thing: the lady was a terrible liar.
“A man’s dead, Mary. And lying to me isn’t going to do anything but get you in a whole lot of trouble.” He paused, waited again. And as he waited he thought about moving in on her, crowding her space, closing her in against that sink where she stood with her back to him, using the kind of subtle intimidation tactics he’d have used with any other suspect. But then he got a clear picture in his mind of that swollen lip and the bruise on her face, and of Jason doing the exact same thing but with a whole different purpose in mind, and he went cold and sick with shame at the thought.
He folded his arms across his chest and hitched in a breath. “Something else the coroner found, Mary. Jason had some blood on his shirt sleeve that wasn’t his. Appears it was a woman’s blood. And I’m guessing if I take a sample of your DNA—and I will have to ask you to let me do that—I’m about as certain as I can be it’s going to match that blood.”
Still she didn’t say anything…didn’t move a muscle. He could hear the tension humming inside her, like an overload of electricity. He could see the wisps of brown hair that lay on the back of her neck, escapees from the nondescript arrangement that was neither bun nor ponytail but something halfway between and that had already seen her through a hard day’s work.
He thought how vulnerable that part of her seemed. And that at the same time, oddly graceful, too.
“Mary?” Barely whispering… “Did Jason Holbrook rape you?”
Again her body jerked as if he’d struck her. She turned slowly, and he saw her face, not vulnerable, now, but white and still, like something carved in marble. Her voice was hard, too, and brittle with contempt. “No. He was too drunk. He tried. When he couldn’t, he…hit me instead.”
Roan swore colorfully, but only inside his mind. Aloud, he prompted in the same quiet, implacable way, “And then?”
“Then?” She shrugged, and he saw her scrape her teeth carefully across her swollen lower lip. “He left.” As she turned back to the sink she drew a breath, and it was the only thing that betrayed her body’s trembling.
He waited a moment, steeling himself. Then asked the question he hated to have to ask: “Mary, do you own a gun?”
Chapter 3
He waited patiently in the silence while she puttered around the sink, doing what looked to him were totally unnecessary cleaning chores, and it occurred to him only then how out of place this woman looked in that particular kitchen. He hadn’t known its former owner, Queenie Schultz, all that well, except to say hello to when he’d dropped off Erin or picked her up from her monthly trip to the beauty shop, but he sure did remember her big-toothed smile and big brassy laugh, and the pinkish-tinted platinum blond hair she wore teased up and lacquered into a bouffant the size of a basketball. That, and her short but big-busted shape she liked to squeeze into smocks that were just a wee bit too small, so she always put him in mind of a little strutting pigeon.
Her he could see in this kitchen, with its pink and yellow flowered wallpaper, ruffled curtains, potted sweet potato vine on the windowsill and potholders shaped like kitty-cat faces. Miss Mary Owen didn’t fit, like the one kid who hadn’t gotten the word it was supposed to be dress-up day, and he wondered if that might account for some of her awkwardness.
He felt a strange desire to reassure her…put her at ease. He’d almost forgotten the question he’d asked, when she gave him the answer he didn’t want to hear.
“Yes,