She nodded jerkily. “That smell…” Lifting her eyes, she said softly, “I still feel sick.”
“Were you and Bryce friends?” he asked gently, steering her mind away from that. He’d found her kneeling in the grass after Letty heard her stumble down the stairs and the old woman had gone to investigate.
Now, Letty was fine, her bright eyes snapping almost joyfully. Oh, she’d be infamous now, he knew. She’d had somebody murdered in her apartment. Nothing like that to get people to talking.
People were weird. Some of them had a morbid fascination with death. Letty was one of them. She followed every murder story that happened in the local area, from Louisville, to Madison, to Indianapolis and back. She knew more about local murders than a news reporter could ever hope to dig up.
And now one had happened on her property.
Kellan imagined it would affect her differently if it had been somebody she liked. And she had taken the time to bring Kim a cold rag and a glass of lemon-lime soda to wash the taste of vomit from her mouth, patting her back kindly before she led Kellan to the apartment.
Letty wasn’t a bad person, just…unique.
Kim’s hesitant words snapped Kellan back to attention, listening as she slowly said, “No. We weren’t really friends. I knew him, but he didn’t like me.” She gave a humorless laugh. “I honestly don’t think he liked women at all, if you want the truth.”
“You mean, you think he was gay?” Kellan hazarded, a little confused by her words.
“Oh, no. I don’t think he is gay. He loves…ah, using? Maybe that’s the word. He loves to talk about all the women he’s slept with, and he can be pretty demeaning toward them. Never around Peggy or Tricia-or anybody else who might try to make him eat his words. Tricia would cut him down without blinking…and Peggy could fire him,” Kim said. Then she gave a watery laugh. “I’m still talking about him as though he’s alive. Damn it.”
Kellan gave her a minute, watched as her hands closed into tight fists and she took a deep breath. Once she had settled, he asked, “You mean an authority figure? Both Peggy and Tricia were his bosses.” Kellan scratched his head. He had known Bryce Bishop, distantly. And the guy was definitely down on the female race, a chauvinistic pig if ever he’d met one.
“Maybe,” Kim said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “He likes-I mean, he liked-to push around the women he knew he could push around. But he never seemed to try it with those he couldn’t intimidate.”
“Was he seeing anybody that you know of?”
Kim chuckled. “Sheriff Grant, you seem to think he actually thought me worthy of confiding that sort of thing,” she said, forcing a tremulous smile. “I wasn’t anything to him. I know how he acted around women just because I saw him at work all the time. But he wouldn’t talk to me about his life. Wouldn’t talk to me about anything.”
Sighing, Kellan pressed his fingers to his brow. This wasn’t adding up. Darci’s break-in, this latest murder… Even though he gave me reason to kill you last night…
Through his lashes, he studied Kim’s face. “Where were you, Kim, on Friday night?” he asked softly.
She blinked. “Friday night?” Shrugging, she said quietly, “Same place I usually am on Friday nights-home alone.” He heard the bitter acceptance in her voice and stifled a wave of sympathy for the girl.
Running his tongue across the inside of his teeth, he ran the idea through his head. “What are your thoughts on Darci Law?”
Now she cocked her head, staring at him with a line of puzzlement between her brows. “Darci? We’re not exactly friends…” her voice trailed away and she shrugged. “She doesn’t much care for the people I work for. And Darci has a funny set of rules. She won’t talk to people she doesn’t trust. And since I work for people she doesn’t trust, well, that means she can’t trust me.”
“Rather astute observation,” he drawled.
Kim flushed red, her eyes turning sad. “Not an observation,” she mumbled. Licking her lips, she looked down at the table, scratching at the surface with a nonexistent nail. “Darci told me that. Every once in a while, when I worked at Becka’s place, we’d go out for lunch. I tried to get her to go grab a bite with me, once, after I started working for Peggy and Tricia. That’s when she told me that.”
“How did you feel about that?” he asked. Was there something here?
“Kind of down,” she admitted. “Darci is…well, she’s Darci.” She flashed Kellan a smile, her nose wrinkling. “You know her. She’s…”
“She’s Darci,” Kellan finished, chuckling, nodding. “Yeah, I know her. She’s Darci, all right.”
Kim nodded, rubbing at a small nick in the table. “I was pretty hurt at first. But I wasn’t really surprised. Darci’s got a way of looking at things-black and white.” She swallowed, and when she spoke, her voice was softer, a near whisper. “Beth and Carrie did some kind of underhanded things to Becka.”
“If it was underhanded, why did you go with them?”
“Carrie. She…she went. Carrie is how I got my job with Becka in the first place. When she told me, I guess I felt I had to,” Kim whispered.
“Did you have any reason to be mad at Carrie? Or Beth?”
Kim sighed. “I don’t know. Carrie wasn’t the nicest of people, I know that. But she got me my job, helped me get the apartment after I got divorced,” she said, frowning. “But she could be kind of mean.”
Hell…Kim wasn’t stupid, Kellan thought, leaning back and sighing. If she had killed any of these people, she would be protecting herself. Not leaving herself wide open like this.
“I’d like to do a formal interview, Kim. Just procedure,” he said, studying what few notes he had made in his notepad. “Is that okay with you?”
She shrugged. “Whatever you think is best, Sheriff,” she said quietly.
Damn.
Helluva lot of blood, Kellan thought, surveying the blood pattern. It had sprayed from Bryce’s neck in a geyser before the man had reached up, trying to staunch the blood flow. No defensive wounds…didn’t see it coming?
He’d died pretty quickly.
An empty whiskey bottle lay on the floor, splattered with dried blood. How much had he drunk before she cut him?
He paced into the bedroom, and studied the rumpled blankets. The air was stale. Couldn’t recognize any particular scent beyond that of death. Using his pen, he tried to edge back the sheets a little. Stains…maybe recent. The coroner would be able to tell him if Bryce had had sexual intercourse before he died.
Was this the he who had been referred to in the note?
Maybe.
Bryce had liked to watch Darci. Kellan knew that because he liked to watch Darci and tended to notice when other guys were doing the same. But Darci wouldn’t go for Bryce, Kellan suspected. Not her type. She’d cut him to shreds with her tongue, especially knowing Bryce’s penchant for chauvinistic remarks.
This might be the he , he thought, nodding slowly. Made sense. Darci was something Bryce had wanted. Would make a woman jealous. But why hadn’t the woman killed Darci?
And if it was the same killer…why kill Beth? Carrie?
Those were people who had caused Darci problems. Killing them, then Bryce, just didn’t make any sense. Bryce hadn’t really caused Darci problems. He wasn’t worth her time, Kellan suspected.
So why had he been worth the killer’s?
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered, shaking his head.