He crossed his arms and stared down the bridge of his nose at little old me.“How could I think that? Easy. I’ve never seen you a day in my life, not until you suddenly showed up at a murder scene.”
I gasped in horror.“Murder? No, she wasn’t murdered. I mean, at least not by me. And, hey, why do you automatically assume foul play? You’ve been here all of five seconds and have hardly even glanced at her. Don’t you have to do like an investigation or something first?”
Ugh. Me and my big mouth!
First I couldn’t defend my innocence, and then I accused him of not doing his job properly. I may have written one or two police characters in my books, but that wasn’t quite enough to make me an expert here.
He groaned and shook his head.“Yes, and I will investigate, just as soon as I’m done questioning the suspect.”
I backed up until my shoulders were pressed flat against the wall.“Look, Deputy Quick Draw, Mrs. Haberdash is my landlady. I was just coming to lodge a complaint. A small one. Nothing to kill anyone over.” I inserted a nervous laugh here as one does when a topic is quite literallydead serious.
“She was like this when I got here,” I added as an afterthought.
“Looks like she’s been here for a while,” he said with a sniff.
“I don’t know anything about any of this. I just wanted some hot water for my morning shower. That’s all.”
Gathering every last vestige of strength, I pushed off from the wall and carefully navigated around poor Mrs. Haberdash in a last-ditch effort to get the heck out of there.
The cop’s light eyes roamed over me, and the slightest smile quirked on his lips.
“Hang on,” he said, stopping me in my tracks as a heavy veil of horror dropped over me once again. “You’re going to have to come with me.”
Noooooooo!
3
Officer Quick Draw left me no time to argue. When I hesitated to follow him toward his squad car, he unhooked a pair of handcuffs from his belt loop and dangled them before me.“Would you prefer we give these babies a workout instead?”
Motivation had arrived. And just like that, I was power walking across my dead landlady’s dead lawn and yanking open the passenger side door to throw myself inside.
The officer gave me a strange look, but I shrugged it off.“If I’m not under arrest, then I’m not riding in the back. I’ve lived in enough small towns to know how fast and far rumors can fly.” Things couldn’t get much worse at this point, so I had to fight for whatever small dignities I could retain. I’d already been driven out of my former hometown by the embarrassment of my ex-husband’s indiscretion.
Since then, I’d briefly lived in two other small towns, but neither felt quite right. I’d been hoping Beech Grove would finally offer a new place to put down roots, but that was probably ruined now. Still, I’d rather whatever time I had here be as pleasant as possible.
I glanced back at Mrs. Haberdash’s dark, imposing house. It looked like the kind of place where murders happened. Why hadn’t I seen that before?
The cop slammed his door, jabbed his key into the ignition, and chuckled as the engine rumbled to life.“So you’re new.”
I nodded in confirmation.“And I’m guessing you’re not.”
“Born and raised right here in Beech Grove,” he admitted with a faint blush. “It’s all I’ve ever known. What I don’t know is your name. You still haven’t told me that little piece of info.” He smiled to himself as he maneuvered the squad car with me in it. It would have been easy tolike him under other circumstances, but now he would forever be the guy who took me in for murder.
I offered a sarcastic laugh to hide my discomfort.“It’s kind of hard to introduce oneself when one’s companion is hurling murder accusations around like they were Mardi Gras beads.”
“Oneself, eh? Smart.You a new professor at the academy, then?” We’d already pulled out of the driveway and were rumbling down the torn-up back road. He did glance at me briefly as if making some kind of assessment.
“What academy?” We were at least an hour away from any kind of big city. Seemed a weird place for something as fancy as an academy.
He frowned but didn’t clarify. “How about we try starting over here? Hi. I’m Parker Barnes. It’s nice to meet you.”
I kept my eyes fixed firmly ahead and nodded.
“And you are?” Parker prompted after several silent moments passed.
“Tawny,” I answered even though I really didn’t want to.
“There.Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I shook my head and let out a beleaguered sigh.“I’d really rather not make chitchat with some guy who thinks I killed my landlady. Let’s just get the questioning over with and go on our separate ways. Okay?”
“Touch?, madame. Lucky for you, we’re already there.”
The car jerked to a stop, shocking me with how short this journey had been.
I widened my eyes at the sight of the sprawling brick building before us. It wasn’t just a single building, but a whole complex—and it definitely wasn’t a police station. I didn’t remember ever passing it before on my walks through town, either. Though it obviously wasn’t far from where I lived, judging from the short time between climbing into this cruiser and reaching our destination.
“I thought you were taking me to the station?” I said, crossing my arms across my chest in open defiance.
“This is the station, at least for our purposes today. C’mon. We’ve lost too much time already.”
I turned to stare at him. He didn’t look like your garden variety murderer-rapist-all-around-psycho, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. I refused to follow him blindly just because he wore a uniform. Uniforms could be faked, after all.
“Everything onlyjust happened. How have we lost time?” I demanded, sitting firm. “And, no, I know better than to go into a strange building with a strange man. I’m staying right here.” Not that camping out in his strange car was any better, but still, a girl had to stand up for herself—otherwise who would?
“Okay, but if anyone asks, you’re the one who chose to do this the hard way,” Parker answered with yet another frown before exiting the car.
I watched as he marched around the car, came to my side, and then flung the door open.“Out,” he said firmly.
I opened my mouth to argue but let out a scream instead. My hands were moving to unbuckle the seatbelt, my feet to pull me from the car. I had told neither of them to do those things.“Hey,” I cried in a pathetic protest. “Stop it.”
“Follow me,” Parker said, obvious enjoyment now dancing in his light eyes.
My legs answered as if they belonged to him instead of me. The no-good traitors.
And into the unmarked office in the non-police building I went, thanks to my frighteningly bossy companion and inexplicably disobedient limbs.
Yup, this day just kept on getting worse and worse.
And that definitely didn’t bode well for whatever happened next.
4
We entered a chilly office space that sat dark and dim despite how brightly the late morning sun shone outside. Okay, so I might have slept in a little that day, but I was between books so it didn’t really matter.
“Your instincts were bang on,” Parker said to someone I couldn’t see. “Haberdash is dead. And I found this one at the scene.”
“Well, that doesn’t bode well for the rest of the day,” a smooth voice responded from somewhere deeper inside. Each of his words rolled directly into the next without taking any small breaks for breath. I’d almost describe it as serpentine, although that description wasn’t exactly right, either.
More than a little intrigued, I whipped my head from side to side but still couldn’t locate the speaker. “Who’s there? What do you want with me?”
The disembodied voice chuckled, and I thought I caught a glimpse of movement at the edge of the room, but just as quickly as I spotted it, the dark form had slunk back into the even darker shadows.