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When I woke up, it was still hazily bright outside. The book was under my hand. The fan creaked as it oscillated in the corner. And Rose was sitting in the chair next to the bed, staring at me.
I blinked. For a sleepy second I thought she was a ghost, she was sitting so still. Then I realized she was real.
Rose frowned at me, as if annoyed. Her hands were in her lap, her nails painted pink against her light-blue jeans. She seemed in no hurry to say anything.
I was too groggy to feel particularly alarmed. “What are you doing here, Rose?” I asked.
“What did they say?” It was the same grating voice I remembered from this morning.
“This is my room,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. “You need to leave.”
“They said I murdered Robbie, didn’t they?”
“What?” The nap had been a powerful one, and the fussy, lacy room was soporific. I couldn’t summon any outrage, just the weird feeling you get when you first leave a dream. “Who?”
“Kyle Petersen.” Rose’s voice was truly angry, though it wasn’t directed at me. She lifted her hostile gaze away from me and aimed it at the opposite wall. “That little turd thinks he can pass judgment on me. On anyone. He’s as useful as an itch in the pants. Robbie said he was one of the worst recruits he’d ever seen.”
I tried to follow. She was talking about the cop, Kyle. The one who had joked about Rose killing her husband, then digging his grave in the garden.
“And Chad Chipwell?” Rose said this slightly unbelievable name with spitting disdain. “When did he ever have a thought of his own in his head? He’s so gullible you could tell him Jimi Hendrix is still alive and he’d scratch his head and ask when he’s putting a new record out.”
This must be the cop who drove with Kyle. Rose’s rant was creepy and completely inappropriate. I had no idea why I was entertained by it.
“Yeah,” I said, propping my shoulders up on my pillow and running a hand through my sleep-rumpled hair. “Kyle told us you killed your husband and that he haunts this place. The other one, Chad, told us not to listen.”
Rose snorted. “They’re just jealous because Robbie was a good cop. The best one they had in this stupid town. He could have moved to the state police and been a detective, but they wouldn’t promote him because of the color of his skin. So instead of making Robbie detective, we got Quentin.” She rolled her eyes behind her huge glasses. “The almighty Quentin, praise the Lord.”
That made me smile. I sat up straighter in bed.
“And Beam,” Rose went on, not needing any cues from me. “He’s only good at pushing paperwork, if that. Robbie caught him sleeping in his car on a stakeout once. Beam threatened to have him fired. Did you eat the tuna?”
“Um, yes,” I said, wondering for the first time where Eddie was. “It was delicious, thank you.” I glanced at the clock radio on the bedside table, sitting on a lace doily beneath a frilly lavender lamp. It was three o’clock.
“Good. I got frozen hamburger patties for dinner. I fry them up. I got buns, ketchup, mustard. You can have some if you like.”
I cleared my throat. “Sure, that sounds good.” I was fully awake now, and I looked Rose in the eyes. “So, you don’t think my husband and I are murderers?”
Rose looked straight back at me without blinking. Her gaze was flat, but there was something there, flickering in the depths. Intelligence, maybe. Anger, perhaps. Or it could have been the determination of a woman who has survived bad things. Who had maybe done bad things. Like me.
“I don’t know you,” Rose said in her blunt, unpleasant way. “I could see you going either way. But your husband?” She shook her head. “That man has never killed anyone in his life.”
“He served in Iraq,” I told her.
“Sure he did. And why did he come home? He didn’t like it much, did he? If he was the killing type, he’d still be there.”
I stared at her, my lips parted in surprise.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Rose went on. “Quentin thinks he has you pegged, and he’s not going to take his eyes off you. If you really are a murderer, you can try it on me, but you’ll have a fight on your hands. Robbie taught me plenty while we were married.” She pursed her lips and looked down at her hand, where she picked at the arm of her chair. She was quiet a moment before she said, “What really happened last night? When you picked up that girl? What did you see?”
So Rose wanted something, then. That, I understood. “I’ll tell you,” I said slowly. “But I have questions of my own.”
Rose looked up at me. “You want information? About what?”
“This town.”
She smiled. “If you want gossip, this town has plenty, and I know all of it. Just tell me what you want to know.”
CHAPTER NINE
