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A jolt shot through me, but whether it was excitement, fear, or something else entirely, I couldn’t quite tell.
“Why did you kill her?” he pressed, his eyes boring into mine as if trying to see straight into my thoughts.
“I didn’t!” I stomped my foot for good measure. Maybe my body could say what my words could not. “This morning in the shower…”
He raised one suggestive eyebrow that sent flames straight into my cheeks. Why did he have to be so good looking? That made this whole situation so much worse. I’d always been great at writing banter, but not so great at actually doing it in real life. Besides, it’s not like flirting could get me out of this one.
“No, not that. I mean, yes, the hot water,” I back-pedaled again and then panicked when he reached back toward his belt. “Wait! I didn’t kill her! How could you even think that?”
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 literally dead 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 to like 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.
