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Carson retrieved his overcoat from Trapper. “Excuse me. I’ve got forms to file.” Juggling coat and briefcase, he hurried down the hallway, almost running into a deputy as he stepped purposefully off the elevator.
Trapper was in a standoff with Glenn. “If I had asked nice, would you have given me access to him?”
“No,” Glenn thundered.
“All Kerra needed to hear were those few words.”
“The voice is wrong,” she repeated, addressing the statement to Glenn. “Believe me, I get goose bumps when I think back to hearing those words and realizing what they implied. I’ll never forget the voice.”
“In your statement, you said that only one of the men spoke. Duncan here could be the one who stayed silent.”
“He could. But I’m positive that’s not the voice I overheard.”
Trapper was listening to her and Glenn and following their thread, but he was also observing Leslie Duncan through the window. He was bobbing his head back and forth and playing imaginary drums on the table as though keeping time to an earworm.
“Sheriff?”
All of them turned to the deputy who had nearly collided with Carson at the elevator. “We got the search warrant about an hour ago,” he reported. “Found this in Duncan’s trailer. Isn’t it the one that’s been missing?”
He held up an evidence bag. Sealed inside it was Kerra’s Louis Vuitton.
Chapter 24
When they returned to the motel room, Kerra remarked, “I’m surprised housekeeping has been here already.”
“I’m surprised there’s housekeeping.”
Trapper’s statement had been spoken in an absent mutter. He was preoccupied with checking one of his various cell phones for missed calls or texts.
“Nothing from The Major?” she asked.
“No.” He tossed his coat onto the bed. “If he calls at all, it’ll probably be to notify me that he’s having me certified.”
“He thinks you’re pigheaded, not insane.”
“Doesn’t matter. I was over what he thought about me a long time ago.”
She knew that wasn’t the case at all, but she let it go. Things were already strained between Trapper and her. They’d driven back from the sheriff’s office in silence. She supposed that he was mulling over how much significance the discovery of her missing bag would have on the investigation.
Pursuant to that, she asked, “What do you think?”
Trapper had his back to the room, staring through the
window, hands turned palms out in the rear pockets of his jeans—the new ones he disliked.
“That you’d be wasting your money.”
Because she’d been envisioning his bare backside inside the jeans, his statement didn’t register. “Sorry?”
He turned to face her. “You’d be wasting your money on a locksmith. I’ll break into your car and hot-wire it. You’ll have to get it fixed when you get back to Dallas, but the repair will probably cost you less than a locksmith.
“Better still, ask Carson to set you up with his discount body shop guy. Just be sure that if he gives you a loaner car it isn’t hot.” He motioned to her small duffel bag on the floor in the corner. “Start gathering up your things. When you’re ready, I’ll take you to your car.”
The drama in the sheriff’s office had obscured her resolve to go home, but apparently it was still fresh in Trapper’s mind, and he wasn’t trying to talk her out of it. Quite the opposite. Before she had time to respond to this turnabout, there was a knock.
Trapper checked the peephole before opening the door.
Carson bustled in, rubbing his hands together. “How’d I do?”
