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He chuckled. “Something like that. And I’ve got a murder to solve. Stay out of trouble with the law,” he added as he headed for the door.
“You’re the law.”
“Exactly.” He stopped, turned, and bent to kiss the tip of her nose. “Sleep well.”
She laughed, full of joy and not really understanding why. “Don’t get shot.”
“First lesson I learned on the firing range in the Army. How to duck.” He gave her a grin as he picked up his clean shirts, pants, and the rest of his stuff in the bag, and closed the door behind him.
She went to bed, certain that she’d never be able to sleep after their heated interlude. To her amazement, she fell asleep the minute her head hit the pillow.
* * *
Tom forced Annalisa to the back of his mind as he started conducting interviews with people who’d seen the victim hours before her death. He had May Strickland and Billy Turner squarely in his sights, but the sheriff mentioned that a local beautician had seen Julie on the day she’d vanished. So he went to the beauty parlor in town first.
The hairdresser who’d given Julie a permanent the morning of the day that she vanished was named Hazel. She was friendly and cooperative.
“I always liked Julie,” she recalled. “She had her moods, but she was usually happy when she came in for me to do her hair. She loved trying new hairstyles and buying pretty things to go in her hair.”
“Did she seem disturbed the last time she came here?” Tom asked.
“Yes. She was really upset,” Hazel replied. “She said that her mother’s new caregiver was paying far more attention to her stepfather than she was to her mother. Mrs. Downing would be wet all over, and May wouldn’t even bother to clean her up. Julie had all the work.”
“Didn’t she tell her stepfather?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Hazel replied. “She said that her father, rather her stepfather, didn’t want to put that burden of all nursing on Julie. May had convinced him that she knew how to take care of sickly people. When he was around, she made sure that Mrs. Downing was cleaned up and had everything she needed. Julie said he’d been away on business a lot just lately,” she added. “Not that he wanted to be. He loved his wife, but she owned a lot of real estate and a business and he had to keep an eye on those. He told Julie it was like pulling teeth to have to leave his wife at all. But that’s why he didn’t know what May was really doing.”
“Couldn’t Mrs. Downing tell him what was going on?”
Hazel shook her head. “She was very weak. Julie wanted to call in hospice. They have specially trained nurses, you know, but May said it would just be a big hassle with half a dozen strange people in the house all the time, and Mr. Downing likes his privacy. She convinced him that it would be a mistake. Mrs. Downing was on heavy sedation because May told the doctor that Mrs. Downing was complaining about the pain. She didn’t really know what was going on around her.”
Tom was taking notes. “They said Julie didn’t like her stepfather.”
“She didn’t like most people,” Hazel said. “She was very jealous of her stepfather and afraid of losing her mother. They were very close. She was an only child and her mother had always taken care of her. She’d have resented anybody who came between them. But she did say that last afternoon that she guessed her stepfather wasn’t so bad after all.”
Tom let out a breath. “Too little, too late, I guess,” Hazel said. “I don’t think he killed Julie, but a lot of people do. Granger Downing’s not a nice person, on the surface. But underneath all those stinging nettles is a man who’d give the last crumb he had to a starving man.”
“I’ve heard that from other people,” Tom told her. “In fact, I met him myself. He isn’t so bad.”
“He can be. Some man was making lewd comments around his wife when they first got married, and Granger slugged him.” Hazel chuckled. “Almost ended up in jail, but Mrs. Downing stepped in and smoothed over things.”
Tom was reflecting that a man who was that protective of his wife was unlikely to want her dead.
“But that May Strickland,” Hazel continued, shaking her head. “She’s bad news, any way you look at it. She isn’t from here, you know. She came from Denver. She’s only been in Raven Springs for a short time.”
“How about her ex-boyfriend?”
“Billy Turner,” Hazel replied, shaking her head. “He’s local. He was accused of assault last year, but his dad managed to talk the victim out of prosecuting him.”
“Do you know the reason for the assault?”
“Well, it was old man Riley Barnes,” she told him. “He’d just come from the bank with a pocketful of cash that he was going to spend at the cattle auction. Billy swore the old man had said something that made him angry enough to swing on him. I never believed that. I think Billy had robbery in mind and got cold feet when the victim yelled for help and the police came.” She laughed. “He got a good lecture from Sheriff Ralston and a warning. Jeff didn’t want to let him off, but Mr. Barnes refused to prosecute.”
“People who assault senior citizens should be prosecuted,” Tom said icily.
“That’s exactly what I think,” Hazel said, and her expression was as hard as Tom’s. “It started local folks thinking. There was a murder here about two years ago that was never solved. It involved another old man, a rich one, who lived alone. He was found on the floor of his office, stone-cold dead with the door to his office locked, from the inside.”
“I’m sure they checked the windows.”
