AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It gets in my way when I’m working,” she said. She sighed, leaning forward with her chin in her propped-up hands. “I’m so tired.”
She looked it. He wondered what sort of job she had. She was wearing a colorful shirt under her coat, with plain colored slacks. Must be a cleaning job, he told himself. She wasn’t old enough to have a profession.
“Tell me all you know about Julie Crane.”
“I covered most of it last night,” she said. “She had some issues, but she was pretty good in school, especially with math. She was a whiz. She could do calculus and trig in the fourth grade. I couldn’t even manage it in high school. She loved numbers.”
“Did you know her well?”
“We were friends, sort of.” She smiled sadly. “She gave me a necklace before she died. Real gold. I wear it on special occasions and think of her. I liked her a lot. I think she liked me, too. She certainly trusted me.”
“Any evidence that the stepfather was doing things to her?”
“You mean . . . ? Oh, I see. No. He wasn’t that sort. He tried to make friends with her, because he truly loved her mother, but she was jealous of him with her mother, and she wouldn’t let him get to know her. Her mother was an invalid after the lung cancer started to work on her. She could barely get out of bed. Julie took good care of her, right up until the end; in spite of the so-called nurse who never did a thing she wasn’t ordered to do! The cancer shouldn’t have killed her that quickly, but I guess every case is different. I helped, until her mother’s nurse thought I was trying to take over her job and complained to Mr. Downing. So I got handed my walking papers. That was sort of odd, you know, that the nurse objected to anybody helping her patient; as if she had something to hide.”
“Julie sounds like a fine person.”
“She really was, and what happened to her was so, so sad.” He was taking notes. Any tidbit might be the key to unlock a case. He overlooked nothing. He said that to Annalisa, his dark eyes steady on her face.
“You never know when a tiny clue will blow open a case.” She nodded, and when he went back to making notes on his cell phone, she studied him. In his thirties, she surmised, probably on the wrong side of thirty-five. He was very good-looking. But she’d had her problems with men who thought the same thing about her. She’d been pursued by several, but she had no interest in them. She’d never felt anything at all with the boys she’d dated. She still felt very little. Men just didn’t affect her.
Well, not until now. She studied that strong face with its chiseled mouth and high cheekbones and felt herself tingling all over. Odd reaction, especially to a man she didn’t really know. He was everything she didn’t like in a man. Big. Authoritative. Overbearing. He was also in law enforcement. That brought back really hard memories of her late father, who’d been all those things. Her father had dominated her completely, ordered her life, told her what to do, nitpicked everything. He’d run off any boys she might have become interested in. They couldn’t get past him. He liked having Annalisa at home to do the housework and cook and take care of him. He wasn’t losing that for some overheated boy who’d never stay with her anyway. He also wanted Annalisa to look after her mother and do all the housework when her mother’s heart started to fail. Poor Julie had the same problems at her home, too. It was why Annalisa and Julie had been friends. Neither of them saw a way out that didn’t involve tragedy. There had been no escape for Annalisa even after her mother died suddenly late one night of a major heart attack. Her father was too important in the community. He drank, a lot, but everybody protected him. Not that he was ever abusive to his daughter. He never lifted his hand to her. He was just overbearing and belligerent. And, at least, Annalisa was still alive. But poor Julie had died.
She threw off the memory. Everyone thought she missed her dad. She didn’t. She wasn’t certain that she’d ever loved him. He’d been verbally, although never physically, abusive to her late mother. Despite the misery of her marriage, her mother was deeply in love with her father. She never stopped loving him, no matter what he said when he drank. She once told Annalisa that she didn’t know why her father was the way he was, but that he’d been a good, kind man when she married him.
Annalisa’s training had been a blessing. At least her father had agreed to that, and it was a good thing, because she had a job that she loved, that paid her expenses. Well, except for the house. It was falling apart over her head. She really didn’t have the capital to fix anything. If it fell in one day, she’d have no place to live. She’d have to rent a room or something. Probably a good idea not to think too hard about that.
“Do you always brood over things?” her companion asked suddenly.
She looked up, startled. “How did you know?”
“Understanding body language is part of my job. I have all sorts of skills.”
“I hope one of them isn’t breaking and entering,” she said calmly.
“I have not broken and entered anything,” he huffed.
“Not ever?” she probed, eyes twinkling.
“I broke a door in once, where a woman was being assaulted.”
“What about the man who assaulted her?”
“Oh, he ran into a wall and got a black eye. They suspected I’d done it to him, but the perp backed up my story very quickly.” He smiled angelically.
“Good for you,” she said curtly. “Men like that should be put in stocks in the middle of towns.”
“There you go, getting medieval again.”
“It wasn’t me, it was you getting medieval,” she shot back.
He grinned at her. His dark eyes twinkled. It impressed her. He seemed very different when he smiled. She smiled back involuntarily.
“Maybe we both should be living back in the dark ages,” she suggested.
“Good luck finding a time machine, especially in my hotel. It has a cricket,” he muttered. “A cricket! In the middle of winter, for God’s sake!”
“The cricket is in a cricket box. The man staying in the motel takes it everywhere with him. It’s a pet.” She didn’t tell him how she knew. The man was from out of town, but he was visiting a friend where she worked.
