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“How you holding up, Gil? You doing okay?” Officer Bailey asked the other man while Detective Sparks looked on. She had a soft spot for the poor guy who’d lost his wife in such a way. After she’d ran him through the system and questioned the neighbors and those around who knew the couple, the picture that unfolded had all but broke her heart.
He’d lost a very high paying job through no fault of his own, only to lose his wife a few months later. The fact that she’d been cheating on him didn’t seem to matter at this point since there was no sign that either of them wanted to quit their marriage before the murder. Though from everything, the neighbors had whispered to her about there was more than a little bit of trouble in paradise these past few months.
By rights, he should be the first suspect on her list; he fits all the criteria. A man down on his luck whose wife had spurned him by having an affair right under his nose for all the world to see no less, who wouldn’t look at him. But she’d been there, she’d seen him break down on the side of the road like his world had just ended, and though she knew that there were some people who could put on a very good act and be guilty as all hell, she didn’t get that from him. She knew a broken spirit when she saw one, and she saw that in him that day.
She could only imagine how hard it must be for him to lose Melissa at a time like this when things were so chaotic between the two of them. There will never be a chance to do things over, to get things back on track. If there were any harsh words spoken between them in the last little while, there won’t be a chance to go back and say you’re sorry, to patch things up between them.
As a cop, she knew she shouldn’t be this soft, and usually, she wouldn’t be, but being in love seems to have tapped into her softer side. And so she let Officer Bailey console the bereaved husband of the victim and didn’t chide him for wearing kid gloves. Once they were through with the niceties, though, and they’d refused his offer of coffee, she got right down to business.
“So, Gil, Bobby tells me you two might have found yourselves in a situation, you wanna tell me about it?” She stood leaning against the kitchen sink while Officer Bailey took a seat across from Gil. The poor guy turned red as a berry and mumbled out an explanation that she had to ask him to repeat.
His story sounded pretty much the same as Bobby’s, and she asked him to go have his urine tested. “They’ll be expecting you at the clinic; Bobby’s going there too. Why don’t you two go together?” It no longer seemed strange to her that the two men were leaning on each other in these troubling times. It looks like she was finally settling into small-town life.
“Look-look-look-look, here comes the other one.”
“Both of them on the same day! I wonder just what in the Sam Hill is going on.”
“I’d bet you anything one doesn’t know word one about the other being here.”
“Never mind that. I want to know where Riley O’Rourke got the gumption to come over here and ask us to keep an eye on his woman.”
“Now Lenore, you know damn good, and well, that boy always had balls of steel.”
“Yes, Constance, but don’t you see what he’s inferring? He’s saying that we’re so nosy that we can keep an eye on that girl as busy as she is.”
“And he ain’t never lied. You know damn good, and well, you always have your nose in something.”
“Like you any different.”
The two older women each took a sip from their camouflage Vodka lemonade. To the undiscerning eye, it looked like two innocent old ladies were enjoying a cool glass of the lemony beverage on a hot summer day. But as Riley had just busted them for, it was indeed ninety percent vodka with a dash of the citrus drink to add color and some flavor as the two had told him straight-faced when he had the nerve to get into their business.
“Okay, now straighten up your face Constance. That boy made us swear up and down, not to say anything. Hi Detective, hello there, Pete, looking good.” Lenore sipped her drink with a grandmotherly smile that would fool the pope while Constance kept a bead on Celia. The girl wasn’t bad looking for all she liked to run around with guns like a man and getting involved in murders and such. No wonder Riley had lost his ever-loving mind.
