AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ms. Hawling!” Prim blushed. “I mean Bliss!”
Bliss chortled. “Now that I have your attention, I’ll share what Shep’s been so patiently waiting to hear.” She sobered. “The grave the sheriff asked me to examine belonged to a womanby the name of Iris Hildebrand. She was a very wealthy heiress from the east, who disappeared en route to an asylum out west.”
“An asylum,” Shep repeated carefully.
“You heard me.” Her expression hardened. “It was one of the easiest ways to strip a woman of her fortune back in those days. Accuse her of being crazy, lock her up, problem solved.” She dusted her hands angrily.
“We guessed right.” Though Shep sympathized with her sentiments, he preferred to stay on topic. “Iris wasn’t Comanche.”
“Not even a little.” Bliss’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“Which raises another question.” Shep wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. “Why was she buried on Comanche land?”
Bliss waggled a finger at him. “That’s the million dollar question.”
“Any evidence of foul play?” He had to ask, though he doubted it was possible to determine something like that from such decimated remains.
“Anything’s possible, I suppose, but every instinct in me says it wasn’t.” Bliss shook her head. “Chief Pecos married a white woman. Who’s to say one of his other tribesmen didn’t do the same?”
Shep frowned thoughtfully. “That still wouldn’t explain why she ended up on the rez instead of at the asylum.”
“No. It wouldn’t,” Bliss agreed. “It’s a puzzle, for sure.” Her gaze roved the room and came to a stop. “One that will have to wait a little longer to be solved,” she sighed. “Unfortunately, we have our own ghosts to lay to rest today.”
He followed her line of sight to Sheriff Gil Remington. “Were you and the sheriff’s wife close?”
Surprise flickered in her gaze. “Good heavens, no!” She compressed her lips, cheeks glowing a dull pink.
Sensing she wasn’t comfortable continuing the conversation, he touched her elbow. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”
He did, of course. “Though I don’t have police jurisdiction on the rez, my volunteer K-9 team is at your service if you need us.”
She gave him a tight smile. “That’s what Adriel said. Thank you.”
The moment Bliss moved away from them, Mayor Heavenly Hawling make a bee-line for her. They were soon speaking in animated undertones. He wondered what that was about.
Prim touched his arm. “I feel like I missed something even though I was standing right here.”
He laid a hand over hers, holding it captive against his arm. “Bliss Hawling was pretty broken up earlier at the grave site.”
“I noticed.” Her gaze didn’t leave his face.
“But when I asked if she and Gil’s wife had been close, she looked like I’d slapped her.”
“I noticed that, too.” She squeezed his arm. “It means her tears were for your boss and him alone.”
“So it appears.” Bliss was the only one doing the looking, though. Shep had been keeping a close eye on Gil Remington. Not once during the entire graveside service had the guy glanced Bliss’s way.
He glanced across the room and found Bliss and Heavenly still had their heads together. Waggling his eyebrows at Prim, he joked, “Are you any good at eavesdropping?”
“Watch and learn, mister.” She lifted a glass of sparkling water from the tray of a passing waiter. In true Remington style, Gil was having the lunch reception catered.
Prim glided away from Shep with a vague flutter of her hand, as if trying to catch someone’s attention on the other side of the room. She breezed past a large portrait of Gil’s wife displayed on an easel. Moments later, she was standing back-to-back with the mayor.
Prim bent over at one point to fiddle with her shoe. Then she straightened and returned to Shep’s side with a triumphant gleam in her eyes.
He spread his hands. “Well?”
“A while back, the mayor found a stack of very old letters at Town Hall. She thinks they might shed some light on how Iris Hildebrand ended up in a shallow grave next to The Longhorn Grill.”
