Kathleen Creighton - Lady Killer

Al gave her an unreadable look. “It wasn’t on him, no, ma’am. We found it in his vehicle.”

He tucked his notebook and pencil back in his pocket and rose. “I guess that’s all-for now. We’ll be in touch once the medical examiner’s done.” He thanked her, nodded a farewell and left the way he’d come, through the back door.

Brooke sat where he’d left her, with one hand covering her mouth and her eyes closed, listening to the sounds of vehicles coming and going outside in the yard, and the distant mutter of men’s voices. She didn’t want to listen to the voices rumbling around inside her own head, but they kept intruding, anyway.

Something isn’t right about this. I can feel it. Something’s not right. It doesn’t make sense.

Either Daniel wasn’t telling her the whole story, or…or what? She didn’t know. Only that something was wrong.

After a while-she didn’t know how long-she realized the noises outside had stopped. That all the official vehicles had gone. Finally. The sun had gone down. It was past time to feed the animals. Only her ingrained sense of responsibility made her get up and go outside and throw some hay to the two horses, six goats and two alpacas, and close and bar the chicken-house door. She didn’t go down to the far end of the corrals, where Lady’s compound was. The cougar was in her holding cage and would be all right where she was until tomorrow.

Back in the house, she went to check on Daniel and Hilda and found both in Daniel’s bed, sound asleep on top of the covers. Daniel had one arm thrown across the dog’s body, and Hilda had her muzzle resting on the boy’s chest. She went to her own room and got a comforter and spread it over the softly snoring pair. Then, after a moment, she lifted the edge of the comforter and lay down, stretching herself out beside her son. With her arm across his body and her face nestled in his damp hair, breathing the salty, small-boy smell of him, she fell asleep.

In the morning, she was in the kitchen, making blueberry pancakes-Daniel’s favorite breakfast-when the knock came. Not on the kitchen door, the one everyone always used, but on the front door. Her hands shook slightly as she wiped them on a dish towel and went down the hall and through the living room to answer it.

Sheriff Clayton Carter stood on her front porch. He was wearing his brown Stetson, and his arms were folded across the front of his unbuttoned Western-style jacket. He didn’t smile or remove his hat when Brooke opened the door, and she didn’t smile and say that it was a nice surprise to see him and ask if he would care to come in for coffee.

“Ma’am, would you step out here please?” the sheriff said.

Moving as if in a dream, Brooke did, and two uniformed deputies she didn’t know came up the steps behind the sheriff, and one of them took her arm and turned her around.

“Brooke Fallon Grant,” the sheriff said, “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Duncan Grant. You have the right to remain silent…”

Then Brooke’s head filled with the sound of high winds, and for some time she didn’t hear anything else. Not until she was in the sheriff’s car and being driven out of the yard, and she looked back and saw Daniel being restrained by one of the uniformed deputies. She heard his shrill and stricken cry.

“Mom! Mama…”

The last thing Holt Kincaid had expected to encounter when he drove into Colton, Texas, was a traffic jam. According to the information he’d gotten off the Internet, the population still hadn’t topped seven thousand, probably due to the fact that the town was just outside reasonable commuting distance from both Austin and San Antonio, and its residents hadn’t yet figured out how to capitalize on its Hill Country charm and local history to bring in the tourist trade. From what Holt could see, the town’s two main industries appeared to be peaches and rocks, and while there was still an apparently endless supply of the latter-in spite of the fact that nearly all the buildings on the main drag were constructed out of them-the season for the former was pretty much over. And it didn’t seem likely the excess of vehicular traffic was due to rush hour, either, since it was mid-morning and, anyway, in his experience in towns like this, what passed for “rush hour” usually coincided with the start and end of the school day.

Also, it didn’t seem likely that local traffic, no matter how heavy, could account for the high number of vans and panel trucks he was seeing, with satellite antennas sprouting out of their tops and news-station logos painted on their sides.

During his slow progress through the center of town, Holt was able to discern that the excitement seemed to be centered around the elaborate and somewhat oversized Gothic-style, stone-of course-courthouse, which was located a block off the highway, down the main cross street. A crowd had gathered on the grassy square in front of the courthouse, everyone sort of milling around in the shade of several big oak trees, the way people do when they’re bored to death but expecting something exciting to happen any minute.

The sense of anticipation-almost euphoria-with which he’d entered the town, certain he was almost at the end of what had been a long and often frustrating quest, was replaced now by a sense of caution, developed over his long years of experience as a private investigator with a specialty in finding people. While it didn’t seem likely this unexpected gathering of news media could have anything to do with his reason for being here in the town of Colton, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to know exactly what he was getting into the middle of.

A few blocks past the courthouse, the traffic thinned out considerably, and Holt pulled off onto a side street and found a parking spot across from a diner, the inauspicious kind frequented by locals rather than passing-through motorists looking for a familiar franchise.

On his way into the diner, he dropped a quarter into a box dispensing the local newspaper, which he folded in half and tucked under his arm as he made his way past empty booths to take a seat at the counter-also empty, except for a waitress taking her mid-morning coffee break. Holt had an idea the usual denizens of the place could probably be found among the crowd down at the courthouse.

As he was taking his seat on one of the cracked red vinyl and chrome stools, the waitress wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, slid off her stool and swept, with a flourish, around the end of the counter to present herself behind the section he’d just occupied.

“Hi,” she chirped. “My name is Shirley, and I’ll be your server today. How may I help you?” And then she gave a throaty chortle to show she was just putting him on, and said in what Holt imagined was her natural Texas twang, “What can I get for ya, hon?”

Shirley was a heavyset woman in her forties, probably, with Day-Glo red curls piled on top of her head and laugh lines radiating from the corners of her vivid blue eyes. She had a nice smile, so Holt smiled back and said, “Coffee, for starters.” He tilted his head toward the glass case behind the counter. “And maybe a piece of that pie there. Is that peach?”

“Sure is,” Shirley said, beaming. “Local, too. And the season’s ’bout over, so you hit it just right. Can I put a scoop of ice cream on that for ya?”

“No thanks-got to watch my waistline.” He patted himself in that general area, and Shirley gave him a severe look and what could only be described as a snort.

“Oh, sure, like you need to worry. Mister, you turn sideways, you’d just ’bout disappear.” While she was saying this, she was efficiently dishing up a slice of pie and placing it in front of him, with a fork and a spoon beside it.

Holt waited until a mug of steaming coffee had joined the pie, then picked up the fork and said, “Where is everybody?”

Shirley made that same inelegant noise as she leaned against the stainless-steel counter behind her and folded her arms across her ample bosom. “Down at the courthouse, probably. Along with just about ever’body else in this town. It’s where I’d be, too, if I wasn’t stuck holdin’ down the fort here.”

Holt dug into the pie, which was delicious, maybe the best fresh peach pie he’d ever eaten. “I saw the media trucks as I was coming through. What’s all the excitement about?”

Shirley tipped her head toward his left arm. “Well, you could read all about it in that paper you got propping up your elbow there. One of our local deputy sheriffs got killed a couple days ago-by a mountain lion, it looked like. And then they went and arrested his wife-ex-wife, I should say-for murder. Biggest thing to happen around here in a while, I’ll tell you. The whole state of Texas seems to have caught it now, too-because it was a cop that got killed, I guess. Or the lion angle, maybe. Anyway, it sure is a shame. They had a kid, too, a little boy. I guess he’s been staying with the preacher at their church.”

Holt didn’t hear anything more. While the waitress had been talking, he’d unfolded the newspaper and spread it out next to his pie plate. There was the headline, pretty much the way she’d summed it up: Local Deputy Killed By Lion, Ex-wife Arrested, and under that a was photo of the deputy in his dress uniform, complete with Stetson. Holt had started skimming the article and had got as far as the name of the woman who’d been arrested and charged with murdering her ex-husband, Duncan Grant. The name jumped out at him, and it was about like having a rattlesnake coil up and strike right at his chest. Brooke Fallon Grant. Shirley’s voice faded into a soft roar, and hot coffee slopped out of the mug and burned his hand.

“Oh-my goodness. Here let me…” Shirley was there with a towel, mopping up. “Hope ya didn’t burn yourself. Coffee’s pretty hot. Just made a fresh pot…”