Jaclyn walked in a little after nine. Eric watched heads turning her way. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, because she wasn’t. Objectively, he supposed most people would say she was attractive. She sure as hell attracted him. But what set her apart was her effortless, long-legged stroll, those dynamite legs, and a classy sense of style. Jaclyn couldn’t look cheap if she tried. Everything about her was meticulously put together without being fussy. He hated fussiness, hated a lot of jangling things hanging off a woman. From the gold studs in her ears to the tiny gold chain around her right ankle, she was restrained and classy. It was funny how the very things that attracted him to her were what he most enjoyed messing up; maybe it was the challenge of getting her clothes off and her hair down, her nails digging into his back. Oh, yeah.

He stood up as she approached, directed her to the chair beside his desk. If he’d pushed it a little last night, he thought, they’d have ended up in bed, but what he wanted wasn’t just sex. He wanted Jaclyn to decide that she wanted him. He wanted her to consciously, deliberately decide to give them a chance, because otherwise he’d always feel as if she had one foot out the door and was just waiting for him to do something wrong so she could leave.

Garvey came up as Eric turned to get the stack of photographs he’d put to the side. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said to her. “That was a close thing last night.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Garvey. Yes, it was. That was the most frightened I’ve ever been.”

“We’re making progress in the case. With luck, this will all be over pretty soon.” He pulled up a chair and sat down—evidently he wanted to be involved in the process.

“I hope so.” She glanced at the clock, then at Eric. “Ready?”

He gave her the head shots first. She flipped through them, taking maybe two seconds on each one, then shook her head and set them aside. “Nothing, but let me look through them again in a few minutes. Sometimes my impressions need to simmer.”

“Take your time.”

She gave a tiny smile. “Today? Time is the one thing I don’t have.”

Next she went through the photographs of cars in the same measured way. She went all the way to the end of the stack, but instead of setting the stack aside the way she had with the head shots, she went back to the beginning and started again, a tiny frown knitting her brow. She went more slowly this time, her head tilted to the side.

Eric and Garvey sat silently, watching and waiting. Eric almost stopped breathing. He was putting a lot of faith in her attention to detail. She might not know cars, but she knew style.

She pulled a photograph out of the stack and tossed it on the desk. “This one,” she said. “The car was like this.”

He glanced at the photograph. He wanted to smile with satisfaction, but he kept his expression noncommittal so he didn’t inadvertently influence her. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. It had that same doohickey sticking up on the hood.”

Eric picked up the photograph. The car she’d selected was a Mercedes S-Class, the S600, which ran about a hundred and fifty thou. Only the S-Class vehicles had the Mercedes emblem standing on the tip of the hood; on all of the other models, the emblem was made into the grill.

Senator Dennison drove a silver S600.

He gave her the other stack of photographs. These had been harder to come by, because they were photographs of the taillights of several different makes and models, taken at night. “Do any of these taillights look like the ones on the car you saw last night?”

“You’re asking a lot,” she murmured. “I was scared out of my head. I barely remembered to look for a tag number, and fat lot of good that did.”

“Just see if anything rings a bell.”

She did the whole methodical thing again, but when she reached the last one she shook her head. “Sorry. Nothing there.”

That had been a long shot anyway. Still, she’d pulled out a piece of information that might sway a judge. She hadn’t identified the senator, but she’d identified his car.

She picked up the head shots again, went back through them before finally shaking her head. “I don’t recognize anyone.”

Eric took the pictures back. “That’s okay. Thanks for coming in.”

She stood, gave him a quizzical look. “That’s it? You aren’t going to tell me if that hood doohickey means anything or not?”

He smiled. “It means a lot.” It also meant a lot that she was being cordial, that she was keeping her hostility firmly under wraps in front of Garvey.

“Good. I’d hate to waste a trip here when I have a million other things I have to be doing. I have to run now. Have a nice day.”

Everyone in the room watched her leave. Garvey heaved a sigh. “If it wasn’t for my blushing bride, I’d give you a run for your money with that one.”

Eric snorted. “Your blushing bride would cut your nuts off.”

“I know. That’s what I meant.”


Chapter Twenty-three

“I HAVE TO TAKE NOTES,” BISHOP DELANEY SAID GLEEFULLY. “Forget notes; I have to take pictures, otherwise no one will ever believe it. I did the flowers for Hee Haw Hell.”

“Hush,” Jaclyn said in an undertone, casting a sharp look around. The last thing she needed was for anyone in the wedding party, or any of the guests, to hear him. But no one was close by; he’d had the good sense to wait until they were alone to share his observation. She wasn’t worried about hurting anyone’s feelings, but she was definitely worried that someone—like half the people there—would take umbrage and pull out their pocket knives. She didn’t have anything against pocket knives; she carried a teeny one in her purse herself, and it was forever coming in handy. But if she had to vote on the wedding party she considered most likely to be in a knife fight, this one would win hands down.

She and Bishop were sitting in the back row on the groom’s side, and since the venue, otherwise known as a barn, wasn’t filled to capacity, there was no one seated in the two rows of folding chairs in front of them. At that precise moment the groom’s mother, who remained silently horrified by her son’s choice of bride and everything to do with the wedding, was being seated—to Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places”—by one of the ushers, though that term was a little glorified when applied to this particular usher, the bride’s mullet-headed brother. At least he was wearing a tie. No jacket, and his pants were khaki, but he had on a tie.

Jaclyn kept trying to put herself into a party spirit and have some fun, because most of the people there, barring the groom’s mother and two sisters, were having a blast. Fun didn’t have to be color-coordinated. Fun didn’t have to have a background of classical music. But what kept her from relaxing was the strong impression that this group’s idea of fun didn’t fit within the definition of “legal.” She frequently handled guests, and wedding party participants, who drank too much or breathed through a joint, but she was afraid this group leaned more toward crack, meth, and a variety of crimes that made the words “warrant for arrest” of importance to them.

This wedding teetered on the edge of disaster; she could feel it. So far everyone seemed to be on his or her best behavior, but “best” was subjective. To call this Hee Haw Hell was insulting to Hee Haw.

The wedding was being held in a barn located in the middle of a field a good forty-minute drive from Premier’s offices. The bride’s grandfather owned this land, and though it was no longer worked as a farm, it remained the home place, the family stomping grounds. To get to the barn, one had to leave the paved road. The directions had read: Turn in PawPaw’s driveway, drive around the house, and follow the tractor road down the left side of the field until you get to the barn. Maybe at one time the tractor road had looked like a real road, albeit a dirt one. Now it looked like a half-grown-up trail, with deep ruts that had threatened to rip the undercarriage of her rental car.

After driving down the dirt/grass road, everyone had to park on a grassy field, which made Jaclyn fervently thankful that the weather had cooperated. She was prepared to contact a vendor and order sturdy tents for the outdoor reception, if necessary, but she couldn’t do a damn thing about a muddy field of cars and ruined shoes.

The interior of the barn was lit by open windows and a multitude of white Christmas lights, as well as a number of off-white candles. Arrangements of white and off-white flowers, along with the lighting, made for an almost quaint setting—“almost” being the operative word. There was old straw on the floor, which the bride insisted was “authentic,” and while there were no animals present, the faint, lingering odor of past residents remained. The fans she’d arranged to be brought in were silent and effective, but maybe moving the air around so much wasn’t a good thing. On the other hand, without the fans everyone would be swimming in a sea of sweat. While this wasn’t the hottest day of the year, the temperature was still close to ninety.

Many of the guests on the bride’s side were in jeans and T-shirts; they hadn’t even bothered to brush off the dressy jeans or, heaven forbid, drag a dress or a suit out of the back of the closet. On the other hand, the running shoes most of them were wearing might come in handy.

The groom’s relatives had made an effort, and were dressed nicely. Jaclyn was wearing the lightest-weight business suit she owned. Bishop, of course, was immaculately dressed and, as always, fashionable and cool … seriously cool. Did the man have sweat glands?

“Why are you still here?” she whispered. The bouquets, corsages, and floral decorations, all paid for by the mother of the groom, had been delivered and set up to Bishop’s specifications. He rarely stuck around for the ceremony.