“Mr. Holmes, you have my sympathy about your aunt, but the work I do in a case like this is strictly confidential. You’ll have to ask the sheriff—”
“In a case like what?” he interrupted.
She gazed at him without answering.
“If it was suicide, why all the secrecy? Coffee,” he practically snarled at the teenage waitress, who scurried off in the face of his anger. He turned back to Chelsea. “Why an autopsy in the first place? Why call in the state’s top forensic expert to perform it?”
She took a drink and watched him warily over the rim of the thick white cup.
The waitress plunked a mug and a cream pitcher on the table and departed.
“Murder, that’s why,” he answered the questions he raised. “What have you found out? I know you know more than you’re telling. She was my relative. I have a right—”
“What’s going on here?” Pierce asked in a low tone. He stopped by the table and leaned over Colby. “Holt Tanner says you’re interfering in the investigation and possibly tampering with the crime scene. That could earn you several years in the pen.”
Colby gave the mayor a sarcastic grin. “I didn’t tamper with any evidence. I was looking for some. Holt must have missed something.”
“Why do you say that?”
Colby tapped the newspaper headline. “Because Aunt Harriet was too strong-minded to do something like that. I wasn’t around my aunt a lot, but she was a forceful woman. Look how she straightened this town out on how to run the library. When she said jump, the city council did.”
Pierce studied the younger man for a long twenty seconds. Chelsea stilled herself for a confrontation. Pierce surprised her when he placed a hand on Colby’s shoulder.
“I agree. She was one determined woman, practical and fair-minded. Suicide seemed out of character to me, too. I asked for Dr. Kearns to do the autopsy and lend the sheriff’s department a hand because she is the best. Let the law do its job, okay?”
The two men eyed each other, one angry and suspicious, the other calm and certain.
At last Colby nodded. “I’d like to know what you turn up,” he requested.
“I’ll see that you get a full report,” Pierce promised.
After Colby left, Pierce tilted his head toward the street. “Ready to go? I have to get back for a meeting at two this afternoon.” He sighed and added, “I hate meetings.”
Instead of riding with him, she drove her own car to her cabin, then walked the short distance to his. She’d wondered what he was going to serve, then discovered he’d bought two lunches at the diner. That’s what had brought him in while she was being grilled by the nephew.
“Barbecued chicken, your favorite,” he said, setting the containers on the patio table. He’d also provided two large cups of iced tea, hers with lemon.
Taking a chair, she joined him in the meal, her mind going like a buzz saw. Pierce had asked for her help with the case. She hadn’t known that. He’d remembered that she took lemon in her tea.
Not that these tidbits meant anything, she reminded her suddenly buoyant spirits. She sighed quietly. Whatever they had shared was now long gone, but it had been a lovely time out of time while it lasted.
As soon as they finished eating, he asked, “Did you see anything interesting at Harriet’s house?”
Chelsea brought her wayward thoughts in line. “She was a neat person. Her house wasn’t cluttered. She liked flowers and she was fond of her sister and nephew. There were no signs of a past of any kind. Where did she go to college? Where was she born? What was she hiding?”
“I don’t think she was hiding anything. Her diplomas are in her office at the library. She has several. She earned a PhD after she moved here, but she didn’t like being called Dr. Martel.”
“It’s obvious she was very intelligent,” Chelsea said.
Pierce studied her, a questioning frown on his face. “But you see a contradiction in her actions?”
“Yes. How does a smart, independent and wealthy woman get mixed up with someone who would shoot her and try to make it look like suicide?”
“You’re the expert. You tell me.”
Chelsea hesitated, then said, “He was very controlling. I think he wanted her to get rid of the baby. She refused. That triggered the quarrel.”
Pierce leaned toward her, excitement flashing through his eyes. “Can you profile him for us?”
“I can give you some ideas on his personality.” She considered the evidence she’d seen and been given by the lawman. “He’s used to command, and he hates to be thwarted. He has a temper, which he’s generally learned to control.”
“But not always,” Pierce muttered.
“No, not always. He’s in his forties, maybe early fifties. Miss Martel was forty-three. At any rate, he was mature enough to control the first wave of panic and think through corrective steps. He wiped down his fingerprints, then set up the suicide. He was smart enough to use her gun.”
“There’s no record she had one,” Pierce said.
Chelsea shrugged. “The slug was a twenty-two, a caliber a woman would be comfortable with—not too big, but powerful enough for close range, say if a burglar was in the house. He probably gave her the gun and insisted she keep it.”
Pierce was silent for a long minute. “Anything else?”
“He would be drawn to positions of power. If in the army, he’d be an officer. In civilian life, he could be a cop or a CEO. If he owned a company, he’d be a tyrant. To attract a woman like Harriet Martel, he’d have to be intelligent. He’d also be charming. Both are good skills for public office. He’d more likely hold an elective office rather than an appointed one.”
“Why?”
“Self-preservation. Other men would be afraid of him. He’s ambitious and ruthless. Utterly ruthless.”
“A person would have to be without conscience to kill his lover and his child. Is that your conclusion?”
“Yes.”
Pierce grimaced. “I wish I knew what to think. I can’t conceive of a murderer walking around loose in my town. I know everybody within ten miles of the city limits and probably half the rest of the county, too. You and Holt say the man is local. I find that hard to believe.”
Anger blazed from his eyes as he glared at her.
She went on the defensive. “Believe what you wish.
Perhaps you’d like to bring someone else in on the case. I can give you a name. I trained under one of the FBI’s foremost forensic investigators my last year of school.”
“So Kelly said.” He waved a hand in dismissal of her suggestion. “You’re the best, or else I wouldn’t have asked for you.”
Her eyes met his and locked. For an eternity they gazed at each other, questions and awareness rushing in rivers of unappeased hunger between them.
“Damnation,” he muttered.
Then he reached for her.
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