She's Gotta Be Mine (28 page)

Brax
didn’t answer. God, she’d have to scour the Internet to find out. She didn’t have time to scour the Internet. God, what was she going to do? How could she save Warren if he didn’t even want her to?

“Since you don’t want to tell me about Cookie, mind telling me where you were between midnight and three this morning?”

The world suddenly tilted. “Do you think
I
did it?”

He merely raised one eyebrow.

“I was at home. Alone. I don’t have an alibi.” She chewed on her cheek. “But then again, I don’t think I have a motive either.
Jimbo
was a nice man.”

He blinked. Slowly. “Yeah. He was a good guy.” Something flickered in his blue eyes. Regret? Sadness? The emotion was gone in the next instant. “Obviously not everyone thought so.” He leaned forward, a strange smile growing on his face. “Good to know you were alone, though.”

Holy
moley
. What an idiot. She should have seen the trap before she fell into it. He wasn’t asking for
her
alibi. He was asking for Nick’s.

Nick had a feud going with
Jimbo
. Nick had had an affair with Cookie. If Bobbie did manage to get Warren to admit he hadn’t killed
Jimbo
, the next suspect in line was Nick.

That said it all. Thank God she hadn’t packed up the mocha machine last night. Because Bobbie wasn’t leaving Cottonmouth. She had a new mission, to prove Cookie Beaumont killed her husband. Where on earth would she start?

First, she had to warn Nick.

* * * * *

He didn’t need to check his shed for anything incriminating. Because he hadn’t killed
Jimbo
.

But
Brax’s
voice kept playing in his mind like an old forty-five stuck in a groove.

Nick succumbed after a dinner consisting of two pieces of cold meat-lovers’ pizza. Princess rushed up to the other side of the fence when he crossed the porch, starting her usual loud yipping as he neared the shed.

He yanked open the metal door almost in protest against
Brax’s
voice. And stared inside.

“What are you doing out here?”

Bobbie, once again showing up in his backyard where he didn’t want her. He turned to look at her. “I could ask you the same thing.”

She still wore her uniform, the apron stiffly starched, but the white collar drooping around her neck. The top three buttons lay open, affording him a view of creamy cleavage.

“I rang your doorbell. You didn’t answer.”

“I was busy.”

“Looking for more
roadkill
?”

“Not today.” He stepped inside the darkened shed.

“Did you hear about
Jimbo
?”

He couldn’t tell a thing from the question or her tone. “Yep. Got whacked with a shovel out by the lake in the middle of the night.” He waited.

She stepped right into the hole his silence left. “Why are you looking in your shed?”

“I just want to make sure I didn’t leave any telltale blood stains on my supplies out here. Or brain matter.”

He turned to find her with arms crossed over her chest and a step back from where she’d been before. “That’s not funny.”

“I didn’t mean it to be.” Now was the time for her to say she knew he couldn’t possibly have done it.

She didn’t. “
Brax
asked where I was last night.”

He moved a few of the tools, clippers, hedger, examined them, put them back. “Guess that means you weren’t with him.”

She gasped. “Of course, I wasn’t.”

He hefted the big shovel away from the metal wall, let it fall back with a clank. “Good.” He let relief show only in the word, not the tone.

“That’s what
Brax
said.”

Nick looked over his shoulder. “Good what?”

She put a hand on her hip. “Good that I was alone.”

He let a beat of silence last between them. “Not much of an alibi for either of us then.” But did she think he needed one?

“I don’t think that’s what he wanted to know.”

“He already knew you weren’t with me.” So why was
Brax
testing Bobbie, too?

“How?”

“Followed me out to the
minimall
for a little
tête
à
tête
.”

She cocked her head and stepped up to the edge of the doorway, one foot in, one foot out. He wanted her all the way in. Firmly beside him.

“Why would he do that, Nick?”

“Because I’m a suspect. He wanted to know if he could come over and inspect my shovel collection.”

She didn’t pick up on the sarcasm, or if she did, she passed on commenting. “What time did you talk to him?”

“Afternoon.” She was jumpy, something on her mind. “Why?”

“Because sometime this
morning
, Warren confessed to killing
Jimbo
.”

“Your husband confessed?” What the hell was
Brax
playing at? What was
she
playing at?

“Warren
says
he did it.”

Christ. Why all
Brax’s
questions about alibis, footprints, shovels, tire tracks? He’d even brought Bobbie into it. After he already had the killer in custody. Then something in Bobbie’s words, stance, whatever, struck him. “But you don’t think your husband did it.”

“He really isn’t capable of murder.”

Nick moved the posthole digger and the pitchfork he used for loosening dirt. “Everyone’s capable given the right set of circumstances.” He waited for some sort of reaction, but she only went back to the question of her husband’s guilt.

“Not Warren. He’s the original Spineless Spivey. If he did it, it could only have been an accident. I didn’t get the impression that
Jimbo
came by his injuries accidentally.”

“Nice sentiment you’ve got about your husband.”

She ignored the little jab. “You know, it happened by the lake, where
we
were the other night.”

What did that mean to her? “Yeah. Off Delton Road.”

It suddenly occurred to him that Bobbie was his alibi, at least for how his prints and tire tracks got there
that
night. Reasonable doubt or something. Yep, Bobbie was his alibi. His only alibi. So, just how far would she be willing to go to prove her husband innocent?

Would she be willing to lie?

Maybe Bobbie was the reason behind
Brax’s
little fishing expedition out at the
minimall
. Maybe she’d gotten him to doubt his suspect’s confession.

Christ. Nick really didn’t want to think about that.

Instead, he turned back to his job of turning the shed upside down.

“You still haven’t told me what you’re really doing,” Bobbie prodded.

He leaned on the pitchfork and stared her down. “Actually, I’m trying to figure out why the spade I was using that day you first turned up seems to be missing now.”

Chapter Twelve

Warren ached with the need to sleep. It had been a hell of a day, starting with that life-altering call from Cookie at a little after three o’clock this morning. And he still couldn’t get Roberta’s words out of his mind.

You wouldn’t have the courage to kill a man even for the woman you love
.

She was right. His inaction had forced Cookie’s action. Now his only choice was to protect her.

“Let’s go over it one more time, Mr. Spivey.”

“There’s nothing else to tell.”

Sheriff Braxton pushed back in his chair, wheels squeaking, and spread his hands over his flat abdomen. He was a big man, well over six feet, and his feet stretched out past his desk. The lamp he’d turned on, tilted to the right, shone in Warren’s eyes. He squinted.

“Sorry about that.” The sheriff leaned forward and snapped the light down to gleam on the desk.

It didn’t help. Warren still felt spotlighted.

Braxton slid his fingers through his hair, curls springing back up in the wake, then returned to his original position, legs crossed at ankles, hands on stomach. Relaxed. In control.

Warren’s belly jerked.

“Now, where were we? Oh yeah, clearing up a few details.”

“Shouldn’t we be in some sort of interrogation room?” The sheriff’s informality made him nervous. “With witnesses and maybe a video tape.”

“That’s not necessary. Unless you think I’m going to beat the information out of you.” The sheriff smiled, lots of teeth, predatory.

“No. Of course not.” Warren’s own teeth threatened to chatter. He clamped his lips over them.

Braxton picked up a pencil, tapping it on a small pad. “Now, why don’t you tell me what kind of shovel you used.”

What kind? God almighty. He hadn’t even thought to ask Cookie that. “Isn’t that in my statement?”

“Nope.”

His thoughts whirling, Warren stalled. “Why is that important?”

“Well, since we don’t have the murder weapon...” Tap, tap went the pencil, and Warren winced at the word
murder
. “We’ve got to make sure the wound pattern matches your description.”

Think of something. “Well, I can’t really remember. I just bought it. I was going to do a little gardening...” He let his words trail off, hands held aloft in a helpless gesture. Christ, he was helpless, all right.

“That should be easy to trace. Where’d you buy it?
Sylvestor’s
in town?”

“No, out at the Home Depot in the
minimall
.” They must have tens of different kinds of shovels there.

“Even easier.” The sheriff wrote something on his pad. “Those places have computer tracking these days.”

Warren’s heart stuttered. “I paid cash.”

“They track that, too. Piece of cake.” The sheriff flashed him another smile, this one friendly, two guys shooting the breeze. “What day did you buy it?”

“I’m not exactly sure.”

“The weekend? Last week? Week before?”

The tapping pencil had begun to feel like a drum beating inside Warren’s skull. He wanted to scream. “I couldn’t say for sure.” He
wouldn’t
say for sure.

The sheriff nodded, wrote on his pad. “Well, my
boys’ll
have no problem tracing it anyway.” He looked up, met Warren’s gaze. “They’re good. Now, you said you threw it in the lake.”

“Yes.” Cookie told him she’d buried the shovel in the woods, she couldn’t remember where, but she’d walked a long way. Would her fingerprints still be detectable after the thing had lain beneath all that dirt? He prayed to God not, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

The sheriff looked pointedly at Warren’s arms in his short-sleeved shirt. “How far did you throw it and in what direction?”

Goose bumps rose on Warren’s skin, despite the day’s heat still trapped in the room. “As far as I could. I’m not sure what direction. I did a sort of whirling motion, then let go.”

The man wrote something else. “Couldn’t have gone too far. And it’s pretty shallow right there. Funny my men can’t find it.”

“Maybe they’re not as good as you think.” The sheriff’s eyes hardened, and Warren corrected his mistake. “Maybe it got buried in some silt.”

Braxton smiled. But the harshness never left his eyes. “That’s a good thought. I’ll have them dig down a little.”

Warren gulped air. “Yes, I think you should do that.” When would this end?

“Did you get any blood spatter on your clothes? Seems to reason there would be since you gave
Jimbo
one hell of a whack or two.” Braxton paused. “Or three.”