had lifted her lips slid away as Matt stepped into the room. Joey’s face turned bright red and he jumped up from his desk.
“Hmm, Sheriff, this is FBI Agent Taylor. She was just asking me some questions about the Harris case,” he exclaimed.
“Yes, we met earlier,” Matt said and tried to hang on to the anger the sight of her had evoked. Between her badge and her beauty, she’d probably been able to twist poor Joey into a million knots.
“Joey, go to lunch,” he said. “And you—” he pointed a menacing finger at Jenna “—in my office.”
Chapter Two
Sheriff Matt Buchannan was livid.
Jenna could tell by the color that filled his face, making the scar on his cheek stand out in stark relief. She sat in the chair opposite his desk and waited for the explosion she knew was imminent.
He reared back in his chair and drew a deep breath. “Do you not believe in taking orders?” he asked, his voice deep and deceptively calm.
“Depends on who’s giving them,” she replied.
His eyes narrowed as he held her gaze. “Stay away from my deputies, and trust me, that’s an order you don’t want to ignore.”
“I was just trying to get information about the murder. If you don’t want me bothering your deputies, then let me see your file. Give me copies of the crime scene photos and any interviews that you’ve conducted in response to the crime. Play nice with me and I won’t have a reason to go anywhere else to try to get information.”
He leaned forward and pulled out a piece of paper. “How do you know Miranda?”
Jenna realized that apparently he intended to interview her and had ignored her request for the official reports of the crime. “Miranda and I have been best friends since we were twelve years old.”
“Had you been in contact with her recently?”
“I spoke to her by phone the Saturday night before her death.” A rise of grief welled up inside her, but she mentally shoved it away. She refused to allow herself to show any emotion in front of this man with his hard gray eyes.
“Did she mention anyone she was having problems with here in town?”
Jenna shook her head. “No, even though she’d only been here a couple of months, she loved living here. She loved working as a waitress at the café and told me she was making lots of new friends.”
“What brought her here to Bridgewater?”
The heightened color had left his features and once again Jenna was struck by the fact that the sheriff was a hottie. She noticed the photo on top of his desk, a pretty blonde she assumed was his wife. She wondered what kind of a husband he was with his commanding presence and autocratic air. Probably a real pain in the butt, a his-way-or-the-highway type.
“Agent Taylor?”
She realized she hadn’t answered his question. “She was coming off a bad divorce and was looking to start over someplace new. She’d driven through here last fall and had thought it was a charming little town, and decided this was as good a place as any to start a new life.”
“You said a bad divorce? Bad how?”
“Nothing violent or anything like that. Mark just didn’t love her anymore, and it broke her heart when he asked for a divorce.” Miranda had been devastated by the death of her marriage, but she’d also been an optimist at heart, certain that true love and happiness was just around the next corner. “I can’t imagine her ex-husband having anything to do with this,” she added.
“Do you know where he is? How I can contact him?”
Jenna frowned thoughtfully. “Last I heard he had moved back in with his parents. I don’t know the address, but their names are John and Belinda Harris and they live on the south side of Dallas.”
“What about any other next of kin? Do you know how I can contact Miranda’s parents? Any siblings?” he asked.
“There is no next of kin,” she replied. “Her parents are dead and she had no siblings.” Except me, Jenna thought.
“Do you know her last known address?”
She told him and watched as he wrote down the information. The sunlight drifting in through the windows played in the thick darkness of his hair and she had the irrational impulse to lean forward and stroke that darkness with her fingers.
A new irritation swept through her. “Are you going to let me have those files or not?” she asked.
“Not,” he replied. “You have no place in this investigation.” Those cool gray eyes of his slid down the length of her. “Don’t you have a job to get back to, or were you fired for insubordination?”
“I’m on a personal leave of absence, so I’m free to hang out here in Bridgewater,” she replied and could tell that he wasn’t pleased at the prospect.
Tough. She wasn’t walking away from this. With or without his help she intended to investigate this murder. She owed it to Miranda who had been the only light in her world of darkness.
She stood, deciding she’d had enough. She had work to do and if he wasn’t going to share what he knew, then she’d just have to work twice as hard to find out who was responsible for Miranda’s murder.
“If you need to ask me any more questions you know where to find me,” she said.
She was halfway to the door when he stopped her by calling her name. She turned back to look at him. “We found a will in Miranda’s personal effects. From what I saw of it you appear to be her sole beneficiary. You might want to contact David Waller. He’s the lawyer here in town and is taking care of the legalities.”
Once again a wealth of emotion buoyed up inside her. Sole beneficiary. Somehow those words made Miranda’s death final as it hadn’t been before.
Miranda was gone forever. Grief clawed up the back of Jenna’s throat, the bitter taste nearly choking her. Never again would she see the brightness of Miranda’s smile, hear her girlish giggles as she shared something funny.
Jenna turned on her heel and left. As she hurried out of the sheriff’s office and into her rental car she was half-blinded by tears. She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and gulped air in an effort to stanch her sobs.
Within moments she had successfully gained control. Control was one of the things that Jenna did best. She’d learned it early in her childhood. Don’t cry. Don’t show fear. Don’t show any emotion at all. If you did it could be used against you if Mommy was having a bad day. And Mommy had lots of bad days.
She pulled away from the office and drove slowly down the street, checking out the businesses on either side of the road. It was mostly the usual stuff that made up small towns: post office, grocery store and city hall. There were also little specialty shops, a dress boutique, a store that sold stained-glass creations and a taxidermy shop with a stuffed wolf and a raccoon in the window that she thought was more than a little bit creepy.
The
