the scene—” he cleared his throat “—um, your house, back to you.”
Marianna nodded and sucked in a fortifying breath, and for the next hour and a half, while officers, a CSI unit, the medical examiner and the coroner paraded through her home and Suzanne’s privacy, she did her best to give Ethan O’Hara something to work with to enable him to find Suzanne’s killer.
* * *
Ethan waited while Marianna sent a text message to her parents that she would be coming to stay for a couple of nights. He was glad texting was such an in thing these days, since it made communication so much easier for the deaf. His sister would have loved the technology. Instead of dwelling on the past, however, he focused on what the crime scene investigator was saying.
“The medical examiner ruled out suicide. Ms. Miller was killed when she cracked her head on the corner of the bedside table. Blunt force trauma, if you want the official term. The M.E. said she’d do an autopsy to be sure, but she doubted she’d find anything else.”
“I’ll talk to her later. Thanks for the help and let me know if you find anything else, will you?”
“You bet, Ethan.”
Marianna walked toward him, her beauty not one bit diminished by her puffy eyes, red nose and blotchy cheeks. The grief stamped on her face pierced him. Why was it always the good ones? The ones who didn’t deserve to have their lives shattered this way? Not that anyone deserved to come face-to-face with murder, but…
Melancholy thoughts would haunt his after-hours work tonight. He smirked at that thought. What after-hours? As a homicide detective, he lived his job twenty-four/seven. Maybe if he had a family, someone to go home to at night, he’d make more of an effort to work less and spend time at home.
He smiled at her and noted the well-trained Twister at her side. Ethan commented, “He reminds me of the dogs on the K-9 squad.”
Tilting her head, she grinned. His heart slammed against his chest, and his breath whooshed from suddenly constricted lungs. Wow. Twin dimples flashed at him as her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Twister is a special dog, specially trained to be my ears. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
Then the dimples disappeared, the brief moment of levity gone. It shocked him to realize how much he wanted her to smile again. “Do you need a ride to your parents’ house?”
“No, but thank you. My brother, Joseph, is on the way to pick me up. He’s home, visiting. My mother let him know I needed a ride, but she didn’t tell him why.” Her hands clasped in front of her, she kept her eyes on his face. She looked lost, shell-shocked.
The urge to gather her in his arms singed him. Instead, he cleared his throat. “Why didn’t she tell him?”
Well-shaped shoulders lifted in a shrug. “A lot of reasons. The main one being the safety of the other drivers on the road between her house and mine.”
“Right. Okay, well, there’s nothing else we can do here.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder, felt a tremble run through her.
Don’t do something dumb, O’Hara, like hug her.
He pulled her to him for a brief moment, patted her back, then stepped back. The surprise on her face matched the disbelief he felt. He’d hugged her. Now why did he go and do that? What was it about her that had him tossing his professional detachment to the wind? She offered him a small smile filled with gratitude.
Swallowing his rampant thoughts and emotions, he realized he’d only just met the woman and was getting in deep, reacting with his heart, instead of his head. Clearing his throat, he said, “Hey, it’ll be all right. Everything will work out, okay?”
Unblinking identical vats of chocolate stared up at him.
Her eyes made him think of Hershey’s—and kisses… and not necessarily the candy kind. She asked, “Will I see you again?”
“Oh, yeah, I think that’s definitely going to happen.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken the words aloud until he watched the flush rise from her neck to her cheeks.
Oops.
Catelyn stomped the mud off her shoes, diverting his attention from the woman in front of him. When he looked to the door, Marianna did likewise.
His partner said, “I’ve questioned all the neighbors I could find.” Her lips twisted in disgust. “Nobody saw anything. Her next-door neighbor was home from work with the flu. Said he heard a crashing sound sometime this morning but felt too bad to get up to see what it was.”
Ethan’s eyes sharpened, “Probably that trash can that was overturned. Check that out to make sure he didn’t dump anything.”
A car turned into the drive. He turned back to Marianna. “I think your ride has arrived.”
Marianna winced. “You mean trouble has arrived.”
TWO
How was she supposed to go back to a normal life? Marianna had taken off yesterday and the day before, calling in sick and staying at her parents’ house, she and Twister fortunate enough to be wrapped up in her mother’s love and concern. Now it was Friday morning and she was on her way to the school. According to Suzanne’s mother, the autopsy had been finished and her funeral was tomorrow.
But, first, Marianna had to make it through today. She’d chosen to go to work instead of sitting around thinking about the brutal loss of her friend, so she was expected to teach without falling apart. But how? My strength is in You, Lord. Please get me through this day.
The day of the murder, Joseph, her eldest brother, had picked up her and Twister up from her small house and taken them to her childhood home, drilling her like a dentist for the entire ten-minute drive. When she’d said trouble had arrived, she should have said the Spanish Inquisition had been revived.
She chalked it up to his being an FBI agent and the boredom of vacationing having set in. And the fact that someone had just killed his baby sister’s roommate. Concern came naturally for him, overprotectiveness his first instinct. One of the reasons her mother hadn’t told him about the murder when she’d ask him to pick her up. Joseph could handle just about any situation with a coolheaded professionalism except when it came to his baby sister.
It drove her nuts.
Throughout her entire childhood and most of her adult years she had fought to prove she could take care of herself and to get her family to stop hovering simply because she was deaf. She was just glad Joseph had agreed to go get her car yesterday afternoon. Being stuck without transportation made her feel trapped, like a bird with clipped wings.
She’d snuck out this morning, avoiding her mother’s delicious-smelling breakfast. When she’d considered eating, her stomach had lurched in protest. The only thing she’d been able to force down yesterday had been soup and some fruit.
As the school building came into view, she glanced across the street at the entrance to her neighborhood. Would it hurt to drive by? Just to see? A quick glance at the clock told her she’d be late if she did. Resisting the urge to spin the wheel to the right, she entered the campus. Waving to
