bristled. “I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
Now that was definitely amusement in his eyes. “Would you rather I called you Bad?” It was clearly a teasing remark and perhaps under other circumstances—before life had trampled all over her heart—she might have picked up the banter, even enjoyed it. But she was what she was and there was no going back.
Still, it didn’t stop her from noticing that the man had the kind of smile a woman could get lost in—even a sensible woman.
But not her, of course.
Still, she wished the chief hadn’t picked him to be her partner. Going it alone—even with an increased workload—would have been better for her in the long run.
“What I’d rather was that my old partner was still around.”
He surprised her by leaning in and whispering, “Lemonade, Good. When life throws lemons at you, you make lemonade.”
Her eyes held his for a long moment. Until she found herself sinking into them. She backpedaled quickly. “I don’t like lemonade.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he murmured before turning back to the murder scene.
Chapter 3
“Hey, Abilene, what do you—”
Kendra stopped abruptly. She’d assumed that the detective was behind her, but when she turned around, she only saw the crime scene investigators in the room.
“Great,” she muttered. “Now he’s wandering off.” Biting off a few ripe words, she went to look for him.
She found her new partner in the bedroom. Abilene stood before the narrow mirrored closet. The sliding door was in the open position and he was staring into it.
Glancing over his shoulder, Kendra saw nothing that would have captured his attention so intently. Was she missing something, or was he one of those people who stared off into space as he pieced things together in his mind?
“So, what do you think?” she finally asked him.
If she’d surprised him by coming up behind him, Abilene gave no indication. Turning from the closet, he looked at her as he lobbed her question back to her.
“You’re the expert.”
Did that mean he was unwilling to state an opinion, or that he was giving her her due? So far she really had no idea how to read this man and that bothered her. More than that, it annoyed her.
Hell, everything about this man annoyed her, not the least of which was that he seemed to be getting under her skin and this was only day one of their temporary partnership. What was she going to be like a month into this ordeal? She didn’t want to think about it.
Kendra was aware that learning to pick up signals from this man would take time, but she’d gotten more impatient in this difficult past year and it made her less willing to wait. Jason’s accident and subsequent suicide had made her want to seize things immediately, solve crimes yesterday. It was hard regaining her stride when all she wanted to do was run, not walk and certainly not stroll.
Abilene was still looking at her. Waiting for her opinion—or at least pretending to. Either way, she gave it to him.
She glanced back toward the living room, then said, “Looks to me as if Ryan Burnett and his girlfriend got into a fight—cause unknown at the moment—and in a fit of temper, he hit her with that bust. When he realized what he’d done—and that she was dead—he apparently got scared and took off.”
“Stopping to pack?” Abilene asked.
He indicated the cluster of bare hangers in the closet. Off to one side of the tasteful, small bedroom was a black lacquered bureau. Several of its drawers were hanging open. From the disarray left behind, it was obvious that some items had been hastily grabbed from there, too.
She shrugged, amending her theory to fit the scene. “Maybe Ryan decided to take off permanently. Man’s going to need more than a toothbrush if he’s starting a new life somewhere else.”
“That shows clear thinking,” Abilene protested. “It doesn’t jibe with a supposed crime of impulse,” he pointed out.
Kendra saw no contradiction. “The man’s an accountant. He’s supposed to be a clear thinker. It’s the nature of the beast.” She glanced at the bed. It had no comforter or blanket over its crisp, coordinated navy blue sheets. That confirmed her initial theory that the blanket in the other room, now spread over the murder victim, had come from here.
That brought her back to the theory that Ryan hadn’t meant to kill the woman. Things had gotten out of hand for some reason. But what had triggered the argument? And why now, at this particular point? The answers to that might explain everything.
Seeing one of the two officers who had called in the homicide, she crossed to the man and asked, “Do we have an ID on the victim yet?”
The officer nodded and offered her the wallet he’d gotten from the dead woman’s purse.
“Her name’s Summer Miller,” he told her. He handed over the wallet, exposing the driver’s license for her benefit.
Kendra looked down at the small picture on the license. She’d seen a larger, framed photograph of Summer in the bedroom on the bureau. She was standing in front of a smiling young man. His arms were wrapped protectively around her. The two appeared very happy, as if they didn’t have a care in the world between them.
They did now, Kendra thought grimly. She assumed that the man in the photograph was the missing accountant, Ryan Burnett.
“Well, at least we have a name for his girlfriend,” she said quietly, closing the wallet for now.
Spying a pile of plastic sealable bags used for evidence, she picked one up and slipped the wallet inside. She closed the seal before tucking the wallet into her pocket. She wanted to hand-carry this piece to her father personally. There were questions she wanted to ask.
And then she turned toward Abilene. “You up for some canvassing of the neighbors on the floor, see if anyone heard or saw anything that might prove to be useful?”
“Lead the way,” he said, gesturing toward the doorway. “But—”
Kendra crossed the threshold, then looked at him over her shoulder. “But?” she echoed.
“Shouldn’t we inform her next of kin first before we start canvassing and flashing her picture around?” he asked.
“Since we’re here, we’ll canvas the floor first.” Kendra didn’t like wasting time and she sincerely doubted that word of the young woman’s murder—as well as her name—would get out in the next hour. “She’ll still be the victim of a homicide—and dead—in an hour,” she assured Abilene. “Plenty of time to break her family’s heart in an hour instead of now,” Kendra added with a resigned sigh.
That was the worst part of the job as far as she as concerned. Informing the family of a death, then watching
