his head with his fist. He wasn’t supposed to put that to her yet. She hadn’t been read her rights, unless Kick had done it off tape, which was almost surely not the case.
Mitch hoped she wouldn’t confess right now. If he was being perfectly honest, he hoped to hell she didn’t have cause to confess at all. It surely would cut down on the workload if he could just haul her in and not have to track down some unknown, but for some inexplicable reason he just didn’t want her to have done it. The thought rattled him.
Women were perfectly capable of murder. However, as a man brought up to revere women, he had to keep reminding himself of that. Finding it hard to believe that the gentler sex would do such a thing was his one huge hang-up and he worked hard at concealing it and compensating for it. But he didn’t want to overcompensate. It was a problem.
He wished to hell another team had caught this one. He obviously needed a good night’s sleep.
Robin couldn’t believe this was happening. “No. I didn’t kill him. I’m the one who notified the police,” she explained.
“Sorry. Won’t get you off the hook.” The detective shrugged as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Sometimes a perpetrator will call in the crime, tryin’ to throw off suspicion,” he continued in that maddeningly slow drawl of his. “But we’ll get around to that in a little while. For now let’s just clear up a few things. Minor points, really.”
He pulled a small black notebook out of his pocket and smiled at her when he successfully located the ballpoint pen to go with it. Had Columbo started out like this? Robin wondered.
She hated his Southern accent. It poured out like thick molasses. Sinfully rich and dark. It made her want to finish his sentences for him. When he spoke in sentences.
Robin riveted all of her attention on him simply because it was something to think about other than what had happened in the next room. She couldn’t deal with that yet.
Her first thought was that this man didn’t look official. He hadn’t shaved. His dark-brown hair needed a trim, and he must have thrown on yesterday’s wrinkled clothes. He wore khaki slacks, a UT pullover and a windbreaker. He wasn’t even wearing socks, just scuffed leather deck shoes. He looked entirely too casual, too rumpled and laid-back for a detective. Since he didn’t look official, Robin didn’t trust him to act officially. She didn’t have much trust in men, anyway. Certainly not this one.
Worst of all he had a smile and an attitude that were working hard to make her drop her guard and lean on him. She quickly realized just which way she would fall if she did that.
“Did you see anybody when you came into the building? In the parking area? Driving away?”
“No,” she answered simply, in the second or so that he provided between each of his questions. He looked and sounded lazy. Or maybe only tired. Suddenly Robin was horribly afraid this man was going to lock her up just because she was handy instead of pursuing the person who had really killed James.
She shuddered, took a deep breath and clasped her arms tightly across her chest. James was dead, murdered, lying lifeless in the next room. The chilling horror of it made her shiver again, but she couldn’t put it out of her mind for more than a few minutes no matter how hard she tried. He was not going to let her.
“You say you flew in from New York just to visit your husband?” the detective asked.
Robin didn’t want to talk about her reasons for being here. She didn’t want to talk at all. Shouldn’t he be ordering people out to look for James’s murderer? Setting up roadblocks or whatever they did down here to catch a criminal? If they all moved and talked at this man’s speed, it was a miracle they ever got anything done.
“Mrs. Andrews?” he prompted, more firmly this time. “Why did you come here?”
“To visit,” she said, her words more clipped than usual.
“Does that mean you have one of those, ah, long-distance—” he paused to make a little questioning gesture with one hand “—what do you call ’em?”
“Separations,” Robin supplied. “James and I have been separated for almost a year.”
He frowned and made a note. “Okay. Were you on friendly terms with your husband, Ms. Andrews?”
“Yes,” she said with an emphatic nod. “James and I had been friends for several years before we decided to get married. After about six months he and I both agreed it was a mistake. He transferred to Nashville right after we separated, and I stayed in New York. His company has an office here.”
“Yeah, Townsend, Inc., you said. So what are you doing here visiting him if you’re not together any longer?”
Robin explained, “He called me at home last week and asked if I planned to fly down to Florida to visit my mother. I usually go for her birthday and he was aware of that. He wanted me to schedule my flight through Nashville and stop over so that we could talk.”
“Unfinished business?” Those penetrating blue eyes focused on her like lasers.
Robin bit her lip and glanced around the room, determined to concentrate on her answers rather than the horror that threatened to tear her apart if she let it.
James was dead. She didn’t love him, but she still liked him. He might have had a weak will where other women were concerned, but she figured she was as much to blame for that as James. The spark between them had been just that, a spark, not the fire they’d first thought it was. It had gone out more quickly than it had erupted. But fortunately it hadn’t destroyed their friendship.
The detective cleared his throat to get her attention. She gave it, studying his face, trying to guess what he would ask her next. This man was about to arrest her. She could feel it.
“I asked if you had unfinished business with your husband?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Also he…he wanted me to bring him something he said he’d forgotten when he moved down here. A computer disk.”
“Music?”
“No. Something to do with his work in the insurance company, he said. He told me he didn’t want me to mail it, because he was afraid it might get lost.”
“You didn’t mention that when Detective Taylor taped your preliminary interview.”
She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “He didn’t question me. He only said to tell what happened after I arrived here.”
“So you brought what your husband wanted you to bring and, in addition to that favor, he planned to discuss something important with you?” he asked slyly. “Maybe he wanted to reconcile?”
“No, he didn’t. James and I are just friends now.” Then she remembered and corrected herself. “Were just friends.” Her voice only broke a little.
“I wonder why you didn’t get a divorce.”
Robin exhaled slowly. “We discussed it several times. I thought we should. But he…” She hesitated, unsure whether she should have admitted this. “Maybe he was ready to start proceedings. He didn’t say on the phone.”
“And now a divorce
