a ceramic rooster, the basket of pine cones and the stuffed blue calico cat on the hearth in front of the unused fireplace. Nothing wrong with any of it, and the homey little knickknacks were pretty enough, she supposed, but so…alien to her. It felt like a set, and she walked through it like an actor on a stage.
But this is who I am, now. Shabby…ordinary. I should be used to it by now. And I must not forget it…ever.
“I was just having a bite to eat,” she said, touching her mouse-brown hair in a self-conscious way that was only partly artifice. “If you, um…wouldn’t mind talking in the kitchen? I’m sorry things are such a mess…as I said, I just got home.”
She’s nervous, Roan thought. He didn’t make too much of that, nervous being a pretty usual way for people to be around officers of the law, he’d found, even the ones who had no reason to be. Especially the ones who had no reason to be.
Like Buster had said, the woman fidgeting her way from table to sink to fridge as she cleared away the remains of her evening meal definitely wasn’t the head-turner type. Not the kind of woman to stand out in a crowd in spite of how tall she was. Not the type to stir a man’s juices to lust, either, not at first glance anyway. Though that may have been due in part to the fact that whatever figure she did have was all covered up by the loose-fitting pink nylon smock she wore.
All together, he decided, she wasn’t bad-looking or what he might call homely, just…plain. As in, ordinary. Her hair was kind of a neutral brown, neither curly nor straight, without much body or shine to it and no particular style either, just sort of twisted up on the back of her head. Which struck him as kind of odd for somebody who made her living fixing up other people’s hair. Her eyes were unremarkable, too, a flat greenish-gray in color, like old moss—though it was hard to tell much more about them, hidden as they were behind a pair of dark-rimmed glasses even he knew were both too big for her face and years out of style.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked as she brushed some imaginary crumbs off the tabletop. “Some… coffee?”
“Oh, no ma’am, thanks, I just had a cup over at the Last Stand.” He laid his hat on the tabletop she’d just cleared off and pretended not to notice the way she’d twitched when he mentioned the saloon. “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time. I just need to ask you a few questions….”
“Oh—of course.” She leaned her hip against the countertop and folded her arms in a way he didn’t have to be a student of body language to know was defensive.
He regarded her for a moment, watching her throat move as she swallowed, not intending to make her more nervous than she already was, but simply pondering the best way to proceed with this woman. He felt a little bit like a hunter stalking a doe, part of him not wanting to spook her, but a part of him secretly hoping she’d wake up to the danger she was in and get herself out of his gunsights while there was still time.
He quelled that notion and drawled with deceptive friendliness, “You can start by telling me your last name. All the folks over at the Last Stand know you by is Mary.”
A smile flicked over her lips and died. She cleared her throat, and one hand rose as if to touch her mouth before halting abruptly and diving back into the bend of her folded arms. “It’s, um, Owen. Mary…Owen.”
But he’d already noted the puffy swelling on her lower lip she’d remembered too late not to call his attention to. And the purple bruises on her jaw—he’d noticed them, too.
“Mary Owen…” He repeated it as he took a notebook and pencil from his shirt pocket and jotted it down. Then he looked up and casually asked, “Do you know Jason Holbrook, Mary?”
No twitch this time. She was expecting that.
She met his eyes calmly, poise restored, the nervousness apparently conquered. And during the long pause while she gazed at him without replying, something odd happened to him, something he couldn’t recall ever having happened before, at least not under those circumstances, questioning a suspect in the investigation of a crime. For no reason he could think of his pulse quickened and a strange little weight came to sit in the middle of his chest, one that made him feel as if he needed to catch a breath. A breath that was mysteriously hard to come by.
“I’ve met him, yes.” Then she added with a note of quiet reproach, “But sheriff, you know that, or you wouldn’t be here. I also know he was found shot dead this morning.” She paused again, and her mouth twitched briefly with a small, bitter smile. “This is a very small town.”
He acknowledged that with a nod and a wintery smile of his own. He glanced down, shifted the position of his hat on the table, then returned his gaze to her. “So…you mind telling me when the last time was you saw him?”
Her lips tightened again, impatiently, this time. “I’m sure you know that, too. I saw him last night, at the Last Stand. He…spoke to me while I was waiting to pick up my to-go order.”
“The way I heard it, he did a lot more than speak to you,” Roan drawled, and now for some reason he was noticing her skin, wondering why he hadn’t noticed before how clear and pale it was, almost translucent, not like most of the women he knew, whose skin, once they passed infancy, got to showing the effects of sun and wind and cold dry weather pretty quickly.
Noticing, too, the way hers changed color with her emotions, the same way his Susie Grace’s did. And when she shook her head and looked away, he didn’t miss the faint pink blush that washed across her cheeks.
“He came on to me. It wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t a big deal.” But she swallowed. He didn’t miss that, either.
“What about when he followed you out to the parking lot?”
Her eyes snapped back to him, the pink in her cheeks deepening to crimson as he watched, and he felt a stab of inappropriate delight that a woman her age could still blush.
“You mean you don’t know that, too?” Her voice was low, barely above a whisper, but he could almost see her body vibrating with emotions fiercely contained, and behind the unattractive glasses she wore, her eyes had come alive. They seemed to shimmer now with green-gold fire. “Didn’t your witnesses tell you?”
He leaned toward her, making his voice as soft as hers, just sort of friendly. “No, but I think I can guess what happened. I’ve known Jason Holbrook for a long time, so I know what a—pardon me, ma’am—what a sonofabitch he can be. And Jason had a laceration on his lip the coroner says is a bite mark. Buster, over at the Last Stand, says when Jase came back after seeing you outside, his mouth was bleeding and he was cussin’ mad. It doesn’t take a genius to figure things out, does it, Miss Mary?” He ducked his head, cajoling her with kind eyes and a wry smile. “So tell me—the truth, now—are you the one that bit him?”
She looked away, made a sound, cleared her throat and finally spat it out—and that was what she reminded him of—a cat spitting. “He…grabbed me as I was getting into my car.” Her folded arms tightened, and revulsion thickened her voice. “He…kissed me. He wouldn’t stop when I tried to push him away. So, yes…I bit him.” Again her eyes lashed back at him, as if to say she wasn’t one bit sorry about doing it, either. And this time he knew the green-gold fire in those eyes was defiance.
Ignoring another of those strange disturbances in his midsection, Roan leveled a gaze at her and waited. It had been his experience at times like this that silence was more apt to provoke further revelations than questions. It didn’t work in Miss Mary Owen’s case, though. She
