There had been a time when he couldn’t talk about his wife, when even thinking about her brought a pain that nearly cast him to his knees. But that terrible grief had passed and over the last year he’d finally begun to look forward instead of backward.
For the next few minutes they ate in silence. She finished her meal but made no move to leave.
There was a part of him, a strictly male part, that found Special Agent Jenna Taylor extremely attractive. Definitely a fatal attraction, he told himself ruefully.
“Why didn’t you tell me about being Miranda’s beneficiary when you first met me?” she asked.
He eyed her with a touch of amusement. “If you’ll recall we didn’t exactly meet under the best of circumstances. I was trying to decide if I should arrest you for interfering with a crime scene.”
“I didn’t touch anything. I’m not exactly a novice around crime scenes.” She leaned closer to him and he couldn’t help but notice that she had the most kissable-looking lips he’d seen in a long time. “I could help you, you know. Catching killers is what I do for a living, it’s who I am.”
He finished the last bite of his meat loaf and then pushed his plate away. “If you really want to help me, then tell me a little bit about Miranda. You said the two of you were best friends. I didn’t know her personally, so any information you can tell me about the kind of person she was would help. You said you’ve known her since she was twelve, did the two of you meet in school?”
“No, Miranda’s parents brought me into their home as a foster child, but that was a long time ago,” she said with a touch of impatience. “Miranda and I were like sisters.”
“You look a lot like her,” he said.
For the first time since he’d met her she smiled, a real smile that warmed the blue of her eyes and lit her features from within. An unexpected flicker of desire ignited in the pit of his stomach.
“Miranda and I used to tell people that we were fraternal twins, not exactly alike but almost. We might have looked alike but in most things we were polar opposites.”
“How so?” he asked curiously.
“Miranda was like a big ball of sunshine. She never met anyone she didn’t like, believed that everyone had some good inside them.”
“And you don’t believe that?”
“It’s my job to look for the darkness in everyone,” she replied ruefully.
They fell silent as Sally brought Matt his lemon pie. Jenna slid off her stool and placed money on the counter. “Look, I’m going to head back to my motel room. I’m in unit seven. I’ll see you there in a few minutes?”
Matt nodded, then turned and watched her weave her way through the tables to the front door. He had to admit she intrigued him more than a little bit.
Certainly that rivulet of desire that he’d momentarily felt had stunned him. He hadn’t felt that for any woman for over five years. Just his luck that the first woman who stirred him on a physical level was one he didn’t think he even liked much.
Chapter Three
Jenna paced the short length of floor in front of the window of the small motel room window. It had been thirty minutes since she’d left the café. How long could it take him to eat a piece of pie?
Although she knew it would be painful, she needed to hear the details of Miranda’s death. She wanted to know how she’d died, who had found her body and what had been done since then to find the guilty.
She walked over to the small table where she had a notebook opened, ready to take notes. She had a laptop, but preferred handwriting things first, then transferring them to the computer. She felt like she thought better in longhand.
She flipped the pages to her to-do list and wrote down that she needed to visit the lawyer first thing in the morning. As Miranda’s beneficiary she’d have to figure out what to do with the house and all of Miranda’s personal belongings. The sooner she got started the better. She didn’t intend to stick around this place forever.
Sinking down in a chair at the table, she pressed her fingers into the center of her forehead where a headache threatened to blossom.
Stress. She’d suffered from stress headaches since she’d been little. Certainly the first twelve years of her life had been filled with stresses that children should never have to experience.
Sometimes she thought those early years of her life had formed the kind of woman she’d become, a woman who sought the darkness in others because she’d come from such a dark place.
She jumped up from the chair as she heard a car door slam outside. A glance out the window showed her Matt walking toward her unit. He walked with a slightly self-confident swagger that was both attractive and more than a little bit sexy.
She opened the door before he could knock. “How was your pie?”
“Excellent,” he replied as he stepped through the door.
She gestured him toward the table and suddenly felt a bit awkward. She’d been in a hundred motel rooms over the last year, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a hunky male in the room with her.
She sank down in front of her notebook and picked up her pen. “I hope you don’t mind if I take some notes.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders as he sat in the chair opposite hers. “Suit yourself.” His gray eyes studied her as if she were a particularly intriguing specimen. “I’m not sure why you want to put yourself through all the gory details.”
“My world is made up of gory details,” she replied.
“I hope you have something good to balance that.”
Miranda, she thought. Miranda had been her balance and now she was gone. “Let’s just get down to business,” she said briskly. “She was stabbed, wasn’t she?”
He looked at her in surprise. “How did you know that?”
“I saw the mattress on the bed, the bloodstains. No bullet holes, just blood. There was no castoff on the walls, so she wasn’t bludgeoned.”
He nodded. “She was stabbed. Several times through the heart. There was no sign of forced entry, so we can only assume she might have known the killer.” He kept his voice low and steady as he dryly recited the facts. “She was killed sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning. When she didn’t show up for the lunch shift, Michael Brown, the owner of the café, got concerned and sent over one of the waitresses to check on her.”
“What’s the waitress’s name?” she asked.
“Maggie Wendt. Apparently she and Miranda had become quite close friends. Miranda had given Maggie a key to her house. When Maggie got there and saw Miranda’s car in the driveway but she didn’t answer the door, Maggie got worried and went inside.”
“You checked out her story?”
“Thoroughly. The whole thing has practically destroyed her. I don’t think she’s left her house since she found Miranda.”
“Any other suspects?” she asked.
“I was hoping you’d be able to give me some names. She was only in town for three months. I can’t help but think it’s possible that somebody from her past is responsible for this.”
Jenna frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t imagine it.”
“But you said you live in Kansas City and Miranda was living in Dallas before moving here. Maybe there were things about her life that she didn’t share with you?”
Was it possible? Were there secrets in Miranda’s life, secrets she hadn’t shared with Jenna? “You just don’t want to believe that the killer might be homegrown,” she said.
He smiled and nodded. Oh, the man had a nice, sexy smile. “Of course I don’t want to believe that anyone from Bridgewater is capable of such a crime, but my mind is certainly open to the possibility.”
“When is the house going to be released?”
He frowned, but the gesture did nothing to diminish his handsomeness. “Probably sometime tomorrow afternoon. We’ve already collected all the evidence, what little there was, but I was going to do another walk through in the morning.”
“What kind of evidence did yo
u collect?” she asked.
Once again he frowned. “Unfortunately not much. There wasn’t a single fingerprint anywhere in the house except for Miranda’s.”
“So the killer wiped everything down,” she said. “Or he wore gloves.”
“We didn’t get much of anything that would help the investigation.” His gaze shifted from hers for a moment, making her believe he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. “Why do you want to know when the house will be released?”
“I need to take care of packing things, but also as soon as you release it I’ll be staying there.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Won’t that be difficult for you?”
“Why? Because she died there?” Jenna set down her ink pen. “She also lived there.” To Jenna’s horror a mist of unexpected tears filled her eyes. She stared down at the table and drew several deep breaths in an effort to regain control of her emotions.
He reached out a hand and covered one of hers. “I’m sorry, Jenna. I’m sorry about your friend.”
Three things sprang to her mind. The first was a black grief for the friend she had lost. The second was that she liked the way her name sounded falling from his lips. The third was that the touch of his big, strong hand shot a wave of evocative warmth up her arm.
She pulled her hand from his and looked at him. “It’s been five years since you’ve investigated a murder, something like this. Aren’t you worried that you might be a little rusty?”
He smiled again, that sexy, easy half grin. “It’s kind of like making love. Even if it’s been a long time you never forget how to do it.”
Her mind exploded with a vision of him in bed, naked and with hunger shining from his gray eyes. She consciously willed the vision away and narrowed her eyes. His statement had been totally inappropriate and she had a feeling he’d done it on purpose, in an effort to throw her off balance and replace her grief with irritation. She had a feeling Sheriff Matt Buchannan was far more intelligent than she’d given him credit for.
She suddenly wanted him out of her motel room, as far away from her as possible. It was clear he didn’t intend to share any real information with her, clear that he wasn’t going to help her in her investigation of Miranda’s murder. And there was something about his easy smile, his very attractiveness that was somehow threatening to her.
“I’ll give you my cell phone number and I’d appreciate it if you would call me when I can get into the house,” she said.
She wrote down her number and tore it from the notebook, then handed it to him and stood in an obvious attempt to dismiss him. “I guess we’re done here.”
He rose to his feet, obviously getting the clue that she was finished with him. She walked with him to the motel room door and stepped outside into the warm July air.
“Jenna, this town and this murder investigation isn’t big enough for us to share. Take care of whatever you need to with Miranda’s estate, but leave the investigation to me.” With these words he left her and walked to his car without a backward glance.
She watched as he got into his patrol car and left the parking lot. She leaned against the outside of her unit and closed her eyes against the bright sunshine.
Miranda, what happened here? Again a wealth of grief clawed up the back of her throat, but she swallowed hard against it.
Who did you meet that killed you? Who could have plunged a knife through your loving, kind heart? Who could have hated you that much? And why? Why did this happen to you?
A faint chill swept through her despite the warmth of the sun. She had felt the creepy feeling she was being watched.
She opened her eyes and gazed around as the disturbing sensation continued. She saw nobody around, but couldn’t dispel the feeling that somebody was nearby, staring at her with malevolence.
The killer?
She’d only introduced herself to Sally. Had the waitress talked about the FBI agent who had come to town? Did the killer already know she was here? Was he stalking her like she intended to stalk him?
“Bring it on,” she whispered just beneath her breath as she went back into her room and locked the door behind her.
“JOEY, I’M HEADING OVER to Maggie Wendt’s place for another interview,” Matt said to his young deputy the next morning. “If you need me, you can either reach me by radio or by my cell phone.”
“Got it,” Joey said.
Matt left the office and stepped out into the hot morning air. Not even nine o’clock yet and the sun was already a fireball in the sky.
That wasn’t all that was hot this morning. As he thought of the dream he’d had the night before, his temperature raised several notches.
Special Agent Jenna Taylor had been the center of his dream, beckoning him into bed with her mysterious blue eyes and a smile that had heated his blood to the boiling point. And he’d been a willing participant, tumbling into the sheets with her and making hot, wild love.
He got into his patrol car and started the engine. It had been a long time since he’d thought about sex, let alone had a dream where he’d awakened panting and aroused and wanting to remain asleep to experience it all over again.
It was an indication that the grief he’d suffered for so long had truly passed. He would forever hold Natalie in his heart, but she was gone and he was ready to move on.
He was only thirty-five years old, far too young to contemplate living the rest of his life alone. Besides, he knew what it was to love. He knew what it felt like to be in love and he wanted that again.
Why he’d dreamed of Jenna was a mystery to him. She’d been in town only twenty-four hours and already he found her to be a major pain.
He shoved away thoughts of Jenna and instead focused on the matter at hand. He’d done an initial interview with Maggie immediately after she’d found Miranda’s body, but she’d been so distraught that he’d had to call a halt to the interview.
He’d tried to talk to her the day before as well, but she’d indicated that she was still too upset to talk about her murdered friend.
He was hoping that today she’d be able to discuss what she knew about Miranda, might be able to give him some details about the murdered woman’s life that would help him find her killer.
It concerned him that they had so little to go on. None of Miranda’s neighbors had seen or heard anything on the morning of her death. The only real evidence they had was a vase of roses, five long-stem roses in various stages of bloom and the sixth that had been found on the center of her bloody chest.
Nobody knew about the roses except the officers who had processed the scene. He and his team were trying to chase down where the roses might have come from, but with Bridgewater being only forty miles from Dallas, it was possible they were bought in the bigger city where there were hundreds of florists. It could take weeks or even months to chase down that particular lead.
He hadn’t wanted to admit to Jenna just how little they had, just how stymied he was in finding the killer. The last five years it had been easy to be sheriff in Bridgewater. The worst of the crimes were an occasional robbery, bar fights and domestic disputes. Murder hadn’t been an issue until now.
Maggie Wendt lived in a small rental home three blocks from Miranda’s house. When Matt pulled up in front of it he muttered a curse as he saw the familiar rental car in the driveway. The woman who had visited his dream the night before seemed definitely determined to get on his bad side.
Even though he was irritated that she was here, he couldn’t help but feel a grudging admiration for her sheer tenacity. Wouldn’t he be doing the same thing if his best friend had been murdered?
He knocked on the door and Maggie answered. “Sheriff Buchannan,” she said in surprise. “Please, come in. I was just speaking with your partner.”
His partner? He shook his head ruefully as he followed Maggie through the small living room and into the kitchen where Jenna sat at the table with a cup of coffee in front of her.
Her eyes widened slightly at the sight o
f him but she offered him, a bright smile as if they were best buddies. “Sheriff, I was just chatting with Maggie,” she said.
She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a sleeveless blue blouse that exactly matched her eyes. The top two buttons of the blouse were unfastened, giving him a glimpse of creamy breasts as she leaned forward to wrap her fingers around her coffee mug.
“I’m so glad you’ve called in the FBI,” Maggie exclaimed. “I want everyone in the world looking for Miranda’s killer.” She gestured Matt into a chair at the table next to Jenna. “Let me get you some coffee,” she said.
“Thanks, that sounds good.”
As Maggie went to the coffeepot on the countertop, Matt looked at Jenna. She shrugged, as if to say that she couldn’t help herself.
“I was just telling Agent Taylor what a wonderful friend Miranda was for the three months that I knew her,” Maggie said as she set a cup of coffee in front of Matt. “Everyone at the café loved her and she and I clicked right away.”
Maggie joined them at the table and grabbed a napkin from the bright red rooster-shaped napkin holder in the center of the table. “I can’t get the picture of her out of my head, her lying on the bed covered in blood.”
Jenna reached across the table and patted Maggie’s hand. “Eventually you’ll forget the horror of it. Time will help.”
Maggie nodded. “It’s just still so fresh.”
“Maggie, I know I asked you this before, but you’ve had a couple of days to think about things, can you think of anyone who might have been angry with Miranda? Somebody here in town who was giving her problems?”
Maggie shook her head as tears glimmered in her eyes. She unfolded the napkin and used it to dab at her tears. “I know everyone at the café loved her. She never complained, even when she took extra shifts. The customers all loved her. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her. Maybe it was a robbery?” she asked hopefully, as if somehow that would make it all better.
Matt shook his head. “As far as we could tell nothing was stolen.”
Scene of the Crime: Bridgewater, Texas Page 3