by Diana Palmer
“Thanks, but I’ve had two cups to wake me up. Any more and I’ll be flying around the room.”
Linda chuckled. “I know what you mean. Have a seat.” She dropped into her own chair. “I understand from Simon Hart that you were personally involved in this case.”
“Far more involved than I wanted to be,” Josette confided. “The murder victim was my date on the night he was supposed to have killed Henry Garner. I couldn’t give him an alibi, but I never thought he was guilty.”
“I’ve read the file” came the quiet reply. “You suspected that Bib Webb was somehow involved.”
Josette grimaced. “That didn’t win me any points, I can tell you. I only mentioned that he was the man with the most to gain from Garner’s death, which was a fact. The media blew it into an accusation and went to town speculating on Webb’s involvement, which was dynamite, considering that he was running for lieutenant governor at the time.”
“Yes,” Linda said, frowning thoughtfully. “His opponent dropped out at the last minute, leaving him a clear field. I always thought the timing was interesting, especially since Webb fell behind in the polls after the trial.” She smiled at Josette. “As I recall, the prosecution was pretty rough on you when you tried to testify for Jennings.”
“They dug up a rape case I’d been involved in when I was fifteen,” she said, obviously surprising the other woman. She nodded. “Yes, I was pretty sure that would be in my file.” She leaned forward. “That boy did try to rape me,” she said firmly. “I didn’t realize until much later that he’d slipped something into my Coke. It was like a forerunner of the date-rape drug.”
The other woman let out a breath. “I wondered if it wasn’t something like that,” she confessed. “I’m glad you were honest with me. In fact, what I heard bothered me so much at the time that I tracked down that attorney, and had him tell me himself why the case was thrown out of court. He was very apologetic. He was young and the boy had family and friends who convinced him the boy was the wronged party.”
Josette took a slow breath. “How nice of him. And only nine years too late.”
“Women are still getting a rough deal in a lot of places,” Linda said quietly. “But at least he’s off the streets—for good. The year before last, he had raped a young woman and strangled her almost to death in Victoria. He died trying to run away from the police in a high-speed chase.”
Josette grimaced. “I know. I had a lot of calls from people in Jacobsville afterward. Including one from the district attorney who prosecuted the boy. He believed in me, right up until the verdict and even past it.”
“At least you were exonerated,” Linda said. “You’ve done well, despite everything.”
Josette shrugged. “I had motivation. I wanted to be able to do something for other innocent victims.”
“You’re a trained investigator. Why aren’t you working on a district attorney’s staff? In fact, why aren’t you a district attorney? We have a female one here.”
“I know,” Josette said with a grin. “If I still lived here, I’d have voted for her on qualifications alone.”
“She’s a tiger. So am I,” she confided. She leaned forward. “Is there some particular reason you’re marking time in state government?”
She was persistent, Josette thought. She smiled sadly. “Just after I graduated from college, Dale Jennings’s murder trial made national headlines. I was an instant notorious celebrity, past and present, and made out to be a liar. Nobody wanted to hire me except Simon Hart. I’ve known him most of my life. He was the only person who was willing to take a chance on me.”
“Tough,” Linda said quietly. “I’m sorry. All the same, if you ever change your mind, we’re not prejudiced here. We’d be happy to have you.”
“Thanks,” Josette said. “I’ll remember that.”
“I’ll be happy to have you on this case. If you need anything, anything at all, you just ask.”
“I may need more than you want to give,” Josette said quietly. “This is a high-profile case, involving a member of state government. That’s one reason we’ve got Marc Brannon of the Texas Rangers involved. We’re going to have to cross a lot of jurisdictional lines. With luck, we may get our hands on your local mob boss, Jake Marsh. But it may also involve prosecuting someone pretty high up.”
Linda nodded. “None of us here are afraid of bad publicity.”
Josette let out a sigh of relief. “That’s just what I wanted to hear. Thanks.”
Linda stood up. “You’ll have to share an office with Cash Grier, but he’s not so bad, despite what you’ll hear about him from Brannon. They used to work together. Sort of.”
“I’ll remember. Thanks for the help.”
Linda smiled. “That’s what we’re here for—doing the job.”
By the end of the day, Josette knew several people on the staff and felt vaguely comfortable in her new office. She hadn’t met Grier and she hadn’t seen Brannon. She assumed he’d be working out of the local Ranger office. That was a relief. She didn’t know how she was going to manage being close to him day after day.
But when she got back to the room she’d rented at the Madison Hotel for her stay in San Antonio, she had a surprise waiting. Brannon was sitting in a late-model unmarked sport utility vehicle, black, with antennae all over it.
She hugged her purse to her chest as she stood beside her car and waited for him to get out of his own vehicle, watching him with a carefully noncommittal expression. That was difficult, when her heart was trying to escape through her ribs.
He leaned against her car, his arms folded, and stared down at her in that arrogant manner of his. He was the most attractive man she’d ever known. He was also sensually intimidating, and in her case, she was certain he did it on purpose. He knew very well how she’d felt about him before she accused his best friend of murder. He was rubbing it in.
“I thought the Rangers issued you a car,” she drawled.
“I’d rather drive my own,” he replied shortly. “How’d your day go?”
“I moved in with an assistant district attorney,” she said without preamble. “I assume you’ll be working out of your own office?” He nodded.
“Did you get the files I sent?”
He nodded again.
She lifted an eyebrow and cocked her head at him. Her dark eyes twinkled. “I speak sign language, if you’d rather not answer me directly.”
He chuckled. “You haven’t changed.”
She adjusted her gold-rimmed glasses. “Oh, I’ve changed, Brannon,” she said. “But I try not to let it show.” She turned. “If you’d like to discuss the case…”
“I would. But not in a hotel room,” he added coldly, stung by her remoteness.
She didn’t look at him. “Fine. I’ll take a minute to check my messages and be right back.”
That irritated him. He couldn’t seem to make her angry. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to. Her calm demeanor made him uncomfortable. She was so damned self-confident.
Ignoring him, she went into her room, called the desk and found no messages, refreshed her makeup and went right back outside, locking the door behind her. She’d taken barely five minutes.
Brannon was obviously surprised. “Five minutes. For a woman, that’s a world record.”
“For a man, it would be a miracle,” she murmured dryly. “Where do you want to go, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Don’t be absurd.” He opened the passenger door of the SUV.
She gave it a doubtful look. “Got a ladder?”
“It’s not that high to climb up into,” he said shortly.
She shrugged and got in with as much grace as possible. He closed the door behind her with exaggerated patience.
When he was behind the wheel, he fastened his seat belt and checked to make sure she had her own in place before he started the truck and pulled out into traffic. He drove like he did everything else, with ease and mastery. She looked at his beautiful lean, brown hand
s on the steering wheel and remembered how they felt on bare skin…
She shifted in her seat and looked out over the golden grass as they passed pastures scattered with pumper wells, small grasshopper-shaped machines that brought up oil from beneath the grazing pastures. Cattle plodded around beside them with magnificent unconcern.
“Those tanks barely look half full,” she remarked, eyeing the concrete depressions that caught rainwater, called “tanks” in Texas.
“The drought is hitting everybody hard. Of course, some people do get rain, as long as they don’t need it,” he added.
He glanced at her from under the broad brim of his Stetson. “I spoke to the D.A. before I got off duty. She says they like you over there.”
“Shocking, isn’t it?” she replied drolly.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
She glanced toward him with a bland expression. “What do you want to talk about?”
“How a convicted murderer got put on a work detail,” he said.
She pursed her lips, watching fences and cattle and grasshopper-shaped oil pumpers fly by. “Now there’s a valid question. I didn’t think to wonder about it, either, but it’s not exactly standard policy to let murderers pick up trash on the roadside.”
“Exactly.” He glanced at her. “Something more—the Wayne Correctional Institute isn’t a federal prison, either, it’s a state prison. Jennings was sent to federal prison.”
“So, what was Jennings doing in Wayne at all, right?”
“Right.” He pulled off the highway toward a truck stop. “Coffee and a burger suit you? That’s about all I can afford until payday.”
“I pay my own way, Ranger, so suit yourself,” she said without embarrassment. “Have you talked to the warden?”
“Not yet. But it’s pretty obvious that somebody pulled strings to get Jennings transferred there.”
She whistled softly. “Some strings!”
“I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“For the obvious inference—that the Texas lieutenant governor probably has contacts who could manage it.”
She gave him a steady glance. “Why state the obvious?”
“Bib didn’t kill Henry Garner, or Dale Jennings,” he said firmly.
“Nobody could ever accuse you of being disloyal to your friends,” she remarked. “But I’m keeping an open mind on this case, and you have to do the same,” she added firmly, her eyes steady on his face. “We’re both prejudiced in favor of the people we think are, or were, innocent. That has to make us extra cautious about any accusations.”
“You’re very broad-minded for a woman with your past,” he said curtly. “And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way,” he added quietly. “I can’t quite figure you out.”
“No need to try,” she assured him. “We’re doing a job together, nothing more. When we get the culprit, I’ll go back to Austin and do what I do best.”
“Which is?” he prompted.
“Providing a liaison from Mr. Hart’s office to district attorneys around the state. I’m very much at home with my nose stuck in a filing cabinet or my ear glued to the telephone.”
“That isn’t what you trained to do at college.”
She shrugged. “I’m not suited to fieldwork” was all she was going to admit. “If you don’t mind, I’m rather tired. I’d like to get the preliminary discussion out of the way and go back to my room. It’s been a long day.”
He didn’t reply. He pulled into the truck stop and cut off the engine. She noticed that he didn’t offer to open the passenger door for her. Brannon had been raised with exquisite manners by his late mother, and while he was Mr. Conservative with the image he gave as a Texas Ranger, he was emphatically not politically correct in some areas. It was as much his nature to open doors for women and walk on the traffic side of them as it was to rest that cannon of a .45 caliber revolver he wore on his hip on an empty cylinder. So not offering to open her door was meant to sting. She opened it herself and ignored the intended insult.
He led the way to a booth in the back of the restaurant, with no diners nearby. A waitress came at once, young and pretty and clearly delighted to have Brannon at her table.
“What can I get you?” she asked enthusiastically.
Brannon grinned at her. It changed his whole appearance. He looked handsome and roguish all at once. It was the way he’d looked at Josette two years ago. “Coffee with cream, a rib eye steak, medium rare, and a house salad with Thousand Island dressing.”
“No problem.” She looked at Josette with a toned down mutation of the smile. “And you, ma’am?”
“Coffee, black, and the house salad with ranch dressing on the side.”
“It’ll be right up. I’ll get your coffee now.” She gave Brannon another shyly fascinated smile and hurried away.
“That silver star gets them every time,” Josette drawled, nodding toward his circle and star Texas Ranger badge.
He leaned back with one long arm over the vinyl of the booth, stretching the fabric of his shirt over those hair-roughened muscles that she remembered with such painful vividness. “If there weren’t a few women left who liked men, the next generation would be sparse.” He smiled coldly. “Not all of your gender are happily following their radical leaders and their man-hating agenda. Makeup-free lemmings,” he added to get a rise out of her, “playing follow-the-leader off a cliff.”
“Some men inspire women to start revolutions, Brannon,” she pointed out.
“Oh, I don’t know. I closed a door in a woman’s face just yesterday.” He smiled, watching her, waiting for a reaction.
He was absolutely gorgeous, she thought, watching him. He didn’t look like the sort of man who liked to play, but he did. She remembered him with some teenagers on campus during an impromptu game of basketball; throwing sticks for one of his dogs on his own ranch. He could be as mischievous as any one of his cowboys. But there were only traces of that man in him now. He wasn’t just making conversation. He was probing for weaknesses. So Josette was not going to get into a verbal sparring match with him. He could keep his good-old-boy prejudices until hair grew out of his ears, for all she cared.
“I want to know how Jennings got out of a maximum security prison, into a state facility, and then placed on a work detail,” she said instead of gracing his remarks with a reply. Her dark eyes met his gray ones evenly. “Whoever was behind it, that would take more than mere influence. Money changed hands. A lot of money.”
“I’m still looking for a motive,” he said, irritated that she wouldn’t rage at him. He hated that even, calm tone. The woman he’d known two years ago, even with her tragic background, had been feisty and happy and full of the joy of life. Her eyes had made love to his every time he’d looked at her. Now, they were empty eyes. They were painted windows with the curtains drawn.
“If we can find the evidence, we can find the murderer,” she returned, pausing while the waitress returned with two mugs of steaming coffee and four little round tubs of half-and-half for Brannon. The waitress gave him yet another deliberate smile.
Brannon took time to return the smile, and wink. The waitress blushed, a breathless little giggle escaping from her lips before she continued to the next table, where another couple was just settling in. The back of the booth bowed behind Josette and she shifted, uncomfortably close to the table edge. It didn’t bother her that he was flirting with the waitress. It didn’t!
With an amused glance, Brannon busied himself with the cream and sugar, doctoring his coffee until it was just the right color and sweetness. He tasted it with his spoon before he placed the spoon carefully down on a napkin and lifted the mug to his lips.
“The motive is pretty obvious,” he said after a minute, setting the mug down carefully on the Formica tabletop. “Jennings had something incriminating in his possession.”
“I agree.” She sipped her own black coffee thoughtfully, noting the rich, strong taste of it with pleasure. In so
many restaurants, coffee was like lukewarm brown water. She often imagined the cooks putting coffee into a cloth sack and dragging it across the surface of water in a coffee urn. The image amused her and she smiled to herself.
“Something funny?” he asked.
She’d forgotten how observant he was. Nothing made it past those quick pale eyes. She recalled that he’d spent the past fourteen years of his life in law enforcement.
“I was thinking about the coffee, actually,” she confessed, and told him what she’d been thinking.
His firm lips pursed in a faint smile. “That’s why I like to eat here,” he remarked, raising the mug deliberately. “Even when the food isn’t perfect, the coffee always is.” He took a sip and put the mug back down. “I went to see Mrs. Jennings this morning,” he added unexpectedly. “She’s in a downtown mission. She doesn’t even have the price of a phone call.”
His expression told her how he felt about that. Despite his faults, Brannon had a soft heart.
“Dale didn’t give her anything to keep for him, did he?”
“Now that’s an interesting question,” he replied. “Because the house she’d owned was ransacked just before she was evicted. She was taken to the mission by a social worker. The woman was going to drive her back to her old home and help her collect her things, but when they got there, the house was already destroyed in a fire. Not a toothpick was salvaged.”
Josette frowned. “Just in case they missed something, they covered all their bases. If the evidence was there, it went up in smoke.”
“I don’t think they know where it is,” he replied. “If Mrs. Jennings didn’t have it, she still may know where it is, even if she wouldn’t admit it when I asked her. The fire could have been a not-so-subtle warning that she’d better cooperate. I talked to the police chief here and asked him to have his men keep an eye on the mission when they could. They don’t have a budget for full-time surveillance,” he added impatiently. “They hardly get enough to cover the bare necessities.”
“It’s like that everywhere,” Josette said. “If we spent two percent as much money on law enforcement and poverty as we do on financial aid to other countries, we wouldn’t have any crime.”