Telling Tales

by Shiloh Walker

  Kellan slid Grady a look. “You got home around nine or so?” he asked, deliberately fudging the time. Clive’s didn’t close until eleven in the summer. Tourists seemed to think the town should keep big-city hours. So, they kept big-city hours. At least the restaurants and diners did.

  “No. I told you,” she said patiently, lifting her eyes to the ceiling. “I stayed at Clive’s until he chased me out-until closing. Later than that actually.” She frowned. “Damn it, my car is there. Shoot. Anyway. I just kept drinking cappuccinos-shoot, I really have to go pee.”

  Kellan lifted a brow at her and smothered a grin. Damn it, that was one of the things he liked about her. She had to be one of the most open women he had ever met in his life.

  She rambled on, unaware of his amusement. “I had been sitting in the window seat, that thing is soooo comfortable. I was reading and then just daydreaming for a while. He let me keep on zoning while he closed up and he told me…”

  Then she locked her lips together and her face went red.

  Kellan sighed and lifted his eyes patiently to the sky. “Look, Darci. I’m perfectly aware that Clive has a nice little recipe that he hands out every now and then. I don’t know what all is in it, and I’ve never been given one, so while I’m offended that you got one, after only living here for five years, and I was born here, and I’ve never gotten one, you aren’t going to get him in trouble.”

  She arched a brow and whistled I Wish I was in Dixie.

  “He didn’t accept money for it, did he?” Kellan asked, suppressing the urge to laugh.

  She stopped whistling and laughed. “Damn it, and here I was thinking I was special.”

  “You are. He only gives that out to a handful of people,” Kellan said sourly. “So you got one of Clive’s miracle drinks and he drove you home…what time you think that was?”

  She shrugged. “He closes around eleven and it was all clean and tidy before he even interrupted my nice little daydreams. Probably quarter after, maybe eleven-twenty. I guess I got home a little before midnight,” she said, nodding toward the sparkling river view just beyond the window over Kellan’s shoulder. “We talked on the porch, while he made sure I drank my ‘goodnight cocktail’ as he called it.” She slid Kellan a look and said, “He wouldn’t let me drink it until we got here, and I can understand why. I had no sooner gone upstairs and gotten into my jammies than I started feeling sleepy. Don’t know what he puts in that thing, but it packs a punch. And I haven’t slept that soundly in years.”

  Kellan felt the knot in his belly loosening. “So basically, you were at Clive’s all evening. I’m sure other people besides him saw you?” he asked, leaning back and staring at her face. Her brows arched higher as she tilted her head, studying him.

  “Yes, I’m sure plenty of people did.” Drawing her knees up to her chest, she rested that elfin chin on them and pinned him with a direct stare, one that was totally at odds with her whimsical looks, and that lazy, almost childish pose. “So, tell me, exactly what is it you’re worried I did last night?”

  “Now you need to be advised that I haven’t read you your rights. You’re not under arrest, and I don’t suspect you of any crimes. However, some people probably do.”

  Across the room, Grady closed his eyes and just shook his head.

  Darci nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said softly. “What crime exactly?”

  Setting his notebook aside, he leaned forward and said, “Sometime last evening, somebody Carrie Forrest knew was inside her house. They had coffee and she got out cookies, which were left untouched in the sitting room.” Kellan stood up and crossed the room, kneeling in front of Darci, not touching her, just watching her face as he finished. “They went upstairs to her studio and then this person killed Carrie.”

  Darci’s mouth dropped open.

  She blinked.

  Her legs slid down and she shifted on the chair, reaching up to rub a fist across her chest. “What?” she repeated in a soft, weak voice. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Carrie is dead,” Kellan said levelly. “She was murdered.”

  Darci fell back against the chair as though all the energy had drained out of her. The light in her vibrant green eyes dimmed and she swallowed. “You think I could have done it,” she murmured, still staring at him.

  Yes, one of the most open women he had ever met. She didn’t hide a damn thing. Kellan replied as honestly as he could. “I don’t think you could have done it. But you are a suspect. Carrie liked to snipe at you, Darci. She did her damnedest to cause you trouble, and you never backed down, especially this last time,” he said softly.

  In the corner, Grady lifted his eyes to the sky, shaking his head.

  “I have reason to dislike her,” Darci said coldly. “I don’t have reason to hate her. I don’t have reason to want her dead.”

  “Some people might think, after what has happened between you, that you would have every reason to want just that,” Kellan said. “She was out to ruin you. Ruin your career.”

  “Get serious,” Darci said, rolling her eyes. “Hatred requires too much energy. And frankly, she’s not worth it.” Then she paled. “Oh, man. That sounds terrible. She’s dead, and…oh, man.” She tugged a gold chain from underneath her shirt and worried the charm on it with her fingers, mumbling under her breath. “I didn’t like the lady, but my mother didn’t raise me to speak ill of the dead. That was mean of me.”

  Kellan closed his eyes and shook his head. This woman was…unusual. To say the least.

  “Ah, I think under the circumstances, your mother would understand,” Kellan said softly.

  She flashed him a wry grin, her eyes sparkling brightly through the tears. “Ummm, you don’t know Mama,” she said, her voice thick. “Speaking ill of the dead is just something you don’t do. Even of Hitler.”

  Kellan waited until she took a shuddering breath and her eyes met his once more. “I need you to come down to the station. I need a statement,” he said softly.

  Her lashes lowered and she sighed, her slim, sleekly muscled shoulders rising and falling beneath the lacy straps of her nightie. “My life seems to be going to hell in a handbasket,” she murmured.

  Kellan couldn’t help it. “Well, it’s a vast improvement over the path Carrie’s life took last night,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. Then she slowly agreed, “Well, you do have a point. Although Carrie chose her path a very long time ago.”

  Well, he might believe she wasn’t a killer, Darci thought sourly as she ran her wet fingers through her short black hair. She made a face in the mirror. “It’s still not keeping me from having to go down and make a statement,” she muttered.

  Part of her felt guilty.

  Carrie was dead. Apparently pretty brutally. Kellan wouldn’t say anything, but she was really good at picking up vibes. And she sensed a terrible rage within him. A terrible rage.

  Maybe she was wrong, she thought as she tugged her nightshirt off and searched for a bra in the dresser drawer. Spying one, she tugged it out and pulled it on, then jerked open her closet and grabbed the first shirt she could find-a waist-length, black sleeveless vest-styled shirt. She stuck her arms in it, buttoned it up and stuck her feet into a black pair of thongs.

  Maybe any unjustified death angered him. It would her. Hearing about anybody dying before their time made her mad.

  But…still. She couldn’t help but think something about this was off. Or maybe she was just letting her emotions toward Carrie affect her. Hell, she thought as she grabbed her purse and keys from the table beside her door and jogged down the steps, she’d been letting her animosity toward Carrie skew her thinking for months.

  Why should this change anything?

  Except she had decided earlier that she was going to get over this. She wasn’t going to let Carrie and Co. matter anymore.

  Meeting Kellan at the bottom of the stairs, she looked into his eyes-soft, warm, hazel eyes. He had taken his glasses off. He had looked awfully good with them on,
like a sexy scholar.

  Of course, he looked good without them too.

  He just looked damned good.

  She just loved his eyes. She’d love to photograph his eyes, those wide-spaced, heavily lashed, warm, hazel eyes.

  Was it her imagination or did they look just a little warmer as he stared at her?

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said quietly.

  Her attorney of record wasn’t exactly equipped to defend her against a murder charge, but Darci wasn’t a fool. As she rode in the back of Kellan’s cruiser, she pulled out her cell phone and called Brittany Daugherty.

  “Darci, I was just getting ready to come over. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything but-”

  “Britt, I’m in the Sheriff’s car, riding over to the station,” she interrupted. “I think it would be a good idea for you to meet me down there.”

  “Oh, shit. I was afraid this would happen. Don’t say anything, don’t tell them anything-”

  “I already have told them some stuff, but it was just where I was last night. I was at Clive’s all evening. But they want to take my statement, ask some official questions,” she said. As she spoke, she glanced up and met Kellan’s glance in the rearview mirror.

  He was studying her with an arched brow.

  She flushed and licked her lips and dragged her gaze away, but she could still feel him staring at her.

  “I’d like you to meet me there, Britt,” she said, lowering her voice. “The whole damn town knows that Carrie and I had some bad history between us. And half of the town is still convinced she was a saint…”

  “The Wicked Witch is more like it,” Britt interjected. “But we can’t let anybody hear you talking like that. Don’t say anything else. And I mean anything. Not until I get there. So zip it.”

  Once Brittany hung up the phone, Darci sighed and flipped hers closed, tossing it into her purse.

  “So, what does your lawyer have to say?”

  Arching a brow at him, she drew an imaginary zipper across the seam of her lips and turned the lock, before leaning her head back. Damn it. She needed to think.

  Because if she thought long and hard enough, surely she’d come up with the reasons she had moved to Vevey to begin with.

  At least she’d taken that white nightshirt off. If he had been forced to question her while she had been wearing that nightie, the hint of her nipples teasing him, he was certain he would have gone mad.

  He was about to lose it anyway.

  Damn it, this was too much.

  Kellan had avoided her like the plague for the past few years. And just for this very reason. The scent of her skin drove him insane. The thought of being close enough to touch all of that smooth white skin, yet resisting, was enough to make him want to drag her by the hair to the closest private place and just throw her to the ground and mount her. To see the sparkle of her emerald green eyes and hear the low husky caress of her voice as she spoke-

  Damn it. He was going to drive himself crazy.

  And they hadn’t even gotten started yet.

  This was the longest time he had ever spent in her company. And the closest. The scent of her skin was permanently embedded on his memory and he was certain that her mouth would be every bit as sweet and soft as it looked.

  Fuck.

  He had kept his attraction to her from becoming an obsession just by keeping his distance.

  And now that distance had been totally smashed. How could he stay away from her now?

  But how could he do anything with a woman who was involved in a murder investigation?

  Hell, she hadn’t done it. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. But she was involved in it. Somehow. Something Carrie had done had pissed somebody off so much that the person had snapped.

  And lately, all her tricks and bullshit seemed to revolve around Darci, Becka, or the gallery.

  As Britt sailed in, her bouncy blonde curls secured in a ponytail, she grinned sunnily at Kellan and asked easily, “How’s Michaela doing?”

  He smiled and said, “Fat and pregnant, last I heard.”

  “Shouldn’t be calling your sister fat. She’s just…plump. A baby can do that, I’ve heard,” Britt said as she settled onto the hard chair, flipping open her briefcase and drawing out a yellow legal pad and a pen. After perching a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on her nose, she flicked Kellan a glance and said, “I’ll need a moment to speak with my client, if you don’t mind.”

  Kellan sighed and said, “She’s not under arrest. I just need to take a statement, ask her some questions.”

  Brittany smiled serenely. “That is all well and good. But I really should know a few things before you ask her those questions.” She arched her brows and waited.

  Kellan scowled and tossed his pen down on the table. He pushed his glasses up on top of his head and left the room, shaking his head as he closed the door behind him.

  He made a beeline for his office and went straight for the coffeepot, pushing the button, knowing JT already had it ready to brew. She had seen him come in and had huffed her way in here, mumbling about overtime and how a body just couldn’t get any sleep.

  And she had the pot waiting for him, so he could have coffee as soon as he wanted it.

  Loveable old biddy.

  As soon as there was enough for a cup, he grabbed the pot and poured one, wincing as footsteps came down the hall, hoping it wasn’t JT. If she knew he was letting coffee splatter on the warming unit again, she’d have his hide. But the footsteps went on past, and he sipped at the hot brew and sighed with pleasure while coffee hissed and bubbled on the heating unit.

  Oh, yeah, JT would skin him.

  But as long as he cleaned up his mess, they’d be fine.

  Darci toyed with the cross at her neck as she repeated, almost word for word, how she had spent her night. “Okay,” Britt finally said, smiling with satisfaction. “Clive is almost gold around here. If he says you were at his place, then nobody will doubt him.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Darci said sarcastically.

  Britt laughed. “Honey, you know by now how things are here. They like you, a lot. But you’re still the new kid. Hell, you’ll be new after you’ve lived here fifty years. But Clive, well, he wasn’t born here, but his daddy was, and he’s been here since he was a kid and around here, he is a fixture. And he likes you. All in all, that is a damned good thing. You’ve got plenty of witnesses and an unimpeachable alibi.” Patting Darci on the knee, she said, “Small-town life, babe. Don’t you love it?”

  Darci groused through the rest of the questions, twisting her rings ‘round and ‘round on her fingers, replaying yesterday through her mind. You have got to be the saddest most pathetic creature…

  It was the truth. She knew that.

  But all she could see was the bright flash of pain that had appeared in Carrie’s eyes for the quickest of seconds. The moment of truth.

  It was truth.

  For a second, Carrie had been forced to stop hiding from it. And she had hated Darci for it.

  “Darci.”

  Jerking her head up, Darci stared into Brittany ’s eyes, her own dark and bruised-looking. “She was a horrid, pathetic woman who was getting old before her time,” she whispered to her friend. “But she didn’t deserve to die before her time.”

  Britt leaned forward, taking Darci’s hand and wrapping her hands around Darci’s cold ones. “Listen, honey, and listen good. Malcontent breeds malcontent. Though most people in this town believed Carrie’s lies, and few knew the truth, she didn’t deserve what happened to her. But unfortunately, the way Carrie liked to live-telling tales, breeding ill will-sooner or later, she was going to set off the wrong person,” Brittany whispered. “What goes around does indeed come around. Sometimes, in spades.”

  Inexplicably, Darci’s eyes filled with tears. Britt leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her, rocking her slightly. “Shhh…shhh, don’t cry, Darci. She’s cost you too many tears already.”

  D
arci forced a deep, somewhat shaky breath into her lungs and then she nodded, pulling back, looking up, letting the tears dry before they fell. “No crying. None. Can we get this over with? I really want to get out of here,” she said fervently.

  ***

  Darci was walking down the two steps that led to the sidewalk when she heard Britt’s indrawn breath. “Don’t say a damn thing to her,” Brittany warned under her breath. “I mean it. Don’t get drawn into something with her. Your alibi checks out, you couldn’t have done it, we know you couldn’t have done it. Don’t let her-”

  “They are letting you walk out of here?” Beth demanded. Her eyes were bright with anger, her mouth twisted and snarling.

  “Beth.” The deep voice came from over their heads and froze Darci in her tracks before she could say anything.

  And she sure as hell was going to say something, even though Britt’s fingers were digging into her arm, about to cut her circulation off.

  “Why are you letting her walk out of here? She killed Carrie! Everybody knows it!” Beth spat. A tiny bit of spittle clung to the corner of her mouth and disgust curled in Darci’s belly.

  “She couldn’t have killed Carrie. Not unless she’s able to be in two places at once. She’s got an alibi for a solid six hours,” Kellan said as he came down the two steps, not looking at Darci. “I’m heading out to speak with said alibi and take his statement. But it’s pretty much ironclad.”

  “She probably fucked him to get it,” Beth snarled, reaching up and shoving at Darci’s chest. “Hell, she’s fucking everybody in town.”

  Darci batted her hand away and said, “Don’t touch me again, Beth. I’ll make allowances because you’re angry and upset. And I’ll make allowances because I know you’re probably hurting over Carrie, but do it again, and I’ll get mad.”

  She heard a muffled snort from Kellan and Britt snickered. Beth’s eyes flamed. “Are you threatening me?” Beth gasped.