by JoAnn Ross
Along with the tape recorder, Trace pulled out a small card. If Garvey was Laura Fletcher's murderer, Trace had no intention of blowing the case on a technicality.
"Planning on reading me my rights, Sheriff?" Clint asked as his gaze skimmed over the small white piece of pasteboard.
"I think it might be a good idea." When Clint didn't respond, Trace pushed the black Record button, then read the short Miranda warning aloud.
"Do you understand your rights as I've read them?"
Clint continued to drink his coffee. If he was a murderer, he was one of the least nervous ones Trace had ever seen. "They seem clear enough," he said in the same laconic tone favored by cowboys everywhere.
"Would you like to contact your attorney?"
"I don't think that'll be necessary."
"After hearing these rights, and being so advised, are you still willing to talk with me?"
Clint looked at Trace over the chipped rim of the mug. His eyes were chips of ice, his face could have been carved from granite. "Hell, why do you think I came here as soon as I heard? I want to talk to you."
After years of working homicide, mere was still a part of Trace that was always amazed and mystified by the way people were so willing to concede their constitutional right to silence. It was the professional murderers who knew how to keep their mouths shut. Two decades after the Miranda ruling, amateurs, thank God, were still willing to put themselves at risk.
"Okay." Trace leaned back in his chair, adopting a relaxed pose designed to encourage his subject to relax as well. Interrogation was nothing more than deceptive role playing. Those cops who earned the highest confession rates were, most often, the most seasoned actors.
"Are you familiar with Laura Fletcher?"
"Hell," Clint growled, showing his first sign of emotion, "if we're going to do this one question at a time, it'll take all night. So why don't I just fill you in on the background stuff, then if you've any questions, you can go ahead and ask them?"
Trace was definitely not accustomed to ceding control in an interrogation. With effort, he reminded himself of his objective. Keep Garvey talking.
"Go ahead," he said with a nod.
"Laura and I were just kids when we met," Clint began slowly. "Of course, growing up around here, I knew who she was, but we didn't exactly move in the same circles, if you know what I mean."
He looked at Trace, who nodded back, remembering all too well how it was to be on the outside looking in.
"Then I got hired on for the spring roundup. I was nineteen. Laura was seventeen."
Clint's harsh expression softened. Trace guessed he was thinking about those lost days of young love.
"To make a long story short, we fell in love. When her father caught us, he fired me and grounded her."
"So you eloped."
"We eloped," Clint said flatly. "But when old man Swann caught up with us, Laura caved in and went back home with him."
"That must have made you angry."
Clint barked a harsh laugh devoid of humor. "Nice subtle try, Sheriff. I was madder than hell. I tried to hate her for years afterward. But it wasn't any good. Because I couldn't stop loving her."
"How long was it before you saw each other again?"
"We'd run into each other at the market, pass in the street whenever she was home from Washington, that sort of thing. Then, after her grandmother left me part of the Prescott spread, we were neighbors, so to speak, so sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of her while I was out riding. But we never spoke."
"Why do you think Ida Prescott left you that land?" Cora Mae had filled him in on the will that had apparently sent more than a few shock waves rumbling through the community, but apparently no one in Whiskey River had been able to understand the old woman's motives.
"Hell if I know. I'd done some work for her from time to time, repairing fences, rounding up strays, that sort of thing, and we always got along."
"After Swann fired me, the old lady told me that he was an ass. She also said that Laura was a damn fool to let her father run her life the way she did. I guess she figured that I got a raw deal and was trying to make it up to me. Or, perhaps she figured if she threw Laura and I together, chemistry might prove more powerful than political ambition."
"Did it?"
Clint shrugged and looked down into his coffee as if seeking the answer in the dark brown depths. "Eventually. But not the way Ida might have thought. It was years later when Laura came to me. I was in Washington testifying on grazing rights and she showed up for the hearing. We went back to my hotel. That's when I finally learned the real reason she went home with Swann that morning."
"The son of a bitch threatened to have me arrested for statutory rape if she didn't get an annulment and promise to never speak to me again."
Pain flooded into his eyes, turning them the color of a storm-tossed sea. "All those damn years wasted," he muttered.
"You don't think Swann would have followed through on his threat?"
Clint stared out the window, but Trace had the feeling it was not the reporters crowding into the courthouse square he was looking at, but the life he'd been cheated out of.
"Hell, of course he would have. Swann isn't the kind of man to make idle threats. And I might have ended up serving some time. But I would have gotten out. And Laura and I still would have been married. And we could have been together."
He looked straight at Trace, his gaze unflinching. "When she came to me, when we made love in my hotel that weekend and it was just the same as it always was, except better, I was fool enough to think we could recapture all we'd lost."
"How long had the affair been going on?"
Clint grimaced at Trace's choice of words. "Six months. And it wasn't any sleazy, backstreet affair. I wanted to marry her."
"The lady was already married," Trace said pointedly.
"She was going to get a divorce." When Trace didn't immediately respond, Clint downed the rest of his coffee and slammed the empty mug down onto the desk. "She was, dammit. She was going to tell the senator this weekend."
Trace was not above a little suspect baiting. "Before or after his Fourth of July presidential announcement?"
"Good try, Sheriff." Clint forced a grin. "But it won't work. Laura wasn't the slightest bit eager to be First Lady, and even if she had been, I certainly wouldn't have killed her."
"Even if she'd refused to leave her husband?"
He looked Trace straight in the eye. "Even then."
"When was the last time you saw her?"
"The night she died," Clint admitted. "The senator was late. I talked to her on the phone, and I could tell she was upset, so I drove over to calm her down."
"Did you have sexual relations with her?"
"We made love." Clint gave him a long hard look that suggested there was a big difference.
"Point taken," Trace agreed amiably.
That was another interrogation tactic. Become a suspect's best friend—his mirror image. You strangled your mother-in-law because she wouldn't stop bitching about you drinking a few six-packs every night after work? Well, hell, pardner, who doesn't fantasize about doing the old battle-ax in from time to time?
Shoot your boss over an overtime dispute? Fuck, the son of a bitch probably deserved to get his balls blown off. Beat your wife to death with your fists? What did she expect, slapping you first, just because you blew the baby food money at the dog track? Become a man's friend and he was more likely to share masculine confidences.
"What did you do after you and Laura Fletcher made love?"
"I went home and waited for her to call and tell me she'd told Fletcher she was filing for divorce. The next morning, when I was still waiting, I figured she'd lost her nerve. Again."
"So this wasn't the first time she'd promised to tell Fletcher she wanted out of the marriage?" Trace watched Garvey carefully.
"No. We'd argued about it."
"Anyone hear you?"
"I don't think so. For obvious reasons, we ne
ver went out in public together."
It crossed Trace's mind that Garvey should have requested a lawyer. Because there wasn't a criminal attorney in America who would have allowed his client to reveal such a damning piece of incriminating information.
"So, when she didn't show up, you went out riding."
"Yeah. I'll admit it. I was steamed. But I always believed eventually, she'd get a divorce."
"And marry you."
"Yes." His unwavering stare did not invite an argument.
Trace picked up a pen and began casually toying with it. "What about children? Did you plan a family?"
"Laura couldn't have kids."
"How did you feel about that?"
"Christ, you sound like some radio talk-show shrink, Sheriff," Clint said. "For the record, it was Laura I wanted. I wasn't looking for a brood mare. If she'd been able to have kids, that would've been a bonus. But she couldn't. So I didn't care."
"Sounds reasonable," Trace agreed easily. He didn't mink Garvey knew. He was also not looking forward to being the one who broke the news to him. "Do you own a gun?"
"Sure. A shotgun and a rifle."
Along with about ninety-nine percent of the county's population, Trace considered. "No handgun?"
"A handgun's for shooting people. The shotgun's for quail and the rifle is for elk and deer. No, I don't own a handgun, Sheriff, because I don't have anything valuable enough to shoot anyone over. And it isn't in me to kill a man. Or a woman," he tacked on pointedly.
"Would you mind giving us permission to search your premises?"
"Go ahead." He shrugged. "I don't have anything to hide."
Trace had heard that one before. "And I'll want to take your boot and tire prints."
"To match them up to those found at the scene of the crime?"
"That's right."
"Hot damn," Clint said derisively, "you're just a regular Columbo, aren't you Sheriff?"
Trace ignored the sarcasm. "I'm also going to ask a judge to request a blood test."
"A blood test?" Frown lines etched canyons into the dark forehead. "Oh." He dragged his hands through his hair again as he contemplated the reason for the request. "Is that really necessary? I've already told you I was with her that night."
"The blood test is also to establish paternity."
"Paternity?" Comprehension came crashing down. Trace watched it move in waves across the dark face. "Laura was pregnant?" Garvey asked in a rough, broken voice.
"The autopsy put her at two months." Trace weighed revealing more and decided, what the hell. "Senator Fletcher claims the baby couldn't have been his."
"A baby." The cowboy appeared absolutely shell shocked. The color faded from his face, leaving his complexion the hue of cold ashes. "Laura was going to have my baby?"
"That's one of the things I need to find out."
A suspicious moisture glistened in Clint's eyes, but his expression hardened. "I guess I lied, Sheriff."
"About what?"
"About being able to kill a man. If I find the bastard who did this—"
"That's not your job, Garvey." For the first time since the interrogation began, Trace's short, harsh tone was that of the tough, no-nonsense city homicide detective he'd once been. "It's mine."
"Then do it."
Trace met his challenging look straight on. "I intend to."
Soon after Clint left the office, with instructions not to leave the county, Trace's intercom buzzed.
"What is it now, Jill?" Trace snapped, expecting yet another call from some network news producer wanting to put him on the air. Or one of the nuisance calls regarding the kids who'd been driving him up a wall.
His office door opened. "Jill was about to announce me," Mariah informed him. She was wearing a snug white top made from some stretchy material that hugged her curves like a second skin and a short flowered skirt that reminded him of a summer garden in full bloom. She smelled like one, too.
"No point in that," Trace drawled. He was uncomfortable with the way he was inexplicably pleased to see her. "When you do it so well yourself."
Her response, issued through gritted teeth, was satisfyingly obscene. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, sat down in the visitor's chair without waiting for an invitation and glowered across the desk at him.
"Don't push me, Sheriff. I've had an absolutely rotten afternoon and I'm in the mood to start throwing things."
"Don't feel like the Lone Ranger."
Their eyes met in a blaze of shared frustration. And something else. Mariah's stomach tightened in a knot of sexual awareness. Not the first she'd suffered since meeting this man.
She told herself that she should be grateful she could still feel such intense sexual desire, despite the painful battering her emotions had taken when she'd arrived home after so long to find her sister murdered.
And she had to admit that last night's dream—a hot, sexual, strikingly graphic fantasy of Trace Callahan handcuffing her to a lacy, old-fashioned brass bed, then making achingly slow love to her until she was literally begging him to end her torment—was a vast improvement over the nightmares about Laura's murder she'd suffered the night before.
Her eyes were ablaze with emotion. Her lips, tinted the hue of a wild poppy, looked soft and sweet and utterly delectable. Although he knew it to be risky, Trace vowed to taste those lips before Mariah Swann returned to her glamorous life in Hollywood.
Secretly excited by the way his eyes had turned to polished pewter as they drifted over her mouth, Mariah dragged her gaze past Trace, out the window. "Was that Clint Garvey I saw driving away in the Bronco?"
"Yeah."
"So he's back in town." She frowned and rubbed at her temple. "Did he know about the pregnancy?"
"He does now."
"Shit." She shook her head, dug around in her purse for her cigarettes, belatedly remembering she'd chosen this morning to stop smoking. Again. "I sure wish I believed in reincarnation," she muttered, opting instead for a Life Saver. "Because those two definitely deserved a second chance."
Although he didn't respond, Trace silently agreed. So long as Garvey hadn't murdered his lover.
"So what did Clint say?"
"You know that's confidential." Seeing the storm brewing on her smooth brow, and taking seriously her threat about throwing things, Trace added, "he didn't confess, if that's what you're wondering."
"Of course I'm not. Clint didn't kill Laura. I've told you, Sheriff—"
"I know. You still believe the senator killed her."
"And shot himself to deflect suspicion," Mariah agreed. When she crossed her legs, he was treated to a glimpse of smooth tanned thigh. "I've written it—"
"I know. Scads of times." His mind was still on that flash of honey-hued flesh. As desire pooled hotly in his groin, Trace frowned.
He hadn't been all that surprised when he'd found Mariah infiltrating her way into his thoughts at times he should have been concentrating on his investigation. She was, after all, a remarkably attractive woman. The fact that she was bright and quick and somewhat amusing only added to her appeal.
It was one thing to find Mariah Swann sexually appealing. It was quite another to feel such an intense, uncontrollable pull.
Determined to regain control, he dragged his mind back their conversation. "So, if you were writing this as a teleplay, you want to explain how you'd deal with the little detail of no weapon being found in the house?"
He steepled his fingers. "What did the guy do? Shoot his wife with the .38, carefully wound himself in a non-fatal location with the .25, drive two miles down to the river—which would involve going around a police barricade, don't forget—throw the guns into the water, drive back to the house, call 911, then pass out before the paramedics arrived?"
"It's more likely he had an accomplice who took the guns away after the shootings."
"I assume you're talking about Heather Martin."
"It's obvious that she and Alan are lovers."
"T
he last time I checked Arizona legal statutes, adultery didn't make a couple coconspirators in a murder."
"Clint couldn't do it."
"Well, the two of you agree on that." Trace's tone suggested his own mind was still open.
"I watched him have to put down a horse years ago. I could tell it tore him up." Mariah shook her head decisively. "He couldn't have shot Laura."
"Spoken like a true and loyal friend."
She shot him a quick, suspicious look. "How did you know we were friends?"
"It seems to be common knowledge."
J.D. had told him a little; Cora Mae had been more than willing to fill in the gaps. The elderly woman's mother lode of gossip—and the eagerness with which she shared that personal information—made her a combination of town crier, old-time party line and local tabloid newspaper.
Conveniently ignoring the fact that she'd checked Trace out with the Dallas P.D., Mariah decided that she didn't like the idea of him asking around town about her. Especially when she could guess what people's responses would be.
"Oh, that Swann girl," Mrs. Kendall, down at Annie's Antiques would sniff, "she was always wild. Sashaying down Main Street in those tight shorts that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. I always thought it was a miracle she didn't get raped, the way she dressed."
"Mariah Swann?" Mariah could practically see Jeb Young, owner of The Saddlery Tack and Feed pause and spit into the old-fashioned milk can he'd been using for a spittoon since before Mariah was born. "The gal was a spitfire, that's for sure. Had more boys buzzin' around her than bees around a honeycomb."
Another wet plug of tobacco would hit its mark. "Whatever trouble she'd get into, the kid sure as hell could sit a horse," Jeb would probably concede. Hadn't he always told her she was a natural born horsewoman? And in the former rodeo champion's eyes, those words were the highest praise of all.
"I would think, with a murderer running loose in Whiskey River, that you'd have better things to do than to investigate me," she complained.
"Actually, I was looking for information about Garvey when your name came up. I take it the two of you were close."
"I never slept with Clint, if that's what you're implying. He was always in love with Laura."