LITMIR.BIZ

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      What was wrong with her?

      “Slowly,” the detective was saying to her.

      She blinked, confused. Had she missed something? “What?”

      “You can sit up,” Nick repeated. “But do it slowly,” he cautioned. “You really don’t want to get dizzy and pass out again.”

      She didn’t like the frailty his warning implied. It wasn’t as if she was made out of spun glass. If she had been, she would have shattered long before now.

      “That was the first time I ever passed out,” Suzy informed him with a touch of annoyance in her voice.

      “First time you had a husband who was murdered, I suspect,” Nick speculated.

      Suzy flushed. She could feel the color rising to her cheeks, making them hot.

      “Yes,” she answered hoarsely, waiting to see where he was going with this.

      “Drastic news brings out drastic results,” he told her matter-of-factly. “Want some water?” Without waiting for an answer, he glanced at Juarez. His partner was just coming back into the room. “Juarez, get Mrs. Burris a glass of water.”

      Without a word, the other detective turned on his heel and went back to the kitchen.

      “Makes him feel useful,” Nick said in response to the protest he saw hovering on the widow’s perfectly formed lips.

      “You always anticipate everything?” she couldn’t help asking.

      He flashed her another amused smile. Amid the vulnerability, he detected a feisty streak. He found it rather appealing.

      “Saves time,” he told her. “But no, I don’t always anticipate everything, just the obvious things.”

      “Like my fainting,” she assumed.

      “Being told that a spouse was murdered usually comes as a shock to the person doing the listening,” he said, never taking his eyes off hers.

      Suzy heard the detective’s emphasis on the telltale word: usually. Did that mean he thought that she was innocent, or did he actually think she had something to do with Peter’s murder? If the latter, she knew she should be outraged at the very idea, but she still felt too drained, too devastated by the news, to summon that sort of a response.

      “It did,” she told him as firmly as she could, the look in her eyes challenging him to say something different.

      Juarez had returned with a tall glass filled to the very brim with water. Nick put his hand out for it, then offered it to the widow.

      Suzy took the glass with both hands to hold it steady and drank deeply. Strange as it seemed, the cold water helped her pull herself together and focus.

      She couldn’t allow herself to go to pieces. There was no one around to help her put those pieces back together again. No one to really rely on, except herself.

      Just like the old days.

      “Thank you,” she said to Juarez, offering him the near-empty glass. Her words elicited a shy smile from the young detective as he took the glass from her.

      “My pleasure, ma’am.”

      Ma’am. She was way too young to be a ma’am. Or maybe she wasn’t. After all, she was someone’s mother now.

      “You up to some questions?” the other detective asked her. She nodded, wanting to get this over with. “When did you last see your husband?”

      “Yesterday morning at breakfast.” That seemed like a hundred years ago now, she thought. Had it only been a mere twenty-four hours?

      “Did he seem particularly preoccupied or troubled to you?” the detective asked.

      She looked at this stranger for a long moment, wondering how to answer his question. Did she tell him that she and Peter had grown apart? That they hardly spoke to one another these last few days, except to talk about the baby? Or did she keep her secret and pretend that everything had been just fine?

      Pressing her lips together, Suzy paused for a moment as she searched for some plausible middle ground. “If you’re asking me if he seemed different than usual yesterday, the answer is no, he didn’t.”

      Her words, Nick noted, were carefully orchestrated. He read between the lines.

      “How long have you and your husband been having marital problems?” he asked gently.

      The question surprised not only Suzy, but the other detective as well. Juarez stared at him, openmouthed. “You didn’t tell me you knew the sheriff and his wife, Nick,” Juarez said, sounding slightly irritated at being shut out this way.

      “I don’t, do I, Mrs. Burris?” Nick asked, looking at the woman.

      She didn’t bother addressing his last question as she focused on the one that not only caught her off guard, but upset her, as well. She didn’t want any dirty laundry to mar Peter’s memory. As far as the people in the county were concerned, he was an exemplary sheriff.

      “What makes you think we were having problems?” she asked.

      The question told him all he asked. He was right. Had there been no problems, she might have issued an indignant denial, or at the very least, stared at him as if he was being boorish. But she didn’t. She was defensive. Because there was something to be defensive about.

      “Let’s just say I’ve been there,” he answered evasively.

      This wasn’t about him, and Nick had no intentions of revisiting his own failed attempt at marital bliss. He’d married far too young and it had all fallen apart on them not that long after the vows. In keeping with his marriage, he’d been divorced young as well. He’d learned a lesson along the way: He was no good at marriage.

      “Were you two talking?” he asked, trying to sound as kind as he could under the circumstances.

      “Yes,” she snapped back, then shrugged helplessly as she amended, “But just barely.” She paused again, searching for a way to phrase what she wanted to say. “We’ve just had a baby—”

      “Congratulations,” Juarez said with enthusiasm. “Me, too. I mean, my wife, too—except not yet. I mean—”

      “He means his wife’s due anytime now,” Nick interjected. He’d heard about nothing else this entire last week. “Go on,” he coaxed Suzy, “you were saying …?” He trailed off, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.

      “Despite that, Peter’s been rather distant lately,” she admitted.

      The next moment, she regretted the words. Why was she baring her soul to these men? What did any of this have to do with whoever had killed Peter?

      “Some men feel threatened by a baby,” Nick told her, recalling what he’d once heard. “They think that they’re being replaced in their wives’ affections.”

      Suzy shook her head. She wanted to stop any further conjecture before it got too out of hand.

      “Having the baby was Peter’s idea,” she told him, then added, “he thought that the baby would bring us closer together.”

      He noticed she didn’t say “again,” which meant that they probably hadn’t been all that close to begin with. Nick decided to press a little further. “How bad did it get?”

      Enough was enough. Suzy’s own protective instincts, the same one that had her protecting her sister from their parents’ inebriated wrath, kicked in.

      She glared at this intruding detective. “What does any of this have to do with my husband’s murder?” she demanded.

      “Just trying to establish the sheriff’s frame of mind the last few days before he was killed,” he replied matter-of-factly.

      She

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