LITMIR.BIZ

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knees, combing the bedroom carpet for fibers.

      “We need to contact Matthew Swann before he hears the news on the radio,” Trace said.

      “Cora Mae called Swann’s ranch right after the 911 call came in,” J.D. revealed. “The housekeeper says he’s in Santa Fe. Some livestock convention or something.”

      “Does she have the name of the hotel?”

      “She did. She also called it. But the desk clerk said Swann got into some kind of argument with the night manager over room service hours so he checked out.... Bingo!”

      The deputy happily plucked a blue thread from the carpet, dropped it into a plastic bag and carefully labeled it. Trace observed the action with mild amusement thinking how you never forgot your first homicide. Trace hoped like hell this would be J.D.’s last one for a very long time.

      “The clerk didn’t know what hotel he moved to. But Cora Mae’s on the case,” J.D. assured him as he resumed his methodical carpet combing. “She’ll track him down.”

      Of that, Trace had no doubt. The woman had a tongue like a razor blade, cursed like a lumberjack at spring thaw and guarded her precious records as if they were the Holy Grail.

      But she was remarkably efficient. She also made the best cup of coffee west of the Pecos and could bluff at poker with the best of them.

      Thinking he might be dealing with a sexual assault as well as a murder, Trace began going through the lingerie strewn over the floor, checking the frothy bits of silk and satin and lace a piece at a time to see if by chance any of the skimpy pairs of panties had been stripped off the victim.

      “Jesus!” He picked up a garment so sheer he could see his hand through the diaphanous silk.

      J.D. glanced up and couldn’t quite repress his grin. “It’s a teddy. I bought Jilly a red one for Valentine’s day. At Victoria’s Secret. She liked it a lot.” His grin widened. “I liked it even better.”

      “I’ll bet.” Trace wondered why, if the senator’s wife was such a fan of sexy lingerie, she went to bed nude. Perhaps, he considered, thinking of what Fletcher had said about not wanting to wake his wife up, she didn’t bother dressing seductively when she knew she was going to be sleeping alone.

      Ellen had always come to bed wearing his ratty old oversize police academy T-shirts. It crossed Trace’s mind that if she’d favored underwear like this, they might still be married.

      Then again, probably not. Sex had never been their problem. At least, not in the beginning. By the time they finally called it quits, neither of them had felt like rolling around in the sheets.

      Trace held up an ivory teddy. The early morning light streaming through the bedroom window rendered it nearly transparent.

      “You actually walked right into a store, in a public mall, where anyone could see you and bought something like this?”

      Shit, he’d been married nine months before he worked up the nerve to buy tampons at the 7-Eleven. For the second time today, Trace found himself feeling like an over-the-hill dinosaur.

      “Actually,” J.D. admitted, “I ordered it from a catalog.”

      Deciding that he’d love to get a look at J.D.’s catalog, Trace moved the teddies aside and found the letters, tied with a blue satin ribbon.

      Love letters, he figured. So the lady had been a romantic. He could have guessed that from the fancy underwear and the romance novel on the nightstand. What Trace did find interesting was that the bold black script on the outside of the envelopes didn’t begin to resemble the precise cursive found on the pages of Alan Fletcher’s appointment book.

      Holding one of the letters gingerly by the edges, Trace turned it over. It was signed simply Love always, C.

      The postmark on one of the envelopes was stamped right here in Whiskey River a little over a week ago, which added an interesting twist to the murder. Although Trace never spent much time dwelling on why a crime was committed—humans were willing to kill for often ridiculously mundane reasons—sex often proved as strong a motive as greed.

      Sometimes stronger.

      “Where the hell is the M.E.?” he demanded impatiently. He’d placed the call to the county medical examiner over an hour ago.

      “Someone looking for me?” a tobacco-roughened voice asked from the doorway.

      “It’s about time you got here.”

      “Don’t know what the hurry is,” Dr. Stanley Potter drawled around a fat cigar. “Looks like this little lady isn’t going anywhere.” He chuckled at his own bad joke.

      It took an effort, but Trace reminded himself that back in Cook County, before he’d gone into semiretirement, Potter had performed more than fifteen hundred autopsies and observed thousands more. He’d also appeared as an expert witness in innumerable cases around the country, proving himself a valuable member of the prosecution team.

      “Just call the death so we can get her out of here.”

      The physician dutifully recorded the victim’s lack of pulse. “She’s dead, all right.” Next he took her temperature. “Ninety-four degrees.”

      “Which would set the murder between two and three a.m.,” Trace calculated. The exact figures varied with environmental differences, but the rule of thumb was about one and a half degrees Fahrenheit temperature loss per hour.

      “Close enough for government work,” the M.E. agreed. He turned over her hand. Her nails were unpainted. “No skin or signs of a struggle.”

      “That could mean she was surprised,” J.D., who’d risen to his feet to watch the examination, offered.

      “It could also mean she knew her killer,” Trace said.

      After the doctor finished his initial examination, Trace stood by as the body was wrapped in a white sheet, slid into a thick bag, placed on a stretcher, and carried downstairs, where she was strapped onto a gurney in the M.E.’s wagon.

      When the gunmetal gray van pulled away from the scene, Trace allowed himself a momentary feeling of frustration at a life cut too brutally and tragically short.

      Then, shaking off the brief regret, he turned, intending to go back into the house, when he heard a voice calling his name.

      “Sheriff Callahan!”

      Trace glared at the man hurrying toward him, past the yellow tape barricade. Rudy Chavez was the sole reporter for the Rim Rock Weekly Record. The young reporter reminded Trace of Jimmy Olson. With just enough Bob Woodward thrown in to make him one helluva pest. Reporters were not Trace Callahan’s favorite people. He considered them akin to vultures, only lower down on the evolutionary scale.

      “I caught the call on my police scanner.” Rudy whipped out a long narrow notebook and a transparent plastic pen. “Is it true? Was the senator shot?”

      Knowing that there was no way he could avoid the publicity on this case, Trace said, “I’ll be holding a press conference in my office at noon. You’ll get a statement then.”

      “But that’s six hours away.”

      “You can tell time, too,” Trace said with mock admiration. “Congratulations.” He caught sight of his deputy out of the corner of his eye. “J.D., escort Mr. Chavez to his car.”

      The reporter visibly bristled. “You can’t run me off the property!”

      “Watch me,” Trace advised easily. But there was steel underlying his tone.

      “Come on, Rudy,” coaxed J.D., who’d worked with his boss long enough to recognize when not to argue. “You know you can’t interfere with a crime scene.”

      “So there was a murder?”

      “I didn’t say that.” A red flush rose from the starched khaki

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