LITMIR.BIZ

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Harlan strode to the large white house glimmering ghostly in the rain and mist. In spite of everything that had happened, Molly Harris had chosen to stay in the family home. Interesting.

      She was at the kitchen sink staring out at him as he approached. He heard the water running from the faucet, and thought of Lady Macbeth futilely washing her hands over and over again after the murder of the king.

      Tapping on the screen door, he opened it without waiting for her invitation. “Ms. Harris?”

      “Yes?” She cleared her throat.

      A lovely throat it was, too, long and curving into her washed-out, winter-white sweatshirt with its gaping neckline. White was her color, all right. She looked like a pale nun, a streak of winter rain…He curbed his thoughts.

      “I have three additional questions I need to ask you.” Stepping into the white-and-black kitchen, Harlan watched her nervous step back, forward. He liked the fact that she was nervous. She should be. Keeping her nervous suited him. “If you don’t mind?”

      “Would it matter if I did? Should I call my lawyer?” That edgy animosity he’d caught earlier surfaced through her cool, husky voice. She was dragging herself together with an incredible effort, questions she should have asked him earlier now obviously coming to mind. Or maybe she’d decided how to play her role.

      Either way, her struggle for control interested him. Under other circumstances, Molly Harris would be a woman with a certain sass and vinegar to her.

      Sticking her hands under the water, never letting her gaze drift from his, she added, “I can, you know. I have a lawyer, and he can be here in thirty minutes. And I would still be considered a cooperative witness.”

      He’d been right. Ms. Harris had a dash of cayenne under all that fragile sweetness. Well, it was going to be fascinating to find out what else she had hidden. He was beginning to like the idea of discovering Molly Harris’s secrets.

      Coming closer, walking right up to the sink, he decided he liked, too, the way the washed-thin, rain-soaked sweatshirt clung to her small curves, skimming down her shoulders to mold her delicate breasts and outline their rain-chilled peaks. Where the sweatshirt rode up to her waist, caught there by the waistband, he could see the soaked and sandy rear end of her jeans, the ridged outline of her panties showing against the butter-soft denim.

      He reached past her.

      She shuddered but didn’t step away.

      Ms. Harris had courage, too.

      Pushing down the faucet lever, he turned off the relentless gush of water. “Conservation, Ms. Harris,” he murmured into her ear.

      She leapt back, the toes of one bare foot tripping against the heel of the other. “What were your questions, Detective? I’ll decide if I should call my lawyer. Ask your damned questions and then,” she said, false civility riming her words, “please, get out of my house. Since you don’t have a search warrant.” One hand with its chewed nails crept toward her neckline until she realized what she was doing and jammed both hands into her pockets.

      “Certainly,” he said, matching her politeness. “And no, we don’t have a search warrant. But it should arrive any minute.”

      She flinched, the wings of her shoulders drawing together as if he’d struck her.

      “My questions are simple, really—should be no trouble for you to answer.” He strolled around the room, looking, touching, knowing she was watching his every nonchalant move. He toed the dish of food on the floor. “You have a cat, hmm?”

      “Is that one of the three questions?” The triangle of her face tightened, the skin around her full lips pinched with effort. Her wet hands dripped onto the black-and-white tiles.

      Harlan moved.

      She jumped.

      Handing her a paper towel he’d torn off from the rack in back of her, he nodded. “Fair enough. All right. That’s question number one.”

      Looking for a trick, she studied him. Her eyes changed to a clear no-color, only that lovely, translucent shimmer of innocence shining in them. “No. I don’t have a cat. I fed a stray this morning before you came.”

      “Did you now?” Indifferent once he’d learned what he wanted to know—the look of her when she was telling the truth—he turned his back to her. He glanced down the hall off the kitchen, but in the glass of the door he watched her reflection as he flicked the light switch. There was a very small, almost-imperceptible fleck of blood at the edge of the tab. But he saw it. Smelled the faint fetor of blood.

      “Question number two?” She had wadded up the paper towel and clutched it between the small mounds of her breasts. Her hands were shaking again and her breasts trembled with the deep-down quaking he’d seen earlier.

      “Ah, well, that’s an easy one, number two is.” Keeping his back turned, he reached into the pocket of his slacks.

      Her shoulders hunched and her hands dropped to her sides, her suddenly relaxed fingers letting the wadded paper fall to her feet. She stooped to pick it up and he pivoted and moved in one step, trapping her while she was kneeling on the floor looking up at him.

      “Do you know whose bracelet this is, Ms. Harris?” He held the gold chain in front of her.

      She did. The dilation of her pupils gave her away. As he watched the blood drain from her face, he wondered distantly if she would lie.

      Slowly, as if she’d aged thirty years in an instant, she rose to her feet and reached out to the shiny trinket. “Yes. It was my mother’s. And then mine. Where did you find it? I wear it all the time.”

      She stopped, clamping her hands over her mouth, realization smacking her in the face.

      “Well, Ms. Harris,” he said, swinging the bracelet back and forth, “therein lies a tale.” Pulling out a kitchen chair, he motioned for her to sit. “And since you’ve asked me a question, I’ll answer it and add one more of my own. Sit down, Ms. Harris.” He pushed her unresisting body into the chair.

      Bonelessly she molded to the contours of the chair, in much the same fashion as her sweatshirt had shaped itself to her. “Go ahead.” Her hands were clasped in front of her, so tightly Harlan had the impression that if she ever let go, she would shake apart, all control lost.

      He was tempted for that instant to force her hands apart and see what happened. The craving to see Ms. Molly spinning out of control was becoming increasingly strong in him. Too strong. It would warp his judgment.

      He placed the strip of gold on the table.

      She didn’t touch the bracelet.

      “Before I tell you where we found this—” he traced it with his index finger and watched the muscles of her throat convulse once as she swallowed “—you tell me when you last wore it. Not a question, merely quid pro quo, as the man said.”

      “You know I must have lost it yesterday.” Defeat shivered in her murmured answer.

      “Possibly. Or last night?”

      He waited, but she didn’t respond.

      “Ah. Well, here’s your answer, Ms. Harris. It was hanging underneath the boards of your dock. Caught there. Right below where the first of the bloodstains appear. Interesting, isn’t it? But that’s a rhetorical question, Ms. Harris, not one of my final two.”

      Nodding, she didn’t reply. He heard the click of her teeth, saw the narrow muscle along her jawline bunch into a small knot. She kept nodding.

      “Question number three. Why did you fire your maid, who was also your friend?”

      Still fisted, her small hands banged onto the table. The thin circlet bounced. “I don’t have to answer that.” The nails were chewed right into the cuticle.

      Stress. Fear.

      Guilt.

      He

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