LITMIR.BIZ

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question hung in the air for a long, pregnant moment before she continued. “This is a two-year-old unsolved murder case and as far as I can tell, very little was done at the time of her murder in the way of an investigation.” She placed the file down on the table in front of her.

      “That’s because at the time of the murder we knew who had committed it,” Ray said. “Bo McBride killed Shelly. He was her boyfriend at the time.”

      Olivia frowned. “Then why isn’t the case closed?”

      “We couldn’t find the evidence necessary to make the arrest,” Wes said.

      “Is there another file someplace? What I have here surely doesn’t contain all of the interviews and statements of people who might have been involved in the case.” Olivia’s dark eyes radiated confusion as she looked at each of the men.

      “A good solid investigation was never done,” Daniel said as the guilt knot in his gut twisted tighter.

      “I don’t understand,” Olivia replied.

      “That’s because you weren’t working for Trey Walker,” Josh added. Daniel knew Josh had suffered just as much guilt as Daniel had with the way the case had been shunted aside. “Trey had made up his mind that Bo was guilty and he made it clear that any of us who wanted to investigate further did so at the risk of our jobs.”

      Olivia’s lush lips pressed together in a sign of obvious disapproval. “You have an unsolved murder that’s now become a cold case and a shoddy investigation at best at the time the murder occurred. We’re going to reopen this case and get it solved. Daniel, I’d like to see you in my office and the rest of you get back to your usual duties.”

      “What a waste of time,” Ray grumbled when Olivia had left the room. “Everyone knows that Bo did it. It’s not our fault that we couldn’t prove it.”

      “Not everyone is so certain that Bo was responsible,” Josh replied.

      That’s the last of the conversation Daniel heard as he left the room to head to Olivia’s office. He was glad that she was being proactive in the case of Shelly’s murder. The unsolved case had been like a stain on Daniel’s soul for far too long.

      He knocked on the door and then entered the office where she gestured him into one of the chairs in front of her desk.

      “I read what little was in the file, but I want you to tell me about Shelly Sinclair and her death,” she said.

      Daniel nodded and tried to school his thoughts. The scent of a lilac-based perfume filled the air. He hadn’t noticed it yesterday, but he remembered it from the night they had hooked up in New Orleans. He had found it dizzyingly intoxicating then and it still affected him on some primal level.

      “Daniel?”

      Her voice yanked him out of the past and to the present.

      “Sorry...yes, about Shelly. She was found floating in the lagoon at the south end of town. She’d been strangled. The area has a bench and some bushes, and from the scene it appeared some kind of a struggle had ensued. Her purse and phone was found on the bench, but her engagement ring was missing and has never been found.”

      “Now tell me about Bo McBride.”

      Daniel shifted positions in his chair, oddly disappointed that her eyes held nothing but professional curiosity about a crime. Of course, that was how it should be. A married woman shouldn’t be interested in the five years that had passed since a hot hookup had occurred.

      “At the time of the murder, Bo owned the place that is now Jimmy’s Place. Bo and Shelly had been a couple since junior high school and it was just assumed that eventually they’d get married. They often met at the bench by the lagoon late at night before Shelly started her night shift working as the clerk in The Pirate’s Inn. When Shelly wound up dead it was only natural that Bo would be one of the prime suspects.”

      “And from what I read in the file, his alibi was that he was at home sick with the flu on the night that Shelly was murdered.”

      “And the last text message on Shelly’s phone was from Bo telling her he was ill and couldn’t meet her that night,” Daniel replied.

      Olivia shuffled through the few papers that were in the file. “And no other suspects were pursued? All I see in here are interviews of Shelly’s sister, Savannah, her brother, Mac, their parents and a couple of Shelly’s friends. Is there anything more you can tell me that isn’t in this file?”

      “Several things have come to light in the last couple of months. Shelly told some of her friends that she was in a sticky situation, but we never managed to figure out what that meant. While we were investigating the attacks on Shelly’s sister, Savannah, we discovered that Eric Baptiste had become friendly with Shelly right before her death, a detail we never knew during the initial investigation.”

      Olivia held up her hand to stop him. “I’m already confused by names and incidents I know nothing about. Obviously you can’t completely update me in a brief talk right now.” She frowned thoughtfully. “What I’d like you to do is head up a four-man task force and focus efforts on starting this investigation all over again from the very beginning.”

      “I’d be glad to do that. I always felt like Bo was an easy scapegoat and the crime wasn’t investigated right from the start. Is there anyone in particular you want on the task force?” he asked.

      She shook her head, her dark hair shining richly in the light flooding in from the windows behind her desk. “You know the men better than I do and you know who you’ll work best with. I just want go-getters, men who want to work hard and close this case with a killer behind bars.”

      She narrowed her eyes. “I want this cleaned up before I leave here.”

      There was nothing of Lily in the hard-eyed woman seated across from him. “We’ll get it cleaned up,” he said, hoping his words of confidence would somehow soften her features.

      They didn’t. Instead, in an effort to get a small glimpse of the woman he’d briefly known, he changed the subject. “I couldn’t help but notice the wedding ring on your finger. I’m glad that you found somebody important in your life.”

      She stared down at the band for a long moment and then looked back at him, her eyes shuttered and unreadable. “I got married to a wonderful man, had a daughter and then last year he died. It’s just my mother, my daughter and me now.”

      “Oh, I’m so sorry.” That’s what you get for trying to take the conversation to a personal level, he thought.

      She frowned. “I’m not the first young widow and I won’t be the last. What’s important to me now is my family’s well-being and my work. And now, don’t you have a task force to pull together?” She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow and glanced toward the door.

      Daniel beat feet to the door and it was only when he was back at his desk that he processed what he’d just learned about her. She wasn’t married. She was a widow.

      Although he was sorry that she’d lost her husband, he wasn’t sorry that she was single. Right now the night they had spent together was like a white elephant in the room whenever they were alone together.

      Sooner or later he was going to bring it up. He was going to have to talk about it. Sooner or later, as crazy as he might be, he hoped that just maybe there might be a repeat of that night in their future.

      * * *

      OVER THE NEXT two days, the task force was pulled together and assigned to work from a small conference room in the back of the building.

      Daniel had chosen Josh Griffin, Wes Stiller and Derrick Bream as his team. It was obvious the men had a good relationship and equally obvious, as Olivia had observed the deputies over the last two days, that Daniel was a natural-born leader. All of the men respected and looked up to him.

      Olivia had spent most of the two days interviewing the deputies who worked for her

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