Нора Робертс - Chasing Fire

“My first was Becca Rhodes. She was a year older and experienced. It went quite smoothly.”

“Are you still friends with Becca Rhodes?”

“I haven’t seen her since high school.”

“See? Humor wins out. Dolly never worked in Florence,” Rowan added. “Our little what-if session hit a mark. A man, a motel—possibly a murderer.” She tipped her head back, found the sky. “I feel less useless and victimized. That counts for a lot. I’m going to talk to Lynn first chance I get, just to see if Dolly dropped any crumbs.”

Time to put it away for the night, Gull decided, and draped an arm over her shoulder. “Pick one out for me. A constellation. Not the Dippers. Even I can find them. Usually.”

“Okay. Then you’ll spot Ursa Minor there.” She took his hand, used it to outline the connection of stars. “Now, the stars in this one aren’t very bright, but if you follow that west, connect the dots, going south and over—it winds around the Little Dipper, see? There. You’ve got Draco. The dragon. It seems apt for a couple of smoke jumpers.”

“Yeah, I get it. Pretty cool. Now that we’ve got our constellation, we just need to decide on our song.”

He lightened her load, she thought. No doubt about it. “You’re so full of it, Gulliver.”

“Only because I have so much depth.”

“Hell.” She turned into him, indulged them both with a deep, dreamy kiss. “Let’s go to bed.”

“You read my mind.”

“Did you find who killed my girl?” Leo demanded the minute he opened the door.

“Let’s go inside and sit down,” Quinniock suggested.

He and DiCicco had discussed their approach on the drive, and, as agreed, Quinniock took the lead. “Mrs. Brakeman, we’d like to talk with both of you.”

Irene Brakeman linked her hands together at her heart. “It’s about Dolly. You know who hurt Dolly.”

“We’re pursuing several avenues of investigation.” DiCicco kept her voice clipped. It wasn’t quite good cop/bad cop, but more cold cop/warm cop. “There are some matters we need to clear up with you. To start with, Mr. Brakeman—”

Quinniock touched a hand to her arm. “Why don’t we all sit down? I know it’s late, but we’d appreciate if you gave us some time.”

“We answered questions. We let you go through Dolly’s room, through her things.” Leo continued to bar the door with his knuckles white on the knob. “We were going up to bed. If you don’t have anything new to tell us, just leave us in peace.”

“There is no peace until we know who did this to Dolly.” Irene’s voice pitched, broke. “Go up to bed if you want to,” Irene told her husband with a tinge of disgust. “I’ll talk to the police. Go on upstairs and shake your fists at God, see if that helps. Please, come in.”

She moved forward, a small woman who pushed her burly husband aside so that he stepped back, his head hung down like a scolded child’s.

“I’m just tired, Reenie. I’m so damn tired. And you’re wearing yourself to the bone, tending the baby and worrying.”

“We’re not asked to lift more than we can carry. So we’ll lift this. Do you want some coffee, or tea, or anything?”

“Don’t you worry about that, Mrs. Brakeman.” Quinniock took a seat in the living room on a chair covered with blue and red flowers. “I know this is hard.”

“We can’t even bury her yet. They said you need to keep her awhile more, so we can’t give our daughter a Christian burial.”

“We’ll release her to you as soon as we can. Mrs. Brakeman, the last time we spoke, you said Dolly got a job in Florence, as a cook.”

“That’s right.” She twisted her fingers together in her lap, a working woman’s hands wearing a plain gold band. “She felt like she didn’t want to take a job in Missoula after what went on at the base. I think she was embarrassed. She was embarrassed, Leo,” Irene snapped as he started to object. “Or she should have been.”

“They never treated her decent there.”

“You know that’s not true.” She spoke more quietly now, briefly touched a hand to his. “You can’t take her word as gospel now that she’s gone when you know Dolly didn’t tell the real truth half the time or more. They gave her a chance there,” she said to Quinniock when Leo lapsed into brooding silence. “And Reverend Latterly and I vouched for her. She shamed herself, and us. She got work down there in Florence,” Irene continued after she’d firmed quivering lips. “She was a good cook, our girl. It was something she liked, even when she was just a little thing. She could be a good worker when she put her mind to it. The hours were hard, especially with the baby, but the pay was good, and she said she could go places.”

“You didn’t remember the name of the restaurant when we spoke before,” DiCicco prompted.

“I guess she never mentioned it.” Irene pressed her lips together again. “I was angry with her about what she did to Rowan Tripp, and embarrassed my own self. It’s hard knowing Dolly and I were at odds when she died. It’s hard knowing that.”

“I have to tell you, both of you, that Agent DiCicco and I have contacted or gone to every restaurant, diner, coffee shop between here and Florence, and Dolly didn’t work in any of them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She wasn’t working in a restaurant,” DiCicco said briskly. “She didn’t get a job, didn’t leave here the night she died to go to work.”

“Hell she didn’t,” Leo protested.

“On the night she died, and on the afternoon prior, the evening prior to that, Dolly spent several hours in a room at the Big Sky Motel, off Highway Twelve.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Leo, hush.” Irene gripped her hands together tighter.

“Several witnesses identified her photograph,” Quinniock continued. “I’m sorry. She didn’t spend those hours alone. She met a man there, the same man each time. We have a witness who’ll be working with our police artist to reconstruct his face.”

With tears trickling down her face, Irene nodded. “I was afraid of it. I knew in my heart she was lying, but I was so upset with her. I didn’t care. Just go on then, I thought. Go on and do what you want, and I’ll have this baby to tend. Then, after... after it happened, I took that out of my mind. I told myself I’d been harsh and judgmental, a cold mother.

“I knew she was lying,” she said, turning to her husband. “I knew all the signs. But I couldn’t let myself believe it when she was dead. I just couldn’t have that inside me.”

“Do you have any idea who she was involved with?”

“I swear to you I don’t. But I think maybe it’d been going on awhile now. I know the signs. The way she’d whisper on the phone, or how she’d say she just needed to go out for a drive and clear her head, or had to run some errands so could I watch Shiloh? And she’d come home again with that look in her eye.”

She let out a shuddering breath. “She never meant to change.” Dissolving, Irene turned to press her face to Leo’s shoulder. “Maybe she just couldn’t.”

“Why do we have to know this?” Leo demanded. “Why do you have to tell us this? You don’t leave us anything.”

“I’m sorry, but Dolly was with this man the night she died. We need to identify him and question him.”

“He killed her. This man she gave herself to, this man she lied to us about.”

“We need to question him,” Quinniock repeated. “If you have any idea who she was meeting, we need to know.”

“She lied to us. We don’t know anything. We don’t have anything. Just leave us alone.”

“There’s something else, Mr. Brakeman, we need to discuss.” DiCicco took the ball. “At approximately nine thirty tonight, Rowan Tripp and Gulliver Curry were fired on while walking on the base.”