Amanda Stevens - The Innocent

But another round of questions with a fresh set of eyes and ears never hurt, and Sergeant Cross was smart enough to realize that. She got out of the car and walked over to the cruiser, saying something to the driver before she came back over to Sam.

Heat shimmered off the pavement beneath their feet, and Sam could feel perspiration rivering down his back. His gaze moved irrevocably to the front of Sergeant Cross’s cotton T-shirt, where the damp fabric clung to her curves in a way he couldn’t help admiring. He was only human, although he had colleagues, past and present, who might take issue with that. Certainly Norah would.

Sergeant Cross lifted her hand to shade her eyes, and the subtle movement accentuated her body’s contours. The pale yellow fabric of her shirt hugged her tightly, and something inside Sam tightened. He’d gone too long without a woman’s company, and now suddenly, at the worst possible time, lust was beating him over the head with a vengeance.

He tore his attention from the front of Sergeant Cross’s T-shirt and scanned their surroundings.

“You want to do this together, or should we split up?” she asked.

Split up, was Sam’s first instinct. They could cover more ground that way. But he heard himself answering almost gruffly, “Maybe we’d better stick together since you know the area better than I do.”

“It’s your party.” She slipped on a pair of dark glasses and started toward the street.

Sam’s gaze dropped to her backside in spite of himself. Unfortunately for him, Sergeant Cross looked as good going as she did coming.

Fayetta Gibbons had lived all of her life on First Street, in the same house in which she had been born sixty-nine years ago and raised by her beloved parents, Milford and Garnett Gibbons, both dead now almost half a century. They lay buried in the family plot at Holyoke Cemetery four blocks away on Peachtree Street, and a pink marble headstone ornately inscribed with Fayetta’s name and birth date marked a space nearby.

Fayetta’s daily habits always included a short visit to her parents’ graves. No matter the weather, the routine never varied. Depending on the season, she would take fresh flowers from her garden, sometimes for her parents’ graves and sometimes to place in the marble vase attached to her own tombstone in the event that after she was gone, no one else would think to.

Except for her afternoon walks and church on Sundays, Fayetta rarely left her home. She’d never married, never had a suitor that anyone in town knew about, and had never, apparently, been sick a day in her life. As she approached her seventieth birthday, she could become a bit confused at times, but her blue gaze, keen as ball lightning on a hot summer night, still missed precious little of the goings-on around her.

If anyone would have taken note of anything suspicious in the neighborhood on the day of little Sara Beth’s abduction, it would be Fayetta Gibbons, Abby assured Sam.

They waited now on her front porch as she carried out a tray of lemonade and crystal glasses. Sam rose from the wicker rocker he’d been assigned and took the tray from her. Fayetta smiled and batted her lashes at him. “Why, thank you…Mr. Burke, wasn’t it? Such a gentleman,” she said to Abby. “A trait one finds all too rarely these days.” Her blue gaze skimmed Agent Burke’s dark suit approvingly. It wouldn’t matter to Fayetta that he had to be melting in this heat. He looked dignified, and Fayetta came from an era where appearances meant everything. Abby suspected the woman would be wearing hoop skirts if she could find some.

As it was, her starched floral shirtwaist looked fresh and crisp, as if she’d donned it only moments before her callers had arrived. In comparison, Abby felt like something her cats had dragged in. The jeans and T-shirt she’d put on that morning in anticipation of tramping through woods and vacant lots had definitely seen better days. She could feel Fayetta’s ladylike disdain rake over her as smoothly as a butter knife on cream frosting.

Fayetta handed her a glass of lemonade, and Abby gratefully accepted it, resisting the urge to touch the icy glass to the back of her neck.

“So tell me, Abigail. How is your mother? I haven’t seen her in church in ages. Is she still feeling under the weather, poor dear?”

“Mama died three years ago, Miss Gibbons. Don’t you remember? You played the organ at her funeral.”

The blue eyes clouded momentarily, then cleared. “Yes, of course. ‘Amazing Grace,’ wasn’t it? That was always Papa’s favorite. I wore my navy dress, and Trixie Baker did my hair that morning, but I didn’t like the shade. It was too brassy, but Trixie insisted it made me look twenty years younger.” Fayetta patted her impossibly blond hair, pulled back and done up in an elaborate bun—the same style she’d worn since the beginning of time. “An outrageous lie, of course, but one is never too old to enjoy a compliment.” She glanced at Agent Burke hopefully.

She’d seated him in the wicker rocker next to hers. Abby had been relegated to the porch steps, perhaps because of her age, but more likely because Fayetta, even though a spinster, was well practiced in the age-old Southern-Belle tradition of jockeying for the most desirable position next to an attractive gentleman.

But Fayetta needn’t have troubled herself. Her subtle coquetry was lost on Agent Burke because he was no Southerner and, Abby suspected, at times no gentleman. He didn’t quite grasp the expectations of an afternoon call, social or otherwise. He leaned forward, his expression almost stern as he dispensed with the niceties. “Miss Gibbons, we’d like to ask you some questions about the little girl who disappeared from Ferguson’s Drugstore yesterday afternoon.”

Stung by his abruptness, Fayetta sat back in her rocker, fanning herself vigorously with a fan from Grossman’s Funeral Home. “What’s this all about, Abigail? The police have already been here. I told them I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t even home when that poor child was taken. Don’t you think if I’d witnessed anything suspicious, I would have hollered all the way to Kingdom Come and back?”

“This is just routine,” Abby soothed. “We’re talking to everyone who lives on this street. Sometimes people remember things after the initial interview. We came to your house first, that’s all.”

Fayetta gave her a narrowed look. “Have you talked to Gertie Ellers? She’s always got her nose stuck where it doesn’t belong.”

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Ellers is in Biloxi with her daughter and grandchildren. She won’t be home until next week.

Fayetta gave a very unladylike snort. “I declare, I don’t know how anyone could put up with that woman for a whole week. Her daughter must have the patience of a saint is all I can think—”

“Miss Gibbons, these questions are very important,” Agent Burke said impatiently.

The rocking stopped. The fanning ceased. Fayetta shot Abby a look as if to say, How dare you bring this ill-mannered lout to my home?

“Two little girls have gone missing,” Abby explained. “We’re doing everything we can to find them, but we haven’t had much luck so far. I’m sure you’ll forgive us if we sound a little…abrupt.”

A pause, then after a moment, the rocking and fanning resumed. “It is a terrible tragedy,” Fayetta conceded. “But I don’t see how I can help.”

“We’re just trying to establish a routine for this street at the time of day that little Sara Beth went missing. If we get people to think about their whereabouts and activities, they may remember something that can help us.”

“But I already told Sheriff Mooney I wasn’t home. I left for the cemetery at three. Just like I did today. Just like I do every day.”