The Maverick: The Maverick / Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress

“Anybody can get shot,” he said.

“Yes, but you’ve been shot twice,” she reminded him. “The word locally is that you’d have a better chance of being named king of some small country than you’d have getting a wife. Nobody around here is rushing to line up and become a widow.”

“I’ve calmed down,” he muttered defensively. “And who’s been saying that, anyway?”

“I heard that Minette Raynor was,” she replied without quite meeting his eyes.

His jaw tautened. “I have no desire to marry Miss Raynor, now or ever,” he returned coldly. “She helped kill my brother.”

“She didn’t, and you have proof, but suit yourself,” she said when he looked angry enough to say something unforgivable. “Now, do you have any idea how we can talk to that woman before somebody shuts her up? It looks like whoever killed that poor man on the river wouldn’t hesitate to give him company. I’d bet my reputation that he knew something that could bring down someone powerful, and he was stopped dead first. If the woman has any info at all, she’s on the endangered list.”

“Good point,” Hayes had to admit. “Do you have a plan?”

She shook her head. “I wish.”

“About that number, you might run it by the 911 operators,” he said. “They deal with a lot of telephone traffic. They might recognize it.”

“Now that’s constructive thinking,” she said with a grin. “But this isn’t my jurisdiction, you know.”

“The crime was committed in the county. That’s my jurisdiction. I’m giving you the authority to investigate.”

“Won’t your own investigator feel slighted?”

“He would if he was here,” he sighed. “He took his remaining days off and went to Wyoming for Christmas. He said he’d lose them if he didn’t use them by the end of the year. I couldn’t disagree and we didn’t have much going on when I let him go.” He shook his head. “He’ll punch me when he gets back and discovers that we had a real DB right here and he didn’t get to investigate it.”

“The way things look,” she said slowly, “he may still get to help. I don’t think we’re going to solve this one in a couple of days.”

“Hey, I saw a murder like this one on one of those CSI shows,” he said with pretended excitement. “They sent trace evidence out, got results in two hours and had the guy arrested and convicted and sent to jail just before the last commercial!”

She gave him a smile and a gesture that was universal before she picked up her purse, and the slip of paper, and left his office.

She was eating lunch at Barbara’s Café in town when the object of her most recent daydreams walked in, tall and handsome in real cowboy duds, complete with a shepherd’s coat, polished black boots and a real black Stetson cowboy hat with a brim that looked just like the one worn by Richard Boone in the television series Have Gun Will Travel that she used to watch videos of. It was cocked over his eyes and he looked as much like a desperado as he did a working cowboy.

He spotted Alice as he was paying for his meal at the counter and grinned at her. She turned over a cup of coffee and it spilled all over the table, which made his grin much bigger.

Barbara came running with a towel. “Don’t worry, it happens all the time,” she reassured Alice. She glanced at Harley, put some figures together and chuckled. “Ah, romance is in the air.”

“It is not,” Alice said firmly. “I offered to take him to a movie, but I’m broke, and he won’t go dutch treat,” she added in a soft wail.

“Aww,” Barbara sympathized.

“I don’t get paid until next Friday,” Alice said, dabbing at wet spots on her once-immaculate oyster-white wool slacks. “I’ll be miles away by then.”

“I get paid this Friday,” Harley said, straddling a chair opposite Alice with a huge steak and fries on a platter. “Are you having a salad for lunch?” he asked, aghast at the small bowl at her elbow. “You’ll never be able to do any real investigating on a diet like that. You need protein.” He indicated the juicy, rare steak on his own plate.

Alice groaned. He didn’t understand. She’d spent so many hours working in her lab that she couldn’t really eat a steak anymore. It was heresy here in Texas, so she tended to keep her opinions to herself. If she said anything like that, there would be a riot in Barbara’s Café.

So she just smiled. “Fancy seeing you here,” she teased.

He grinned. “I’ll bet it wasn’t a surprise,” he said as he began to carve his steak.

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked with pretended innocence.

“I was just talking to Hayes Carson out on the street and he happened to mention that you asked him where I ate lunch,” he replied.

She huffed. “Well, that’s the last personal question I’ll ever ask him, and you can take that to the bank!”

“Should I mention that I asked him where you ate lunch?” he added with a twinkle in his pale eyes.

Alice’s irritated expression vanished. She sighed. “Did you, really?” she asked.

“I did, really. But don’t take that as a marriage proposal,” he said. “I almost never propose to crime scene investigators over lunch.”

“Crime scene investigators?” a cowboy from one of the nearby ranches exclaimed, leaning toward them. “Listen, I watch those shows all the time. Did you know that they can tell time of death by…!”

“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!” Alice exclaimed as the cowboy gaped at her. She’d “accidentally” poured a glass of iced tea all over him. “It’s a reflex,” she tried to explain as Barbara came running, again. “You see, every time somebody talks about the work I do, I just get all excited and start throwing things!” She picked up her salad bowl. “It’s a helpless reflex, I just can’t stop…”

“No problem!” the cowboy said at once, scrambling to his feet. “I had to get back to work anyway! Don’t think a thing about it!”

He rushed out the door, trailing tea and ice chips, leaving behind half a cup of coffee and a couple of bites of pie and an empty plate.

Harley was trying not to laugh, but he lost it completely. Barbara was chuckling as she motioned to one of her girls to get a broom and pail.

“I’m sorry,” Alice told her. “Really.”

Barbara gave her an amused glance. “You don’t like to talk shop at the table, do you?”

“No. I don’t,” she confessed.

“Don’t worry,” Barbara said as the broom and pail and a couple of paper towels were handed to her. “I’ll make sure word gets around. Before lunch tomorrow,” she added, still laughing.

Chapter Four

After that, nobody tried to engage Alice in conversation about her job. The meal was pleasant and friendly. Alice liked Harley. He had a good personality, and he actually improved on closer acquaintance, as so many people didn’t. He was modest and unassuming, and he didn’t try to monopolize the conversation.

“How’s your investigation coming?” he asked when they were on second cups of black coffee.

She shrugged. “Slowly,” she replied. “We’ve got a partial number, possibly a telephone number, a stolen car whose owner didn’t know it was stolen and a partial sneaker track that we’re hoping someone can identify.”

“I saw a program on the FBI lab that showed how they do that,” Harley replied. He stopped immediately as soon as he realized what he’d said. He sat with his fork poised in midair, eyeing Alice’s refilled coffee mug.

She laughed. “Not to worry. I’ll control my reflexes. Actually the lab does a very good job running down sneaker treads,” she added. “The problem is that most treads are pretty common. You get the name of a company that produces them and then start wearing out shoe leather going to stores and asking for information about people who bought them.”

“What about people who paid cash and there’s no record of their buying them?”

“I never said investigation techniques were perfect,” she returned, smiling. “We use what we can get.”

He frowned. “Those numbers, it shouldn’t be that hard to isolate a telephone number, should it? You could narrow it down with a computer program.”