Field of Danger

He focused on Aunt Suke. Her white hair spread out over her shoulders like a wide fan, and her blue eyes flared with the fire of a mother bear protecting her cub. “You shouldn’t be here, Daniel. You can’t make me believe Ray wants you working on this.”

A spear of annoyance shot through Daniel, but she was right. Daniel had spent more than twenty years trying to figure out how Aunt Suke knew everything about everybody in town. Then, about ten years ago, he’d given up and accepted it as a fact of life in Caralinda.

Ray would have a fit if he knew Daniel had stopped at Aunt Suke’s. Ray’s strict instructions to stay away from the case and the scene had sound reasoning behind them. Not only would Daniel have no objectivity about the murder, but his involvement would be a perfect target for a defense attorney. Ray had told him to go home and start making calls to his family.

Except that he couldn’t. He had to do something, and he knew that he could interrogate April with an experience almost everyone on the force except Ray lacked. Only, he hadn’t exactly gotten off to a professional start. He should be asking questions. Instead, he wanted to hold her close and make the pain go away.

Daniel closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to shove down the grief roiling inside. Letting the breath out slowly, he slid his hat off his head and ran one hand through his black hair.

“Sorry, Aunt Suke.” He looked at the woman standing behind her. “My apologies, April. It’s just that…well, Dad, he…” He stopped, trying to gather thoughts scattered to the winds by grief. “I knew you were here and that you saw…”

As his voice trailed off, Aunt Suke softened and reached for his arm. Polly, sensing the change in mood, relaxed and slowly wagged her tail. “Well, you’re here now. Get out of the door and stop letting all my cold air out. Sit down in the front parlor and get yourself together.” With small, affectionate prods, she ushered them all into the only room in a fifty-mile radius that could legitimately be called a “front parlor” and opened thick damask drapes to let in the bright sun.

Obviously a room for entertaining ladies, the elegant, spotless parlor had tall windows, a tasteful selection of Queen Anne furnishings and a soft, Oriental rug over a polished hardwood floor. The graceful, feminine room made Daniel a little nervous, and he immediately checked his shoes to see if he’d tracked anything in.

Aunt Suke caught the move, smiled and patted his arm. “Don’t worry about it, honey. Today is not a day to worry about a little dirt. Sit.”

He did, on a sofa that looked too fragile to hold his weight. But it felt solid beneath him, and he relaxed a little, watching as April perched uneasily on a small chair on the other side of a low coffee table, her tall, slender frame making the slightest of depressions on the cushion. She was avoiding eye contact. Was she embarrassed at the way she’d cried on his shoulder? He hoped not. He was glad that she’d felt she could turn to him for comfort. The only part that bothered him was how she’d pulled away when the tears finally stopped. He wouldn’t have minded holding her a little longer.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to fall apart like that. I’m sure this must be hard enough for you without me making it worse. I’m just…I’m sorry about your dad.” Her tight voice held a slight tremor. “He was a good man. A good friend. I wish I could help you find the man responsible. But I didn’t really see…just the gun…and then I ran and hid in the corn.”

As April’s words faded, Aunt Suke sat next to Daniel and spoke softly to April. “You’ve been shook to the core, and who can blame you? There’s no call to be apologizing for that.”

Daniel looked down at the rug, sorrow and frustration tearing a hole in his entire being over his own loss, and what all of this was doing to April. He knew this was exactly why Ray had told him to go home; he had to get control of his feelings or he wouldn’t be of any use to anyone.

He looked up again, this time meeting the uncertain look in April’s bright green eyes dead-on. “I can help you with that.”

“What?”

“I can help,” he repeated to April. “I know how rough it is to see someone get shot. I know it disrupts everything you thought right and good. That anyone could turn a gun on another person just doesn’t register with most of us, and that’s the way it should be. And I know you’re terrified.”

“Not exactly.”

He stopped, waiting for her to go on, watching as she took a deep breath and sat a bit straighter in the chair.

“I mean, I was with that man shoving his way through the corn, firing shots in the air, threatening me in the cellar—”

Daniel’s eyes widened. “Did he call you by name or were the threats just wild?”

April looked very small and still in her chair. “He called my name. Said he would kill me.” She swallowed hard. “Kill us. Said the cops couldn’t protect us.”

“He’s wrong.” Daniel leaned forward on his seat. “We can help you. I can help you. I know it’s hard right now, with the shock and horror blurring your memories, but if we work together, I think I can help you identify the killer.”

Silence covered the room a moment, then Aunt Suke spoke softly. “You mean this is someone we all know.”

Slowly Daniel nodded. “This wasn’t a robbery or a carjacking. The killer didn’t take anything but my father’s life. This was someone with a personal grudge, not to mention someone who knew Levon well enough to know where to find him. There’s not a doubt in my mind—the killer’s a local.”

April took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve not been here long enough to make many friends. Aside from my sister, I barely know anyone but Levon, and the people he’d introduced me to.”

All her muscles seemed to tighten. “But Levon didn’t have enemies, did he? He was a great man. Everyone loved him. How could anyone want or have a reason to do this?”

Good question. One Daniel had already been turning over in his mind a hundred times. Levon Rivers was not only a good man, he was a beloved man. Daniel had never heard an ill word against his father the entire time he was growing up, and when he’d thrown a sixtieth birthday barbecue for Levon four years ago, the entirety of Caralinda showed up.

Whoever the shooter was, he’d managed to keep his grudge against Levon well-hidden. Would he be as successful at hiding his guilt now that the crime was done? Daniel was afraid so, which made April’s blocked memories even more important.

He had to try a different tactic.

Daniel put his hat on the sofa beside him and leaned farther forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he focused on her eyes. “I know that you took him lemonade every morning he worked in the fields. He told me. He loved that about you, said it made him feel remembered, especially when he was doing something on his own, no hired folks about.”

Her eyes glistened a bit at this, and she nodded.

“So you were on the way this morning, walking through the field.”

She nodded again. “Through the corn.”

“He planted it pretty dense this year.”

Again, she agreed. “A different hybrid he was trying. Harder walking than last year, but he said it would make the harvest easier, with the way the combines worked. But it allowed a lot of weeds to grow up in some places.” She smiled slightly, as if remembering something. “Levon encouraged me to walk around the fields, to use the field road to make it easier, but it was still quicker to go through. I told him that the harder hiking was good for me, that I needed the exercise. He laughed.”

I’m sure he did, thought Daniel. April stood almost as tall as his own six-foot height, and her lean, muscular frame reminded him of an Olympic athlete. She had been softer, less muscular when she’d arrived in Caralinda a year ago, a beautiful, vibrant woman he’d wanted very much to spend more time with.

He’d even asked her out, but she’d told him that her divorce still stung and she couldn’t manage anything but friendship. He’d understood, sort of. He’d been through breakups, but nothing as serious as a divorce.

April had obviously been healed by Caralinda, however. The days in the sun, walking the fields with his father, and the work in her own garden had slimmed her down even more and made her skin glow. Her emerald-green eyes had always been bright against her reddish-brown hair and the freckles that splattered across her face, but now they gleamed as they met his focused gaze without flinching.

She knows what I’m doing, he realized. Good. He cleared his throat.

“Did you hear anything before you stepped out of the corn?”

April thought for a moment, then shook her head.

“What did you see first?”

She closed those emerald eyes, and her brow furrowed. “His back. The shooter’s. Then your dad.”

“Was he taller than Dad?”

April hesitated a moment, trying to remember. “N-no. I could still see the top of your dad’s head.” She held her hands about two feet apart. “But broader. I think.”

“What was the shooter wearing?”

She hesitated. “Jeans. Dirty. Beat-up jeans. A light shirt. White…or pale blue. Maybe.”

“Anything on his head?”

“A ball cap.”

“What color?”