Stonebrook Cottage

He almost smiled. “All right, Detective West. I won’t call you ma’am.”

“It’s a southern thing, right? The ma’am?”

Sam realized she was serious. “I like to think of it as a manners thing.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, I guess. Okay, back to this gallery. It’s in Austin, which is about ninety miles from San Antonio. It has reduced hours during the summer while the owners—Kevin and Eva Dunning—are at their summer place on Lake Champlain, but they came back special because this was the only time they could get Gordon Temple. Right so far?”

“Right so far,” Sam said, careful to avoid any hint of sarcasm. He’d let Detective West ask her questions. Why not? He might learn something about Kara and why she’d acted the way she had that night.

“The Dunnings are the in-laws of another Texas Ranger, a lieutenant, Jack Galway. He’s Kara Galway’s brother. Your superior, right?” West paused, adding, matter-of-fact, “This was all pretty easy to find out on the Internet. I read a couple articles about that business in the Adirondacks last winter. You got shot, didn’t you, Sergeant?”

Sam didn’t answer right away. Zoe West had done her homework. In February, he’d gone up north to help Jack sort out a murder investigation that had ended up involving Jack’s wife and twin teenage daughters. They’d done snow, ice and bitter cold, and Sam swore he’d never complain about the heat again. And, yes, he was shot.

Kara had slid her fingertips over the scar on his upper thigh.

Damn.

“It was just a flesh wound,” he told the Connecticut detective.

“The Galways are doing okay now?”

“Yes.”

“Gordon Temple’s a famous Native American painter—Cherokee, lives in New Mexico. You any relation?”

“That’s irrelevant, Detective.” But he’d spotted Gordon Temple that night and remembered the black hair streaked with gray, the dark eyes and muscular build that were a lot like Sam’s own.

Zoe West paused a beat. “So you were there, what, for the art?”

Now who was being sarcastic? Sam watched an overweight man with tattoos on his upper arms carry a bag of food to a big rig. He tried to picture the Bluefield detective in her small-town Connecticut police station.

“Okay, so why you were in Austin is beside the point,” she said. “Governor Stockwell called Ms. Galway shortly after seven your time. Did you see her take the call?”

“Yes. We left together about ten minutes later.” Sam had never talked to Gordon Temple, never complimented him on his paintings or said, “Oh, by the way, I’m your son.” He shifted, losing patience. “Detective West, you’re on a fishing expedition. I have things I need to do.”

She made another couple of clicking sounds. “All right, here’s the deal. Kara Galway is one of a very few who knew Governor Parisi couldn’t swim. She told you that, right?”

Sam didn’t answer.

“Oh. I guess it didn’t come up over coffee, huh? If someone wanted him dead and tossed the bluebird into the pool deliberately, hoping he’d fall or seeing to it he did—well, they’d have to know he couldn’t swim.”

“Stupid way to kill someone.”

“It worked. He’s dead. And it looks like an accident.”

“Maybe it was an accident.”

“Too many accidents around here for my taste,” Zoe West said.

Sam sat up straighter, hearing something in the Bluefield detective’s voice he recognized, maybe just because he was in the same line of work. “There’s been another accident?”

“You didn’t hear? Allyson Stockwell and her two children had a close call during a Fourth of July bonfire at her mother-in-law’s place here in town. A gas can exploded. Someone left it too close to the fire. No one’s owned up yet, of course.”

“Injuries?”

“Not from the explosion itself. A local guy—Pete Jericho—shoved Mrs. Stockwell and the kids out of the way just in time. He had some minor cuts and bruises. Scared the hell out of everyone.”

“Governor Parisi was there?” Sam asked.

“He was. What if someone tried and failed to arrange a fatal accident for him that night, then tried again and succeeded a few weeks later?”

“Is that your theory, Detective?”

“Just the sort of question to keep a law enforcement officer up nights, don’t you think, Sergeant?”

“What about the state investigators?”

“They say they don’t want to speculate. Hey,” she said suddenly, “I’m supposed to ask the questions.”

Sam wasn’t fooled. Zoe West wanted him to have this information or she wouldn’t have given it to him. She might not have wide experience as a small-town detective, but she obviously wasn’t stupid.

“I guess it’s easier to call the explosion a backyard accident,” she went on. “Same with Big Mike and his injured bluebird. I mean, I know he was a nut about bluebirds and everything, but wouldn’t you think he’d be careful scooping one out of the drink when he knew he couldn’t swim? I would.”

“He could have lost his balance.”

“Could have.” She took in a breath. “Thanks for your help, Sergeant Temple. Keep my number handy if you think of anything else.”

Sam promised he would, and she hung up.

He sank back against his seat and shut his eyes a moment, the fatigue crawling at him. He was ten minutes from Jack’s house. He could stop in and have a cold beer and not mention Zoe West’s call, then head home and sleep.

But that wouldn’t be smart. Jack was protective of his entire family, his little sister no exception. Bad enough Sam had slept with her—now he’d just hung up with a Connecticut detective checking out Kara’s story from that night. Best to keep some distance between himself and Lieutenant Galway, at least, Sam thought, until he’d sorted out just how pissed he was at her.

Kara knew Mike Parisi couldn’t swim. His big secret. She was at the Dunning Gallery when he was falling into his swimming pool and therefore couldn’t have been in Connecticut killing him.

Theoretically, she could have hired someone to kill her governor friend. He doesn’t know how to swim. Get him to the deep end of his pool. Make it look like an accident.

But that didn’t fit with what Sam knew about the Galway character, and as far as he could see, she had no reason to kill the guy. It was more plausible, but still unlikely, that she could have inadvertently told the murderer Parisi couldn’t swim. Zoe West would want to know if Kara had kept her governor buddy’s secret—maybe she’d already asked, when the two of them talked. Kara obviously hadn’t seen fit to tell Sam about her conversation with the Bluefield detective or that she’d given Zoe West his number.

He swore under his breath. He didn’t believe Kara had anything to do with Parisi’s death, but she should have told him about it at some point before he’d left her house that Sunday—preferably before they’d landed up in her bed.

She damn well should have told him she was among a chosen few who knew Michael Parisi couldn’t swim.

Sam didn’t like being anyone’s alibi.

Two

F or the first time in weeks, Allyson Stockwell felt almost normal. The late-afternoon shade soothed her taut nerves as she swung gently on a hammock strung between two maple trees on Stockwell Farm in Bluefield, deep in the Litchfield Hills of northwest Connecticut. The taste of her iced tea, the smell of her mother-in-law’s roses, the sounds of birds in the nearby trees—all of it seemed so blissfully normal.