Best Kept Secrets(140)
"No." The district attorney gave her a hard look, testing
her truthfulness. "No," she repeated. "Believe me, if I had,
I'd be after him myself. I didn't even catch a glimpse. All I
could make out was a silhouette against the sun. I think he
was wearing some kind of hat."
"Do you think it was a random incident?"
She came up on both elbows. "Do you?"
He patted the air, urging her to lie back down. "No, I
guess it wasn't."
"Then don't tax my strength with stupid questions."
He ran a hand through his hair and swore. "When I told
my old buddy Greg Harper that you'd have carte blanche, I
didn't know that you were going to wreak havoc in my
county."
Her patience with him snapped. "It's my head that moun-
tains are being slammed against, Mr. Chastain. Why are you
whining?"
"Well, dammit, Alex. Judge Wallace, who didn't like me
much in the first place, is hotter than a pistol. I can't win a
single point in his courtroom these days. You've all but called three of the county's leading citizens murderers. Pasty
Hickam, a fixture in this town, turns up dead while you're with him. You were at Nora Gail Burton's whorehouse when
a shooting took place. Goddamn it, why'd you have to open
up that hornets' nest?"
She pressed her hand to her throbbing forehead. "It wasn't
by choice. I was following a lead." She lowered her hand
and gave him a pointed look. "And don't worry, your secret
interest in Nora Gail's is safe with me."
He squirmed guiltily in his chair. "I tell you, Alex, you've
got a bull by the horns here, and it almost got you killed
tonight."
"Which should prove that I'm getting closer to the truth.
Someone's trying to bump me off to protect himself."
"I guess," he said morosely. "What have you got that
you didn't have before you got here?"
"Firmly established motives, for one thing."
"Anything else?"
"A shortage of concrete alibis. Reede Lambert says he
was with Nora Gail. She admitted that she would perjure
herself if necessary to corroborate that, which leads me to
believe that he wasn't with her all night. Junior hasn't produced
any kind of alibi."
"What about Angus?"
"He claims he was at the ranch, but so was Celina. If
Angus was there all night, he would have had ample opportunity."
"So would Gooney Bud, if he'd followed her out there,"
Pat said, "and that's what a good defense attorney will tell
the jury. No one gets life on probable cause. You've still got
nothing that places one of them in that stable with a scalpel
in his hand."
"I was on my way to your office this afternoon to talk to
you about that when I was run off the road."
"Talk to me about what?"
"The vet's scalpel. What happened to it?"
An expression of surprise came over his face. "You're the
second person this week to ask me that."
Alex struggled to prop herself up on one elbow. "Who
else asked you about it?''
"I did," Reede Lambert said from the doorway.
Thirty-eight
Alex's insides lifted weightlessly. She had dreaded the moment
she would see him again. It was inevitable, of course,
but she had hoped to appear unscathed by what had happened
between them.
Lying on a hospital examination table, her hair clotted with
blood, her hands painted with pumpkin-colored antiseptic,
too weak and muzzy to sit up, didn't exactly convey the
impression of invincibility she had desired.
"Hello, Sheriff Lambert. You'll be pleased to know that
I took your advice and stopped looking over my shoulder for
bogeymen."
Ignoring her, he said, "Hi, Pat. I just got off the radio
with the deputy."
"Then you heard what happened?"
"My first thought was that Plummet was involved, but the
deputy said her car was struck by an ME truck."
"That's right."
"ME encompasses a lot of companies. Just about anybody
in the county could get access to one of those trucks."
"Including you," Alex suggested snidely.
Reede finally acknowledged her existence with a hard stare.
The D.A. looked at them uneasily. "Uh, where were you,
Reede? Nobody could find you."
"I was out on horseback. Anybody at the ranch could tell
you that."
"I had to ask," Pat said apologetically.
"I understand, but you ought to know that running somebody
off the road isn't quite my style. Besides me, who do
you think could have done it?" he asked Alex pointedly.