Mean Streak(25)

Grange asked, “Would you describe your wife as conscientious?”

“He called her responsible,” Knight supplied.

“She is,” Jeff said. “Very conscientious and responsible.”

Grange frowned. “Then it seems to me you would have been worried when she didn’t call to let you know she wouldn’t be coming home Saturday night.”

“I was worried.”

“But you waited another twenty-four hours before making the trip up here to look for her.”

“I’ve acknowledged the delinquency as poor judgment. But I told him,” he said, pointing to Knight, “last night, that I feared something had happened to Emory. He dismissed my worry. If you and this…” He looked around the squad room, his gaze pausing on the lady with the collapsed barn who was now weeping over a dead horse. “If this mismanaged department sat on her unexplained disappearance for another twelve hours, the fault is yours, not mine.”

With maddening composure, Knight said, “Nobody’s blaming you, Mr. Surrey.”

“That’s not what it sounded like to me. What he said sounded like an insinuation.”

Grange, unfazed, asked, “What did I insinuate?”

“Negligence on my part. Indifference. Neither of which is true or accurate.”

Knight leaned forward again and gave him that folksy smile. “Detective Grange wasn’t insinuating anything, Mr. Surrey.”

Jeff eyed them both coldly but didn’t say anything.

“Only…the thing is…” Knight shifted in his chair and winced as though he’d inflamed a hemorrhoid. “That one-tenth of one percent of missing people I mentioned earlier? Usually the person who reports them missing is the very person who knows where they’re at.”





Chapter 10



Any trust he’d won vanished the instant she saw that damned rock and drew the logical conclusion.

Her freak-out had lasted several minutes, during which she had fought like a wildcat. He’d tried to restrain her without injuring her, but she continued to claw, kick, and beat at him. One of her fists connected with the scratch she’d inflicted yesterday. It reopened and started bleeding. She hadn’t stopped flailing at him until sheer exhaustion overcame her. Otherwise she wouldn’t be even as docile as she was now.

Docile, maybe, but wound as tight as a harp string. He had deposited her on the edge of the sofa where she sat hugging her elbows, literally holding herself together. He went over and extended her a glass of whiskey. “Here. Drink this.”

“Like hell.” She pushed the glass away, sloshing the bourbon on him.

“Waste of good liquor.” He sucked it off the back of his hand.

“You’d like me to get drunk, wouldn’t you? Make me more manageable?”

“I didn’t pour enough to make you drunk, just enough to take the edge off.”

“I don’t want to take the edge off, thank you.” She threw her head back and glared up at him. “Why didn’t the rock work?”

“It did. It knocked you out.”

“And then you dragged me here.”

“Actually I carried you to my truck. You rode here slumped over in the passenger seat. Seat belt kept you from falling onto the floor of the cab.”

“Why did you bring me here?” She studied him with what seemed to be as much bafflement as fear. “If you wanted to kill me, why haven’t you just smothered me in my sleep?”

“No sport in that.”

She gestured toward the ceiling. “Can I expect to be strung up on that bar and gutted like a deer?”

He looked up at the bar and frowned. “Too much sport. Lots of heave-ho-ing. Big mess to clean up after. Instead, why don’t you just drink the poison-laced whiskey?” He extended the glass toward her again, and when she didn’t move, he said, “No? Okay then.”

He shot the drink. She might not want the edge taken off, but he sure as hell did. Setting the glass on the end table, he said, “That was all bullshit, you know, meant to be a joke.”

In no joking mood, she continued to hug herself, rocking back and forth, obviously distraught. “I was beginning to believe…”

“What?”

“That you didn’t mean to harm me.”

“I don’t.”

She gave a short laugh and glanced toward the incriminating sack sitting on the dining table. “Despite evidence to the contrary.”

Huddled there, she looked small, helpless, frightened. He admired the grit it took for her not to cry when her eyes shimmered with tears. Her evident fear affected him much more than her flailing and kicking ever could.

He sat down beside her, ignoring that she recoiled to keep their shoulders from touching. “I never wanted you to see the rock.”

“Then you should have had a better hiding place.”

“Temporary. In the meantime, I never thought you’d go digging around in the wood box.”

“One would never expect such a gruesome find at the bottom of it.”

“Gruesome, yes. With your blood and hair on it. I knew seeing it would upset you.”

“You’re damn right it did,” she said with heat. “I actually believed you when you said I fell.”