Page 18 of Killer on the Homestead
“Thank you, Owen. I really appreciate it, and I’m going to do my best to help the detectives get to the bottom of it. They’regoing to keep asking you questions, and it’s going to be hard, but you’re going to get through it, because every answer is a chance for making sure whoever did this to Hunter pays.”
Owen nodded as a few more tears fell. When Terry came back into the room, Rosalie gave Owen’s shoulder a squeeze as she got up, then followed Duncan out of the bunkhouse and back into a shockingly sunny early afternoon.
They walked onto the pathway that led to the main house. Almost in tandem, they let out slow breaths and took deep ones of the summer sunshine.
“Hell, I feel old,” Duncan muttered. “Back when I was twenty-two, I thought I was such an adult. Now I look at him and think what a kid he is. Shouldering all this.”
“Yeah, we’ve all got things to shoulder. Life doesn’t discriminate much, does it?”
“Guess not.”
“Besides, you are old,” she offered, with some forced cheer he knew was meant to be an attempt to lighten the mood.
And since he figured they both needed it, he went along with it. “Too old?” he replied, flashing a grin.
“Obviously,” she replied, but she was smiling. Nah, not too old.
She sighed. “I’m going to head to my office, do some paperwork on this. When Detective Beckett comes back with search warrants and questions, I want you to pay attention. What the search warrants are for, what questions they ask. Record what you can if you don’t have a good memory.”
“I’ve got a good memory.”
“Excellent. I’ll be in touch.” She started to march toward her truck, those short legs eating up the distance in quick time. A completely different person than she’d been back there at the bunkhouse.
Or was it different? Because she was taking on a case no one would pay her for. Out of concern for her sister, maybe, but she’d treated Owen like… Well, like he figured anyone would want to be treated in such an awful situation.
Duncan couldn’t have managed that on his own.
“Rosalie.”
She stopped, looked at him somewhat suspiciously.
He didn’t know how this would have all gone down if she hadn’t accidentally been here. Certainly not as smoothly. “I’m glad you were here.”
There was just asecondwhere she went completely still. An arrested expression crossed her face, then she shrugged and stalked away.
Duncan couldn’t think about her reaction to that, or his. He had to go inside and deal with his parents.
Rosalie typed itall up. Her fingers movedalmostas fast as her mind. She found in her years of working at Fool’s Gold Investigations that people talked a lot more when you weren’t taking notes or recording things. They gave information more freely when it felt like a conversation, like you cared about them as much as the case.
Owen Green was telling the truth. Rosalie knew that not because she believed she had some amazing ability to tell truth from lie, or that she didn’t believe people could act. She’d learned her gut instinctscouldbe fallible andsomepeople didn’t need a reason to lie—they just liked it.
But poor Owen was overwrought. Hurting. Grief was one of the few emotions she’d never seen someone fake well. When people were faking it, they just acted sad, or maybe they’d maneuver in a little anger. They cried a lot, yelled a lot. They didn’t know that with grief always came a helpless undertone ofshock, and guilt. No matter how old or young the deceased, no matter how peacefully they might have passed, grief and guilt held hands for those who’d loved the person they lost.
Rosalie muttered a foul curse under her breath, because she didn’t want to be thinking aboutgrief.
She focused on this case for the rest of the day. Well past dinnertime she was sending emails, making phone calls, and putting together what disparate details she could. Quinn popped in to say goodbye, and still Rosalie stayed at her desk and worked, only taking a quick break to tell Audra she wouldn’t be home with pizza any time soon.
Later, she heard the faint sound of a knock and looked up, but she couldn’t see the front door from where she sat in her office. Her gun was still holstered at her hip, so she put a hand to it as she stood and carefully moved to the doorway.
The front blinds were drawn for the night, but there was a little window at the door, and in the window, she saw a recognizable face.
Duncan.
Why that made her feel nervous she couldn’t quite figure out. He was an easy enough guy to deal with. It was no doubt about work, so there was absolutely no reason for her heart to skip a beat.
She moved forward and opened the door. It was dark outside, though she saw a flicker of lightning in the distance and could smell the rain with it as well.
Which was the only reason she let him step inside, the threat of that storm in the distance.
