Page 26 of Out to Get Her
“It’s… a delicate matter.”
“So she’s married. Got it. Can she confirm that you were with her yesterday afternoon?”
“She can,” Nathan said. “Whether she will or not is up to her, not me.”
Samantha frowned. “Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be. For either of us.”
She knew he didn’t give a rat’s ass about making things easier for her any more than Deputy Fonseca wanted to make things easier for her. But she also knew he’d want to make things easier for himself. Healwayswanted that. It was usually his entire M.O.
“When was the last time you spoke to Paul?”
He tilted his head to give her a downward look and raised his brow. “What year is it?”
“I’m serious, Nathan.”
“So am I. That cretin and I had no reason to speak to one another. If you could even call all the grunting he did ‘speech.’”
Ever the elitist.
If she hadn’t had to bear much of his derision herself, she might have been inclined to cut him some slack. Her ex-husband came from a long line of folks who thought they were better than everyone else. And not just better than the citizens of Etta. Better than everyone. Everywhere. Always. They were big, ugly fish who were completely unaware of the size of their tiny pond.
And they’d done a bang-up job training their offspring to believe that nonsense.
Case in point.
She regretted a lot about her marriage to Nathan Ardoin, but one thing she would never regret was leaving without adding any children to that family. No heirs of hers they could ever attempt to brainwash.
“Paul isn’t the one being questioned here today. You are.”
“But shouldn’t he?” He leaned back in his chair. “After all, he was trespassing himself, I hear.”
“Any idea why Paul might have been there?”
“Why would I know that? I told you I haven’t spoken to the man.”
They might not have spoken, but Paul did a lot of talkingaboutNathan. The whole town knew Paul’s beef with him. Legitimate or not. He’d gotten hooked on pain pills and blamed Nathan’s pharmacy as much as the doctor for his addiction and depleted bank account. Nathan had more cause than anyone she could think of to shut Paul up for good.
“But you hear things. And you know things. You’re a smart man.” It was her turn to give a sly smile as she gestured at the bookcases beside her. “I mean, you have all these books.”
His eyes narrowed, an uncharacteristic flash of untempered rage in them. A charlatan’s greatest fear was being unmasked.
“I’m afraid the motivations of Paul Latiolais are beyond my scope of reference.”
“So you haven’t heard anything about why he might have been at that house? What he might have been doing there or looking for or who he might have been with?”
A curious twitch hit his lip. “What makes you think he was with someone?”
“I can’t reveal the details of an open case.”
Which also meant she couldn’t reveal about the needle or why that made him look like a prime suspect. Nathan had inherited his family’s pharmacy.Thepharmacy in Etta. Word was they owned a few doctors, too. Nathan would have had easy access to whatever would come back from the autopsy and tox screen reports.
It was also a Nathan kind of crime. Clean. No mess.
She didn’t think for a second that he’d get his own hands dirty, even like this, but she could believe he’d pay someone else to make a problem go away. She was living proof of that.
Any jury in the world would take one quick look at his history and believe he was capable of paying for a hit. He’d made plenty of people go away with cash. Just hadn’t escalated to permanently-go-away levels before now.
Nathan leaned over the chair arm and reached to place a hand on hers. “Sam, do you think maybe this case is a little… big for you?”
