He glances around the room. “You got something better to do?”
I tug at my earlobe, a nervous gesture, and perch on the edge of the opposite chair. He’s in uniform, which doesn’t help. Not the official, authoritarian vibe it gives off or the way the starched shirt emphasizes his square shoulders, the chiseled slope of his jaw. Tawdry scenes from Myrtle’s collection of paperbacks flicker through my mind with increasing speed. I flush from my thighs to my eyelashes and have to reach over and take his ice water, gulp several mouthfuls down.
He stares at me. “Weird crowd tonight,” he says, rolling his eyes around the room of clearly out-of-place women.
“Aunt Myrtle is hosting a thing,” I say offhandedly, hoping that will satiate him. “It’s, um, good to see you. I didn’t get a chance to say it the other night; I was still in shock. But it is.” They are words I’m certain I should not say under the circumstances, but they spill out across the tabletop like a mouthful of seeds.
He glances at his hands, the soft down of his lashes flickering against his skin, and then peers at me. “Acacia, I…” The breath rushes out of him as if he has lost a fight. “I didn’t come here as a social call.”
“Oh.” I draw my hands into my lap, fingers interlocked, and wait for him to say more.
He looks around, leans forward. “I think you should be careful.”
My knee starts jumping under the table. “You mean because of the Strangler?”
His head shakes and he inhales, regroups. “I thought you’d want to know the gentleman from the other night didn’t make it,” he tells me.
I take a breath. “That’s, um… that’s too bad.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”
“Thank you for telling me. I’ll be sure to pass the word along to Myrtle.” I start to rise.
“I’d hoped to ask you a couple more questions,” he says before I can make my escape.
Thwarted, I lower back down to the chair. “Sure. Go ahead.”
He pauses. “Don’t you want to know how?” he asks, leaning an arm across the table.
“How?” I repeat, not sure what he means.
“How the man died. What killed him.”
“Oh, right.” I laugh nervously. “Thathow.I thought you meant…” I don’t actually know what I thought he meant. I clear my throat. “Never mind.”
Something slides across his features, the softness there only moments ago now slick as oil. Regis has left. It is just the sheriff sitting before me now. He watches me with a poker face that only makes me want to babble more. “Poison,” he says slowly.
The word sits between us like something barbed. An accusation. A hand grenade with someone’s finger on the pin. I clear my throat again. “P-poison?”
“Uh-huh.” He leans back. “From a deadly mushroom.”
I arch my brows and nod as if I am appraising this information. “Wow.”
His tongue runs over his bottom lip. “The same, actually, as the one you tried to pick that night after getting out of my truck. Do you remember? I told you it would kill you before sunrise. Destroys the liver.”
“Right,” I say, glancing around the room. A woman in pink slacks is watching me from the far wall, a gold chain belt slung across her hips and a cashmere cardigan draped across her shoulders. She seems to know there is more to this conversation than friendly chitchat. I feel like she’s assessing my ability to manage the sheriff, ready to scurry off and report my shortcomings the second I turn around. “What a coincidence.”
“I’d say so,” he responds. “I spoke with the woman at the hospital, too, the one you told me about. Turns out she’s his wife. Only married a few months. She confirmed that he hit her. Seems your instincts are spot-on. Maybe I should give you a job at the department.”
I laugh emptily and he smiles at me. “I don’t think Myrtle could spare me.”
“Maybe not,” he says. “The wife also told me you served the man his coffee right before stepping outside. That it was the last thing to touch his lips before, well, you know. You didn’t mention that.”
“Didn’t I?” I suddenly feel like the room is heating up by a few dozen degrees. I rub my palms together under the table, trying to disperse the sweat. I have to remind myself this is the same manwho let me lock him out of his own house. “She’s right, I did. But I—I wouldn’t know, you know, if that was the last thing he had. I was outside, like I told you.”
“Doing?” he asks now.
“Laundry,” I blurt. “Changing stuff over from the washer to the dryer.”
