22
Paul Brooksfield admired his wife from the driver’s seat of their GMC Sierra truck. Her cornrows were tied up in a silk scarf. She was just as beautiful as the day she’d sashayed through the bar door in low-cut jeans and that sparkly backless top. Toward the end of that night, her increasingly drunk blond friend had finally ended up sprawled on the floor. Margie—stubborn even back then—had tried to haul the blond out by herself rather than ask for help. Paul remembered how she had struggled until he rushed to her aid. But she had laughed too, always finding the humor in life—a great tinkling laugh that echoed across the bar.
As she saw him staring, she smiled back at him.
“Whatcha lookin’ at, handsome?” She winked a big brown eye. Hook, line, and sinker. Even after all these years, she could flip his heart over.
He tried to smile, his hands tightening on the steering wheel as they pulled into the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office lot.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
“If we can survive the ire of Grandma Brooksfield, we can make it through anything.”
Paul grimaced at the thought of his mother, Jolene, who had written him out of the will when he brought Margie home. Sullying the family line, she had implied many a time—but never said outright. The ranch, at least, had been in a trust that she couldn’t mess with, but it came with no money, and they’d been struggling ever since.
“Margie…” Paul reached for her hands. “Are we sure about our story? They’re gonna have questions.”
“What do you mean,story? This is the truth.” Margie pulled her hands away and didn’t meet his eyes, staring instead out of the dusty windshield at the glass office building shimmering in the sun.
Paul felt uneasy. There was something she wasn’t telling him—he could just feel it.
Paul parked and got out of the truck and Margie followed. He could sense the heat radiating from the pavement, inhaling the tarry scent of it. A blistering day.
Their attorney, Belen Caldas, was just getting out of her car. Paul greeted her with a handshake. She was wearing a crisp black suit, sunglasses, and incommodious-looking stilettos. A halo of black hair poofed about her face in ringlets. Despite her elegant appearance, she was said to be a bulldog, which was why Paul had hired her. He hoped she would live up to her reputation—and expense.
Caldas removed her sunglasses and swiped at her forehead with her palm. “Jesus, it’s hot here. This is really in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, huh?”
“Our mountains,” said Paul, “are a lot taller and prettier than your Denver glass-and-steel towers.” He tried to cover up his racing heart with a joking attitude. He had never been involved with the police before.
“I prefer glass and steel,” said Caldas, shrugging. “Even my plants are plastic.” She turned to Margie. “All right, remember what we practiced.” As they approached the building, she slipped her shades into her pants pocket. “Keep your mouth shut, let me take the lead, and keep your answers absolutely short and to the point. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do they think Margie’s a suspect?” Paul asked.
“We have to assume she is—even if she isn’t.”
Paul watched as Margie began to fuss with her cornrows like she did when she was nervous. It was absurd that anyone would think she might have had anything to do with Grooms’s death.
They entered the drab interior of the sheriff’s building and were led into an interrogation room. Four chairs squatted around a metal table,and a clunky out-of-date video camera was tucked into a corner where the ceiling met the wall. Margie and Caldas sat side by side. Paul, who was not being questioned, was allowed to be present, seated in a chair against the wall. The room smelled faintly of piss, and he wondered how many low-life murderers, rapists, and drunks had been hauled through these doors. Caldas would set this straight, that was for sure.
Sheriff James Colcord and CBI Agent Cash strode in, closing the door behind them, and situated themselves at the table on the opposite side to them.
“Good morning,” Agent Cash said.
Caldas stared at Cash with a jaw like stone. “It will be a better one once we get my innocent client out of here. I want to be clear: We are here voluntarily to set the record straight, not because we believe this investigation into my client has any merit whatsoever. Everyone around this table knows you’re chasing shadows, Agent Cash.”
“We’re just here to ask some questions,” Cash responded mildly, not provoked in the slightest. “Mind if I record?”
“You may,” Caldas said.
Cash placed her phone in the center of the table and hit Record.
Caldas began speaking right after she hit Record. “Agent Cash, I would like to ask: Are any white suspects being interviewed, or is Margie Brooksfield—the only African American in the town of Burns—the lone suspect you are pursuing?”
If Cash was rattled, she didn’t show it. “I am not familiar with the demographics of Burns—”
“There are only three hundred and fifty-three residents,” Caldas interrupted. “It’s not difficult to confirm—”
