Marlene Schmidt had cried on the phone like a woman destroyed by grief.
Marlene Schmidt had also possibly lied.
Perhaps she had driven three hours back into Harlan County to catch her husband with another woman.Perhaps she had arrived before he died.Perhaps she had left after he was killed.But proof was needed.
Selena felt the case shift under her feet.
Warren Holt had enemies.Victor Schmidt had enemies.But now Selena knewbothmen had been accused of having an affair, andVictor also had a wife with motive, opportunity, and a secret journey she had chosen not to mention.That connection had to mean something.Selena could feel it.
Connor was not going to like it.
That did not matter.
She needed Marlene’s phone records.Traffic cameras.Gas receipts.Anything that could place her on the road and put a time against the lie.
Selena looked down at Marlene’s name on the page and drew a slow line beneath it.
By the end of the interview, she had a new suspect.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Melania’s Waffle Diner looked better in the evening than during the day.
The setting sun came through the front windows at an angle, softening the scratches in the tabletops and turning the chrome trim around the counter warm for a few minutes.By morning, it would look tired again.Grease under the griddle hood.Sugar crusted near the syrup pumps.Men in work shirts stirring mugs of coffee as if the spoon might solve something.
Evening forgave more.
The killer sat in a booth along the window with both hands around a cup of tea.
Not coffee.
Never coffee, unless forced into it by some wretched circumstance.
Tea had patience.Tea required restraint.A person selected it, waited for it, allowed the leaves to settle into the water at their own pace.Coffee made people loud.Twitchy.Full of false urgency.It turned ordinary citizens into irrational lunatics who believed bad decisions were productivity.
The killer lifted the cup and took a measured sip.
Too weak.
Melania’s served tea as if it were medicine for invalids, but even weak tea was preferable to coffee.It warmed the throat and settled the mind.On a night like this, a settled mind mattered.
The booth vinyl pressed against their back.The table held the cup, a small metal pot, a folded napkin, and a plate with half a waffle, now cold under a neat square of butter.Outside, pickup trucks moved along the road with their headlights on.Beyond them, Elmsview’s storefronts were darkening one by one.
The county had begun to talk.
That was good.
Fear needed conversation.Without conversation, fear wandered.With conversation, it learned direction.
At the counter, two men in seed company caps argued quietly about corn prices.Near the register, a waitress refilled glasses and carried plates with her hip turned to avoid the tight spaces.In the booth behind the killer, three women had been talking for ten minutes, voices lowered in the way people used when they wanted privacy but still wanted the room to know there was something worth hearing.
The killer had not turned around.
Turning around was amateurish.
Better to watch the window reflection and listen.Three vague shapes sat behind them, framed in the glass over the darkening street.One woman had large earrings that moved every time she spoke.Another kept tapping the table with one finger.The third had a laugh that came out too hard, too often.
The conversation had started with church volunteers, moved through Victor Schmidt’s death, drifted into the price of school uniforms, and now, at last, found something useful.
