Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [59]
The thought had jolted her.
Time to get a pet, she’d told herself and gone back to work, here at her desk in the department offices.
Now, with Grayson watching her, she said, “It’s quiet here. I get a lot done when no one’s around. No distractions.”
“What about later? What’re you doing?”
“I was thinking Chinese takeout.”
He actually smiled, his lips twitching beneath the mustache. “Great as that sounds, and, y’know, it does, why don’t you stop by my place?” Her stupid heart nearly skipped a beat. “Got a few friends comin’ by. Around six. Real casual.”
So they wouldn’t be alone. Good. “Maybe I will.”
He chuckled again. “That sounds like a thinly disguised ‘No, thanks.’”
“A bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool maybe.”
“I’ll hold you to it.” His eyes, as brown as her own, pinned her and silently accused her of trying to placate him. “And get the hell outta here.” With a nod, as if he were agreeing with himself, he whistled to the dog, then made his way toward the back door, the sound of his boot heels and the click of claws fading away.
She leaned back in her chair and reminded herself that Grayson was her boss. Yeah, she found him attractive in that grizzled ranch-hand way. With his long legs, slim hips, and broad shoulders, he was built like a cowboy, tough as leather, and, as far as she knew, had lived all of his life in the area. He’d been married once, and she didn’t really know all the details there; Grayson kept a lot of his personal life close to the vest, which was another reason she admired him. She did the same.
Today, though, she hadn’t been lying. The offices, for once, were nearly silent, aside from the hum of the furnace as it forced warm air through the vents. She was able to get a lot of work done without coworkers, ringing phones, fax machines, and e-mail blasting at her every ten seconds. But she wasn’t playing catch-up, as she’d told Grayson.
Instead she was reviewing Jocelyn Wallis’s autopsy and tox screen.
The autopsy indicated that the victim had heart disease, more advanced than she might have known. According to the ME, Jocelyn’s arteries were partially blocked and could have been from a woman twice her age, the result probably of bad genes and a hard lifestyle. She probably would have suffered a heart attack if her condition was left untreated and might have died young. There was no sign of recent sexual activity, but along with evidence of the over-the-counter meds she’d been taking, there were traces of arsenic in her blood.
She looked through the report that listed the contents of the victim’s stomach and found nothing out of the ordinary. It looked like chicken vegetable soup and coffee and little else.
Odd. Rather than the evidence absolving her of her suspicions, just the opposite had proved true. Glancing at a photo of the victim, she said, “So what happened to you?”
And more importantly, who did it?
Jocelyn had two ex-husbands, one living outside of Laramie, Wyoming, the other in Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada. Both had ironclad alibis and, it seemed, had had little contact with their ex-wife. Without children or custody issues or jointly held businesses, there had been no reason for them to keep in contact with her.
Also, Jocelyn had next to no life insurance, just enough to bury her. The beneficiaries listed were her