Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [25]
On her way home from the shop tomorrow, she’d stop at the gun club and head out to the firing range for some practice. It had been two weeks since she’d dug out her .38 and shot off a few rounds. She liked to keep in practice, needed to feel sharp when it came to her handgun. She needed to know that if she had to use it, she could hit her mark. She hadn’t come this far to do anything but.
Thinking about the gun club seemed to nag at her. . . .
She rolled up the sleeves of her cotton shirt and started the lawn mower. By the time she finished the back section of grass she was in a serious sweat. She shed the shirt and tossed it onto the stone bench, then set out to finish the job in her tank top.
The feeling that she was being watched began to creep over her as she started on the strip of grass on the side of the house that linked the front and back yards, and the sensation grew stronger as she returned to the back and turned off the mower. The slamming of a car door out near the street drew her attention and she walked to the end of the drive in time to see Chief Mercer standing near the mailbox and studying the house.
Never one to wait for trouble, she walked down to meet him. She wondered how he’d managed to slip the tattooed wonder as quickly as he had.
“Hi,” he called when he saw her.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you.” She stopped at the sidewalk and folded her arms over her chest.
“That the advice of your lawyer, or your brother?”
“My brother.” She didn’t have a lawyer yet, but he didn’t need to know that.
He appeared to be debating with himself. Finally, he asked her, “Do you own a gun, Ms. Crosby?”
“Yes.” She nodded. It was no secret. Half the people in town knew she had taken lessons at the firing range on the outskirts of town. She’d written about the experience in one of her newspaper columns several months ago.
“When was the last time you fired it?”
She paused, and it came back to her. The gun club . . .
Uh-oh.
Her eyes met his, and before she could remind herself not to answer the question, he said, “I was just wondering, because the GSR results are back.”
“And?” She went cold inside. Her stomach flipped, then sank. She knew exactly what he was going to say and why he was there.
“You want to tell me the last time you fired that gun, or are you going to wait until I tell you what I found on the sleeves of the sweatshirt you gave us?”
Amanda sighed. She’d forgotten. Completely forgotten . . .
“I was at the range two Mondays ago. You can check with the gun club. They’ll confirm that. You have to sign in—”
“What kind of a gun do you have?”
“A .38. Everyone in the county knows about it. I’m surprised you don’t.” Her hands were on her hips now, defiant. Derek had been killed with a bullet fired from a .38. Everyone in the county knew that, too. “I wrote all about learning to shoot the damned thing for the County Express back in March.”
“Where’s your gun now?”
“It’s in the drawer in the table next to my bed.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you for it.”
Amanda sighed. “I can make you get a warrant, can’t I?”
“Sure. But what would that do besides delay the investigation? If the bullet that killed your partner wasn’t fired from that gun, we’ll be able to confirm that right away. Like you said before, the sooner we eliminate you, the sooner the investigation can move ahead. I’d think you’d want to clear that up as soon as possible. I mean, with the finding of the GSR on your sweatshirt . . .”
“I wore the shirt to the range two weeks ago. I didn’t happen to wash it between wearings, so I imagine there would be residue on the sleeves.”
“Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”
“Because I wasn’t thinking . . . I wasn’t thinking about having shot off my handgun at the range as