Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [45]
“Personal experience, Chief?”
“Nah. I wish,” he laughed self-consciously.
She opened the driver’s side door and leaned in to drop her things onto the passenger’s seat.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re not wanting for female companionship.” She smiled. Like that hot-looking redhead with all those tattoos.
“I haven’t had a whole lot of time lately for female companionship.”
She slid behind the wheel of the car without comment. She knew better. “Well, Chief, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
He nodded and slammed her car door for her. She rolled down the window and put the car in gear.
“Chief Mercer,” she said just as he turned to walk to his own car two rows down. “Do you think I did it? Do you think I killed Derek?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he told her. “The only thing that matters is what the evidence shows.”
“Thanks. Always good to know where you stand.”
“Be careful driving home, Ms. Crosby.”
“Thanks.”
She was halfway home when she realized he was following her. When she pulled into her drive, he parked across the street in the shadow of a long hedge. Going into the house, she ignored his presence and the blinking light on her answering machine and went into the kitchen to rummage for something to replace the dinner she hadn’t had time to eat that night, thinking that while the woman she was today was far better equipped to deal with a possible stalker situation than she’d been a year ago, it still gave her some measure of comfort to know that someone was watching her back.
There was something coolly reassuring about Chief Sean Mercer, with his deep dark eyes and soft voice and his way of looking at you that could stop you cold. If she were a bad guy and he turned that gaze on her, she’d abandon any plans to break the law.
Of course, she reminded herself ruefully, he had turned that gaze on her. On several occasions. But she’d been able to meet him head-on. She was innocent. She should have nothing to fear.
Oh, but the thought that she might be a suspect in Derek’s death was unbearably painful. That Sean Mercer could believe she might be a murderer somehow made the cut that much deeper. Well, she’d just have to do whatever she had to to prove her innocence and, at the same time, turn over every stone in search of Derek’s killer.
Maybe Mercer was right. Maybe there was a connection to the goblet. Maybe she’d been wrong to dismiss the possibility so quickly. Tomorrow she’d find Derek’s client list. If she had to call everyone in his address book, everyone on his Rolodex, everyone he’d ever made a sale to, she’d track down the person he had in mind to sell the goblet to. Then she’d do whatever it took to find out just how badly he—or she—wanted it.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
For the first time in all the years she’d been in business, Amanda was happy to have no customers in the shop to distract her. She’d awakened a little before five that morning, eager to begin going through the lists of Derek’s customers in the hope of identifying a possible buyer for the goblet. She showered, then breakfasted on an English muffin and some chocolate yogurt, planning on stopping at the convenience store at the end of her street for coffee on her way to St. Mark’s. Dressed in a denim skirt and a yellow cotton twin set, she slipped into flat leather sandals and out the door.
The sun was barely up and the grass still wet and slick with dew. Her feet kicked up dots of water that tossed themselves onto the backs of her legs as she walked to the end of the driveway to pick up her morning newspaper. The air was rich with the scent of apples from the trees on her neighbor’s property and the sweet autumn clematis that covered one side of her garage and had just started to bloom. It was still warm, but there was no question that summer, however reluctantly, was slipping away.
Amanda pulled into the parking lot at St. Mark’s, expecting to be the first of the shopkeepers to arrive, and was surprised to see Marian’s car already there.
She must have gotten