Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [60]
“So, how long have you been seeing Amanda?” She tried the soft approach.
“Since her partner turned up dead.” Sean speared a couple of green beans with his fork.
“You didn’t know her before that?”
“Greer, I’ve been in Broeder for a little more than six months. In that time, I’ve put in sixteen-, eighteen-hour days, seven days a week.” He took a long drink from the bottle of water he’d brought in with him. “So you figure out when I would have gotten around to romancing Ms. Crosby—or anyone else, for that matter—which you obviously think I am doing.”
“I was just wondering if you’d been seeing her, that’s all.”
“Oh, I’ve been seeing her, all right.” He snorted. “Of course, until this morning, I figured that from here on out, I’d be seeing her through the bars of one of my cells. At least until they gave her one of those nifty orange jumpsuits and hauled her off to the county prison.”
“I just thought that maybe you’d been going out with her, Sean. You don’t have to be such a smartass about it.” Greer frowned. “I get it. You’re not dating. Though I don’t understand why not. Such a pretty girl, and she seems like she’s real smart. Owns her own business—”
“Don’t you get it? Amanda has been a suspect in a murder I’m investigating. You don’t get chummy with suspects, Greer. You don’t see them as anything other than that, and you don’t ask them if they’re free on Saturday night. At least if you have more than half a brain, you don’t.”
Greer gave him her iciest stare. “You can’t possibly be serious. You could not have thought that sweet woman could have killed anyone.”
“Greer, I’m a cop. I can’t make assumptions. I can only evaluate the facts, not appearances. And until the facts are in—until the evidence points one way or the other—it has to be played strictly by the book. Cross the t’s, dot the i’s.” He paused to chew and swallow a piece of steak. “Look at Ted Bundy. Lot of people had a hard time believing he could be guilty of the things he did.”
He cut another piece of meat. “The steak is great, by the way. Thanks for fixing it for me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, don’t look at me that way, Greer.”
“I cannot believe you just compared Amanda to Ted Bundy.”
“I did not. But in the beginning—after the first murder—things didn’t look too good for Amanda. She had motive, she owned a gun the same caliber as the murder weapon, the sweatshirt she’d admitted to wearing on the night her partner was killed had gunshot residue on it. Christ, she’d even left a message on the victim’s voice mail saying she was going to kill him.”
“She isn’t the killer type, Sean. Anyone can see that.”
“Sorry to shatter your illusions, but there is no one killer type. Christ, Greer. Derek England’s murder was my first homicide here in Broeder. Everyone’s watching to see what I do. I know that. Especially since my brother-in-law is the one who brought me in here, got me the job.” He took another sip of water. “How would it look for Steve if I did a lousy job? And you tell me what the hell kind of cop would I be if I ignored evidence just because the suspect is beautiful and smart and owns her own business?”
Greer smiled with satisfaction. So he had noticed. . . .
“What?” Sean asked.
“You said beautiful.” She picked up his empty plate and took it to the sink to rinse off. “I only said she was pretty.”
Muttering curses under his breath, Sean thanked his sister for dinner and headed out the door.
Amanda lay beneath the covers in the darkened room at the end of the hall and turned over yet one more time, wishing she could close her eyes and not see the blood. She’d taken two showers already that day, the first in her house, when Dana Burke had so kindly taken her home and let her take off the clothes that were heavy with Marian’s blood. Dana had bagged and tagged each item of clothing as Amanda had removed it, then turned on the shower for Amanda and told her she’d wait downstairs, for Amanda to take her time. She must have known how long it would take to wash away the blood. Amanda had stood beneath