Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [44]
“Oh, I’m sorry, boy,” I said, loosening my hold. I stooped down and rubbed behind his floppy Labrador ear in apology. He licked my hand in forgiveness. “Let’s go before they see us.”
I ducked into Gum Alley, a local artistic landmark created and maintained by generations of gum-chewing college kids, to Blind Harry’s back door and punched in the security code. Leaving Scout in the stockroom on a rug that Elvia had provided especially for his visits, I walked through the children’s department to the wooden stairway leading down to the basement coffeehouse. All the way downstairs, while waiting for my coffee order, and winding my way through the Friday night crowd to a table in the back corner, I talked to myself about the picture I’d just seen—there was nothing to worry about, Gabe loved me, I was invited and chose not to go, and, yes, they looked great together, but looks weren’t everything, were they? Okay, so they had history, too, but that was a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Okay, they had a son together. One child. One. He was grown now. And he liked me, too. I was so involved in my silent pep talk between bites of my sandwich I didn’t notice anyone around me until a chair next to me scraped across the wooden floor. I glanced up into Detective Hudson’s smiling face.
“Is this chair taken?” he asked, sitting down before I could answer. In the background, the folk singer started crooning “Blue Moon.” Detective Hudson cocked his head and listened for a moment. “My mother’s favorite song. She’s a music teacher in Abilene.”
“I thought you said she was an interior decorator in Dallas.”
He rubbed his chin and grinned. “You’ve got a good memory. Where’s your husband?”
My jaw tightened, and I looked away, pretending interest in the folk singer’s performance. “Out to dinner with his son.”
“And his ex-wife?” he inquired, his voice softly mocking.
I turned and stared at him, unblinking. “Are you following me?”
He shifted in the tall wooden library chair. “You’re right, it’s none of my business. Just hate seein’ such a pretty woman look so sad.”
“Would you cut the bull and tell me what you want?”
“Just wanted to know if you’d heard anything new on our case.”
“ ‘Our’ case? I told you, I’m not involved.” I picked up my sandwich and took a small bite.
He unzipped his black leather jacket, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his legs. Tonight he was wearing bright red bullhide boots. Black shafts stitched with rainbow-colored swirls peeked out from under his Wranglers. No Arrow shirt, only a pure white T-shirt.
“Those are the ugliest boots I’ve ever seen,” I said. “They look like something a pimp would wear.”
He grinned at me. “Thank you.” Then he leaned forward, placing both boots flat on the floor. The folk singer finished her song and started another, an Emmylou Harris song, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.”
“You went out to Seven Sisters ranch today.”
“You are following me!”
“Did you find out anything?”
“I wasn’t trying to find out anything.”
“Sure.”
“Detective Hudson, listen up, because I don’t plan on repeating myself. I am not going to snoop for you. Not now, not ever. Got it?”
His face turned serious, and I caught a glimpse of an intensity that startled me. “Benni, I have something important to share with you and I’m telling you because your husband probably already knows or will shortly, and you need to know it, too, whether he thinks so or not. We aren’t dealing with a heat-of-the-moment homicide like it first appeared.”
“We aren’t?” I said, before realizing he’d won and pulled me into thinking of this as something we were doing together.
“I suspected as much Tuesday when I was taking the gun and bullet down to the lab in Goleta.”
“Why?”
He said slowly, “The bullet didn’t match the gun. The gun found at the scene was a .38 revolver. The bullet came from a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. They cause similar