The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [41]
“But here’s the thing,” Chloe said. “He came at me from behind. He wanted to attack me. I was on my way out of the barn when he knocked me down. If I startled some kid, isn’t it more likely that he would have bolted, or hidden until I left?” The vision of that cultivator seemed branded into her brain. I could have been killed, Chloe thought. I could have had my skull cracked in two like an egg.
Dellyn flopped back against the sofa. A car passed on the street out front, its radio cranked up so loud that the pulsing bass thrummed through the room.
Then Roelke stood, tucking away his notebook. “Before I go, I’d like to take some photographs in the barn. I’ll need to take that cultivator with me, too. And I want to look around outside.”
The two women waited on the back step as Roelke fetched a camera from the squad car. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the barn and inspected the yard, the garden, and the outbuildings. The harsh beam of his flashlight sliced back and forth through the night.
“I don’t freaking believe this,” Dellyn muttered. Chloe squeezed her hand.
When Roelke rejoined them he reported, “I didn’t see anything out of order. But you need to be attentive. Call us if you see anything, or find anything amiss.”
They walked back around the house. “Dellyn, why don’t you stay at my house tonight?” Chloe suggested. “I’d really love to have you.”
Dellyn shook her head. “I am burying my sister tomorrow.”
Chloe put an arm around her friend’s shoulder. “I know. But it doesn’t matter if you wake up here, or at my place.”
“This is my home. I won’t be spooked out of it.”
Chloe tried to think of a reasonable argument, and came up with diddly. No way to change Dellyn’s mind without risking alienating her altogether. “I’ll come by in the morning, then.”
“No need,” Dellyn said, her tone weary. “I’ll see you at the service later.”
Chloe turned to go, but Roelke paused. “Miss Burke. Have you thought any more about what might have been troubling your sister? Any new ideas?”
Dellyn sighed. “I don’t know what was bothering her. I already told you that.”
Chloe struggled to maintain her composure until she and Roel-
ke had settled into the squad car again and watched Dellyn disappear back inside the house. “What was that for?” she demanded.
He turned the key in the ignition. “What?”
“That last question! Do you think Dellyn wasn’t upset enough about what happened tonight without bringing up Bonnie again?”
Roelke checked his mirror and pulled into the road. “Sometimes people remember things a day or two after a crisis. Details that didn’t come to mind right away.”
“But what does it matter? Do you think Dellyn doesn’t feel terrible enough? Geez!”
“I want to know why Bonnie Sabatola did what she did,” he said stubbornly.
Everything that had been pushed away in the last hour—Markus and the awkward introductions at Sasso’s and her own muddled feelings—roared pride-like back into the car. Whatever sense of safety and calm Roelke’s presence had given her evaporated.
“Maybe you are letting your friendship with Dellyn get in the way of thinking clearly,” he said. “She’s overwrought.”
“Get in the way of thinking clearly?” Chloe echoed incredulously. “You’re criticizing me for trying to take care of a friend? A friend you’re dismissing as ‘overwrought’? You self-righteous jerk! Why not call us both ‘hysterical females’ and be done with it?”
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to take care of a friend. But this is police business.”
“Well, it’s personal business to me. Dellyn is my friend. She doesn’t have anyone else right now.”
“She has other friends.” Roelke pulled up behind her car, in front of the police station. “Libby, for one.”
Chloe shook her head. “You know what? This is the stupidest argument we’ve ever had.”
“I think you like feeling important.”
“I—what?” She gaped at him. “Maybe I just like having a woman friend in my life, Roelke. Ever think of that?” She’d never parsed it quite that way, but it was true. At West Virginia University’s forestry school, most of her friends had been guys. She