he hadn’t stopped.
No excuses.
Even with the air-conditioning blasting, he could feel the August heat, see it rising off the pavement. A half-dozen eighteen-wheelers idled in the parking lot. He’d had less than eight hours’ sleep in three days. He needed a long shower, a dark room and cool sheets.
He didn’t need Kara Galway. She was a complication. A mistake. Making love to her had been damn stupid, even if he couldn’t bring himself to regret it—not for one second, no matter how hard he tried.
Zoe West answered on the first ring. “West.”
“Detective West, it’s Sam Temple. I’m returning your call.”
“Oh, right—thanks. Just a couple questions. Kara Galway said you were with her at a gallery opening in Austin when she heard about Governor Parisi’s death. I’m just following up.”
“You’ve talked to her?”
“Briefly.”
Sam frowned. “Why are you following up?”
“Routine.”
He doubted it. There was nothing routine about the death of a governor or Zoe West’s call. “Isn’t this a state investigation?”
“Big Mike died in my town. I’m assisting.”
In other words, she was sticking her nose in the investigation, whether the state cops wanted it there or not. Sam said nothing. He had his white Stetson on the seat beside him, his tie loosened, his badge still pinned to his shirt pocket. Two weeks on a serial murder investigation in an impoverished area in near-hundred-degree heat, and here he was on the phone talking about a rich man who’d drowned trying to save a damn bird.
“When did Ms. Galway arrive at the gallery?” Zoe West asked. “Did you see her?”
“She was already there when I arrived around seven o’clock.”
“That’s eight in the east. We figure Parisi drowned sometime around seven.”
Sam could see Kara now in her little black dress, her dark hair pulled back with a turquoise comb that he’d tugged out later, threading his fingers into her thick waves of hair even as he warned himself to leave while he still could.
“Aren’t you from San Antonio?” Zoe West asked.
“Detective West, I’m not seeing the point here.”
She made a clicking sound, as if she was thinking. “San Antonio’s about ninety miles from Austin, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’”
“Are you being sarcastic, Sergeant Temple?”
“No, ma’am.”
“People only call me ma’am when they’re being sarcastic.”
He almost smiled. “All right, Detective West. I won’t call you ma’am.”
“It’s a southern thing, right? The ma’am?”
Sam realized she was serious. “I like to think of it as a manners thing.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, I guess. Okay, back to this gallery. It’s in Austin, which is about ninety miles from San Antonio. It has reduced hours during the summer while the owners—Kevin and Eva Dunning—are at their summer place on Lake Champlain, but they came back special because this was the only time they could get Gordon Temple. Right so far?”
“Right so far,” Sam said, careful to avoid any hint of sarcasm. He’d let Detective West ask her questions. Why not? He might learn something about Kara and why she’d acted the way she had that night.
“The Dunnings are the in-laws of another Texas Ranger, a lieutenant, Jack Galway. He’s Kara Galway’s brother. Your superior, right?” West paused, adding, matter-of-fact, “This was all pretty easy to find out on the Internet. I read a couple articles about that business in the Adirondacks last winter. You got shot, didn’t you, Sergeant?”
Sam didn’t answer right away. Zoe West had done her homework. In February, he’d gone up north to help Jack sort out a murder investigation that had ended up involving Jack’s wife and twin teenage daughters. They’d done snow, ice and bitter cold, and Sam swore he’d never complain about the heat again. And, yes, he was shot.
Kara had slid her fingertips over the scar on his upper thigh.
Damn.
“It was just a flesh wound,” he told the Connecticut detective.
“The Galways are doing okay now?”
“Yes.”
“Gordon Temple’s a famous Native American painter—Cherokee, lives in New Mexico. You any relation?”
“That’s irrelevant, Detective.” But he’d spotted Gordon Temple that night and remembered the black hair streaked with gray, the dark eyes and muscular build that were a lot like Sam’s own.
Zoe West paused a beat. “So you were there, what, for the art?”
Now who was being sarcastic? Sam watched an overweight man with tattoos on his upper arms carry a bag of food to a big rig. He tried to picture the Bluefield detective in her small-town Connecticut police station.
“Okay, so why you were in Austin is beside the point,” she said. “Governor Stockwell called Ms. Galway shortly after seven your time. Did you see her take the call?”
“Yes. We left together about ten minutes later.” Sam had never talked to Gordon Temple, never complimented him on his paintings or said, “Oh, by the way, I’m your son.” He shifted, losing patience. “Detective West, you’re on a fishing expedition. I have things I need to do.”
She made another couple of clicking sounds. “All right, here’s the deal. Kara Galway is one of a very few who knew Governor Parisi couldn’t swim. She told you that, right?”
Sam didn’t answer.
“Oh. I guess it didn’t come up over coffee, huh? If someone wanted him dead and tossed the bluebird into the pool deliberately, hoping he’d fall or seeing to it he did—well, they’d have to know he couldn’t swim.”
“Stupid way to kill someone.”
“It worked. He’s dead. And it looks like an accident.”
“Maybe it was an accident.”
“Too many accidents around here for my taste,” Zoe West said.
Sam sat up straighter, hearing something in the Bluefield detective’s voice he recognized, maybe just because he was in the same line of work. “There’s been another accident?”
“You didn’t hear? Allyson Stockwell and her two children had a close call during a Fourth of July bonfire at her mother-in-law’s place here in town. A gas can exploded. Someone left it too close to the fire. No one’s owned up yet, of course.”
“Injuries?”
“Not from the explosion itself. A local guy—Pete Jericho—shoved Mrs. Stockwell and the kids out of the way just in time. He had some minor cuts and bruises. Scared the hell out of everyone.”
“Governor Parisi was there?” Sam asked.
“He was. What if someone tried and failed to arrange a fatal accident for him that night, then tried again and succeeded a few weeks later?”
“Is that your theory, Detective?”
“Just the sort of question to keep a law enforcement officer up nights, don’t you think, Sergeant?”
“What about the state investigators?”
“They