Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“It can be. The point is, she might tell me things she wouldn’t tell you.”

“I doubt it.”

The woman got her hackles up. “Should you even be working this case? After all, you have a personal connection here.”

“I met Sherry Bishop one time. Maybe twice. There’s no reason—”

“I’m not talking about your relationship to the victim, Raintree. Until we eliminate her, your cousin is a natural suspect.”

“Echo wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“You tell her, Gideon,” Sherry Bishop said in an irate voice. “How dare she insinuate that Echo would do this to me?”

“You’re not objective,” Malory insisted.

Gideon did his best to ignore Sherry’s ramblings, which had nothing at all to do with her death. “We’ll establish my cousin’s alibi first thing, if it’ll make you feel better. Once she’s eliminated from your list of suspects maybe it’ll be okay with you if I do my job.”

“There’s no reason to get snippy.”

Gideon leaned down slightly and lowered his voice. “Detective Malory, if you’re determined to be my new partner I don’t guess there’s much I can do about it. Not at the moment, anyway. But do us both a favor and act like a detective, not a little girl.”

Her nostrils flared. Ah, he’d hit a nerve. “I am not a girl, Raintree, you—”

“Snippy,” he interrupted. “A word not used by real men anywhere.”

“Fine,” she said with unnecessary sharpness. “I’ll just grunt a lot and scratch my ass now and then, and maybe I’ll fit in.”

Sherry grimaced. “I’ll bet a chick like her never scratches her ass.”

The truth of the matter was that Gideon knew it didn’t matter what Hope Malory did or said. She was going to get under his skin big time. Like it or not, she was already there, and she was going to stay until he found a way to get rid of her. Out of sight, out of mind, right? It wasn’t as if she was the only pretty woman in Wilmington.

He didn’t need a partner; he didn’t want one; it would never work. And in the end, it wouldn’t matter.

Malory wouldn’t last long.

THREE

Monday—2:50 p.m.

“Lunch?” Gideon glanced at his new partner briefly as he negotiated a turn in the road. The wind blew Malory’s carefully styled sleek hair into her face. He could have put the top up, he supposed. Then again, why make this easy on her? She’d insisted on coming along, and he’d insisted on driving. She didn’t want to know what could happen to her new, electronically handicapped car if he was too near it at the wrong moment.

“I thought you wanted to talk to that club owner,” she shouted to be heard above the wind.

“He won’t be in until four or later.” They’d already spoken to the manager at the coffee shop where Bishop and Echo had both worked for the past seven months. Mark Nelson knew nothing of interest, but Gideon wanted to go back tonight and have a look around. Maybe the killer would be there, watching for a reaction to the news of Sherry Bishop’s death.

“Okay,” Malory said reluctantly. “I could eat something, I suppose.”

She sounded less than enthusiastic, but Gideon figured she would never admit that the murder scene had dampened her appetite.

He made a couple of turns on narrow downtown streets and pulled into the parking lot of Mama Tanya’s Café. It was late enough in the afternoon that the lunch rush was over. The gravel parking lot was practically deserted.

“Where are we, Raintree?” Malory asked suspiciously, eyeing the small concrete block building that could use a coat of paint and a bucket of spackle. And maybe a window or two.

“Mama Tanya’s,” he said, opening his door and stepping out. “Best soul food in town.”

She followed him, her heels crunching in the gravel. “If you’re trying to scare me off…” she muttered.