“It wouldn’t have made sense for Matt to do it, given how close he was to leaving home,” she protested.
Sounding irritated, he said, “Maybe your father skated on his responsibilities because first your mother and then you let him. Did you ever think of that?”
She looked away. “I…sometimes.”
He clasped her hand again and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Beth. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean that to sound like I’m criticizing you. You were a kid, doing your best to keep your family going. Obviously, you did just fine. They were lucky to have you.”
Beth focused on his hand, strong, so much bigger than hers, and chose not to say anything. Only she knew how much resentment Emily and Matt felt. That didn’t suggest she’d done such a fabulous job, did it?
Then she lifted her gaze to his. “You give really mixed messages, you know.”
His jaw muscles flexed. “You know as well as I do why that is.”
She wished she could believe she was so amazingly irresistible. Not believing made it a lot easier to pull her hand free and say, “Well, stop.”
CHAPTER NINE
HE’D DESERVED BETH’S ACERBITY, Tony reflected. And probably more.
At the station, he sat with his chair back, his feet stacked on his desk, and brooded.
After leaving her at the house, he’d stopped at her mother’s old tax and accounting firm, where he had spoken with one of the partners. Trish Senyitko hadn’t known Christine well at all; they had only overlapped for about a year. Keith Reistad would remember her best, but he wasn’t in right then.
And she had declined to provide a list of Christine’s clients. He would need a warrant for that, she had said, with a definite chill.
He’d just gotten off the phone with Lucy Jimenez, an assistant DA, who had submitted the warrant request to a judge.
He still needed to talk to any neighbors of the Marshalls who had lived there thirteen years ago. Once he did that, though, the cat would be out of the bag. The gossip, the questions, wouldn’t be pleasant for any of the Marshalls.
Tony frowned. He should head out to the community college and talk to John’s colleagues who had been there long enough to have met Christine at faculty functions, too.
Another thing to ask Beth: names of her parents’ friends. Not that the lover was necessarily one of them. But, if nothing else, Christine might have confided in a female friend.
Tony was a lot happier to have an excuse to call Beth than he should have been.
You give really mixed messages, you know.
Trouble was, his feelings weren’t mixed at all. If it hadn’t been for the job, he’d have been after her from the minute they’d met.
He glanced up to see Troyer escorting someone to his desk for an interview. Another detective in the department, Jack Moore, had fallen in love with a woman who was a suspect in a teenage girl’s disappearance. At the time, Tony had been too busy to pay much attention, but he knew nobody had come down on Jack.
Beth wasn’t even a suspect. The problem was that her loyalties lay with her father and brother, both of whom were suspects.
Uh huh. What if you end up arresting her father? Remember that little glitch in your campaign?
No, he hadn’t forgotten, but his instincts told him John Marshall hadn’t killed his wife, that Beth was right; her father simply wasn’t capable of that level of rage and violence.
Who could object if he took her out to dinner and they didn’t talk about the investigation?
Except he did have those questions he needed to ask.
Wait until tomorrow.
A glance at his computer told him five o’clock had come and gone. He’d probably wasted a good ten minutes waffling here, on top of the earlier, useful things he had accomplished. She might have stayed to make dinner for her dad.
Didn’t mean she had to stay and eat with him.
Tony did some internal swearing, reached for his desk phone…and put it back down. He needed to go somewhere else to make this call. He had to draw a line between on the job and off the job. He grunted. Too bad he’d already irrevocably blurred that line.
He ended up at the rear of the building, looking at the parking lot. Smokers sometimes gathered out here, but he was alone right now. Another hesitation, another go-around with his conscience, or at least his sense of self-preservation, and he mumbled a foul word and hit the green dial button. Maybe Beth would be less of a distraction if they actually got something going.