The Lover. BEVERLY BARTON

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СКАЧАТЬ she was naked when they found her, and you know what that usually means—it means she was probably raped. Poor girl.”

      “Wonder if they think her husband killed her?” Amy said. “I tried to pry something out of Jerry Dale last night, but he wasn’t talking. I told him, what good is it for me to be the DA’s wife if the DA never tells me anything.”

      All three women laughed.

      “Did somebody tell a good joke?” Robyn asked as she pulled the serving cart behind herself.

      “Not really,” Brenda replied. “It was just nervous laughter.”

      “We were talking about that poor Stephanie Preston,” Thomasina said.

      Robyn retrieved two salads in plastic containers from the serving cart, then handed one to Thomasina and the other to her mother. “You know, when she came up missing and all those searches didn’t turn up anything, I had a feeling she was dead. It gives me cold chills to think about what happened to her.” Robyn handed Amy a salad.

      “We were trying to dig information out of your mother, but she won’t tell us anything,” Amy said.

      Robyn eyed her mother speculatively, the corners of her wide, full mouth turning up ever so slightly. Brenda knew that expression only too well. It was Robyn’s shame-on-you-Mama look.

      “Being members of the sheriff’s family doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in possession of any more information than the average citizen,” Robyn said, then winked at her mother.

      Brenda let out a mental sigh of relief that her daughter hadn’t given her away. But then Robyn had been Brenda’s coconspirator all her life, backing her up, keeping her secrets, sharing in her love for gossip. Bernie had been the tattletale, always telling R.B. everything. Her elder daughter had never learned the art of telling socially acceptable little white lies. Like R.B., she could be too in-your-face blunt and brutally honest. That detrimental trait wasn’t very appealing to most men and was probably one of the reasons Bernie couldn’t find a husband. That and the fact that Bernie needed to lose twenty pounds.

      * * *

      Since the Preston home was in Jackson County, Sheriff Mays accompanied Bernie, Jim and Charlie Patterson when they met Kyle Preston and Stephanie’s parents at the white vinyl-sided house the newlywed couple had rented near Hollywood. Bernie asked the parents and husband to come outside with her and sit on the porch to talk to her and Ed Mays while Charlie Patterson and Jim Norton searched the house.

      The parents sat side by side in the porch swing. The husband sat in one of the two white rocking chairs, while Ed Mays took the other. Bernie remained standing.

      “I can only imagine how difficult this is for y’all.” Bernie looked at each of them individually. “And I’m truly sorry that we have to question y’all again.”

      “Ed explained,” Jay Floyd, Stephanie’s father, said. “We want to do whatever we can to help y’all catch whoever killed our little girl.” Tears welled up in the middle-aged man’s faded brown eyes.

      “We appreciate your cooperation.” Bernie glanced at Emmy Floyd, Stephanie’s mother, who sat quietly, tears streaming down her cheeks and a glazed expression on her face. She held her hands in her lap and kept twisting her gold wedding band around and around. Dear God, how horrible this must be for her. To lose a child would be bad enough, but to know that child had suffered repeated brutality for nearly two weeks would be something no mother could ever come to terms with.

      Bernie turned to Kyle Preston, and she could tell by the glassy look in his eyes that he was still medicated. “Mr. Preston … Kyle … thank you for allowing us to search your house. I promise that Agent Patterson and Captain Norton will not tear things apart in the search.”

      “I don’t know what they think they’ll find,” Kyle said. “If I’m not a suspect …” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard.

      “You’re not a suspect, Kyle. Your in-laws verify the fact that you were at their house the evening Stephanie came up missing, that you two had eaten supper there before her night class and that you’d stayed on to help Mr. Floyd work on his tractor.”

      “That’s right,” Jay Floyd said. “We expected Stephie to come back by and pick up Kyle, and when she didn’t show up by eleven, we called Ed.”

      Bernie nodded. “I realize y’all have answered a lot of questions since that night, that y’all did everything you could to help us in our investigation then and again yesterday after we verified that Stephanie was dead.”

      Emmy Floyd keened softly. Her lips puckered; her chin quivered. Jay scooted closer to his wife where they sat in the porch swing and put his arm around her shoulders.

      “I hate to go over this again, but it’s possible something one of you thinks is totally insignificant might help us in the investigation.” Bernie eased backward and braced her hips against the porch banisters. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Stephanie? Someone who was upset with her or had a grudge against one of you?”

      “Our girl didn’t have an enemy in this world,” Jay said. “She was as good as gold.”

      “Jay and Emmy don’t have any enemies,” Ed Mays told Bernie. “I don’t know a soul who doesn’t think the world of them and of all three of their kids, too.”

      Bernie nodded again. “What about you, Kyle?”

      “I don’t know of anybody, except maybe all of Stephie’s old boyfriends,” Kyle replied. “They gotta be jealous because I got Stephie.”

      “She was a prize,” Jay said. “Pretty. Smart as a whip. A good girl.”

      Old boyfriends. Hmm … Was it possible that an old boyfriend hated Stephanie for dumping him in favor of Kyle? Hated her enough to kidnap her, rape and torture her, then kill her?

      “Was Stephanie dating someone she broke up with before the two of you got serious?” Bernie asked.

      “I—I wasn’t serious about the old boyfriends,” Kyle said nervously. “The only boyfriend she ever had before me was Richie Lowery.”

      “Richie was a good boy,” Jay said. “Besides, he’s the one who broke up with Stephie.”

      “He might have been the one who ended things, but I think he wished he hadn’t,” Kyle said.

      “What makes you say that?” Bernie asked.

      Kyle glanced at his wife’s parents, then at Ed Mays. “Stephie got some notes and some little presents from him last month. She showed them to me and I told her that if he called her or bothered her, she was to tell me and I’d go have a talk with Richie. You know, beat the shit out of him if he messed with her.”

      “Are you saying Richie was harassing Stephanie?” Bernie looked point-blank at Kyle.

      “Nah, nothing like that. After a couple of notes and presents, nothing else happened. I guess when Stephie didn’t respond, he got the message that she was happily married.”

      “Why didn’t you tell us about this before now?” Ed asked.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ