An Absence of Motive Read online

  Scanning the room, he did his best to put names with the faces he recognized. The town was small, but he’d only lived there for a few months. He wished he’d asked Lori to come to the visitation. She’d grown up in town and could give him the lowdown.

  “Coffee, boss?”

  Ben jerked, then gaped at his deputy, wondering—not for the first time—if she was some kind of mind reader.

  Lori winced. “Sorry, I thought you heard me say your name.”

  She pointed toward the lobby. “Coffee? I have to warn you, it’s not as good as Julianne’s, but it’s a sight better than the sludge you brew.”

  Ben smirked. “Maybe in a minute.” He cocked his head to indicate that he was listening to the people around him. “I was thinking I should have asked you to come tonight.”

  “No need to ask,” Lori said, scanning the room. “I’d have been here anyway.”

  Ben stared at her dumbly for a moment, trying to remember if he’d ever bothered to ask if she was acquainted with the deceased. “Did you know—”

  She shook her head, cutting him off. “No. I mean, not well. One of his cousins on his mama’s side was in my class. I was a couple years ahead of them.” She nodded to a knot of people who bore a vague resemblance to the woman standing in front of the casket. “Doesn’t take much to make a connection in these parts.”

  “You were coming anyway,” he concluded.

  “Everyone will,” she corrected with quiet certainty. “The only people who don’t show up for a visitation here are the ones who don’t give a damn about what anyone says about them. Reputation is currency in a small town. There’s a pecking order, and believe me, attendance is taken.”

  He pressed his lips together then gave Lori a grateful nudge with his elbow. “Noted.”

  He spotted some familiar faces. Camille Brewster from the bakery visited with a small cluster of women as they inched forward. Chet Rinker, the pharmacist, stood solemn-faced and stared in a trance at the wooden cross suspended behind the casket at the front of the room. An older woman with bright red hair stood behind him, leaning heavily on her walker but steadfastly refusing all offers of assistance, cups of water and vacated chairs. He speculated she might be the Miss Louisa Shelby. People loved to tell tales about the town’s oldest and most colorful resident.

  “Where’s Clint Young’s father?”

  “Ran off with his secretary about ten years ago,” Lori supplied quietly.

  “Secretary?”

  “He was Henry Masters’s right-hand man at Timber Masters until he got bit by the love bug,” she reported. “About the time Clint would have been starting junior high, I guess.” She gave her head a sad shake and searched the crowd. “I don’t think he’s here. They moved off somewhere. Tupelo? Tuscaloosa? Some city with a T.” She shrugged. “Anyhow, it was big gossip for a long time. Still is.”

  “Really? Even that long ago,” he commented, shooting her a skeptical look.

  “Gossip moves fast, but people’s memories are long.” She gave him a smirk. “This isn’t the city. Not a lot happens here, so when something does, people tend to hang on to it.”

  There was a rustling commotion at the back of the room, and the line of mourners shifted, moving to one side of the aisle or the other. Henry Masters made his way into the room, pausing to exchange nods, handshakes, shoulder squeezes and cheek kisses with nearly every man or woman he passed. His wife and daughter followed in his wake but left the glad-handing to him. The women doled out smiles and pats on the arm here and there, but it was clear Henry was the man to be hailed.

  When Henry clasped both of Eleanor Young’s hands between his and bent his head close to speak to her, Ben remembered something he’d overheard at the Youngs’ house. “Do they have a son?”

  He felt Lori stiffen beside him and tore his attention from the blonde on the other side of the room to look at her. “What?”

  “The Masters,” he clarified. “Do they have a son?”

  She gaped at him, but Ben simply waited for an answer. Patience was often the most effective tool in getting people to talk.

  “Yes. Jeff. His name was Jeff.” She cleared her throat, then spoke in a quiet, but infinitely steadier, manner. “Jeff Masters. Why do you ask?”

  “Was?” He leaned forward, inviting her to continue.

  Lori swallowed hard and said only, “He passed away less than a year ago.”

  Ben felt an instant stab of remorse. “You knew him.”

  She huffed a laugh. “I’m sure it’s strange to you because you’re new here and all, but we all know each other. Everyone.” She looked up, meeting his gaze directly. “Some of us better than others, but we all ‘know’ each other,” she said, using air quotes to emphasize the difference in degrees of knowledge.

  Something about the deflection pinged his radar. “How well did you know Jeff Masters?” Suddenly, he realized he was asking the wrong question. “Wait. How did Jeff Masters die?”

  Lori pressed her lips together and shook her head. He caught the shimmer of unshed tears in her eyes, then she pivoted on her heel and pushed past the guests lingering at the back of the room to get to the reception area. Torn between going after her to press for answers and the uneasy feeling in his gut, he hesitated. The room hummed around him. Quiet conversation charged with a buzz of tension. He looked to the front and found Henry Masters had escorted the old woman with the walker past the people in line and delivered her to Eleanor Young.

  He scanned the room and spotted Carolee Masters seated in the front row. As always, she was immaculately dressed in a navy blue suit with black piping. Her slender ankles were crossed and tucked neatly beneath her seat. She sat still and straight, her face pointed toward the casket. Unmoving.

  The hairs on his arms prickled as he sought Marlee Masters. Something told him she’d stick close to her mother. He wasn’t wrong.

  She stood near the end of the front row, her bearing erect and alert. Protective. Clearly ready to run interference for her mother, if the need arose. The air in his lungs grew too full and hot for him to hold. He exhaled in a long gust as he took her in. There was nothing provocative or the least bit suggestive in the styling of the black dress she wore, but the fabric draped and clung to her curves. She wore the same killer shoes she’d had on when she accompanied her father to town hall, but they were miles more lethal paired with the dress rather than the pantsuit.

  When he lifted his head, he found her staring back at him, her jaw tight and tilted at a defensive angle.

  A sizzle of awareness traveled up his spine, but Marlee Masters didn’t back down.

  Aware his stare would be considered rude, he inclined his head, then looked away.

  A group of young women approached Marlee with a hushed glee wholly inappropriate in the setting. She looked decidedly uncomfortable as they closed around her, chattering and gushing over her, completely oblivious to the fact they were in a funeral home.

  “Killed himself, they say,” an older man seated in one of the back rows said, his volume making up for what was clearly his own hearing loss.

  “I heard he was runnin’ with a bad crowd, but...”

  The last part of the snippet dangled tantalizingly, but Ben had no idea who gave voice to the speculation. There were at least a dozen women in his vicinity.

  “I took a seven-layer salad,” a woman to his right said to the woman sitting next to her. The two of them waved paper fans attached to oversize Popsicle sticks in the general direction of their faces. “It’s so hard to know what to do. I couldn’t just throw together a tater-tot casserole,” the first woman complained, pausing midwave to cast a glance at her friend. She sniffed her disdain. “Women like Eleanor and Carolee don’t eat carbohydrates. They aren’t normal people.”

  “Lord, no,” her friend concurred. “Everyone knows Carolee Masters is perpetually on a liquid diet.�
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  The two women snickered and resumed their desultory fanning. For the first time, Ben noticed how warm the room had become. A rivulet of sweat ran down his spine as he checked the door. The crush of people kept coming.

  He wasn’t going to be able to make heads or tails out of any of the things he overheard. He’d unwittingly tripped headfirst into a sticky spiderweb of small-town connections. But he had to figure out where he’d gone wrong. He needed his deputy to provide some context. Resolved, he headed toward the lobby, hoping she hadn’t decided to leave.

  She sat in a small alcove, perched on the edge of a velvet settee looking shell-shocked. In one hand she clutched a napkin with two chocolate chip cookies, and in the other, a bottle of water perspiring only slightly more than he was.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He’d never seen his deputy looking so vulnerable, and he had to say, the look didn’t suit her. “How are you doing?”

  She peered up at him, then past him. The corners of her mouth tilted up as she nodded to the procession of people waiting to pay their respects. “There’s my family.”

  He spotted a cluster of people who matched Lori’s tawny coloring at the tail end of the line. The youngest of the children appeared to be no older than ten. “Oh, wow.” Then, realizing his reaction probably wasn’t the correct one, he gave a self-effacing laugh. “Sorry, uh, big family.”

  “I’m the oldest of seven,” she said with a low nod. She wrinkled her nose, but a devilish light sparked in her dark eyes. “Cath-o-lics,” she said in a stage whisper. “What can you do?”

  Ben chuckled. For the first time, it occurred to him Lori was nearly as much of an outsider in this town as he was. The only difference was, she’d been born here.

  He nodded to the empty spot beside her. “May I?”

  She scooted to the side to allow him more room. “Sure.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. I guess I’m figuring out what to ask and what not to ask.”

  “This town is full of quicksand.” He waited while she took a deep pull on the water bottle. His patience was rewarded. “I was seeing Jeff Masters when he died,” she said, low and confidential.

  “Was it a secret?”

  She shook her head, and her lips curved downward. “No, not a secret, but there were plenty of people who didn’t approve.”

  “Like who?”

  She snorted a laugh. “His parents, mine, anyone who didn’t think the crown prince of Pine Bluff should be spending time with me,” she said, waving the water bottle in an all-encompassing circle.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not white,” she said bluntly. He sputtered a weak protest, but she plowed ahead. “Oh, I’d be good enough for some people but not for Jeff Masters.”

  “I see.”

  They lapsed into silence for a minute. Ben watched as people slipped out of the room. A few sidled closer to the exit as they greeted newcomers, no doubt hoping they could sneak out without anyone taking note.

  “He killed himself,” she said softly. He jerked his head around to look at her, but she kept her eyes fixed on the water bottle in her hands. She picked at the loose edge of the label with her thumbnail.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We hadn’t been together long. And no, I don’t know why.” Her words were spoken thoughtfully, as though she was shifting through memories in her mind. She gave a short laugh, then took a sip of her water. Straightening her shoulders, she looked him directly in the eye. “I guess I fooled myself into believing we were more than we were. He certainly didn’t give me a second thought in the end.”

  “I am sorry,” he repeated, enunciating each word in the hopes his sincerity might ring through.

  “Anyway...” She studied the cookies with disinterest. “I’m trying to move on, but now Clint.” She sighed. “They say something about how one suicide can lead to others, don’t they?”

  “There are theories, I suppose,” he said carefully.

  She bit the cookie in half, then chewed. “It’s weird, though. Clint and Jeff used to be friends. They fell out years ago. I don’t have any answers for why,” she added with a preemptive glance at him. “But I can’t imagine Clint being so torn up over Jeff he’d do the same thing.”

  “Maybe they were unrelated,” he said gently.

  Lori shook her head, her sadness palpable. “Maybe,” she murmured, but she sounded unconvinced.

  He wanted to press her to explain, but a pair of shiny, expensive-looking black high heels appeared in front of him. He fixated on them for a moment, then allowed himself the luxury of savoring every inch of Marlee Masters’s long, lithe frame as he lifted his head.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. The agitation in her posture clearly indicated the woman didn’t have a sorry bone in her body. She wanted their attention, and she wanted it now. Something about her demeanor made him want to shut her down, but then she shifted her focus to Lori, and her expression softened.

  “Hey, Lori.” She paired the casual greeting with a brief flutter of her hand. “Can you help me?”

  Lori met the other woman’s gaze, surprise written all over her face. “Um, sure.”

  Marlee darted a quick glance at him, then shrugged. “I guess you can see this too.” She thrust out her phone, and Ben watched as his deputy carefully took it from her.

  Lori cradled the device in both hands. He didn’t blame her for the extra caution. Replacing that particular model could eat up a mere mortal’s entire paycheck—before taxes. Which, he supposed, made sense. Marlee Masters seemed the type to be accustomed to having the latest and greatest.

  He tipped his head to the side as he looked at the blank screen. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, sorry. Here.” She plucked the phone from Lori’s hands and unlocked the screen by flashing a megawatt grin at the camera. The moment it sprang to life, she ditched the beauty queen routine and placed the phone back in Lori’s hands. “Open the message app.”

  Lori did, and Ben leaned close enough to see a string of text conversations appear. There were a couple labeled “Dad,” one with “Mom” and a whole string of others showing only ten-digit phone numbers rather than contact information.

  Lori opened the first of the unlabeled texts. It read simply, Welcome home.

  Lori tapped back to the list screen, her expression tightening. “I take it you don’t know who this was from?”

  Marlee shook her head. “No.”

  The next message read, Lookin good marlee.

  His deputy snorted and clicked off the second message, mumbling, “Too busy for capitalization or punctuation, I see. I guess we can narrow it down to someone who flunked English in school.”

  Marlee laughed, but the sound was mirthless.

  Ben peered over Lori’s shoulder. The third and fourth messages were along the same vein. One, a brief approval of the dress she’d worn to visit Eleanor Young; the other, unsolicited commentary on whether she should be eating whatever it was she had been carrying in a Brewster’s Bakery box.

  “Nunya, you jerk,” Lori muttered as she clicked back to the list of messages.

  She started to open the next text, but Ben stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “Wait.”

  Both women swung startled gazes in his direction. “What?” Lori asked, suddenly on high alert.

  “They get worse,” Marlee said, frustration making her voice low and tight.

  “They’re all from different numbers,” he said, pointing to the list on the phone. “Have you tried to call any of these numbers?”

  At last, he felt the full force of Marlee’s blue-flame eyes on him. “Yes. They all go to a recording saying the person is unavailable.”

  Rubbing his chin, Ben shook his head. “Burner phones or some kind of automated thing?” he puzzled aloud.

  “No clue. Read the
last one. It came while I was in there,” she informed them, nodding toward the viewing parlor.

  Ben tore his gaze from Marlee’s troubled expression, his gut tightening with dread as Lori scrolled to the most recent text and opened it.

  Can’t wait to see more of you.

  He looked up and found Marlee Masters staring directly into his eyes, and the only words that popped into his mind were Me too.

  * * *

  GOD, SHE HADN’T wanted to get the hot sheriff involved in this, but the last message had come through minutes ago, and it freaked her out. She’d abandoned her mother long enough to give official condolences to Mrs. Young and settle Miss Louisa Shelby into one of the chairs in the front row, walker close at hand. Her father was still working the room, so she’d picked up her purse and clutched it close as she claimed the chair next to her mother.

  She’d felt the vibration indicating an incoming message. Murmuring a weak cover story about needing a tissue, she’d opened her bag and took out her phone. But what had once been a chastisable offense in her mother’s eyes hadn’t mattered. Carolee Masters’s once all-seeing gaze was completely glazed over.

  Now, Sheriff Kinsella was looking at her, and she couldn’t look away. His dark eyes burned with intensity as he nudged Lori Cabrera with his elbow and extended his hand, broad palm up. “May I?”

  She eyeballed him, wondering what his angle might be. After all, he’d been reading along with them the whole time. But now, he was asking permission. Despite what most people thought of her, Marlee was far more accustomed to being told what to do. The question was a formality, but he was giving her the power to say yes or no. The very fact that he gave her a choice made her want to give him anything he wanted.

  “Of course.”

  He took the phone from Lori and began opening and closing the text messages with a detached efficiency she found herself envying. She’d been tempted to delete the messages when they first started, but the better judgment gleaned in three years of law school tempered the impulse. Evidence. Her gut told her these creepy texts from some rando might one day be evidence, so she kept them.