Deadly Devotion by Sandra Orchard

button.
    Edward heaved the bag over the lip of his trunk.
    Hand itching to grab his gun, Tom stepped out of his car as casually as his racing heart permitted. “Planning a trip?”
    Edward’s arms jerked at the sound of Tom’s voice, but he immediately resumed what he was doing. “No, this stuff is for Kate,” he said, seemingly unfazed by Tom’s arrival. Edward’s smudged polo shirt told another story.
    “Are you all right?” Tom asked, his hands poised at his side, ready to draw his gun if necessary.
    “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”
    Tom motioned to his chest. “You have blood on your shirt.”
    Without so much as glancing toward his shirt, Edward reached into his pocket.
    Tom went for his gun.
    Edward pulled a paper towel from his pocket and pressed it against his palm. “I cut my hand on a broken mirror in the basement.”
    Tom let his gun settle back into its holster and cautiously made his way toward Edward’s car. “Let me give you a hand with that bag.” Tom helped Edward stuff the bag into the trunk, all the while feeling along its sides. Whatever was in the bag, it wasn’t a body.
    “What’re you doing here?”
    “Looking for Kate. Do you know where she is? Her roommate told me I’d find her here.”
    “You just missed her. Said she was late for a meeting.”
    “At the research station?”
    Perspiration beaded Edward’s upper lip. Whether from nerves or exertion, Tom couldn’t be sure.
    “Don’t know.” Edward wheezed as he struggled to wedge the duffle deeper into his miniscule trunk. “She ran out of here like a bat out of you-know-where.”
    Tom schooled his reaction. He knew better than to ask questions that might prompt the man to demand his lawyer, but neither was he ready to take Jim—aka Edward—at his word. The man’s act was slicker than his car.
    “Why?” Edward gave the bag one last shove. “Has Kate convinced you to reopen the case?”
    “Not officially, no. Unofficially, there are a few loose ends I’d like to see tied up.”
    Edward slammed the trunk closed and fingered his keys with a little too much interest.
    Oh yes, this man knew exactly what some of those loose ends might be.
    When Edward spoke again, the bravado in his voice sounded forced. “Glad to hear it. Because my aunt was too smart to drink the wrong tea.”
    Nope, Edward wasn’t as cool as he’d like Tom to believe. Of course, now wasn’t the time for Tom to tip his hand. Not with one suspicious death, and Kate, still unaccounted for. One mention of Edward’s true identity and he’d be lawyered up before nightfall.
    Mrs. C tootled her fingers from her vantage point on the other side of the picket fence. From the look of the pile of weeds in her bucket, she’d been on patrol for a while, whichboded well for Kate’s safety. Julie’s overactive imagination had gotten them both a little too keyed up.
    Tom’s cell phone rang. That was probably her now. “Excuse me, I need to take this.” Confident Edward wouldn’t try to leave while Tom’s car blocked the drive, he put some distance between them before answering.
    “Edward killed Daisy,” the panicked voice on the other end of the phone shrilled.
    “Kate?” Tom pinned his gaze on Crump, who’d gone back into the garage and started rummaging through a box along the wall. “Are you okay?”
    “Yes. No. I don’t know. Listen to me.”
    Her rattled response had Tom on the verge of ripping into Crump, demanding to know what he’d done to her.
    “Edward burned Daisy’s journal. It must’ve had something incriminating. You have to arrest him.”
    Tom could just imagine the incriminating details Daisy might have written about Crump in her diary, but without the evidence he had no grounds for an arrest. “Where are you?”
    “I can’t believe we trusted him.” Tires squealed and Kate’s next words sounded breathless. “Daisy loved him like her own son.”
    Tom’s chest tightened at the sound of Kate careening through traffic. “Where