Deadly Secrets by Jude Pittman Page A

else, I’d appreciate a call.”
    Kelly got up and faced Krystal. “I’m sorry.” His voice was warm and Krystal raised her eyes. “Maybe I can give you a ring later. I knew Anna pretty well. If you’d like to talk about her, I’d be happy to share what I know.”
    “Thank you,” she said. “I’d like that.”
    “Did you recognize the guy she was talking about?” Gus asked as they walked back to the car.
    “Bubba. But if you think he had anything to do with strangling Anna, you can forget it. Bubba’s one of those guys who wears guilt plastered all over his face. I’ve talked to him and if he was hiding something about Anna’s murder, I’d damn sure have got a sense of that.”
    “Greed does strange things to people,” Gus said. “We’re already checking him out anyway. One of your Creek people told us Bubba had a falling out with Anna over some fish camp he wanted to buy.”
    “Frank Perkins,” Kelly snarled. “If there’s any shit to start you can always count on Frank. Sure, Bubba and Anna were talking about buying a fish camp and apparently they had words about it but that was just booze talk. Anna was temperamental when she got to drinking and Bubba knew it.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind.” Gus pulled his car up beside Old Blue and turned to face Kelly. “I’m running a check on everybody out there, especially the ones who were hanging around the Hideaway that night. If I come up with anything, I’ll give you a call. In the meantime, keep your ears open and let me know what you hear.”
    “Will do,” Kelly said. “And thanks for the ribs. Next time, they’ll be on me.”
    It was after ten when Kelly reached Indian Creek but he knew Cam would be waiting for news, so he stopped at the Hideaway. The bar was empty, except for Leroy and Marty at their usual table playing cribbage. Kelly sat on a bar stool and Cam reached in the cooler for a Budweiser.
    “Anything new?”
    “Gus found the mystery woman.” Kelly propped his arms on the counter. “She wasn’t much help though.”
    “I see.” Cam’s face dropped.
    “It’s not hopeless. She gave us a couple of leads I’m going to follow up. That’s more than I had before I went there. Krystal—that’s her name—is Anna’s daughter and from what she had to say, I’ve an idea that Anna’s past could stand some looking into.”
    “I’ll be damned.” Cam’s eyes widened and he shook his head in disbelief. “I never figgered Anna for having a kid. How come she never came around before?”
    “Seems Anna took off when Krystal was seven and left her with her grandmother. Krystal hired a detective a couple weeks ago and he tracked Anna down.”
    Cam frowned. “There was a fella named Boscon nosing around out here. He claimed to be writing a story for some fishing magazine. I wondered about him at the time. He asked a lot of questions and most of them had nothing to do with fishing.”
    “That’s the guy. He told Krystal about Anna’s stall at the flea market and she came out to look. She was waiting for a chance to talk to Anna when Bubba showed up with a bottle of whiskey.”
    Cam grinned. “Sounds like Bubba.”
    “Yep! You know how Anna was. She tipped the bottle right there in her stall and started guzzling. Seems Krystal snapped when she saw that. She tried to grab the bottle and fell into Anna’s chair.”
    “Do you believe her?” Doubt registered in Cam’s dark eyes and his unsmiling face showed the strain he was under.
    Kelly nodded. “Yeah. Her story pretty much jives with what I saw. It’s her family situation that’s got me curious. Apparently, Krystal has always wondered what happened to her mother but nobody in the family would talk about it. All she knows is that her father committed suicide and her mother disappeared the same night.”
    “Sounds like a can of worms.”
    “It’s got a nasty smell all right,” Kelly agreed.
    “I’m planning to dig around a bit into Anna’s past and I think I’ll