Murder in the Marketplace by Lora Roberts

ahead in business have a kind of star quality of their own, an intensity and drive that can be felt. Sharp intelligence beamed out of those blue eyes when he willed it. “Do you keep up with the software market?”
    “Not really—just what I hear occasionally from Emery.” I gestured at the phone. “But from the calls today, you’ve really got something."
    Ed turned the smile on Mindy. “It’s great of you to help out at the front desk, Min."
    She blushed. “I’m glad to do it, Ed. We have to pull together, with Jenifer’s death on our minds.”
    A cloud crossed his face. “Poor little Jenifer. How could something like that happen to such a nice kid?”
    I looked from one to the other. “What happened?”
    They were silent a moment. The answer came, surprisingly, from Door Number Two. “She killed herself.” We all turned. A woman stood in the doorway—presumably Suzanne Hamner. She spoke unemotionally. “Mindy, I need the documentation on the last software update for the new product. Ed, could I talk to you for a minute?”
    Mindy scurried off. Suzanne and Ed faced each other across the reception roam. She was nearly as tall as he was, rangy and badly dressed in faded corduroy pants that had shrunk to reveal her ankles, which were encased in a grayish-white pair of those short athletic socks that have little pompons on their backs. Her running shoes were scuffed and dirty. Her shirt, a once-green polo, hung untucked. Abundant dark brown hair was pulled back from her intense, bony face with a rubber band.
    Her face was beautiful, in the ageless way of fine sculpture. It could have belonged to a model—high cheekbones, great dark eyes, a full-lipped mouth held tight just then with irritation. She, too, looked to be in her early forties, not because of the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but from a sensation of maturity and pain that she radiated.
    Between her and Ed stretched a nearly visible force field of vibrating emotions. It hurt just to be in its way.
    “Can it wait?” Ed glanced at his watch. “I’ve got another appointment any minute.”
    “This won’t take long.” Suzanne held her office door open, politely indicating that he should precede her through it. He straightened with an impatient sigh.
    Before he could cross the room, though, the plate glass doors swung violently open. The young man who stood there carried his own aura of powerful emotion. His eyes were reddened, and his hair wildly disarranged.
    He advanced on Ed, though he glanced at Suzanne. “So you finally did it.” His skin was pale, blotchy around his eyes. His words came with a shaky effort that was familiar, and I realized he was holding back those gusty, hysterical sobs that come—I had thought, only to adolescent girls such as I had been—after crying in the total abandonment of grief. “You finally killed my sister.”
     

Chapter 10
     
    Ed stayed calm.
    “You’re overwrought, Jason,” he said kindly, guiding the young man to the client chair in front of my desk.
    Jason wouldn’t sit. He bounced up, shaking off the pats Ed bestowed on his shoulder. “It’s all your fault,” he shouted, sounding much younger than he looked. I put his age at about twenty-five or twenty-six. “I know what you were doing.”
    People began to gather in the corridor between the dividers; Angel peeped curiously around the edge, along with Mindy and a couple of others I didn't recognize. In a place so open, arguments would have to take place behind Doors Number One or Two to keep from being broadcast wholesale through the office.
    Ed stopped patting. He put one hand up to screen his hurt expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jason,” he said softly. “But if you want to blame me, go ahead. Maybe there was something I could have done—said—that would have stopped her.”
    Jason looked uncertain for the first time. “You were working on her, pushing her all the time to have an affair. Couldn’t