A Parfait Murder (7 page)

A flush licked up Sonny’s neck. “Yeah, well, I may not be your daddy, but right now I’m the closest you got.”

“Not true,” Alice said. “Mr. Harper’s been more of a dad to me than you could ever be.”

Bree nearly crushed my fingers in her grip. We’d both seen plenty of Alice’s righteous indignation and raw fury, but it was always directed at her mom and we knew it was just teenagery hormones. But this was the real deal, our girl’s deepest pain on display. It was as if she’d opened a vein in the middle of the A-la-mode, and it was brutal to watch.

“At most you gave me your DNA,” she continued. “And that’s fine by me. I don’t want anything else from you. So you can drop your stupid lawsuit, because I wouldn’t take one red cent from you. Not now, not ever.”

Alice’s chin ticked up a notch. “It was nice meeting you, Miz Charlize. Welcome to Dalliance.” She whirled around, pushed her way between me and Bree, and retreated to the back of the store.

Bree and Peachy exchanged a look, and Gram limped after Alice. It was a good call on Bree’s part. As worked up as Alice was, Peachy’s stolid presence would be a better comfort than Bree or me.

“Nice work, Sonny,” Bree said. “You handled that like a pro.”

“Listen,” he said, “I’m doing the best I can.” He glanced nervously at Charlize. “Darlin’, could you give us a minute?”

A muscle twitched at the corner of her right eye, but Charlize batted her lashes and smiled. “Sure thing, sugar. I’ll just go powder my nose.”

She looked at me with an eyebrow raised in question, and I pointed toward the hallway leading to the ladies’ room. She sashayed away. Bree hadn’t lied: Beneath the fine wool suiting, there was a hypnotic sway to the woman’s hips. Just a hint of something a bit improper.

As Char disappeared from view, Sonny sidled up to the counter.

It was as if a mask had slipped from his face. Suddenly he appeared earnest, worried. “Was Alice serious? Y’all don’t want any money?”

A stillness settled over Bree’s features. “Why?”

“Look, I don’t want to make waves for you and Alice. Believe it or not, I don’t want to see either of you get hurt. If you’re not looking for a handout, I don’t see any reason to drag us all through the courts.”

“Are you serious?” Bree asked.

I could hear the edge of outrage in her voice, clear as a summer day, but apparently Sonny couldn’t.

“Absolutely.” He reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I’m real glad you’re here. If you’ll just sign this paper, I’ll get out of your hair.”

“And what exactly would I be signing?”

Dang, if Sonny couldn’t hear the river of ice in Bree’s tone, he was a bigger idiot than I thought.

He licked his lips in a way that made me think he was starting to understand his error. But he soldiered on.

“It’s just a promise that you won’t sue me. You don’t sue me, I won’t sue you. Sounds fair, right?”

“Mmm.” To me, that noncommittal hum sounded like the vibration of a teakettle right before it blows.

“I’m serious, Bree. I have to protect my interests, but if you’re not going after my money, then me claiming Alice doesn’t do no harm.”

I took a step back out of self-preservation. Mount Bree was about to blow.

She drew herself up, her chest swelling with indignation, her nostrils flaring with fury. Despite her strappy gold sandals and skimpy lavender polka-dot sundress, she was a Valkyrie, an Amazon, a warrior of pure feminine power, her flaming hair and arctic eyes burning with elemental rage.

“Wouldn’t do no harm? You no-good, dried-up piece of cow crap, that girl is the only good thing you’ve ever done in your whole entire life. You should fall down and kiss the ground in gratitude that you get to ‘claim’ Alice as yours. God knows, you don’t deserve her.”

“I—”

She leaned forward on her toes, crowding Sonny and forcing him back a step. “No, sir, you just keep your lips zipped. It’s my turn. I was hurt—hurt as hell—that you would question whether Alice was your child. But heck, I wasn’t a saint. Maybe, just maybe, you were justified in questioning me. But now, come to find out, this isn’t about anything other than money? Sonny Anders, I never figured you’d be so low. How dare you?”

Sonny’s eyes darted to the side, as if he was worried about someone else—Alice? Charlize?—coming in and hearing his scolding. He sucked his teeth.

“Listen, Bree, you’ve got a right to be mad. But I worked hard for what I’ve got. Char and I, we’ve both worked hard. We’re fixin’ to get married, so any claim on my money is a claim on Char’s, too. She stuck by me through some tough times.”

“Oh, and loyalty means so much to you, huh?”

Sonny closed his eyes, silently accepting the gibe. “Look,” he said, his voice lower, more reasonable, “I owe her. I have an obligation to protect her interests. You gotta understand that.”

Bree snorted. “I don’t gotta understand anything. I just have to hold your feet to the fire and make you be a man. Your first, last, and only obligation is to your child. Alice has gone without so many times—she couldn’t go to science camp, she couldn’t go on the class trip to Washington, D.C., she had to buy her prom dress at a secondhand store—and she’s never complained. Not even once. And now she’s managed to cobble together the scholarships to go to a fancy private college, but even so, she doesn’t have the fast computer she needs or the chance to study abroad.

“You’ve never given her a damn thing. Alice may want to keep it that way, but it’s not her call. It’s mine. And I’ll let you drag my name through the mud until the cows come home if it means prying some cash from your wallet so that child can have the education she deserves. The freakin’
life
she deserves. Because that girl is better and more important than you and I put together could ever hope to be.”

Bree drew back her head, and for a second I thought she was going to spit in Sonny’s face. But, instead, she turned on her heel and stalked away as fast as her stilettos could carry her.

“Sonny, I think maybe we should go.”

Sometime during Bree’s tirade, Char had slipped back into the room. A smile still graced her perfectly symmetrical face, but there was an unmistakable edge in her voice. She had to be completely mortified at her man acting like such a petty scuzz-bucket.

Sonny cleared his throat. “Sure thing, sugar.”

Char sashayed forward, that wicked wiggle in her walk, and looped her arm through the crook of Sonny’s elbow. “See ya, Tally,” he said as they headed for the door.

He paused on the sidewalk, his hand still on the knob, the door still ajar. I watched him pat Char’s arm, then gently pry her fingers from his sleeve.

He hustled back to the counter, Char watching him through the glass with narrowed eyes.

“Tally,” he whispered. “Try to talk some sense into Bree. Get her to sign that release.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Look, I know you probably hate me. That’s fine. But trust me. It’d be better if she signed that release.”

I didn’t respond, just crossed my arms over my chest.

He rolled his lips between his teeth and ran a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated. “You two are peas in a pod, aren’t you? Stubborn as a rusty pump.”

He hitched his hands in his pockets and left again. As he walked away, I turned my attention to Char. Her eyes were fixed on Sonny, her guard down. Her lower lip sagged in a bit of a pout, and the angle of her brows looked anxious to me.

I wondered again at their relationship. Sonny was a good-looking guy, in his own unctuous way, but Char seemed way out of his league. Yet she seemed strangely dependent on him, clinging to him, touching him, clutching him with her greedy gaze.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Sonny had managed to seduce Bree—who was way smarter than she let on. Despite her big brain and rockin’ bod, my cousin had fallen hard for Sonny. His sly, bad-boy charm worked.

“Is he gone?”

Bree’s question startled me.

“Tell me what you saw in him,” I demanded.

“Sonny? Lord, I don’t hardly remember.”

“You remember Dillon McBride? He was cute, had a good job, and had the hugest crush on you . . . but you looked right through him and winked at Sonny.”

Bree laughed. “Dillon. Wow. Blast from the past.” She sighed. “Dillon just didn’t have an edge.”

“Edge is overrated.”

She elbowed me. “Are you kidding? Didn’t you just pass over a gorgeous, steady, loyal hunk of a man in favor of a bad boy?”

“Touché.” I cut my eyes in her direction. “So you think Cal McCormack is gorgeous?”

A blazing blush burned her cheeks. I couldn’t believe Bree, my brash and rowdy cousin, was blushing over a boy. “Oh, hush. You know what I mean.”

“Mmm-hmm.” It was true. Cal was a mighty fine man. But I had never realized Bree had noticed.

Curious.

“Well, I was crazy when I fell for Sonny. But at least I got Alice out of the deal. And now maybe she’ll get a little something to make her life better, too.”

I understood where Bree was coming from, and I didn’t like the idea of Sonny bullying his way out of child support, but I couldn’t help wondering whether the price would prove too dear.

“A
re you sure?” Cal sighed. “Dang it, Tally. Of course I’m sure. This is my job, and I do it pretty well.”

“Don’t get testy, Cal. I’m just askin’.”

“And I’m just sayin’.” Cal gave me a hard look. “Let’s not forget that I’m doing you a monumental favor by doing this walk-through with you. It’s not exactly legit.”

“Oh, come on. The scene’s been cleared. The only reason they haven’t started up the ride again is that everyone’s too creeped out by what happened.”

“Right. We’re not doing anything illegal here, but it’s a little out of the ordinary for me to give the prime suspect’s cousin a guided tour of the crime scene the day after a murder.”

He stood near the mini train track that ran through the saloon display in the haunted rodeo, his feet planted on a red X taped on the floor. “So like I was saying, the angle isn’t right for me,” he said, “because I’m taller, but the crime scene folks said that based on the angle and location of the entry wound, Kristen was crouched down low in the train car and the shooter was standing here, aiming down toward her.” He illustrated his words by extending his arm, his thumb and forefinger cocked like a gun.

“Wait. Back up. What do you mean, you’re taller? Taller than what?”

“Taller than Bree.”

“Taller than Bree? Or taller than the killer?”

Cal took a careful step back, as though he were easing off a land mine, and then he turned to face me. “All they really know is the angle of entry for the bullet. So you can draw a line, at an angle, back from where Kristen was located when she was killed. Exactly how far back the killer was depends on how tall the shooter was.”

Geometry was never my forte, but even I could see the flaw in this logic. “So they only put that mark on the floor right there because they assumed the shooter was Bree’s height?”

Cal frowned. “Well, sort of.”

“There’s no ‘sort of’ about it. If the shooter was as tall as you are, he wouldn’t have been standing on that X. You just said so yourself.”

He pulled his hat from his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “Right, but even if the killer was, say, six-four or six-five, that would mean he was standing back a few feet. Not over there by the saloon doors like Bree said.”

“Are you sure?”

His chin dropped to his chest in defeat.

“Look, I want to believe Bree, too. Honest. We did find a slug back behind Old Cletus over there”—Cal gestured toward the zombie cowboy blocking the saloon doors—“which backs up part of Bree’s story. But I asked the techs if it was possible the person who shot Kristen was standing by the saloon doors. They said, if that were true, the shooter would have been eight feet tall. I’ve known some pretty tall Texans in my day, but no one that tall.”

I walked over to the saloon doors and sidled up to the mannequin dressed as a zombie cowboy. Up close, I could see the layer of grime streaking his leering greenish-gray face, and a bright white streak across the side of his hat where Bree’s bullet had grazed him.

I tipped back my head and tried to figure out where the eight-foot man’s hand would have been. “So the gun would have been right about where?”

Cal joined me. He reached up and tapped the top of the artificial doorframe. “About here.”

I stepped back into the center of the room and let my eyes rest on the place he indicated. Then I looked down. And then I looked up.

Right up the frilly, glittery skirt of the saloon girl perched above the door.

I pointed at her. “What about there? What if the shooter had been up on that little balcony? Where the saloon girl is?”

He looked up to where I was pointing. Without warning, he jerked back his head, then doubled over in pain.

“Cal!” I rushed the few steps to his side and wrapped my arm around his shoulders to support him. “Are you okay?”

He straightened, rubbing his right eye. “I’m fine. Just got something in my eye.”

I pried his hand away from his face. “Here, let me look.”

The light inside the ride cast amber shadows across his strong features. Even in that anemic glow, though, I could see the flash of red glitter dotting his cheekbone.

“Hold still,” I commanded. I dabbed my forefinger with my tongue and carefully brushed the glitter away.

“Sorry,” I said. “Wiley said the dancer drops that glitter all the time. I should have warned you.”

He stepped out of my reach, lifting his hand to wipe moisture from his eye. “I’m fine,” he muttered.

He sniffed and then lifted his gaze to the saloon girl’s balcony. He frowned. “That’s too high,” he said.