An Absence of Motive

by Maggie Wells

  Earlier in the evening, she’d driven her mother to a committee meeting at Trudy Skyler’s house. She’d sat and dutifully sipped iced tea while the women dithered over what kind of Christmas decorations to order for the town’s lampposts. Mostly, she’d thought about Ben and how annoyed she’d been with Wendell for keeping her so busy that she hadn’t had a chance to slip over to the municipal building to “drop in” on him. After an evening of screeching, bickering and incessant gossip, Marlee had only wanted to hear his smooth, deep voice.

  Holding her hand under the tap to test the water temperature, she hummed softly as she took in her surroundings. The bathroom fittings were old enough to be considered retro. The walls were covered in white-on-white tiles but not the elongated subway-style one saw on all the home-decor shows. Still, the ceramic surfaces gleamed.

  She’d missed the old claw-foot tub when she moved away. Her parents had updated it with a rainwater showerhead and charming circular shower curtain, but when she was younger, she’d preferred baths to showers. There were countless evenings when she’d lounge in the tub until the water cooled, reading a book or listening to music.

  Only the years of dormitory living as an undergrad and frenetic pace of law school broke her of the habit. She’d grown accustomed to taking nothing more than the necessary five minutes to scrub herself clean and wash her hair. Now, she was home again and not working the sixty-hour weeks most first-year law associates work. She’d have to learn to downshift, take long soaks again. As she drew back the curtain and stepped over the high side of the tub, she made a mental note to pick up some scented bath salts.

  Five minutes later, she had a chamois hair towel twisted around her head and a thick bath sheet—one of the ones her mother’s housekeeper, Mrs. Franklin, laundered and sprayed with lavender water as they line dried in the sun—wrapped around her body. The long evening hours stretched in front of her. Marlee meticulously applied lotion to every inch of her still-damp skin in a vain attempt to distract herself from the restlessness roiling inside her. Unwinding the hair towel, she finger-combed her hair into wet waves, content to let it air-dry on this warm evening. The steam trapped in the tiled room threatened to make a second shower necessary, so she moved into the cool spaciousness of her bedroom to finish drying off. The house was air-conditioned but built in the days before modern insulation and ductwork. The system worked well enough when it came to sucking the humidity out of the air, but it never felt overly cool.

  Holding the knot of the towel, she went straight to the dresser. Her feet skimmed across smooth wood floors. She looked forward to dropping the thick towel and slipping into the cool cotton of one of her brother’s old shirts. Wresting a washed-thin Atlanta Braves tee from the bureau, she shook it out, then stopped dead in her tracks.

  The sheer curtains had been pushed apart and the slats of the blinds cranked open.

  The T-shirt whooshed to the floor at her feet. She blinked twice, unable to believe what she was seeing. But she wasn’t imagining it. The slats were angled down. At precisely the correct angle for someone on the street below to see inside.

  Clutching her towel tight, she bolted from the room and into the empty hall. She ran to the opposite side of the house, toward her parents’ rooms, and skidded to a halt outside her mother’s door. The muffled sound of the television leaked out into the hall, but Marlee heard no other noise. Twisting the knob silently, she opened the door enough to see her mother sprawled across the love seat fully dressed, out cold. She held her breath until she caught the rumble of a soft snore, then gently closed the door again.

  Her mother wouldn’t have been much good in this sort of situation anyway. Making her way to the top of the stairs, Marlee listened for sounds from the first floor. Nothing. Her father might have gone out. But then again, it was also possible she’d run into one of her father’s cronies. They came and went at all hours. Usually, they carried important papers and claimed there was some form of business to be discussed, but mostly the men hung out on the back veranda and drank bourbon.

  She hesitated, still gripping the oversize towel tightly to her chest. She should go back to her room and dress. She could grab her phone while she was there and...what? Call the sheriff and ask him to come look under her bed?

  But she didn’t want to go back to her room. Not until she figured out who’d been in there while she’d been in the shower. Grasping the banister with her free hand, she padded down the steps as quietly as century-old wood would allow. The front door was closed, but she’d lay odds it wasn’t locked. Biting her lip, Marlee made her way toward the back of the house, pausing for a moment at the partially closed door to her father’s study. Two men were talking. One was her father, but she didn’t recognize the other man’s voice. The last thing she could do was show up at the door to her father’s study and expect him to introduce her to whoever it was while she was dressed in only a towel.

  Moving as soundlessly as she could, she slipped past the study and tiptoed to the back of the house. The laundry was off the kitchen. She prayed Mrs. Franklin had left something she could slip into in the tiny closet of a room. When she saw the empty hampers and abandoned drying racks, she heaved a heavy sigh. Biting her lip as she gave the towel yet another mournful glance, she consoled herself with the knowledge she could sneak up the narrow back staircase from the kitchen without being seen. She was about to do so when she spotted the canvas bag full of dry cleaning ready to be taken to the cleaners.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she said as she abandoned her hold on the towel and began rooting through the bag for something belonging to her. She spotted the black dress she’d worn to Clint Young’s visitation and plunged her hand deeper into the bag. The towel came unfurled, but she didn’t care. The sides gaped like loosened tent flaps as she shoved her arm into the bag nearly to her shoulder.

  “Excuse me, ma’am? Are you all right?”

  The question was drawled low. The timbre of his voice conveyed secrecy but failed to mask the speaker’s amusement at the sight she must have presented. Yanking her arm from the dry-cleaning bag, she scrambled to get hold of both sides of the bath sheet as it slid another inch down her back. She tugged it all the way up into her armpits, knotted it and shifted the closure so she could pin it in place with her arm. Pushing her now-tangled hair back from her face, she straightened to her full height and faced the intruder head-on.

  A tall man with the lithe, athletic build of a distance runner stood near the kitchen counter, clutching an unopened bottle of bourbon by its neck. His hair was golden blond and about a half inch too long to be considered well-kept. His skin was sun-kissed, and his teeth so white and even, she wondered for a moment if they were caps. She met his frank perusal with a once-over of her own.

  “Who are you? And why are you in my kitchen?” She raised her chin a smidge in hopes of coming off more imperious than indecent.

  “I’m Will Thomason,” he said, brimming with confidence. “You must be Miss Marlee. I keep meanin’ to come meet you, but we’ve been doing some reshuffling of personnel, what with Clint and all...”

  The name registered with her, but Marlee wasn’t in a giving mood at the moment. She was freaked out, mostly naked, and there was a strange man in her house.

  “Have you been in my room?”

  Sandy brows shot high. He made a bit of a production out of blinking once, then shook his head. Something about the way he never broke eye contact with her made her mistrust him. It was a tell, a gambit many people misplayed. Oddly enough, the fact that he didn’t peek at any other part of her felt like an act of aggression. Was he daring her to question his integrity? If so, she would.

  “Were you?”

  “Was I in your room?” he parried, still locked in on her eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “Why would I have been in your room? We’ve only just met.” At last, he looked down at the bottle in his hand. “I only came i
n here to get a fresh bottle for your father. If you want to show me your room, I think we might be better off waiting until your parents aren’t home,” he said, dropping what she assumed he thought was a playful wink at her.

  “It wasn’t an invitation. It was a question,” she stated through clenched teeth.

  “Will, did you find it?”

  Marlee closed her eyes and cringed as her father’s footsteps rang out against the hardwood floors. “Right above the stove. I keep it up high so—” He stopped on a dime when he spotted her standing in the laundry room door wearing nothing but a towel. “Marlee? What the hell?”

  “I think I walked in as Ms. Masters was looking for something in the laundry,” Will said, flashing a charmingly sheepish smile at his employer, then her. “I’m afraid we startled each other.”

  “Why are you running around the house half-naked?” her father demanded.

  “I was—” The temptation to use Will Thomason’s cover story was tempting, but there was something off about him. She didn’t want to give the man the chance to latch on to some kind of rescuer image of himself. “I was in the shower and someone came in my room.”

  Her father pulled his head back, puzzlement written all over his face. “In your room?”

  “While I was taking a shower. Someone was in my room while I was taking a shower.” Thankfully, her voice didn’t fail her as she stared the two men down. “I came down to see who was in the house.”

  “You thought whoever it was might be hiding in the hamper?” Will asked, and she decided she loathed the dimple that flashed in his cheek when he chuckled at his own joke.

  Now she was too annoyed to be mortified, which, in a way, made Marlee happy. Rolling her shoulders back, she repeated her question. “Was it you?”

  “No.” He held her gaze in his disconcerting way.

  “Why would Will be in your bedroom?” her father demanded.

  “I don’t have the faintest idea,” she said with exaggerated calm. “Why would anyone else be in my room?”

  Her father shook his head dismissively. “No one was in your room. If there was anyone, it was your mother,” he said. “I’ve been down here the whole time.”

  “When did he get here?” she pressed, waving a hand at Will Thomason.

  “Will’s been here all evening. We’re working on an acquisition proposal,” her father said impatiently. “He hasn’t left my office.”

  “Except when I went out to my car to get my power cord for my laptop,” Will supplied helpfully, a shade too jovial for her liking.

  Henry huffed and waved his hand as if her concerns were nothing more than a swarm of gnats. “Yes, well, that’s neither here nor there.”

  “Or in Miss Marlee’s room,” Will added without missing a beat. He gazed at her, his expression all blank innocence. “Full disclosure, I believe I also availed myself to the powder room a time or two.” He hefted the bottle of bourbon. “You see, I wasn’t allowed anything more than water until I’d finished my homework.”

  “Enough,” Henry said, annoyed with the disruption of his evening. “You two wanna flirt, do it on your own time.”

  The mere suggestion that this confrontation with a stranger in her home was a flirtation made Marlee’s skin crawl. “We are not flirting.”

  “I believe Miss Marlee’s tastes run more along the lines of the law enforcement type,” Will said, his oh-so-casual drawl drawing the observation out to the point of pain.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” her father said, dismissing the notion out of hand, despite his earlier display of concern. “We have work to do. Marlee, go on back upstairs. You can’t be running around here in nothing but a towel. What would your mother say?”

  She wanted to tell him she wouldn’t say a thing because she was too busy being passed out at eight in the evening, but her father had already lost interest. Henry snatched the bourbon bottle out of Will Thomason’s hand, then gestured for the younger man to precede him.

  Will inclined his head to her. “It was a pleasure to meet you.” The polite sentiment didn’t quite match the predatory gleam in his eyes. Thankfully, he followed her father out of the kitchen and back down the hall.

  She crept out of the tiny space she’d backed into and stood for a moment, holding tight to the towel and listening to the low rumble of the two men’s voices. Will said something about how pretty she was, and Marlee had to resist the urge to make gagging noises. Then she heard her father say something about how he should have introduced the two of them earlier and how he’d always hoped Will Thomason might “hit it off” with her, and the rough outline of her father’s plan began to take shape.

  Horrified, she bolted for the back stairs. Bare feet slapped the varnished wood of the upstairs hallway as she stomped her way back to her room. Muttering under her breath, she rushed in. She stuck close to the walls in an effort to avoid walking directly in front of the window, then scooped up the Braves shirt and her phone, retreating to the safety of her bathroom.

  Heart pounding, she locked the door behind her and tapped the screen to call Ben. The second the call connected, she slumped against the door, her towel coming unraveled as she sank to the cool tile floor. “You will not believe what happened over here,” she began without greeting.

  The connection crackled, and she heard Ben speaking, but his words came across garbled.

  Frustrated by the delay in relaying her concerns, she interrupted whatever he was trying to tell her. “What? Ben, I can’t hear you. Where are you? Can you move to a room with better reception?”

  “Not...room,” he said, his voice louder but the reception only marginally clearer.

  “Where are you?” she repeated.

  “I’m...call...Prescott County.”

  “You’re in Prescott County? Why?”

  He unleashed a stream of distorted words and heavy breathing. She thought she heard him say the word “body” and might have made a joke about obscene phone calls if he didn’t sound so serious. And urgent.

  “Why are you huffing and puffing?”

  “Trying...hang on...a clearing,” he said, the connection clearing at last. “There. Better?”

  “Much better. Did you have to climb a hill or something?”

  “Or something.” Ben inhaled deeply, then said in a rush, “They called me when we got off the phone earlier. They found a body.”

  Her breath snarled in her throat. Her mouth ran dry. All she could force out was a strangled, “Oh, God.”

  “We have an ID on the victim, but I can’t tell you yet. We’re looking into next of kin. Listen, I’m at the scene now, and things are hectic. I have to get back there, but I’m probably going to lose you. It’s not terribly developed around here,” he said, faltering a bit on the last.

  “Most of Prescott County is pretty rural,” she managed in a whisper.

  “Yeah.” His voice softened and he spoke quietly into the phone. “Marlee, can you come see me first thing in the morning?”

  “I can stop by when I go for my run. Why? What do you need?”

  “They found the body in a half-finished house...on the other side of Sawtooth Lake.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Marlee rolled out of bed, tied her hair up in a messy bun and put on her running shoes. The sun peeped over the horizon. She hadn’t slept a wink. Between keeping a watchful eye on her window, replaying the run-in with Will Thomason in her head from every different angle and wondering who’d been found dead on the other side of Sawtooth Lake, she hadn’t been able to put her mind on pause long enough to even doze.

  Marlee stretched, then took off toward the municipal building at a brisk jog. She’d worked up to a pretty good clip by the time she reached the door to the sheriff’s office with the flats of her palms. She looked up and saw Mike Schaeffer’s pale, shocked face on the other side of the glass. He raised both hands
in surprise, then took a step back so she could enter.

  “Hey,” she said, breathless. “I’m Marlee Masters. We weren’t properly introduced the other day. You’re Mike?” She raised her arms over her head in an effort to open her lungs and even out her breathing.

  “Um, yes. Yes, ma’am,” the deputy stammered.

  Swallowing her annoyance, she thrust out a hand. “Not ‘ma’am.’ Marlee.”

  He gaped at her for a moment, then gave her hand a brief but firm shake. “Yes, ma—Marlee.”

  “Marlee?” Ben’s deep voice startled Mike into dropping her hand.

  “I was goin’, but she came runnin’ up,” the younger man explained in a rush.

  Ben nodded his understanding. “She has a way of sneaking up on people. Go on home, Mike. You did good work tonight.” The younger man looked unsure, so Ben waved him on. “I’ll be leaving here right behind you. Get some rest.”

  Once the outer door closed, he spoke to Marlee in a hushed rush. “I don’t want to talk here.”

  “But I heard—”

  He grasped her elbow and nudged her closer to the door. “I need to talk to you about some stuff, but this is not the time or the place.”

  She caught his urgency but couldn’t follow his logic. They were in the sheriff’s office. Another person was dead, and she assumed he might now be giving her suspicions of foul play more credence. What better time? What better place?

  His dark eyes bore into her. “Fine,” she managed at last. “Where? When?”

  “What time do you have to be at the office?”

  “I’m going to be working out of Wendell’s office. He told me he prefers banker’s hours, so not until nine o’clock.”

  He nodded. “Go run. Meet me at my place. I should be able to shake free from here in about twenty minutes.”

  “Your place?”

  “Yeah. It’s a blue house with awnings down the street about—”