Dana Marton - Broslin Creek 05 - Broslin Bride Read Online Free PDF

pounding too hard to be able to think clearly.  
    The mushroom cap on the motel, which she always thought cute and quirky, now loomed like a prison tower as she pulled up.
    She scanned the single police cruiser up front and went to park in the back. Then she hurried inside, hoping and praying that she’d be able to keep her composure.
    The rest of the employees were already gathered around a single detective in the middle of the reception area. Several inches taller than the tallest of the women, he wore dark dress pants—his badge clipped to his belt—with a light blue shirt that did nothing to disguise his massive shoulders. He stood in the typical police power stance, feet slightly apart. She didn’t think he was trying to be intimidating, but the solid mass of his body had that effect anyway.
    That she’d once slept with him now seemed utterly surreal.
    He turned as Luanne came in, his gaze settling on her face.
    “Luanne Mayfair,” Chase said dispassionately as he looked her over.
    * * *
    Luanne looked in rougher shape than he did, and that was saying something, since Chase was on his second shift. His crazy night had included a street fight, checking out the crawl space under a house after reports of suspicious sounds that turned out to be raccoons, and saving a pet turtle from a tree. He’d also handled half a dozen traffic violations with their share of cursing and crying and threatening with powerful friends. And that was just his first shift. The second started off heavy-duty right away, with a murder.
    And then Luanne Mayfair had walked in.
    Chase reached to his hair to brush away any cobwebs he might have acquired in the crawl space, but caught himself and dropped his hand to his side. He was not prettying up for Luanne.  
    He was a grown man. A detective. He was not going to feel like an awkward, rejected schoolboy when he talked to her. That decided, he strode over for a private word. He’d already interviewed the other maids and the two front-desk clerks.
    “Luanne.”
    She looked even worse up-close, mouth tight, her whiskey-color eyes spaced out one second, then nervously darting the next.
    “Detective Merritt.”
    He’d braced himself against her voice, but the low, velvety pitch got to him anyway. “Let’s stick with Chase. Everything okay with the twins?”
    “Fine.” She bit out the single word, then cleared her throat, clasping her hands in front of her, her fingers red from scrubbing.
    Of all the employees, she seemed the most upset. The others were shocked and dismayed that something like this could happen in Broslin. But not one had shed a single tear over the manager. Yet Luanne looked on the verge of breaking down in tears.
    Maybe she’d been closer to Earl than her coworkers.
    Chase let his gaze pan over her again. Long, blond hair barely combed, no makeup, a wrinkled silk shirt topped blue jeans that accentuated her slim legs. Long legs. She’d run track in high school. “You don’t look fine.” The assessment came from the analytical-cop part of his brain. The stupid-guy part still thought she was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen. Her whiskey-color eyes, bleary or not, drew him in.
    She cleared her throat again, and he could see as she gathered herself little by little, with effort. She held his gaze. “Exhausting date last night.”
    The jealousy that cut through him was beyond stupid, so he refused to acknowledge it.
    She has an alibi , he thought instead. Good. He didn’t want to have to interrogate Luanne. She had plenty on her plate with raising her sisters.  
    He pulled out his notebook and pen. “I’m going to need to talk to your date. Need the timeline for your night. Step one in the investigation is to just rule out as many people as we can. Name?”
    She cleared her throat. Looked away. “Gregory.”
    He wrote it down. Waited. “Last name?”
    She bit her lower lip. “I can’t remember.”
    Not like Luanne. Then again, it’d been a pretty long time.