The Winter Widow Read Online Free PDF Page A

to see her.
    Sophie the cat lady, nutty about cats, collected strays and kidnaped pets she felt were mistreated. (“Damn Sophie and her damn cats. I spend half my life chasing around for irate pet owners.”) At three, he returned, fuming because he’d been unable to find Sophie. He told Hazel he was going home for a time and would be in later.
    Susan was painting the kitchen ceiling when he arrived about three-ten, straight from the department. There wasn’t time for him to have gone anywhere else.
    He was home for less than an hour, and during that time he’d received three phone calls: one from his sister, Helen; one brief call from someone as yet unidentified; and one from Hazel. Hazel reported that a man identifying himself as Otto Guthman claimed to have evidence of cattle rustling. Daniel was wanted immediately.
    A few minutes before four, Daniel left for Guthman’s. Susan had just gotten back to the kitchen when Lucille Guthman came by looking for Daniel. An hour or so after Lucille left, Daniel was killed in her father’s pasture.
    Since the murder occurred outside the city limits, the county sheriff’s department held jurisdiction, and technically Sheriff Holmes was handling the investigation. She wondered about him, whether he was a good man. Hector Holmes. Okay. At least he was acting in conjunction with the Hampstead police—something to be thankful for.
    In theory, all law enforcement agencies working the same case were supposed to cooperate with each other. In her experience, it didn’t always work that way. Competition, personality conflicts, even petty jealousies often kept pertinent information from being released. According to George Halpern, Daniel’s senior officer, that wasn’t a problem here. The sheriff had a large county, a manpower shortage, too much to handle, and was glad to have Hampstead PD investigating.
    Parkhurst didn’t exactly snap to and hustle in. She was reaching for the phone when the door opened. He stood there, face expressionless, dark eyes hard, hands loose at his sides, feet planted wide apart, like Marshal Dillon come to check out the saloon.
    Oh shit. He was going to give her trouble. She should have expected it. She’d known some like him—arrogant pricks who resented working with women, who stubbornly believed she got her job through affirmative action and her advancements through sleeping with the right people.
    She gestured, palm up, toward the chair at the side of the desk. He pulled it out a few feet and sat, a maneuver that forced her to change the angle of her own chair to see him comfortably.
    Parkhurst, my friend, this isn’t a debate. The decision, management level, is already in and you’re stuck with me. She rose, moved to the end of the desk, rested her rear against it and looked down at him. His sharp gaze touched her with amused acknowledgment. Well. A sense of humor? Maybe there was more here than met the eye.
    Daniel had liked him, described him as extremely intelligent and self-contained, and a good cop. Parkhurst had originally been with the Kansas City force. Several years ago, his younger sister, apparently the one person in all the world whom he loved, had been killed two days before her seventeenth birthday. She’d attended an evening class and on her way back to her car was abducted by adolescents, raped and strangled. Daniel never said whether Parkhurst had been asked to leave Kansas City because of a tendency to cuff suspects around, especially teenage suspects, or whether he’d resigned to avoid being asked.
    â€œTell me everything you’ve got,” she said.
    Parkhurst regarded her coldly. “You shouldn’t be here.”
    â€œAny particular reason?”
    â€œYou ought to know, big-city cop. You’re too close to it. Emotions have a way of wiping out judgment.”
    She could almost hear him thinking: And besides, you’re stupid, you don’t know