Shades of Twilight
Tansy had prepared huge amounts of food to feed the expected crowd and had been glad of the opportunity to keep herself busy. People wandered in and out of the dining room where the buffet had been arranged, filling plates and returning to gather in small groups where they discussed the situation in hushed voices.
Webb shut himself in the study. Roanna walked down to the stables and stood at the fence, finding comfort in watching the horses graze. Buckley saw her and trotted over, thrusting his head over the fence to be patted. Roanna hadn’t been riding since Jessie’s death; in fact, this was her first visit to the stables. She scratched behind Buckley’s ears and crooned soothingly to him, but her mind wasn’t on what she was saying, it was just automatic noise. He didn’t seem to mind, though; his eyes half closed in delight, and he made a grunting noise.
"He’s missed you," Loyal said, coming up behind her. He had changed out of the suit he’d worn to the funeral and was now clad in his more familiar khakis and boots.
"I’ve missed him, too." Loyal propped his arms on the top railing and surveyed his kingdom, his gaze warming as he watched the sleek, healthy animals he loved.
"You don’t look too good," he said bluntly.
"You need to take better care of yourself. The horses need you."
"It’s been a bad time," she replied, her voice lifeless.
"Sure has," he agreed.
"It still don’t seem real. And it’s a
shame how folks are treating Mr. Webb. Why, he no more killed Miss Jessie than I did. Anybody who knows anything about him would know that." Loyal had been extensively questioned about the night of the murder. He’d heard Webb leave and agreed with everyone else that the time was between eight and eight-thirty, but hadn’t heard any cars after that until the sheriff had been called and the county vehicles arrived on the scene. He’d been awakened from a sound sleep by Roanna’s scream, a sound that could still make him wince when he remembered it.
"People only see what they want to see," Roanna said.
"Uncle Harlan just likes the sound of his own voice, and Aunt Gloria’s a fool."
"What do you reckon will happen now? With them living here, I mean."
"I don’t know."
"How’s Miss Lucinda holding up?"
Roanna shook her head.
"Dr. Graves is keeping her on mild sedatives. She loved Jessie a lot. She still cries all the time." Lucinda had been frighteningly diminished by Jessie’s death, as if this had been one blow too many for even her nature. She had pinned all her hopes for the future on Webb and Jessie, and now it looked as if her plans had been destroyed, with Jessie dead and Webb suspected of her murder. Roanna. had kept waiting for Grandmother to go to Webb and put her arms around him, tell him that she believed in him. But for whatever reason, whether Grandmother was too paralyzed with grief or maybe because she did think Webb could have killed Jessie, it hadn’t happened. Couldn’t Grandmother see how much Webb needed her? Or was she in so much pain that she couldn’t see his?
Roanna felt nothing but dread for the coming days.
"We got the results of the autopsy back," Booley said to Webb the day after the funeral. They were in Booley’s office again. Webb felt as if he’d spent more time there since Jessie’s death than he had anywhere else.
The initial shock had passed, but the grief and anger were still bottled up inside him, all the more potent for having to be kept under restraint. He didn’t dare let his control slip, or his rage would explode over everyone: his so-called friends, who had stayed as far away from him as if he’d been a leper; his business associates, some of whom had seemed secretly pleased at his trouble, the bastards; and most of all his loving family, who all apparently thought him a murderer. Only Roanna had approached him and said she was sorry. Because she’d accidentally killed Jessie herself, and was afraid to say so? He couldn’t know for certain, no matter what he suspected. What he did know was that she too had avoided him, Roanna who had always done her best to stay right at his heels, and that she was definitely feeling guilty about something.
He couldn’t help worrying about her. He could tell that she wasn’t eating, and she was alarmingly pale. She had changed in other, more subtle ways, too, ways he couldn’t analyze because he was still so angry he couldn’t focus on those tiny differences.
"Did you know Jessie was pregnant?" Booley asked.
If he hadn’t already been sitting, Webb’s legs would have folded beneath him. He stared at Booley in silent shock.
"I guess not," Booley said. Damn, this case had as many hidden little twists as a maze. Webb was still the best bet for Jessie’s killer, which -wasn’t saying much, but the evidence wasn’t there. There wasn’t much evidence, period; no witnesses and no known motive. He couldn’t convict a gnat on the evidence he had. Webb’s alibi had checked out, Roanna’s testimony had established that Jessie had been alive when Webb had stormed out, so they had nothing but a corpse. A pregnant corpse, as it turned out.
"She was about seven weeks along, according to the report. Had she been puking or anything?"
Webb shook his head. His lips felt numb. Seven weeks. The baby wasn’t his. Jessie had been cheating on him. He swallowed the lump in his throat, trying to consider what this meant. He’d had no indication she’d been unfaithful, and there hadn’t been any gossip either; in a small town,
there would have been gossip, and Booley’s investigation would have turned up something. If he told Booley that the baby wasn’t his, that would be considered a believable motive for killing her. But what if her lover had killed her? Without even a guess as to who the man might be, there was no way of finding out, even assuming Booley would listen to him.