Shades of Twilight

"I’m not going to say anything to the others now, so don’t mention it to them just yet. I’ll call in a couple of hours and check on her."

He got off the phone just as Sheriff Beshears came in and tiredly settled himself into one of the two chairs in the room. Lanette was in the other, but Webb wasn’t inclined to sit anyway. He wanted to be closer to Roanna’s side.

"Well, you’re looking better than the last time I saw you," Beshears said to Roanna.

"How do you feel?"

"I don’t believe I’ll go dancing tonight," she said in that solemn way of hers, and he laughed.

"Don’t guess you will. I want to ask you a few questions if you feel up to it."

A puzzled look crossed her face.

"Of course."

"What do you remember about last night?" "When I fell? Nothing. I don’t know how it happened." Beshears shot a quick look at Webb, who gave a tiny shake of his head. The sheriff cleared his throat.

"The thing is, you didn’t fall. It looks like someone broke into Davencourt last night, and we figure you walked right up on him."

If Roanna had been pale before, now she was absolutely

white. Her face took on a pinched, frightened expression.

"Someone hit me," she murmured. She didn’t say anything else, didn’t move. Webb, watching her closely, had the distinct impression she was drawing in on herself, holding everything inside, and he didn’t like it. Deliberately he reached out and took her hand, squeezing it to let her know she wasn’t alone, and he didn’t give a damn what conclusions Beshears drew about his action.

"You don’t remember anything?" the sheriff persisted, though his gaze flickered briefly to their clasped hands.

Chapter 15

"I know everything’s confused now, but maybe you caught a glimpse of him and you just haven’t realized it yet. Let’s take it step by step. Do you remember leaving your room?"

"No," she said tonelessly. Her hand was motionless in Webb’s grip. Once she would have been clinging to him, but now she didn’t hold on to him at all. It wasn’t just that she didn’t seem to need him anymore, but that she didn’t want to even be around him. For a while, when she had been so confused, all the barriers had been down and she had seemed to be comforted by his presence, to need him. But now she was pulling away from him again, putting emotional distance between them even though she made no effort to physically pull away. Because of what had happened between them yesterday, or was it something else, a detail about her injury? Did she remember something after all? Why didn’t she want to tell the sheriff?

"What’s the last thing you remember?" Beshears asked.

"Going to bed."

"Your folks say you have insomnia. Maybe you were awake, and you heard something and went to see what it was."

"I don’t remember," she said. The pinched look was more pronounced.

He sighed and got to his feet.

"Well, don’t fret about it. A lot of folks don’t remember at first what happened right before they took a bump on the noggin, but sometimes it comes back to them after a while. I’ll be checking back with you, Miss Roanna. Webb, come on out in the hall with me, and I’ll tell you what we’ve done so far."

Webb went with him, and Beshears strolled down the hall toward the elevators.

"We followed the trail through the weeds all the way to that pasture road that cuts off from the highway, just past the turnoff going up to Davencourt," he said.

"I figure he left his car parked there, but it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve had any rain and the ground was too hard for us to get any tread marks. Just to be sure, we brought in a couple of dogs, and they followed the trail as far as the pasture road, too, but nothing after that. It’s a good place to hide a car; the brush is so thick anything parked even twenty yards up the road would be damn hard to see even in the daylight, much less at night."

"He got in through the kitchen door?"

"That’s what it looks like. We couldn’t find any other sign of entry." Beshears snorted.

"I thought he was a fool at first, for not going in through some of those fancy glass doors y’all got all over the house, but maybe he was pretty smart. You think about it, the kitchen is the best place. Everyone should be upstairs in bed at that time of night, so he don’t want to risk waking anyone by going through any of the upper veranda doors. The doors on the patio are on the side of the house, visible from the stables. But the kitchen door is on the back, and you can’t see it from the driveway, the stables, or anywhere else."

They had reached the elevators, but Beshears didn’t stop to punch the button to call it. He and Webb strolled on to the end of the hall, out of earshot of anyone getting off the elevator on that floor.

"Was anything taken?" Webb asked.

"Not that anyone can tell. That lamp’s knocked over in the den, but except for that and the lock on the kitchen door nothing looks like it was touched. Don’t know what he was doing in the den, unless he got rattled when Miss Roanna screamed. I suppose he ran back downstairs, looking for a quick way out, but the front door has a double lock on it and

he couldn’t figure it out in the dark. He ran into the den, saw it doesn’t have an outside door, and accidentally blundered into the lamp. Looks like he finally went out the kitchen door, same as he got in."

Webb roughly ran his hand through his hair.

"This won’t happen again," he said.

"I’ll have a security system installed this week."

"Y’all should already have had one." Beshears gave him a look of disapproval.

"Booley used to go on and on about how easy it would be to break into that house, but he never could talk Miss Lucinda into doing anything about it. You know how old folks are. With the house so far out of town, she felt safe."