“Maybe Leonard’s doing whatever he can to make your life miserable,” he was saying. “But he’s lying about me. I don’t have any naked pictures of you. And I can’t understand why you won’t believe me. I’m not even attracted to you!”
That comment, more than any other, told her he was no different than he’d been years ago. He sounded like a high school boy, not a stepfather. “I wish you never had been.” At least, not in that way. She’d needed a stabilizing force, someone or something to shore up her crumbling world. Instead, she’d gotten a sexual predator, which had made her world fall apart even faster.
“You misunderstood what I was trying to do. You misunderstood everything,” he said.
“Oh, quit playing the martyr.”
He moved toward her as if to strike her. Instinctively, she raised her arms to protect her face, but he caught himself, and said only, “I wish you’d stop saying that.”
Sophia bit back the many angry responses that vied for expression. Arguing about the same old thing wouldn’t change the past. She had to focus on the reason she’d come here today. “How long have you owned a gun?” she asked.
His eyes cut to the filing cabinet she’d just closed. “For years, why?”
“You’ve never mentioned it.”
“I haven’t mentioned a lot of things. You and I don’t talk, remember?”
“Where’d you get it?”
He was in a full sulk now. “That’s none of your business.”
“Gary? Is that you?” Her mother’s voice carried in from the living room. She was coming toward the office.
“I don’t want to deal with that old…issue again,” he said. “Ever. This is your last warning.”
Warning? Sophia stepped closer. “Or what?”
He didn’t answer, but the pressure of his lips against his teeth expunged all color from them and told her he had plenty to say. “You make me so—” he put some distance between them as he threw up his hands “—crazy.”
“There’s my sweetheart.” As Anne came to stand in the doorway, she realized Sophia was here rather than in the bathroom and looked curiously between them. “What’s going on?”
The mask Gary always wore with Anne fell neatly into place. Sophia felt chilled to see him slip into character so effortlessly.
“Nothing.” He smiled. “I was just giving Sophia a sneak peek at your birthday present.”
Blushing with pleasure, Anne came farther into the room. “What is it?”
He slid his arm around her. “I’ll never tell. Not until the big day.”
Anne appealed to Sophia. “You’ll tell me. Won’t you?”
“Not me. You’ve got to wait.” Her voice was a little too flat to make her “birthday” enthusiasm believable, but her mother was a pro at twisting any situation into what she wanted it to be.
“Isn’t he a wonderful husband?” she gushed.
Sophia struggled against her gag reflex. “He’s a keeper.”
Gary kissed Anne, a bit too passionately for having an audience. Apparently, he had trouble understanding what was appropriate, even now. But he succeeded in distracting Anne, which was probably his intent. “It’s too bad, what happened to Stuart, don’t you think?” he said as he pressed his forehead to hers.
“It’s terrible!” Anne agreed.
Sophia toyed with a paperweight from Gary’s desk, momentarily tempted to throw it. “You don’t know anyone who’d want him dead, do you?”
Gary frowned as he considered the question. “We’ve got two possibilities. Either the Mexicans are retaliating, or…”
“Or?”
“It’s Roderick Guerrero.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“According to the sheriff, he’s the one.”
“The sheriff?” she echoed.
Anne piped up. “Sheriff Cooper is a cousin of Edna’s, you know.”
Around here, everyone seemed to be related or have some type of connection. When it came to investigating criminal proceedings, that wasn’t a good thing. “So?”
“Rumor has it Stuart trashed Rod’s motel room only hours before he was killed,” Gary replied. “That’s what set him off. But he’s always had it in for Stuart. Everyone knows that.”
“It is pretty coincidental that Stuart would wind up dead less than a week after his half brother came back to town,” Anne said, as if that was as incriminating as finding Rod’s DNA at the crime scene.
Sophia had thought the Dunlaps might point a finger at the bastard child they’d rejected. The sheriff was probably going along with it to avoid a panic and to curb the chances of a backlash against undocumented aliens. But there wasn’t any hard evidence to tie Rod to the murder, so she hadn’t been too worried. “We don’t prosecute people on coincidence,” she said.
“Folks at the Firelight are saying he stopped by looking for Stuart just before the murder,” Gary pointed out.
“That’s circumstantial, too. It wasn’t Rod. I was with him at the Firelight, helping him look.”
“But what did he do after he left you?” Gary said. “That’s the question. He won’t tell anyone where he went.”
They couldn’t talk about the safe house and he had enough honor not to drag her down with him by mentioning that he’d ultimately gone to her place.
Sophia had hoped to keep her sex life out of public scrutiny, especially when there was already talk of an affair between her and her stepfather. Especially because, for a certain period of time, he’d been at her place alone. But this gave her no choice. She had to provide as much of an alibi as she could.
“I’m telling you he didn’t do it,” she said. “Thanks to whoever damaged his motel room, he needed a place to stay. So I let him stay with me.”
This revelation apparently wasn’t clear or specific enough to change her mother’s mind. But Sophia couldn’t blame her for not catching on sooner. She’d denied having much contact with Rod only twenty minutes earlier. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Anne said. “Maybe he slipped out while you were asleep.”
“He was there alone for a while, but he was hurt and had no transportation. And once I got back, which was close to the time we believe Stuart was killed, he didn’t go anywhere.” Sophia sent her mother a significant look, but it did no good.