Poison Flowers by Nat Burns

Author:Nat Burns [Burns, Nat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay & Lesbian
ISBN: 9781594933219
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2013-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

Marya’s desk was a cluttered mess. She moved the piles of waiting paper firmly to one side. She had to find some tangible means of proving her innocence or it could come down to her word against that of the Coburn County Police Department. She was definitely not yet considered one of the locals, and around here outsiders attracted finger-pointing like magnets attracted iron. It didn’t look good. Especially not with deputy-dog, misogynist, smart-ass Thomas involved.

Marvin had intimated as much during his hour-long interview with her. Off the record, of course. Though Marya had offered to do the story, Ed had refused, saying it was a front-page piece. Marvin’s beat, not hers. She knew the real reason; he wasn’t one hundred percent sure she wasn’t involved somehow.

At least her parents believed her. But they also believed she was in harm’s way, her mother begging her to move back in with them until the investigation was over and the bad guy caught. Marya sighed as she tucked her bag under the desk. Her mother hovering over her twenty-four/seven? Not a chance.

Who did murder Denton? Who could be heartless enough to do away with such a sweet old soul? Her mind raced across possibilities and raged like a brush fire gone wild.

Snapping on her computer, she found solace in old friends—the national police database and the national news archives. These were familiar stomping grounds.

She entered codes and passwords until she came to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Her reporter status gave her only limited access. Still their database might provide something useful. She typed in Denton Hyde and waited, the fingertips of her right hand smoothing the knuckles of her left.

His name was there but not as a criminal.

In 1996, in Richmond, Virginia, he had witnessed a purse snatching, fought off the perpetrator and reclaimed the bag. The bad guy had gotten away, but Denton had been fingerprinted. Witnesses and victims often were, so their fingerprints could be ruled out during investigations. Nothing in the file indicated a possible motive for his murder. It held other information, though, including his wife’s maiden name, Darlene Wood. This had to be Dorry’s sister, the woman whose photo she had seen in Dorry’s office. Denton once told her that cancer had taken his wife too early. She sensed that Denton had never quite gotten over her death. Could there be some grain of motive there? Could Dorry have taken Denton’s life as payback for some past transgression? Certainly she had the power, the physical strength, to snap his neck, and temper enough. Marya had seen evidence of that.

But Marya had also interviewed a few confessed murderers. They had all had a sort of devious sullenness about them, magnified by a moment-by-moment intensity that disconcerted everyone who knew them intimately. Dorry seemed different: She didn’t seem jaded by life or agitated by it. She just wasn’t…interested. She seemed as though she were fed up with it and the paltry pearls it had to offer.

So, if

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