His Only Defense. Carolyn McSparren

beside her unmarked car and looked around for the source of the voice. She saw an old man standing beside a small brick ranch house set back in the woods on her side of the road. She could barely glimpse the house through the closely planted pines. She leaned on her door and called, “May I park in your driveway? I’d very much like to speak to you if you’ve got a minute.”

      “Sure. Better move your car before somebody comes flying around that curve and creams you.”

      She moved the car. As she climbed out, the man walked over to her, removing his beat-up John Deere cap with the aplomb of a Victorian gentleman.

      “Folks in the country drive twenty miles faster than the road can handle.” He grinned. “Can’t tell you how many accidents I’ve seen on that curve in the forty years I been living out here.”

      She stuck out her hand and told him her name and her business.

      She could feel the bones in his fingers, but the skin felt like well-tanned leather. His face looked like leather, as did the scalp that showed through his sparse white hair. He shoved his cap back on his head. “Name’s Taylor Waldran, ma’am. Lord, don’t tell me y’all are trying to find that woman’s body again.”

      “Again?”

      “Every couple of years some cop comes by to talk to me about what happened that night. I tell him the same thing. I have no idea. It was pouring rain. The wife and I stayed inside by the fireplace. Saw nothing, heard nothing. Didn’t find out about the car being abandoned till the next morning.” He waved a hand at his lawn and the pines. “The riders used our front lawn as the staging ground for the hunt.”

      “You said riders?”

      “Yes’m. There’s a bunch of riders brings their walking horses and hounds whenever somebody disappears in the woods, and Putnam’s over there’s been part of the Wolf River Conservancy for twenty years. At first they thought the woman might have wandered off and died of exposure or drowned in one of them marshes, but they never did find one single trace of her.” He shook his head. “My Vachie kept the cookies coming and the coffeepot hot for three days.”

      “Could I speak to her?”

      “No, ma’am. Gone these three years.”

      “I’m sorry for your loss.”

      “Thank you. Hard to be alone after fifty-three years. My grandkids want to move me to town into some kind of zero-lot-line old folks apartment, but I ain’t havin’ none of it.”

      An obese basset hound with a gray muzzle meandered off the front porch and slumped down beside Mr. Waldran’s knee. The dog definitely looked more than seven years old. “That night the woman went missing, did your dog hear anything?”

      “Maizie?” He laughed and reached down to scratch the basset’s long ears. “She’s been stone deaf for years and too lazy to hunt a cold biscuit.”

      “What about the hounds? Did they find any trace of her?”

      “Ma’am, by the time they started looking, the rain had been pourin’ down for hours. Any scent might ’a been there would ’a been long gone. On t’other hand, if he’d buried her, would ’a washed away the soil some, but didn’t find no sign of a grave, either.”

      “Could she have walked away and abandoned her car?”

      “In that weather? Had to be a mighty good reason to leave a perfectly good car sitting on the side of the road with the motor running, the door open and the dome light on.”

      “Could she have stopped to help someone and been abducted?”

      “That’s what they thought at first, but that husband o’hers swore she’d never do something that dumb. Besides, she carried a gun in the car. Had a permit and everything. It was still there. If she’d gotten out of the car, she’d ’a took that gun, if she had a lick o’ sense.”

      “What did you think of the husband?”

      “Seemed like a nice man. Real cut up. My Vachie tried to look after him some. ’Course, those detectives thought from the get-go he killed her.”

      “So they were just going through the motions on the search?”

      “Oh, no, ma’am. They didn’t let up for three solid days. Had them crime scene folks here, but wadn’t nothing to find after that downpour. After a while I guess they just gave up.”

      Liz thanked Mr. Waldran and asked if she could leave her car while she walked across the road to look in the woods. He agreed and went back into his house. Maizie lumbered after him.

      Contemplating the curve of the road, Liz was as surprised as Mr. Waldran that someone hadn’t come around the corner and smacked into Sylvia’s car all those years ago, especially since the driver’s-side door had been open.

      Though the rain had stopped earlier, mist still hung in the cold air, Liz noted with a shiver. A little more moisture and mud wouldn’t make much difference at this point.

      She walked across the road and stood on the narrow grass shoulder to stare down into the water-filled ditch. If Sylvia needed help or refuge, surely she’d have headed up the driveway to the Waldran house. Mr. Waldran and his wife had both been investigated at the time, to make certain they hadn’t kidnapped and done away with Sylvia.

      Both had come up clean. He was a deacon of the Camp-belltown Baptist Church. Pillars of the community, they’d raised four children and had a dozen grandchildren. Neither was senile or paranoid. There had been no sign that Sylvia had been in the house or the garage.

      The obvious solution was that someone had stopped her on the road somehow, abducted her or killed her and hidden her body too well for it to be found, probably a long way from the scene.

      She wouldn’t have braked for someone she didn’t know. She wouldn’t have gotten into a car with a stranger. If she’d been accosted, she’d have used her gun to protect herself.

      Her car had not been dented or disabled, proving she hadn’t been rammed by another vehicle, and stopped to check the damage. Who else but her husband would even know she’d be alone on this road at night?

      The one person she would have stopped for was big Jud Slaughter.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      “DADDY,” COLLEEN SAID, “who was that lady, the one you arranged to have breakfast with? She’s not one of your clients.”

      Jud turned his truck into the parking lot of Hamilton’s Academy for Young Ladies and joined the line of SUVs, crew-cab pickups and fancy sedans also dropping off girls for school. He debated whether to tell her the truth and let her stew all day, or make up something he’d have to refute later. “How’d you know she’s not a client?”

      “Those slacks came from someplace like Target, for one thing. And ladies who can afford your houses always wear gynormous diamond rings and carry Coach handbags for every day. She’s not married.”

      He glanced at his daughter in amazement. She was fourteen! How could she possibly identify where the woman’s slacks came from, or be aware of purses and jewelry? “What do you study in that fancy school of yours?” He pulled into the unloading zone, stopped and turned in his seat.

      “You always say it pays to know quality,” she said with a cheeky smile. Leaning over, she gave him a kiss, slid out of the car, waved at a couple of other girls with long blond hair and ran up the stairs to the front door.

      She’d forgotten to ask him again about Liz Gibson, but she’d remember sooner or later. He’d have to respond, but he’d have a better idea of how much he needed to tell her after breakfast.

      When he walked into the diner, Liz was already sitting in a booth. She was reading the morning newspaper and drinking orange juice. He took a moment to assess her from the doorway.

      Good-looking. Maybe late twenties, early thirties.