Vendetta. Meredith Fletcher

subsided. She hadn’t thrown up even though she’d felt she would have once she’d reached the privacy of the bathroom.

      You’re okay, she reminded herself. Everything’s going to be all right.

      But Keller’s words haunted Marion. She knew she wasn’t going to be directly responsible for the woman’s death. Her actions, the physical evidence at the scene and the testimony of the witness were going to do that.

      She was just going to try the case.

      Not try it, she amended. Hopefully you’ll get to be part of it. She opened her blouse front and looked at the bruising across her neck and collarbone. After this, Turnbull had better let me on as co-counsel.

      She placed her purse on the sink and took out her emergency makeup. Her hands grew steadier as she fixed the damage done by the struggle. While her hands and eyes worked automatically, her mind concentrated on her questions.

      When she got out of the bathroom, a deputy directed Marion to Keller. She found the big man standing at the observation window looking into one of the interview rooms.

      The female prisoner sat at the small rectangular table inside the featureless room. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and manacles secured her ankles. Cotton balls filled her nostrils.

      Keller looked up as Marion entered the room. “How do you take your coffee, Counselor?”

      The question took Marion aback. Then she noted the percolator on a small hot plate on the table in the corner. The aroma of the coffee made her hungry.

      “It’s fresh perked,” Keller said. “But that’s about the only thing it has going for it. I’d advise disguising the taste a little.”

      “Cream. Two sugars.” Marion felt odd watching Keller get her a cup of coffee. “I can get that.”

      “I know you can.” Keller poured coffee into a ceramic cup, then poured in cream and dropped in two sugar cubes. He looked around and finally found a saucer to serve it on.

      Marion took the coffee gingerly. She’d hoped her hands would be steady, but they weren’t. They shook and the cup and saucer clattered just a little.

      “That was pretty scary back there.” Keller didn’t look at Marion when he spoke. His attention was riveted on the woman.

      “Yes.” Marion sipped the coffee. It was still so hot she barely tasted it.

      “I talked to Whitten before she went to the hospital.”

      “How is she?”

      Keller nodded. “She’s gonna be fine. Whitten’s one of the toughest women I’ve ever met.”

      “What about the other jailer?”

      A frown tightened Keller’s face. “Ambulance guys said she probably had a concussion. Maybe a cracked skull and a dislocated jaw. They also said she was lucky she wasn’t dead.”

      Marion remembered how smoothly the woman had moved during the fight. “If she’d wanted anyone dead, she would have done it.”

      “Maybe you’re right.”

      There was no maybe to it. Marion knew she was right. “She chose not to kill them.”

      “The same way she chose to kill Marker?” Keller looked at Marion. “Don’t go getting soft on her, Counselor. Whatever else that woman is, she’s a cold-blooded killer.”

      On the other side of the one-way glass, the woman sat unmoving. Blood dripped down her face to the jumpsuit. Except for the steady drip of blood, she might have been carved of stone.

      “Did Whitten tell you about the fight?” Marion asked.

      Keller nodded. “Said she used some kind of karate or something.”

      “It wasn’t jujitsu.” Marion sipped her coffee and found it a little cooler. “But it was something organized. Something dangerous.”

      “Something like Bruce Lee in The Green Hornet?” Keller smiled mirthlessly.

      “Yes. Where would she get specialized training like that?”

      “Who said she was trained?”

      “Do you think she wasn’t?”

      Keller’s eyes narrowed as he regarded the woman. “Oh, I think she was trained. I’ve been contemplating the possibility that the Russians trained her.”

      The Russians? Then Marion grasped the meaning behind the suggestion. “You think she’s a spy?”

      “The kind of training that woman has? The cold-blooded way she killed Marker?” Keller nodded. “I bet when we figure out who she really is, we’ll find out she’s a Communist spy.”

      Although the newspapers and television media kept the threat of a nuclear war in the public eye, Marion didn’t buy into the thinking as much as many others did. She chose to believe the Cold War would defuse itself before international annihilation manifested.

      “You think she killed Marker as part of her assignment?” she asked

      “Don’t know yet. But I know she intended to leave a message for somebody.”

      “Why?”

      Keller slipped two fingers into his shirt pocket and took out a thin rectangle covered in clear plastic wrap. “Because she left this at the murder scene.” He held the object out. “Careful when you handle it.”

      The evidence was a playing card. Specifically, it was the Queen of Hearts. Dark smudges of fingerprint powder marred the card’s surface and gave the queen a dirty face.

      “These are her fingerprints?” Marion asked.

      “And Marker’s.”

      “That doesn’t mean that she brought the card to the murder scene. Since Marker’s prints are on it, he could have just as easily brought the card.”

      “So while she’s pointing a gun at him, with her foot in the middle of his chest, he asks her to take a look at a playing card? Or let’s say Marker did that. Why would she take the card while she’s holding a gun on him?”

      Marion handed the card back. “I don’t know.”

      Keller tucked the card back into this shirt pocket and buttoned the flap. “I think she used the card because it meant something to Marker. It was something he’d recognize. Since they’ve got a history—”

      “You can’t prove that.”

      “You don’t just break into a stranger’s motel room, put your foot on his chest and shoot his face off,” Keller said gruffly.

      Marion winced.

      Keller sighed. “Sorry about that. Sometimes I’m a little too plainspoken.”

      “That’s all right.”

      “But the fact of the matter, Counselor, is that those two people— Marker and that woman—knew each other before they came here. We’ve just got to figure out how.”

      “What do we do now?”

      “We talk to her,” Keller said. “See if she’s ready to tell us why she killed Marker.”

      Looking at the woman, Marion sincerely doubted that was going to happen.

      Someone knocked at the open door. A deputy leaned into the room. “Sheriff Keller? There’s a man in the lobby who says he’s that woman’s attorney. He’s demanding to see her.”

      That surprised Marion. She looked at Keller. “Has she called anyone?”

      Keller shook his head. “Did the attorney give you a name?”

      “Yes, sir. Even gave me a card.” The deputy entered the room and handed it over.

      Keller