The Police Chief's Lady. Jacqueline Diamond

inquired.

      “No. Because you got our minds off Ethan Forrest for about five minutes.”

      Chuckles sounded around the table, then broke off as, in the next room, the front doorknob turned. Jenni still hadn’t grown accustomed to the Lowells’ habit of leaving their house unlocked during waking hours.

      Barry entered. Peering through the archway between dining and living rooms, Jenni was startled when she glimpsed his companion.

      “Uh-oh,” Rosie muttered.

      “Well, now, that just blows the whole thing, doesn’t it?” commented Mae Anne, sending them into gales of laughter.

      In the living room, Ethan wore such an endearingly baffled expression at their mirth that Jenni almost sympathized with him. Then she remembered telling him that she’d planned to attend this party tonight. He’d accompanied Barry knowing full well she would be here.

      She reminded herself not to make assumptions. Maybe he had business to conduct. Besides, the warmth with which some of the other women greeted him made her realize how much female attention he must attract wherever he went.

      Determined not to reveal her mixed feelings, Jenni gave the men a lazy grin and stretched like a cat. “Hi, Barry. Good to see you, Chief.”

      Ethan’s appreciative gaze made Jenni blushingly aware that the movement had drawn her knit top tightly across her breasts. Darn it, she’d been trying to act casual, she thought as she shifted to a more modest position.

      “Good to see all of you,” Ethan said. “Carry on, ladies. We have a few things to discuss.”

      With a nod, Barry headed for the stairs. “Want to take some food with you?” Karen offered.

      “No, thanks.” As usual, her brother was in a hurry.

      “Don’t mind if I do.” Ethan strolled to the table, his powerful build inside the tailored suit drawing more than a few pairs of admiring eyes. As he claimed a cookie, he graced them all with a knowing wink that brought a round of smiles. Then he followed Barry up the stairs, leaving behind the sophisticated scent that had plagued Jenni’s senses all week.

      Nobody spoke until, upstairs, a door closed. “That man,” Gwen said at last, “has charisma.”

      Jenni didn’t bother to argue.

      Chapter Five

      For one inexplicable instant downstairs, the entire room had vanished except for Jenni Vine. Ethan didn’t understand it. He’d never been drawn to blondes, and he considered this one an ill fit to the community. Yet he’d battled the urge to stand there drinking her in, as if she cast a sunny spell over him.

      She’d been perfectly aware of the effect she created. She’d stretched provocatively, while he, who made a point of keeping a friendly distance between himself and anything resembling male vulnerability, had stood there verging on meltdown.

      This wasn’t entirely her fault, he conceded. As Gwen had said earlier, men all over town were scheduling their long-delayed physicals for a chance to be around her. Reducing adult males to the level of lusty adolescents had probably become second nature to her.

      He almost wished he weren’t so scrupulous, or so cognizant of his position. If circumstances had been different, Ethan might have enjoyed a fling with the lady before she decamped for more interesting surroundings. Assuming she wanted a fling, of course.

      No, he thought, he wasn’t the love ’em and leave ’em type, or the love ’em and be left by ’em type, either. When he’d fallen in love with Martha, he’d stayed in love. Heaven help him if he ever made that mistake with Jenni.

      “What’ve you got for me?” he asked, following Barry into an upstairs rec room converted to a large office. Amid the file cabinets, desk and computer equipment was a bulletin board covered with old clippings and hand-drawn charts.

      “Although nobody seems aware of it, Ethan, you’ve got an unsolved murder in this town,” Barry replied.

      That caught his attention, all right. “Who’s the victim?”

      “Norbert Anglin.”

      Anglin was the farmer Barry had been convicted of killing. So this was about that case. “Go ahead.”

      “The coroner said the killer struck him three times. I only hit him once,” Barry said.

      “With a shovel,” Ethan reminded him dryly.

      “He attacked me with a pitchfork.” Barry and his friend Chris McRay, Mae Anne’s grandson, had aroused Anglin’s wrath one night when he caught them freeing chickens at his farm. “Maybe I hit him harder than I thought, but I know I didn’t land more than one blow.”

      “I’ve heard this before,” Ethan reminded him, studying the piles of papers in dismay. To see such a talented man unable to move beyond the past bothered him. “They said you might have lashed out two or three times without realizing it.”

      “But I didn’t. And the cops were so quick to finger me they never tried to figure out who really killed him.” Barry selected a chart. “I’ve diagrammed his property and re-created the movements of everyone at the farm that night—Mrs. Anglin, the hired man, that transient who was supposedly sleeping in the barn—and, of course, Chris and me.”

      Ethan resisted the urge to dismiss the matter. The editor had invested too much work and too much emotion to let go that easily. “I reviewed the case at your request last year, as you’ll recall. I can’t say the police did as thorough a job as they might have, but they had an eyewitness.”

      “Chris.” Barry’s voice rang with resentment. “He’s the one who put me in prison.”

      “He testified to the same thing you did—that you smacked Mr. Anglin with a shovel,” Ethan noted.

      “No, he didn’t!” the editor replied. “He said I was yelling and flailing around, so he couldn’t be sure the shovel didn’t connect more than once.”

      Ethan saw no point in debating. Better to go right to the point. “Are you telling me you’ve identified another suspect?”

      “Yes, I have.”

      That startled him. “Who? The transient?” He’d been ruled out because Chris had testified to seeing him some distance away as the two boys fled.

      “Let me explain first so you’ll understand.” Barry selected a paper bearing a shaky signature. “I had to track Lou Bates—the transient—all the way to New Orleans, but I managed to interview him. I found the hired hand in Oklahoma six months ago.”

      Barry had attended a newspaper conference in Louisiana the previous month, Ethan recalled. He supposed the Oklahoma trip had involved work, as well. “So that’s why you’ve been traveling so much.”

      Barry forged ahead. “They both said the same thing. They spotted two figures running, and then a few minutes later they saw one of them sneak back.”

      Ethan weighed the implications. “At the trial, the transient said he might have seen you head back.”

      “And the DA implied that if I didn’t strike Norbert more than once the first time, I returned to finish the job,” Barry added. “But both told me they only made those statements because the police asked leading questions. They really didn’t think the man moved like me, only they were afraid to contradict the authorities.”

      “After so many years, they probably don’t remember what happened.” Ethan had to play skeptic, no matter how much he sympathized with Barry. “Besides, Chris said he couldn’t find you afterward.”

      “We split up while we were running, and I laid low for a while in case Anglin came after me. I was pretty scared.”

      Ethan could envision a number of possibilities,