Stonechild and Rouleau Mysteries 5-Book Bundle. Brenda Chapman

step of the way. This won’t be the open-and-shut case you think it is.”

      “They never are,” Rouleau said.

      “So who do think is lying?” Gundersund asked. He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at Rouleau.

      “My guess would be him based on the bruising. The photos in her file are brutal. No way she did that to herself. We should check with neighbours and friends to see if they observed anything nasty going on between them before this.”

      “Their times are off. He says they had sex in the morning and she said the evening. Is it possible to prove either way?”

      “She waited to go to the hospital, so it’s hard to tell exactly from the medical report.”

      Gundersund grimaced. “They should have separated before things got this far.”

      Rouleau nodded. “The problem is, they rarely ever do.”

      Chapter Three

      Gail Pankhurst stepped through the main door and removed one of her ear buds. It was hot in their little office space with only two fans mounted on the ceiling, rotating on full, uselessly moving the soupy air around and around. The university funded their help line but hadn’t coughed up any more money than necessary, budget restraints being the usual excuse for skimping on air conditioning. She stopped at Jucinda Rivera’s desk on her way to the vacant one near the far wall.

      “Hey Juicy. Are you starting shift or finishing up? I thought you had today off.”

      Jucinda flinched as she did every time Gail used the nickname, but she didn’t comment. Gail routinely poked her with the moniker, curious to see when Jucinda would react. So far, she’d kept any displeasure from reaching her lips. Gail had made Jucinda one of several unofficial subjects for her experiments in human psychology. She was particularly interested in how her guinea pigs dealt with upset or annoyances in social settings. Jucinda wasn’t alone in pretending that something that obviously bothered her wasn’t a concern.

      Jucinda tossed her black hair, dyed fuchsia at the tips, over her shoulder and reached for the ringing phone. “Leah was supposed to be in but couldn’t make it. Mark worked this morning, but he had to leave after lunch for an appointment. I’m filling in until he gets back,” Jucinda said, picking up the phone.

      “Great.” Gail tossed her bag under her desk and plopped into the chair. Adele was singing into her right ear and she left the other ear bud swinging loose. She could relate to the British superstar — criticized for being a little pudgy but her own woman nonetheless. Gail had learned not to give a rat’s arse what people thought of her. She’d let all that go when she had Mickey Mouse tattooed onto her right bicep. She’d had Betty Boop inked the length of her forearm right after she told her parents she was gay. Every tattoo marked another step in her emancipation. She now felt completely liberated, which was good since she was running out of available skin with the exception of her face and neck. She’d promised her mother to keep those ink-free zones.

      It was an hour later before both she and Jucinda were off the phones at the same time.

      “Busy afternoon,” Gail commented. She stood and stretched. “Would you like a cup of Earl Grey?”

      “Sure,” said Jucinda. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a package of Fig Newtons. “I have these to go with it.”

      They decided to drink their tea and eat the cookies standing directly under the fan near the window while they got the chance to leave their phones.

      “Leah never takes the day off,” Gail said. “Do you know when she called in?”

      “There was a voicemail message, or that’s what Mark said when he phoned me to replace her. He said the odd thing was that Leah left the voicemail early Friday night right after her shift ended saying she needed a day off, especially since he’d booked the Saturday off a month ago and so missed her message until he got in Sunday afternoon. If you ask me, she could have cleared it with him before she went home instead of leaving us short-staffed today. But no, that would have been too much trouble for our princess Leah. Anyway, Mark should have been back by now.”

      “What about Wolf?”

      “He’s studying. He has that board exam and then has to defend his thesis. He told me they have him slated in next month. Hard to believe he’s that close to a Ph.D.”

      “Dr. Wolf. Has a nice ring. It’s too bad he and Leah broke it off.”

      “He can do better.”

      Gail looked more closely at Jucinda. Was that a blush under her swarthy colouring? If she didn’t know better, she’d say Juicy had eyes for Wolf. They said the cool, detached ones often held the most secrets. Maybe Jucinda had it going on. “You don’t think much of our Leah,” she said in a neutral voice. She studied Jucinda’s face.

      “She’s a ho.”

      Gail choked on a mouthful of tea. She wiped at the hot liquid dribbling down her chin. “Excuse me?”

      Jucinda’s eyes flashed righteous anger. “I don’t respect that kind of woman. It’s hypocritical for her to be giving advice to university kids when she’s carrying on like a common whore with a married man.”

      “Wow. I didn’t know you felt that way about her. I’m not sure I’d call her a ho, myself,” said Gail. “She’s more like a free spirit.”

      “Only if free spirit is a euphemism for loose and easy. Anyhow, Wolf is better off without her.”

      Gail was close enough to Jucinda to smell the sweet coconut scent of her hair when she flipped it back from her face. In the two years they’d worked together she’d always thought of Jucinda as virginal and placid, like a shallow green pond with nary a breeze stirring. Pretty, petite, and pudding-dull. This opening into the workings of Jucinda’s brain was unprecedented and a wee bit disturbing. Just what did Jucinda know about Leah and why hadn’t Gail picked up on it? A married man?

      They finished their tea and returned to their desks. Gail talked a boy through his urge to quit calculus all the while keeping one curious eye on Jucinda, who’d opened a biology textbook. She read it while twirling a long strand of hair around and around in her fingers, every so often lifting her head to look toward the front entrance as if waiting for someone. Gail found her own head turning toward the door in unison.

      Mark Withers sauntered in as Gail hung up the phone. Jucinda glanced over at him and said hello, but her shoulders slumped and the smile didn’t stay on her face for more than a second.

      So it’s not Mark you’re waiting for. Gail looked across at their boss, the eternal beach boy dressed in his navy shirt with wide horizontal white stripes, khaki shorts, and brown loafers, worn sockless. His hair was a tousle of sun-bleached strands, cut like Robert Redford’s in that Butch Cassidy movie. You’d never know that Mark had a good ten years on the rest of them. He could have passed for early twenties.

      “Hey ladies,” he said. “You can head out, Jucinda. Nate will be here in a few minutes.”

      “Good. If Leah’s away tomorrow, maybe line up Nathan or Wolf. I have an exam in the afternoon.”

      “No problemo. She hasn’t called in so I expect her back for her shift.”

      Gail looked over his shoulder. Nate was coming through the door, carrying a large coffee and a box of doughnuts that he offered around. He and Mark were the only two married employees. He was also Mark’s polar opposite, quiet and observant, always dressed in jeans and shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’d graduated the year before and worked part-time on the help line and part-time as Professor Dino Tadesco’s teaching assistant. Gail found Nate the most attractive of the three men on staff, not that she was into men.

      She looked over at Jucinda to see if his entrance had brightened her up. She was biting into a cruller and it was hard to read her expression, but she didn’t look all aglow in Nathan’s manly presence.