the effort. Plus, maybe I could interview him at the crisis center about Beast. The bailiff handed Charles off to Bud, who looked me up and down before leaving, probably so he could report full details to Pierce and the rest of the police force in Timber City. Great.
I limped back to the office and wondered again why I hadn’t studied business in school. A quick trip to the ladies’ room revealed I was too kind in my earlier assumption of how I looked. It was beyond terrible. Catastrophic maybe. My hair stuck out in frizzy spirals, and a deep purple bruise spread over my right cheekbone under my squinty, bloodshot eye. In movies the heroine always looked so sexy with a bruise marring her perfect face; somehow the bruise always accentuated high cheekbones. My bruise looked splotchy and painful and kind of grotesque. The only thing the shiner accented was my now uneven skin tone.
I threw the blouse and nylons in the trash. At this rate I wouldn’t have anything to wear to work but jeans and a workout bra. The rip in my skirt was up the side and not too bad so long as I didn’t move. I tugged my hair out of the braid and put my hands under the faucet before running them through my hair—when all else fails, curls will do. Finally, I buttoned up my jacket. While the material plunged further than I’d like at work, it was the best I could do.
It was time for Scot’s funeral, which should be packed considering he’d been the prosecutor in the area for so many years.
I wasn’t ready to face that many people with all of my bruises…and whisker burn down my neck from Aiden. It was time for more concealer.
Chapter 29
The funeral was a somber gathering of law enforcement, judges, lawyers, and general townspeople in a nondenominational church in town. No family. Scot had worked as the prosecuting attorney for at least a decade, and as a deputy prosecutor before that, but he wasn’t an Idahoan native. Most of us had family going back generations. If not, you were new to town, even after decades.
It looked like Scot had been well liked, and apparently, he’d attended one of the summer camps on the far side of Timber Lake as a child. That’s how he became aware of the area in the first place. The preacher spoke quietly and reverently, mostly about Scot’s success in the courtroom.
The fact that Scot had been gun-downed after being arrested by the DEA was off limits for the day, and I was fine with that.
I stood between Nick Basanelli and Detective Pierce, feeling bracketed by maleness and guilty about my liaison with Aiden. They’d both given my new bruises a once-over but had quite smartly not said a word. Now they scanned the crowd in a way that made me feel like I should be doing something besides feeling sad that Scot hadn’t had any family. What would it be like to be alone in the world?
I truly couldn’t imagine.
“Ex-wife number one.” Nick dipped his head toward a forty-something-year-old platinum blonde standing up by Celeste near the casket. How was the paralegal doing? I should check in with Celeste after the service.
I couldn’t see the face of the first wife, but her suit looked like Chanel.
“Number two,” Pierce added, lifting his chin to the adjacent pew. This woman was a brunette with liberal gray through her hair. She was trim, almost dainty…also in Chanel.
“Paid a fortune in alimony,” Nick whispered.
Geez. They were like two gossipy old men who should be sitting on porch swings. Somebody clapped up front, and I jumped, craning my neck to see who’d interrupt the preacher.
“Ah, great,” Pierce muttered.
I elbowed him in the ribs, so he’d move over, and then I caught sight of what he’d seen. I winced. Judge Hallenback was dressed in a neon green suit jacket with the logo for Hallenback’s Used Car Lots somehow emblazoned across the back. He wore a striped clown wig. His brother stood next to him in a muted brown suit that also held the logo.
“They give car dealerships a bad name,” Nick said.
The judge clapped again, and his brother shushed him.
“We need to do something about that guy,” Pierce said. “It’s time for retirement.”
A slight ruckus at the rear of the church had me turning to see Pauley pushing away from a crowd gathered near a series of white pedestals covered in flowers. I froze for