Murder in the Smokies - By Paula Graves Page 0,27

mentioning a job and how she’d lost it because of the drinking.

There. She found it jotted on the margin of the typed-up bio. “Worked as a billing secretary—Davenport, Maryville.”

Davenport Trucking again?

She flipped back to the bio Antoine had compiled on April Billings. Most of the notes were about her college career. No mention of whether she’d picked up a job this summer while she was home from college.

But April’s brother had hired Sutton Calhoun to look into her murder. Would Sutton know?

She grabbed her threadbare robe and wrapped it around herself before she ventured down the hall to the spare room. She paused for a moment, listening for any sounds from within.

Suddenly, the door whipped open and Sutton almost walked right into her. She stumbled backward in surprise, bumping her head hard against the wall across the hall. “Ow.”

His look of surprise settled into mild concern. “You okay?”

She rubbed the aching spot on the back of her head. “Yeah, you just surprised me. Do you need something?”

“Just a glass of water.” His expression was a neutral mask, impossible to read. She didn’t know if he was telling the truth or hiding something—by design, she suspected. Her gaze wandered down to his bare chest, and all thoughts of truth or secrets flew out of her head for a long, heart-fluttering moment.

Since when was she so vulnerable to lean-muscled pecs and a flat, well-defined belly?

Since Sutton Calhoun brought his bad-boy self into your house, reminding you of how it feels to be fifteen and madly in love with the juiciest piece of forbidden fruit to ever grow in Bitterwood, Tennessee.

“What were you doing outside my door?” he asked when she didn’t say anything else.

She jerked her attention back to the case. “I was looking through the case files on the murders, actually,” she said, nodding her head toward the kitchen. She walked with him down the short corridor into the kitchen, pointing him to the water glasses over the stove. “I came across something I’d missed before.”

“Yeah?”

“Two of the victims worked at the same place, as it turns out.” She started to tell him about Davenport Trucking, then remembered Captain Rayburn’s warning not to try to bring Sutton into the investigation. She was going to be in enough trouble as it was, once the captain heard about her Clingmans Dome adventure. Better keep the details to herself for now. “Anyway, I was wondering if maybe April Billings’s brother had mentioned whether she’d taken a temporary job this summer while she was home from college.”

Sutton turned away from the refrigerator, withdrawing his glass from the water dispenser in the door. He took a long drink of water, then shook his head. “Stephen didn’t mention a job. I can ask.”

“Thanks, I’d appreciate it. It may be nothing—this is a small rural area with limited job opportunities. Still, it’s curious.”

“Yeah.” He drained his glass of water and put it in the sink. “I’ve got another lead to follow tomorrow, but I’ll give Mr. Billings a call and let you know.”

She walked with him to the spare room. “Another lead?”

“May be nothing. I want to follow it through before I say one way or another.” He paused in the open doorway. “Get some sleep, Detective. You look beat.” He closed the door behind him.

She stared at the solid rectangle of wood, releasing a sigh. Great. While she’d spent the past few minutes trying not to salivate over his bare chest, he thought she looked beat.

Nothing quite like abject humiliation at—she checked her watch—twelve twenty-five in the morning.

* * *

SUTTON HADN’T EXPECTED to sleep that night, but he must have drifted off at some point, because the next time he opened his eyes, his room was bright with morning sunlight. He glanced at his watch lying on the bedside table. Already after eight. He’d overslept.

Tugging his dirty jeans on, he checked the house and found a note from Ivy written on the back of a business card she’d pinned to the refrigerator with a black bear magnet. “Gone to work. Help yourself to eggs or anything else you want for breakfast.”

Finding the coffeemaker on the counter next to the stove, he made himself a couple of cups of strong black coffee and cracked a couple of eggs into a skillet for an omelet. A shower and shave later, he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and set out in the Ford Ranger for Maryville, the small city about twenty minutes southwest of Bitterwood. He’d looked up the

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