Murder in the Smokies - By Paula Graves Page 0,9

the best role models growing up.”

Sutton grimaced. “That’s no excuse. His sister Delilah turned out just fine, and she came from the same family.”

“You turned out pretty well, too, considering.”

He slanted a thoughtful look at her. “Maybe. I suppose none of us really got out of here unscathed.”

She certainly hadn’t, she thought bleakly. Life with her undependable, often foolish mother had taken a heavy toll on her chances at a normal life. By the age of sixteen, she’d no longer had any illusions about romance, love or sex. She’d seen too much, suffered too much to think of romantic love as anything pure or uplifting.

She’d had boyfriends. She’d had sex. But she’d never had that elusive thing called love that her mother seemed desperate to find, and she had no intentions of ever looking for it.

Back at Marjorie Kenner’s house, most of the onlookers had dispersed, leaving only police cars and a vehicle marked with the TBI’s insignia. “That was fast,” she said, nodding toward the new arrival.

Sutton pulled up next to Antoine Parsons’s Ford Focus and looked toward the front door. “Your boss is here.”

She followed Sutton’s gaze and spotted her supervisor, Captain Rayburn, standing in the doorway talking to Parsons.

Well, hell.

* * *

INCOMPETENCE WAS BAD enough, Sutton thought as he and Ivy headed up the front walk, but in Glen Rayburn’s case, he’d never been sure whether the captain was merely inept at his job or actively corrupt.

He’d made it to captain the way a lot of cops in a lot of small towns did—by making friends with the mayor and city council. He did favors for anyone in the department above him, often at his own expense, and got away with being a careless, corner-cutting cop as a result.

Rayburn’s eyes narrowed to slits as he recognized Sutton. He didn’t bother with politeness. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I have family in town,” Sutton answered airily.

“You ain’t got no family here at my crime scene.”

Your crime scene? Sutton forced himself not to look at Ivy for her reaction, aware that it might turn Rayburn’s displeasure toward the detective instead of Sutton himself.

But Rayburn apparently had plenty of displeasure to go around, for he turned his baleful gaze on Ivy and asked, “You brought him here, Hawkins?”

“I came here on my own,” Sutton answered before Ivy could speak. “Matter of fact, Detective Hawkins just gave me the third degree—why was I here, what do I want, how long am I going to be in town—”

“And?”

“He’s been hired by one of the victims’ brothers,” Ivy answered. “To look into her murder.”

Rayburn turned his attention back to Sutton. “Somebody hired you?”

“Yes.”

“Mind if I ask who?”

Stephen Billings hadn’t asked him to keep his identity a secret, and Sutton had already told Ivy who his client was. Still, he gave Rayburn’s question a moment of thought before he answered, wondering if there was any way Rayburn could use Billings’s identity against him. “April Billings’s brother,” he answered finally.

“April Billings’s murder has nothing to do with this crime scene,” Rayburn said firmly. He sounded as if he believed it.

Was he really that self-delusional? Or was he desperate to believe there were no connected murders in Bitterwood because the alternative might bring state and federal investigators swooping down on the small mountain town, putting all the police department’s secrets under a bright light of scrutiny?

“Maybe not,” he said aloud, trying to keep his tone friendly. “I just wanted to talk to the detectives on the case, see what territory’s already been covered so I’ll know where to start.”

“That’s not going to happen again.” His face darkening with anger, Rayburn shot Ivy a warning look. “Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was tight with annoyance, but if Rayburn noticed, he didn’t comment.

Instead, he turned back to Sutton. “Leave my detectives out of your investigation. That’s not what we pay them to do.”

Swallowing a smart-mouthed retort, Sutton nodded and turned away, walking slowly to his truck.

He spared a glance back at the crime scene as he cranked the truck and put it into gear. Rayburn had already moved on, talking to the TBI agents milling near the state agency’s van. But Ivy Hawkins’s gaze was still turned his way, the look on her face thoughtful.

He felt a flare of regret at the realization that she was now officially off-limits to him, regret that had nothing to do with what she could offer him as a detective in charge of the case he’d been hired to investigate.

Instead, it had