A Profiler's Case for Seduction - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,72
and regret. She hated him because he was going to make her cry, because even though she refused to be in love with him, he was breaking her heart all over again.
* * *
“Dora,” Mark repeated, his heart heavy as he saw the tears that filled her eyes. “You know I don’t believe you had anything to do with any of this, but the questions have to be asked to make a complete record.”
He patted the sofa next to him. “Please sit down.”
She resisted for several heartbeats and then eased down on the opposite end of the sofa from him. She didn’t want to sit close enough to him that she could smell him, that she could feel the body heat she knew radiated from him.
“Let’s just get this over with and then you can be on your way,” she said.
For the next few minutes Mark asked her the questions he needed to ask to prove that she had nothing to offer the case, that she had nothing to do with whatever theory of the crime Mark believed or that the team believed.
Her alibi of working in the bookstore was an easy one to check. In the couple of weeks before school began, the bookstore would be a busy place as students prepared for the coming semester. There would be hundreds of witnesses who could place her there during the time of Melinda’s kidnapping and the murders.
“Tell me about your relationship with Melinda,” he asked.
“We don’t really have one.” Dora remained tensely curled up in the opposite corner of the sofa, as if allowing herself to relax would bring about complete disaster. “She’s almost four years older than me and we were never close even as children. When she left Horn’s Gulf at eighteen she never looked back. I didn’t hear anything about her until she appeared in town to grab me by the arm and throw me in rehab.”
Her cheeks flushed with color and she drew in several deep breaths, allowing the pink to slowly ebb from her cheeks. “When I got here, she made it clear she wasn’t looking for a sisterly bond and I was just so grateful to be here I didn’t pursue one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your relationship with her? You knew I was investigating her kidnapping.”
Dora shrugged. “I also knew I couldn’t help you, that I didn’t know about what happened to Melinda. I’ve never told anyone that she’s my sister. I never wanted her to be embarrassed that her forty-year-old sister was finally getting her life together. The last thing I wanted to be was an embarrassment to the person who gave me a second chance at life.”
“Sounds to me like you deserved a do-over in life,” Mark said softly. He couldn’t get out of his head what she’d told him about her former life, coupled with what he’d discerned from his talk with her old schoolteacher and the new owner of the Daisy Café.
She frowned, her eyes the color of dark metal. “Melinda managed to get out. I managed to make bad choices. Despite the fact that my mother was a raging alcoholic, I somehow felt bound to stay in town and take care of her. I’d clean her up when she got sick, I’d sober her up to get her back to my father at the end of the night.”
She grabbed a bright orange throw pillow to her chest and wrapped her arms around it, her gaze downward as she continued. “I managed to hold things together through my miserable childhood. I even managed to survive the abusive marriage and divorce from Billy Cook. It was Jimmy Martin who was the straw that broke my back.”
“Tell me,” Mark said softly, and inched closer to her on the sofa.
She toyed with the fringe on the pillow and he noticed the faint tremble in her hand. “I loved Jimmy—at least I thought I was in love with him, and when we got married I thought he loved me. I truly believed he’d managed to overlook my reputation, my background, and saw the heart and soul of me shining through all the muck.”
Mark wanted to say something to ease the pain that sparked in her eyes, but he could tell by their unfocused glaze that she’d gone backward in time, apparently remembering things she’d tried hard to forget. Her fingers tightened on the fringe.
“The first year of our marriage I thought everything was perfect. Jimmy worked at the bank and I was