the yard near the street with its line of bright blue state trooper cars. The crowd of police shifted, and I could see Edward with him. I could tell that Olaf was upset, but if I hadn’t known him so well, I might have thought he looked calm, just like Livingston had. It was Edward who seemed calm to me, but he was clearly trying to talk to Olaf in a serious way. They were framed by the crowd of civilians that had started gathering outside the perimeter of police. Once I would have thought it was the neighbors, but there were far too many people for this one small street. There were always more people at crime scenes than you could explain. I never understood where they all came from, and people had been gathering at crime scenes long before the Internet made it easy to spread the word about every damn thing.
Muriel was screaming inside one of the police cars, pushing herself against the window. Her husband sat quietly in the car behind her. Newman was talking to Duke to one side of the cars. They seemed intense but calm. The bad guys were all tucked away, so I walked toward Edward and Olaf to see if I could help Edward talk the big guy down or out of whatever he was upset about.
I was partway to them when there was a commotion in the civilian crowd. A tall woman was trying to push past the police line. She was dressed in white, which made her stand out in the crowd even more than her height. I mean, she wasn’t Olaf tall, but she was over six feet. She had large round white-framed sunglasses that hid her face, so at first, I didn’t recognize her. It wasn’t until the crowd parted for her and she bent low over the policeman who seemed to be listening to her that I realized it was Jocelyn Marchand. Honestly, if I hadn’t had her mother’s face in my head from years ago, I might not have recognized her, but with the glasses covering the brown of her eyes, she looked like her mother’s ghost since she was dressed all in white.
Sheriff Leduc must have recognized her, too, because he was walking that way. He made a small gesture at the officer who was holding her back, so he stepped aside. She strode forward on strappy stiletto heels that put a sway into her narrow hips that made her short skirt flare out and swirl around her with every long-legged step. Seeing her in a hospital bed hadn’t prepared me for how long and shapely her legs were. I wasn’t normally a leg person, but they seemed to lead straight up to that swirl of oh-so-short skirt like it was an exclamation point aimed at the swell of her hips and everything else that lay just under the narrow, dancing hem of her skirt. As she sashayed across the street, I realized it was more than just clothes, makeup, and hair. She knew how to move for maximum effect. I wasn’t the only one who watched her with my head on a swivel as she met the sheriff in the middle of the pavement.
In her heels she was actually tall enough that she had to lean over for him to speak low to her. I couldn’t see her eyes, but at a certain point, her shoulders stiffened, and I would have bet money that her eyes had widened behind the big sunglasses. She looked toward the police cars with her aunt and uncle in them, and then she opened that perfectly lipsticked mouth and yelled, “Aunt Muriel, how could you do that?” She took a suddenly shaking step toward the cars. “Uncle Todd, how could you kill Dad? How could you frame Bobby? You made me think he killed our dad!”
She slapped the window of the car that held Todd, and he winced visibly as if the blow had touched him. If we could get him away from his wife, he’d talk. He felt guilty, and that made you do stupid things like talking without your lawyer.
Jocelyn moved to the car with Muriel in it. Muriel didn’t flinch when her window got slapped. Her head was turned away from me, so she was looking at her niece. I wished I could have seen Muriel’s face, because whatever her expression was, it made Jocelyn press her hands flat against the window and bring her