In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(9)

Kate cocked her head to one side.

"We don't solve this Stephanie case, we'll be marked for the town where gangsters can bring their bodies and dump them in hotels and never get caught," he said.

Kate laughed. "That's a little on the dramatic side there, Bobby. I can't play detective. I was only part-time relief anyway, and I didn't make the grade to even get a full-time position, so I can't be detective. So how could I ever help?"

"Under the table," Slim said.

"Captain would fire you," Kate said.

Bobby nodded. "We'll take the chance. It's been two weeks, and we got nothing"

"Okay, then what have you got that I don't already know?"

"You know about the fingerprints that Hart Ducaine left. That was around six, before he went to the wedding and hooked up with you," Slim said.

Kate opened her order pad to a back page.

"Report came in this morning. The other fingerprints in the room belonged to Billy Joe Miller. He's got a jacket but not murder. It's mainly drunk driving, drugs, that kind of thing. So he's staying over in Albany with his brother, and we go over there to talk to him. He's got a rock solid alibi. He was there but he left at eight, got picked up on a DUI just as he was going into Albany, and spent the rest of the night in jail before his brother could make bail and spring him. Booked in at eight thirty," Slim said.

She took notes while he talked.

"Anything more?"

"Past that we are empty-handed."

Cookie Mannford waved at Kate from the door. "Texas ain't supposed to be cold. It's supposed to be hot even in the winter, so what's going on?"

Kate left the officers and followed Cookie to a back booth. "What are you doing in town? This isn't the second Friday in the month"

"No, me and Gloria had to switch some days. Why aren't you at the police station?" Cookie slid into the booth.

"They won't be calling on me for relief work anymore." Kate joined her.

When her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Cookie took a sabbatical from her truck driving job. As the only unmarried sibling among five children, she left the lush mountains of Luray, Virginia, where she had been living, and returned to the mesquite and mosquitoes of Texas. Her only request was that her sister take care of their mother once a month, so Cookie could have a night to herself. She usually checked into a motel and read a big thick romance book.

"I heard some junk like that, but I didn't believe it. Those fools really aren't going to give you any more work? Why? Is that the two that caused you a problem, sittin' right there?"

"No, it's not Slim and Bobby. They are actually the good guys" Kate told her the whole story.

Cookie threw back her head and laughed. A natural redhead, complete with a face full of light freckles, she had sparkling green eyes and delicate features and was almost six feet tall. She didn't fit the stereotype of a female truck driver at all. Give her a professional makeup artist and put her in a designer gown, and she could easily walk the models' runway in New York City.

She wiped at her eyes. "Now if that ain't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is. Woman has a right to talk to her boyfriend wherever she wants to talk to him. If that had been a male officer talking to a woman, nobody would've thought a thing about it."

"He's not my boyfriend, Cookie."

"Well, he ought to be. He was the handsomest one that went into that room that night. I'm just nosy, but hey, I only get out twice a month. Lady got there at five o'clock, saw her in the office when I paid for my room. She was a bottle blond and looked hard. We walked out at the same time, and she took a little bag from her car. License plate right here. White Escalade. Showed me right quick that she come from money and I'd been wrong"

"How'd you know all that?" Kate asked.

"That's the motel I was staying at, and I couldn't get interested in my book, so I was sittin' out there in the shadows, smoking a cigarette. Only room they had that night was a nonsmoking one. Anyway, I was sittin' out by the door in a chair I pulled out there, all wrapped up in a blanket, telling myself that with what goes on in a small-town motel, I could write my own romance book if I knew how to put the words together."

"No one mentioned her car," Kate said.

"I don't imagine they did. It left later on that night. I'll have a tamale dinner with extra refried beans on the side," Cookie said. "Put in my order and come back, and we'll give those two officers something to chew on"

Kate went to the kitchen and returned with two tall glasses of iced tea.

Cookie went on. "After the good-lookin' cowboy left, some seedy-looking guy drove up in a ratty old pickup truck. Blue and white. Squared-off-looking, not rounded like the first feller's new truck. He stayed about an hour and came staggering out. Took about three times to get his truck started, and he was already weaving all over the road by the time he turned back to the west toward Albany."

Kate nodded. "That would've been Billy Joe Miller."

"It was quiet for a while. I watched a couple of other folks but nothing that interested me, so I went on back in the room. Ate a candy bar and drank a Coke and decided I wanted another cigarette. So I wrapped up in the blanket and went back outside."