Free Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek: A Samuel Craddock Mystery (Samuel Craddock Mysteries) by Terry Shames

say.” She sits forward, eager to convince me of his good intentions. “He liked to kid around, you know? He made me feel… valued.” In that moment, I see what appealed to Dellmore. Animated, her face is pretty, her blue eyes round and innocent.
    “I have to ask you: Were the two of you involved sexually?”
    She jerks back as if I’ve slapped her. “No!”
    “When you talked, did he seem worried about anything?”
    The momentary light in her eyes flickers out. She shakes her head. “No, and… he wouldn’t have told me anyway. We just goofed around. My roommate was in her room, so…”
    I can’t help thinking she was lucky her roommate was here.
    She glances over at the TV screen. The sound is muted. On the screen a man and woman are standing too close together for real life, and by the look of it they are angry with each other.
    “Did Gary flirt with other girls at the bank?”
    Jessica pulls her attention back away from the TV. “He was friendly to everybody. Everybody liked him.”
    Somebody didn’t. “Were you jealous of him flirting?”
    She picks at her nails, catches herself again, and balls her hands into fists. “Why would I be jealous? It wasn’t like we were dating or anything… like, you know, he was married.”

Marietta Bryant is walking out the door when I pull up at Grange Realty. “I’ve got to drive out to look at a lot ten miles outside of town. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll talk on the way?” I’ve never seen her dressed anyway but “up.” Today she’s wearing a white blouse with the collar turned up and a modest black skirt and high heels. She always wears gold jewelry: chains and small button earrings.
    She drives a big SUV that she has to hoist herself up into, and she looks like a doll behind the wheel. “My husband usually drives this. It’s a gas hog and he had to drive to Houston today, so he took my Toyota.” She says she’s gotten used to the big car. She and her husband live on a little farm on the outskirts of town and they need a big car to haul things around in.
    I tell her it’s hard for me to imagine her mucking around on a farm. She turns sparkling eyes to me. “Oh, I can wear jeans and a sweatshirt with the best of them. But mucking around? Forget it! I told my husband when we got married that I wasn’t doing anything that would break my nails.” The glee in her eyes tells me she’s probably teasing.
    She’s equal to the task of driving the SUV, wheeling out of the lot like it’s a sports car. We head across the railroad tracks and into pastureland studded with the occasional rustic home. Before we’ve gone half a mile, her cell phone chirps. She glances at it, pushes a button, and slips it back into the holder between the seats like a gunslinger.
    It’s relaxing to be in the passenger seat for a change, and Marietta points out various lots for sale and talks up plans people have for upgrading the area.
    I ask her the same thing I asked Reinhardt. Did she hear or see anything suspicious when she left the night of the meeting?
    “It seems like I’m always in a rush, and that night I left there like I was driving to a fire. I had to meet a client and sign some papers before it got too late. There could have been twenty extra cars there, or none at all, and I wouldn’t have paid any attention.”
    “Fair enough. Now let me ask you something. Did you see this thing coming with Alton Coldwater?”
    She glances over at me. She’s driving fast, but she knows what she’s doing. “No way I could have. I only got my hands on the books a few months ago and by then the damage was done. Alton kept dancing around, putting Rusty and me off until Rusty insisted he turn over the books. When I got them in front of me, I realized why he was reluctant.”
    She slows down and turns onto a gravel road. There’s a lot of scrub brush here and few trees, but farther up the road I see a stand of post oak.
    “Anyway, I tried juggling numbers every way I