Free Nightwind by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

his heel, carrying
    her toward the back of the store.
    “Reed Yelverton, please. It’s an emergency.” Lauren covered the mouthpiece of the phone and looked
    around at the Sheriff. “What happened to her?”
    “I had some shocking news to tell her, Miss Lauren. It put her in a state, I guess.”
    Lauren held up a hand to interrupt him as the phone at the other end was answered. “Mr. Yelverton?
    This is Lauren up at the store? I’m calling for Sheriff Jackson. You’d better come up here when you can.
    Mrs. Yelverton needs you.” She flinched as the connection was broken with a loud click. She turned to
    the Sheriff. “He’s on his way.” Hanging up the phone, she saw the stark worry in the lawman’s lined face.
    “Something else has happened, hasn’t it?”
    Wiley Jackson nodded grimly. “It’s the Janacek girl, I’m afraid.”
    Lauren’s blood ran cold. “Is she all right?”
    The Sheriff took off his hat and ran the back of his arm over his forehead. “No, she ain’t.” He put the hat
    back on, pulled it low on his brow. “She’s dead.”
    “How?” Lauren gasped.
    The man’s face turned red. “I don’t reckon you ought to hear such things as how she was murdered.”
    He looked at her.
    Syntian hunkereddown beside Louvenia Yelverton as she lay moaning on the sofa in the break room.
    He watched as her eyelids fluttered open. In the glazed depths of her pupils, he saw the horror of what
    she’d been told. “Louvenia?” he asked softly, his voice urgent, demanding.
    “Yes, Syn?” she asked dreamily, staring up into his mesmerizing eyes, falling through the space they
    opened up for her.
    “I’ll be visiting you tonight, Louvenia.” He ran his finger down her arm. “Expect me.”
    “Mr. Cree?”
    He turned, smiling as the sheriff stopped him at the door of the shop. “Yes?”
    “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the party the other night.” Wiley
    Jackson stepped out of the way as Reed Yelverton came rushing into the bookstore. He pointed toward
    the rear of the shop. “She’s back there, Reed. The Fowler girl is with her.”
    Reed Yelverton barely glanced at Wiley and Syntian Cree as he hurried toward the back. His shoulders
    were hunched as though he expected a blow to his head at any moment.
    “They’re very devoted to one another,” the Sheriff commented to Syntian. “Never had any children.”
    “What was it you wanted to ask me?” Syntian asked. His face was open, direct, and friendly.
    “One of my deputies dates Allen Turnbridge’s youngest daughter. He was at the party Saturday night
    and he said he saw you and Beth Janacek together.”
    Syntian nodded. “We spent some time talking, yes.”
    “Lin Dixon, that’s my deputy, told me Beth left early. About Nine-thirty.”
    Syntian’s brows drew together. “I believe it was somewhere around that time.”
    “Did you leave with her?” Wiley watched the tall man closely.
    “No,” he answered, shaking his head.
    “You didn’t drive her home?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    Wiley Jackson squinted. “Florence Frazier, do you know her? She’s our County Clerk? Well, anyway,
    she remembers hearing you telling Miss Janacek that you would come by her apartment later that night.”
    Syntian smiled. “Beth invited me to, yes, but I never made it over there.”
    “And why is that?”
    He let a dull flush spread over his face and he slipped on a look of chagrin. “I’m afraid Allen took my
    car key’s away from me, Sheriff. I was, shall we say, feeling no pain?”
    “What time was that?” Wiley wrote something down in his notebook.
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. I called a friend about ten or so, I remember doing that because I was
    half-watching the baseball scores on the television in Allen’s den when I called her.”
    “And who was it you called?”
    “Lauren Fowler.”
    Wiley Jackson’s brows shot up. “I suppose she could corroborate that?”
    “I would think so. She was in