Free Touch of Evil by Colleen Thompson

quietly, “Couldn’t even touch me.”
    “How did he react to these changes?”
    “How do you think? How would you?” Laney wiped her eyes as grief and anger echoed in the small space. “We were going to do something with our music. And I’m not just talking about playing the Tin Roof or even music festivals in Austin and New Orleans. We recorded demo tracks before Jake got too sick—before any of them started dying. Our agent says they’re really good. And other people in the industry do, too.”
    “People around here know Laney,” Ross said. “Every time I’m out with her in public, she gets stopped for autographs.”
    Though Laney blushed, new interest sparked in Justine’s dark gaze.
    “I’ve heard you and I’m not surprised,” she said. “And I understand you wrote most of the songs yourself, too?”
    Laney nodded, a troubled look drifting like a rain-soaked mist behind her eyes. “Jake and I were planning to get married.We were planning to spend our lives together…somewhere far away where we’d both fit in.”
    “Laney,” Ross said, surprised to hear this news. But not surprised that Laney had kept it from the family. Aunt Ava might have liked Laney singing in the church choir, but she and Ross’s mother both objected, loudly and often, to Laney “carrying on with those seedy musician types” at the local dance hall. And though the rest of the family had been known to show support by going to listen to her music, the consensus was that Laney ought to find herself a “fallback” career, or at least a husband with a stable job and benefits.
    Laney didn’t meet his gaze. “It wasn’t fair.”
    Justine glanced up from yet another note and shook her head. “ Life isn’t fair. I can understand why you would feel upset, even angry when your boyfriend decided to follow Hart without asking what you wanted.”
    “No,” Laney cried out, rising abruptly. “No. Jake didn’t hang himself. He wouldn’t do that to me. He knew I still loved him. He knew I’d never leave.”
    “So if Jake wouldn’t kill himself, who would?” Justine asked her. “And who’d want to kill Hart Tyson and Caleb LeJeune, for that matter?”
    Laney shook her head. “I don’t know who. I only know someone did.”
    “Did they have enemies? Were they threatened? Any conflicts you know of?”
    Laney shrugged. “Hart and his ex-wife fought like mad cats—”
    “He mentioned the divorce in his note.”
    “And Caleb got into more than his share of bar brawls,” Laney went on, “but none of it seemed serious, and why would anybody hang Jake?”
    “So what about race, Miss Thibodeaux? You ever hear threats? Ugly comments?”
    Flushing, Laney shook her head. “Hart got the occasionaldumb remark from some moron or other on his umpteenth beer, but I don’t remember anything serious.”
    “I couldn’t come up with any enemies, either,” Justine explained, “and I found no reason your boyfriend might’ve been purposely killed. Only explanations for why he might take his own life.”
    “Except Jake couldn’t have, at least not that way,” Ross chimed in. “He was so weak, I can’t imagine him doing it on his own. Not unless he’d improved markedly from the last time I saw him.”
    Laney shook her head. “No, no. He was getting worse. So even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have gotten out there alone without a car. He was found about a twenty-minute drive from the apartment.”
    “None of his friends admitted taking him,” Justine said, “so we assumed he hitchhiked.”
    “Even if he did,” Ross argued, “there’s no way he could have manipulated a rope and knots without help, unless…There were knots, weren’t there? He didn’t just wrap the rope around the tree’s base and…”
    Again, he hesitated, unwilling to distress Laney by painting such an ugly picture.
    “Go on, Ross,” Laney urged him. “Whatever you were going to say, I want to hear it.”
    No longer bothering with notes,