Free Murder Inside the Beltway by Margaret Truman

record, not even a parking ticket. As he studied her photo, he read into it a vulnerable woman, her eyes sad and looking for something in her life that she’d probably never find. Hatcher would consider such an analysis to be naïve, even stupid.
    He forced Hatcher from his mind, got out of the car, and walked to the building’s entrance, where he scanned the tenant list next to call buttons. Her apartment was number 9-C. He pressed the button and heard it sound in the apartment. No voice responded through the small speaker.
    An older woman pushed through the door.
    “Excuse me,” Jackson said.
    She eyed him suspiciously.
    “I’m looking for Ms. Simmons.”
    The way she said, “I don’t know her,” coupled with the disgusted look on her face, told him that she did.
    “Do you know if she’s away?” he asked.
    “I hope so,” the woman said, and left.
    He was about to return to the car and go back to headquarters when the door to the building opened and Micki Simmons exited. She wore a scarf over her head, and carried a suitcase.
    “Ms. Simmons?” Jackson said.
    She stopped and glared at him.
    “Can we talk for a minute? I’m—”
    She walked away.
    “Whoa,” he said, catching up with her and blocking her path. He fumbled for his detective’s badge and displayed it. “I’m Matt Jackson, detective, MPD. I’d like to speak with you.”
    She cocked her head and sneered, “Yeah, I’m sure you would. Maybe another time.”
    He shifted his position to prevent her from advancing toward the curb, where a taxi had pulled up.
    “Get out of my way,” she said.
    “Look,” Jackson said, “either you agree to talk with me now, or I slap cuffs on you and we do it at headquarters. Your call. It’s about your friend Rosalie Curzon.”
    “I never would have guessed,” she said. “That’s my cab waiting.”
    “After we talk, I’ll drop you wherever you want. But first we talk.”
    Until this point she’d been all toughness and challenge, not a hint of any southern accent or charm. Then, as though she’d received an instant Dixie transplant, she sighed, lowered her suitcase to the pavement, and said in a softer voice, “Ah suppose ah don’t have any choice, do ah?”
    Jackson smiled. “No, ma’am, I suppose you don’t.”
    She looked around. A middle-aged couple came from the building and didn’t try to hide their interest in what was going on.
    “Can we go somewhere?” she asked.
    “Your apartment?”
    “No, ah don’t think that’s a good idea.”
    “My apartment?” Jackson said.
    It was her first hint of a smile. “Are you sure you’re a cop?”
    “Want to see the badge again? Look, tell you what, we’ll go to my apartment. It’s in Adams Morgan, only a couple of blocks from here.” He pointed to his car. “That’s mine. I make good coffee, the real thing. When we’re through, I’ll drive you wherever it is you want to go.”
    She chewed her cheek.
    “By the way, where
were
you going?”
    “Home. All right. But if I answer your questions, I’m free to go?”
    “That’s right, unless you confess to killing your friend. Then—”
    “Don’t even joke about that.”
    They dismissed the taxi, whose driver was visibly miffed, placed her suitcase in the trunk of Jackson’s car, and drove the short distance to his apartment.
    “You live here alone?” she asked.
    “Yeah. I mean, sometimes my girlfriend stays but—”
    “It’s so neat.”
    He laughed. “I like order around me. Must mean I have a disorderly brain. At least that’s what a professor of mine claimed about externally neat people.”
    “You went to college?” she said, going to a window and looking down at the street. In her experience, cops weren’t college-educated.
    “Uh-huh,” he said from the kitchen, where he readied the coffeemaker. When he returned to the living room, she’d removed her raincoat and settled on the couch, her shoes on the floor in front of her. She wore a white sleeveless sweater that