Free Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) by Harper James

told it's been said that my Robbie might have
run off with his whore because Daniel saw them together, so they killed him to
keep it secret and then ran away together. What kind of a sick person makes up
something like that?'
    Evan didn't have an answer. He
couldn't bear to look her in the eye. Whoever had told her - Guillory
presumably - didn't have as much respect for her feelings as Evan did. No
wonder she chose not to mix with people around town. Chose instead to hide
herself away, refusing to listen to the rumormongers. But Evan knew only too
well you couldn't hide from yourself. In the small hours of the morning all
your doubts and fears come to haunt you.
    'I'm sorry, it's been building a long
time,' she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. 'I don't suppose you expected
this when you knocked on the door.' She gave him a small smile.
    'I'm not sure now what I expected,
but this is probably more than I bargained for. Certainly more raw emotion
anyway, but that's fine.' He smiled back at her, letting her know that he was
Mr Emotional Sponge, the man with the inexhaustible capacity to absorb other
people's problems. He just hoped he didn't spoil things and start to cry himself.
He needed to get it back on track. Time to get back to nice hard facts; less
of the emotional claptrap.
    'Do you have any ideas about what
might have happened?' he said.
    'Plenty of things might have
happened. As far as what actually did happen, I haven't got the first idea. And
there's not a day gone by when I haven't thought about it.'
    'Faulkner mentioned the teacher, Ray
Clements.'
    He managed to get Faulkner’s name
out without starting her off again. 'Ray Clements is a good man. As far as I'm
concerned he could no more have hurt Daniel than Robbie could. I know Faulkner
hounded him before he had his epiphany regarding Robbie, but I never thought
that was right either.'
    It seemed to Evan that Linda managed
to see the best in everyone - except Faulkner that is. He got the feeling that
when they finally got round to whoever she thought was the prime suspect (and
he was sure she had someone in mind) it was all going to come pouring out
again. Perhaps she thought it was Faulkner, she certainly hated him enough.
    'He didn't tell them he'd given
Daniel a ride home. That must have looked like he had something to hide.'
    'If you knew what Faulkner was like
back then, you wouldn't have been volunteering any information.' She snorted
again. It wasn't an attractive habit and detracted from the nice neck. 'He
seems such a nice guy now and everyone feels so sorry for him because of his
wife dying, but if he got you in his sights back then, you'd have had a very
different opinion. Ask poor Ray Clements; he ruined his life.'
    'What makes you so sure Clements was
innocent?
    'I can't say. But just because I
can't prove why he didn't do it, doesn't mean he did. I thought we had a
presumption of innocence in this country. Nobody seems to have told Faulkner.'
Evan agreed, but was getting the feeling that Linda's reasoning was a little
light on facts and biased more towards whether she liked you or not. It seemed
you were just meant to accept what she told you. 'The only reason Faulkner
concentrated on him was because that low life Hendricks convinced him Daniel
never left the campus -  and Ray Clements was an easy target. Faulkner liked
things easy.'
    Evan wondered if they'd finally got
round to the point where she was going to let rip. 'I get the feeling you don't
like Hendricks. You think he had something to do with it?'
    He thought she was about to snort
again, but she held it in this time. 'You're not kidding I don't like him. He's
a really nasty piece of work. The best part of him ran down his mother’s leg.’
The vitriol in her voice surprised him more than her language. It also seemed
to him that two distinct teams were forming here.
    ‘Unfortunately, just because I don't
like him doesn't mean I think he had anything to do with it. How could he