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  Beth thrust the phone back at Raleigh and made a run for the restroom. She lost what was left of her breakfast. Maybe it was the gory sight of the autopsy catching up with her, and watching that fight had been the final insult to her stomach.

  Or maybe it was watching someone she’d thought she loved in a homicidal rage. And the terrible certainty that, if a rage like that had come over him, he might be guilty of murder.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MITCH KNEW HE WAS IN DEEP trouble when the two women strode across his mother’s front yard toward him as if they wished they had guns.

  They knew. No doubt about it. He couldn’t imagine who’d told them, because absolutely no one knew his real name except Craig.

  He was sitting on the front porch, shelling peas for his mom the way he’d done when he was a kid. The simple act of keeping his hands busy had helped prevent him from going slowly nuts, wondering if he’d jeopardized his case by fighting last night.

  The more he’d thought about it, the more he’d realized that driving to Houston had been a boneheaded move. Yeah, his fighting career had taken a big leap forward with last night’s victory. But what good would that do him if he was sitting on death row?

  He put the bowl of peas aside and stood up, trying to muster a smile. But no amount of charm was going to help him now.

  “Hello, Beth. Raleigh.” He nodded a greeting to Raleigh while his gaze remained on Beth, looking daisy fresh as usual in a short, peach-colored skirt and dainty white shirt with tiny peach flowers. He tried to gauge her mood. But her expression was shuttered, like one of the vacant storefronts in Coot’s Bayou’s struggling downtown.

  “You risked going back to jail for a cage fight?” Beth said when she’d mounted the steps to stand in front of him. “Really?”

  “It seemed like the thing to do at the time,” Mitch said. “I’d signed a contract. I was a headliner. Backing out would have cost me a lot of money and done a lot of damage to my reputation.”

  “Your reputation is exactly what I’m worried about,” Raleigh said. She didn’t sound all that angry, just concerned. “If that YouTube video ever gets in front of a jury, they’re not going to doubt you have violent tendencies. And I hope you plan on that black eye being better the next time you have to appear in court.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” he said.

  Beth flopped onto the porch swing, refusing to look at him. “You didn’t think about much of anything, did you, except the childish need to beat some hapless guy senseless.”

  “Not just ‘some guy.’ I beat the champion,” he said. “As of last night, I’m the reigning light-heavyweight MMA champion of the south-southeast district of Texas.”

  “And this is something to be proud of?” Beth asked incredulously.

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” He paced the porch in front of the swing, a little bit irritated by her lack of understanding. “I shouldn’t have ditched the cuff and violated the terms of my bail, I can see that now. Although I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get caught, and I couldn’t see any harm in it at the time, I can see that I’ve betrayed your trust. Raleigh’s and Billy’s and Daniel’s, too.”

  “Ya think?”

  “For that, I am sorry. Truly.”

  “Apology accepted,” Raleigh said cheerfully. “Can we move on to damage control?”

  “But I’m not sorry about winning a fight. It’s something I’ve been working toward for years. This was my first televised fight—well, the first one to go on a real cable TV channel. I was the total underdog, and I won! That means something to me.”

  “Okay,” Raleigh said, “I’ll just go inside and visit with your mother, Mitch. I’ll let you two debate the merits of cage fighting versus other hobbies.”

  “It means something to me, too,” Beth said bitterly. “It means that you’re a violent human being. It means that gentle, funny, sweet, kinda nerdy guy I fell in love with is a phony.”

  Fell in love with? Then he hadn’t imagined those hasty, whispered words in his ear when they’d made love. His heart was buoyed for a few seconds. Surely if Beth loved him, he was worth saving. But his hopes fizzled at her next words.

  “The guy I shared pizza with, the one who laughed at my collection of ceramic bunnies, the one who freaks out if he sees an anchovy on his pizza, the one who will stay up till four in the morning tracking down some elusive clue that will help some innocent person get out of prison—that guy doesn’t exist.”

  “Of course he exists. Although I’m not nerdy, thank you very much.”

  “My ex-boyfriend could pour on the charm, too. But he was nothing but a violent bully with an uncontrollable temper. You’re no better than him.”

  Hearing her compare him with that bastard who’d broken her jaw, Mitch felt that illustrious temper flaring. But he tamped it down. If he showed any emotion but calm reasoning, he would lose Beth forever.

  He suddenly realized that he really, really didn’t want to lose her. He wanted a chance to make things work.

  She loved him. Or she had, until she’d learned about his secret life. A hobby, Raleigh had called it, but it was more than that.

  “I’m not like Vince,” he said. “I don’t hit women. I don’t hit children. I’m not a bully.”

  She said nothing, just looked down at her lap.

  Mitch sat on the porch railing. “I don’t deny that I have a temper. That’s what happens when you spend your childhood getting beat up on a daily basis with absolutely no way to stop it. The anger builds up inside you, with no way to release it. And then it spills out.”

  She hopped to her feet and paced, her platform sandals clunking against the wood planks. “So you get help. You go to therapy. You learn anger management. You don’t start beating people up.”

  “I went to therapy. The last shrink I saw told me to find a socially acceptable physical outlet for my temper. So I did. I signed up for jujitsu classes, and I discovered I had a knack for it. Fighting in a cage, with a referee, is my therapy. Fighting is what allows me to be the laid-back guy you know.

  “I don’t assault people. I participate in a sport that obviously isn’t to your taste, but that’s all it is—a sport. If you want to condemn me for outsmarting my monitoring cuff and breaking the rules, fine. I’ll take my lumps for that decision. But martial arts is part of who I am.”

  Finally she looked at him, and she did seem to be trying to understand.

  He tried again. “I don’t particularly like your ceramic bunnies, but I don’t condemn you for collecting them. Or insist you get rid of them.”

  As an exit line, it was laughable. But Mitch had run out of argument. He wanted to go punch some hay, but that would have to wait until Project Justice was done with him.

  He hopped off the railing, grabbed the shelled peas and went inside, where his mom was putting together some kind of dessert in a casserole dish and Raleigh sat at the kitchen table with a glass of tea.

  “Just set those in the sink, Mitch, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He pulled out a chair and sat across from Raleigh. “So, how badly have I screwed myself? Is Project Justice going to abandon me?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. My last client threatened to assault me, and I didn’t drop him. Emotions are running high, and sometimes bad decisions run rampant. We’ll deal with it. Hopefully, your prosecutor isn’t a big fan of mixed martial arts. And if he should try to get a video of your fight admitted as evidence, I’m pretty sure he won’t succeed.

  “But I need to know, Mitch—are there other videos floating around?”

  “Maybe, but nothing as alarming as last night’s fight. A takedown like that doesn’t happen every day. That’s the only televised fight I’ve ever been a part of.”

  “Is there anything else you haven’t told me? Please, I don’t care how bad it is, it’s better if I know about it now, rather than later.”

  “I haven’t been arrested since the car theft thing. I did some not-strictly-legal street fig
hting before I got smart and went legit, but nothing that involved the police. Nothing that resulted in serious injury.”

  “But the local cops—they could probably dig up a few people who will testify that you beat them up?”

  He nodded, conceding the point. “Maybe. But you won’t find anyone who’ll testify that I ever owned a gun, or shot a gun. Robby and Larry were both shot.”

  “One more thing…does Daniel know about the cage fighting?”

  He looked away guiltily. “No.”

  “I find that hard to believe, given how he vets his employees.”

  “I’ve never used my real name.”

  “And how did you beat the psych evaluation every Project Justice employee has to go through?” she asked without missing a beat.

  “I’d like to think I didn’t have to beat it—I’m perfectly sane.”

  “Okay.” Raleigh patted him on the arm. “We’ll get through this, Mitch. Did you and Beth sort things out?”

  He only wished.

  BETH PULLED HERSELF TOGETHER and headed indoors. She wanted to mull over what Mitch had told her, but now wasn’t the time. There were other considerations—such as breaking the news to Mitch that she thought they should seriously consider Dwayne as a suspect, at least in Larry’s murder. His demeanor at the M.E.’s office had bothered her, and her instincts about such things were usually dead-on.

  She smoothed her hair off her face, took a deep breath and opened the door. She met Myra in the hallway, having come from upstairs. She had just freshened her makeup and fixed her hair, looking much better than she had the first day Beth had met her. Maybe having her son around had given her something to live for, something to fight for. She hardly resembled that hopeless, defeated woman who had answered the door five days ago.

  She also, Beth noted, wore a bright pink-orange shade of lipstick.

  “Oh, hello, Beth,” Myra said pleasantly. “I hope you’ll be staying for dinner.”

  Beth had lost any semblance of an appetite, but dinner was still a few hours away. “Yes, I will, thanks. Myra, that’s a lovely shade of lipstick. Do you think it would look good with my coloring?”

  Myra smiled shyly. “Thank you. Are you an autumn? I’m an autumn.”

  Beth felt a prickling of guilt for asking a trick question. Myra had been so sweet through all this…although she had been cagey when asked about Willard Bell’s guns.

  “I think I’m a winter.” She’d once taken the what-season-are-you test in a magazine, anyway.

  “You’re welcome to try it,” Myra said. “I have a new tube in my purse—I’ll get it for you.”

  Beth’s guilt increased. No one had ever considered Myra a suspect, but who knew for sure what family dynamics were going on back then? Myra had already admitted she thought Robby was a bad influence on her baby boy. Maybe, after the car theft incident, she’d decided to get rid of that influence once and for all.

  Myra went to the hall tree, where her purse was hanging, and dug around in a small zipper pouch until she found a tube of lipstick. Beth’s breath caught in her throat—the tube was gold with copper stripes. Myra took off her glasses and squinted at the bottom of the tube. “It’s made by Genevieve. The color is Youthful Coral.” She handed the tube to Beth.

  Her hand shaking, Beth opened the tube and, using the hall tree mirror, applied a touch of the lipstick to her bare lips. The color actually didn’t look bad on her.

  “That’s right pretty,” Myra said. “I think it looks better on you than me. You want to keep it?”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay.”

  “I can get another one.” She chuckled. “Debbie at the drugstore meant to order ten of these lipsticks and she added an extra zero and ordered a hundred. She has them on sale for a dollar apiece. I think every woman in town is stocking up on extra lipstick.”

  The tightness in Beth’s stomach eased, although her suspect pool just widened considerably. She and Myra entered the kitchen together. Myra went to work emptying the dish drainer, opening and closing her battered oak cabinets and drawers to put the dishes away. Beth avoided looking at Mitch, keeping her eyes aimed squarely at Raleigh.

  “Is that a new lipstick color?” Raleigh asked, looking perplexed that Beth would primp at a time like this.

  “I borrowed it from Myra. The color is Youthful Coral. Should I stop by the drugstore and buy a tube? I understand they have a whole bunch of it on sale for a dollar, and every woman in town is stocking up.”

  Raleigh grimaced, obviously understanding the implications. “Well, that was a whole lot of money wasted on chemical analysis and database comparison.”

  Mitch looked from one woman to the other. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just that the lipstick stain found on Larry’s clothes won’t be much help if dozens of women in Coot’s Bayou wear this same shade.”

  “Wait a minute. You thought my mother—”

  “No, Mitch, of course not.” Beth found herself fibbing again. She was doing that a lot lately. “I just happened to notice the lipstick and wanted to know if she’d bought it around here. If it was unusual, that could have helped us find a suspect. But it’s not rare.”

  Myra didn’t seem fazed by the idea she might be considered a suspect. She didn’t act like a guilty person…except about those guns. This, Beth decided, was a matter she should put to rest.

  “Myra, you’re not considered a suspect. But I do think you know more about Willard’s guns than you’re telling us.”

  “You gotta be kidding.” Mitch sounded disgusted.

  “No, Mitch, Beth is right.” Myra turned to face them, wiping her hands on an old linen dishcloth. “I didn’t tell the truth when she first asked. I needed money, and I sold Willard’s guns at a flea market. I sold them to anyone who had the cash, and some of those men might have been criminals. There, now, I’ve said it, and I’m glad I’ve gotten it off my chest.”

  “Myra, don’t worry,” Raleigh said. “You didn’t do anything illegal. But do you happen to remember who might have bought a small revolver?”

  She thought for a moment. “I only remember one handgun. It was a big thing, though.” She indicated a span with her hands far larger than a .22. “The rest were all shotguns and rifles.”

  “So Willard might have disposed of the .22 before his death,” Beth said.

  “I’m afraid so. Anything could have happened to it.”

  Beth quietly sighed. She was glad to put any lingering suspicions about Myra to rest, but the new information didn’t help with the investigation at all. Unless…

  “Mitch,” Beth said, “remember when you said you thought Dwayne might be trying to sabotage your case?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that. I didn’t want to cut him any slack at first.”

  “No, you certainly didn’t.” She shivered, recalling how angry he’d become over her suggestion that Dwayne had been abused.

  “From everything I’ve seen, Dwayne’s a lot different than he was when we were kids. He’s been pretty cool about this whole thing. Even when he picked the fight with me—I think he did it for my own good, so I could work through some old resentment. I just read him wrong. He really was trying to give me a heads-up when he came to see me at work. Now that I think about it, he probably didn’t have a current home address for me—”

  “Mitch, wait…” How inconvenient that he’d changed his mind, just when she’d changed hers. “Dwayne behaved very suspiciously at Larry’s autopsy this morning. He had fresh scratches on his arm. I think he might know something about Larry’s death.”

  Mitch rolled his eyes. “First you think my mom did it, now Dwayne?”

  “I never really thought your mom—”

  “That’s it. I don’t want to hear any more.” He stood up and pulled a set of keys from his pocket.

  “Is that your solution? You get angry, so you walk away rather than talking things out?”

  “I’m not angry.” His tone of voice
said otherwise. But he took one deep breath, then another, and a steely calm came over him. “I’m not angry,” he said again. “But I’m gonna go talk to Dwayne. I’ll extend him the same courtesy he did for me. I’ll give him a heads-up. Dwayne might be a jerk sometimes, but he’s proud of that badge. Can’t see him breaking the law.”

  “I’m going with you,” Beth said. If Dwayne really was a murderer, she didn’t want Mitch confronting him alone. Maybe she couldn’t defend him, but she could try to keep the calm if things got crazy. She could at least call 9-1-1.

  “Wait, both of you. No one do anything right now, okay?” Raleigh said. “I need to go. I have a meeting scheduled with Buck. Can I please depend on you—both of you—to stay out of trouble?”

  “Nothing I do is going to cause trouble,” Mitch said, actually offering a smile. “I’ve learned my lesson after last night, okay?”

  Beth noted that he hadn’t actually said he would stay put, or that he wouldn’t go see Dwayne. Which meant it was Beth’s job to make sure he didn’t. As if she’d been so effective in the past convincing him to do anything.

  “Thank you, Myra, for the iced tea,” Raleigh said as she gathered up her things. “I’ve never been a fan of sweet tea before, but you’ve turned me into a convert.” She gave Beth’s shoulder a meaningful squeeze before departing. She knew Beth was struggling, but she obviously had no sage words of advice.

  Mitch sat at the kitchen table, nibbling on a cookie from a plate Myra had put out and flipping through the paper, looking unconcerned.

  “So you’re not going to see your brother?”

  He didn’t answer right away; at least he didn’t seem intent on lying to her. She supplied an answer for him.

  “You’re waiting until I’m distracted, then you’re going to take off.”

  She knew by his expression that she’d guessed correctly.

  “It’s not like going to see my brother would be violating the terms of my bail. He lives well within the parish. And don’t tell me I’d be interfering with a police investigation. So far the police don’t view him as a suspect. Only Project Justice.” What he meant was, only you.