Broken Places by Sandra Parshall Page B

over her. And he’s always over there when Cam Taylor’s gone, I guess when he’s workin’ at the paper. Sometimes they stay at the house, and sometimes Scotty just picks her up and they go off together. He drops her back at the house two or three hours later. You can make whatever you want to out of that.”
    Oh, man. Would this turn out to be a simple case of jealousy? A triangle involving three volatile personalities was guaranteed to produce trouble sooner or later. “How often have you seen Scotty over there?”
    “Two, three times a week.”
    “Was he there today before the other visitor came, or after?”
    “After. I think.”
    “Did Scotty or the other visitor come back a second time? Was either of them over there right before the fire?”
    “Maybe. Maybe not. Like I said, I was busy, I wasn’t payin’ all that much attention.”
    “You said the first person drove a fancy car. Did you notice the make?”
    “Some kind of a sports car. What’re they called, them cars with the cat on the hood?”
    “A Jaguar?”
    “That’s right,” Wilson said, nodding, “a Jaguar sports car. Dark-colored. I think it was black, but could’ve been navy blue. I never was too good with colors.”
    Ben Hern had said his mother drove a dark blue Jaguar. Had Karen Hernandez visited Meredith before leaving the county? Why would she? Lindsay had said they weren’t friends, that her mother disliked Karen Hernandez. Tom hoped he could get her back to Mason County for questioning after the sheriff’s department tracked her down. If he had to, he’d drive to Washington to see her.
    Right now, though, he was a lot more interested in talking to Scotty Ragsdale.
    Chapter Nine

    Rachel set a dish of food on the tack room floor for the stable cat, an orange tabby named Ginger, and gave her four kittens a large communal plate. Unable to quiet her worries about Ben and erase the image of Cameron Taylor lying dead in the woods, Rachel had sought solace where she knew she could always find it, with animals who needed her attention. She’d brought vaccine with her. After the cats had eaten, she would scoop them up one by one and give them their shots.
    Leaning against the saddle bench in the shadows, watching the kittens’ bellies swell as they packed away the food, Rachel wondered if she should keep one or two of the kittens for herself. Frank might enjoy their company.
    “Hi there.”
    Startled, Rachel spun around. Lindsay Taylor stood in the doorway, her blond hair backlit by the early evening sun through the stable’s main door. “Hi,” Lindsay said again. “You look surprised to see me. Didn’t Tommy tell you I’m staying with Joanna?”
    Rachel had heard nothing about this. But maybe it hadn’t been settled until after she’d seen Tom that afternoon. All she could think of to say was, “I’m glad you have a family friend to stay with.”
    Lindsay leaned against the door frame and watched the kittens. “They’re cute.”
    “Yes, they are.” Rachel turned away, shook out a clean towel she’d brought, and spread it over the scarred wooden table against one wall. From a small zippered case she removed alcohol and cotton balls and the syringes into which she’d already drawn the proper amounts of vaccine.
    Silence stretched out. Rachel resisted an urge to look at Lindsay, to examine her more closely. She didn’t have to do that to understand why Tom had been attracted to her. Any man would be.
    “Do you ride?” Lindsay asked.
    “Yes, I do. This is a great place for it.” Having fussed with the arrangement of the vaccine syringes as long as she reasonably could, Rachel turned and pinned her gaze on the cats again. Sunlight slanting through the room’s single window fell over the little family and made their striped coats gleam like gold. Rachel’s skin prickled with awareness of Lindsay’s eyes on her.
    “Tommy and I used to come out here to ride all the time,” Lindsay said. “We helped Joanna saddle-train