Dead Certain by Mariah Stewart

friend who had been murdered—I forgot to mention that I do own a gun, and that I’d fired it the day before. It just never occurred to me, since it wasn’t used to kill Derek.”
    “Ruling out your gun as the murder weapon will certainly go a long way to prove that, since there is that matter of gunshot residue on the sweatshirt you were—by your own admission—wearing on the night Mr. England was killed.”
    “Because I’d worn it to the firing range.” Her jaw was clenched. “And I can prove that. There’s a video camera set up on the range. Check it out and you’ll see exactly what I was wearing.”
    “Thanks. I’ll do just that.”
    Muttering under her breath, she turned and marched up the stairs to the second floor. She stopped midway up and looked down at him over one shoulder.
    “You tested my hands and arms as well. What were the results of those tests?”
    “They were clean. No residue.”
    “I could have told you that.” She made no effort to hide the touch of smugness as she continued up the steps.
    She held the gun out to him handle first, as she came back down a moment later.
    “Here. It’s not loaded. But you were taking quite a chance, weren’t you? I mean, how did you know I wouldn’t come back down, gun blazing?”
    “My very obvious error.” She would have expected him to look a bit embarrassed by this oversight, but he did not.
    “I’ll get you a plastic bag from the kitchen so that you don’t even have to get your prints on it”—she waved for him to follow her toward the back of the house—“since you obviously didn’t expect to gather any evidence this afternoon.”
    He walked behind her down the short hall and into the kitchen.
    She opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag into which she unceremoniously deposited the gun. Handing the bag to him, she said, “There you go. In a few days, you’ll know for certain that I am absolutely, positively telling you the truth. I did not kill Derek.”
    He accepted the bag and folded over the top. “Thanks,” he told her. “I hope it proves you didn’t.”
    “Why, Chief Mercer, I believe you—”
    The air between them was split unexpectedly by the harsh ringing of the phone.
    She glanced at the wall unit.
    “You going to answer that?” he asked.
    Amanda hesitated.
    The answering machine in the front hall picked up. Even from the kitchen, the sound of heavy breathing was clear and distinct. Her face drained of color as she walked quietly into the hall, listening. Finally, Sean followed, then lifted the receiver and said, “Hello? Who is this?”
    The phone immediately went dead.
    The caller ID displayed two words. Unknown number.
    He hit the buttons for the return call feature.
    “The number of your last incoming call is unknown,” the recording announced.
    “You get a lot of those?” Mercer asked.
    She nodded, not trusting her voice.
    “When did they start?”
    “A few days before Derek was killed.”
    “Any thoughts on who the caller could be?”
    “No. I called the phone company and they said they couldn’t trace the calls. That they were most likely being made from a cell phone using a phone card.”
    “Did it occur to you to report this to the police?”
    “No, frankly, it did not.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you’ve made it clear that I’m your number one suspect in Derek’s death. How seriously would you take me? Besides, the last time—” She stopped in midsentence.
    “The last time?” He raised an eyebrow.
    “Oh, come on, Chief.” She ran an agitated hand through her short spiky dark hair. “You’ve been here long enough to have heard the story about how I was stalked and attacked. An attack which was followed by your predecessor’s being fired, as I’m sure you know.”
    She turned on her heel and went back into the kitchen, where she ran water in the sink and filled a glass, which she drank down.
    “I did know that you had been attacked, but I wasn’t familiar with all the details.