Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

Sheila agreed. “But some people can carry a torch for a long time, especially if their feelings have been injured. Anyway, after the separation, Harmon seems to have hoped that they could get back together again, and Kirk seems to have encouraged her. Maybe he was hoping to get her to cancel that policy. Or maybe he was just lonely. But then he broke it off, and it drove her over the edge. Being rejected a second time was more than she could take. She started hanging around his place—”
    “So she was the stalker Larry emailed me about,” China put in. “The same person that the Little Old Ladies’ League reported seeing in the alley. Gotta give those ladies credit, Sheila. It may look like they have their noses in their sewing, but not much gets past them.”
    Sheila smiled. “She’s the one. We found her initials on Kirk’s calendar. He was keeping track of the times he saw her, maybe with the idea of using the information in his effort to get a restraining order.”
    “Ah,” China said.
    “She was smart enough to figure out that the best time to fire a gun in that quiet neighborhood was when the garbage truck went through. And smart enough to make the murder look like a suicide—and send a phony suicide note to her victim’s wife. But one of the garbage pickup crew saw her leaving the house and gave us a positive identification. When we looked at that suicide note in the context of the emails Kirk wrote just before his death, it was clearly a fake. And she forgot—or never knew—that he hated guns, and that he was a southpaw.”
    “The suicide exclusion on the policy had lapsed, I take it,” China said.
    “Long ago. If she had managed to pull it off, the insurance company would have paid the full death benefit, no questions asked.”
    “A million dollars,” China mused. “Like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Very tempting.”
    “That’s a good way of putting it, China. And as far as motives go, it’s hard to say which was most compelling. Her desire to get even with him for dropping her—twice
—
or her need to get her hands on that insurance money. We’ve learned that her business was in trouble. The bank was calling one of her notes. She was strapped for cash.” She shook her head. “Those COLI policies are an open invitation to trouble.”
    China chuckled. “The prosecution is going to have fun with that one.Juries love to be entertained by stories of greed and passion—it’s even better when there’s a little sex and some corporate scandal thrown in. But juries hate circumstantial cases, and I’m sure her defense attorney will go for reasonable doubt.”
    “He can try. But the partial print on the cartridge—
her
print—isn’t circumstantial. That’ll be a pretty tough challenge for the defense. And the garbage crew’s identification puts her on the scene at the crucial moment.”
    “Facts can be difficult,” China agreed. “But good defense attorneys love a tough challenge. Don’t count her side out. It’s not game over until the buzzer sounds.”
    “Yeah, right,” Sheila said wryly. “But Jack Bartlett is continuing to dig. He may turn up even more hard evidence before this thing goes to trial. He’s a good guy, China. Strong instincts, logical mind. He handled the blackmail case very well.”
    She felt a strong sense of relief when she thought about that part of it. There had been some whispering in the department, but there hadn’t been the strong political backlash that Blackie had predicted. Bartlett seemed to know how to deal with his fellow cops. They respected him. And Sheila had even gotten wind of some compliments tossed in her direction for giving him the lead on the Kirk case—and the credit for solving it.
    “Are you going to press charges against Henry Palmer for his role in Timms’ blackmail?” China asked.
    Sheila frowned. That hadn’t been cleared for public release yet. Palmer was still in the hospital, recovering, and the case was still under investigation. “How’d you hear about that?”
    “Charlie Lipman told me. He said he’s been retained by Palmer, but he hasn’t heard the charges.”
    “You and Charlie Lipman.” Sheila shook her head. “Between the two of you, I doubt that anything happens in this town that you don’t know about.”
    “Between me, Charlie, and Hark Hibler,” China amended with a grin. “So where is the investigation?”
    “Bartlett’s working on it,” Sheila said. “There’ll probably