Stranger At My Door (A Murder In Texas) by Mari Manning Read Free Book Online Page A

darted up to her face to see if she was teasing him, but her expression was serious. “What did you and Teke talk about?”
    “This and that.” She began to pick at her cut-offs. “He was real nervous. Kept saying someone was watching him. I didn’t believe him, of course.” She glanced away, and her gaze hovered over the tarot table. “Maybe I should have.”
    “Do you know why someone would follow him or want to hurt him?”
    She shook her head. “Not really.”
    Not really. Some kind of suspicion was floating around under her waterfall of blond waves. “How about a theory. Got any of those?”
    Her fingers stopped playing with the threads dangling from her shorts. Emotions tripped across her face—surprise, alarm, uncertainty, guilt. What would she do if he kissed her? Would it be easy to tell if she liked it by watching her face?
    “Aren’t the police concerned with facts?”
    “We’re concerned with all kinds of things, including evidence, opportunity, and motive. Any thoughts along those lines?”
    She jumped up from the sofa and stared down at him. “You think it’s me, don’t you?”
    Definitely hiding something. But what?
    “No. But it could be the intruder from last night.”
    Her face paled, and she began to pace back and forth, circling the bowls on the floor like a test driver. “I came back here to bury my daddy and fix up this house so I could sell it. As soon as I find a buyer, I am leaving Texas for good. That’s my whole story. In the meantime, I’m just mindin’ my own business.”
    “Not exactly.”
    She stopped. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, you did make your presence known in town by handing out the flyers.”
    “I made Shira’s presence known.”
    “At your address, and you sure didn’t fool Teke. He had a flyer in his pocket when he was found. He’d written ‘Dinah’s back’ on it. Would he have been familiar with your, uh, stage name?”
    She frowned. “No. But it’s a small town, I guess, and most folks probably knew I was living in L.A. after…after everything. Plus my momma used to do readings, so Mr. Teke probably put two and two together.”
    Rafe tossed out the next question. “Are there others here in town who might have put ‘two and two together?’”
    “Lots of people probably could. The kids I went to school with knew about L.A., and my momma’s friends and the people who knew my daddy would recognize our address and the tarot card thing. I’d say almost half the town. Plus, I’ve been wandering around El Royo for the past week. So people knew I was back.”
    “Why did Teke come here last night?”
    She began to pace again. “He said he wanted a reading. Even paid me for it.”
    Gotcha. “Last night when I broke down the door, you said that you told Teke you didn’t know where the money went. What did you mean? And who did you think I was?”
    Dinah stopped. “I’m being honest here, Rafe. I don’t know anything. Not for sure.”
    It sounded like a surrender. “Why don’t you come on back and have a seat. I’d like you to lay out everything you know or think you know, even if it isn’t for sure.”
    Sidestepping a mixing bowl, she came back to the sofa. “It’s long and complicated. Besides, you probably know some of this already.”
    “If it gets boring, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
    “Well, Mr. Teke and my daddy and two other guys—Gerald Sutton and Lonnie Bigsky—used to play poker every other Friday night.”
    “Just those four.”
    She nodded. “Most of daddy’s other friends were Baptists. Their wives wouldn’t let them gamble. Not that there was much money at stake. Dollar ante, ten-dollar limit.”
    Lonnie Bigsky had been at the park earlier, but Rafe hadn’t seen much of Gerry Sutton since his car accident last year. The talk around town was that Gerry’s legs had been busted up, and he needed a wheelchair. “Doesn’t sound like anyone lost enough to rob an armored truck.”
    “It was never about the