She hadn’t trusted him much from the get-go, he thought, even though she had flagged him down.
“Who are you—really?” she asked him.
“Agent Rockford. Really.” By rote, he produced his badge.
She looked at it, then at him, and said, “You do realize that badge doesn’t mean much these days. We—the innocent public—are conditioned to accept any kind of forgery because we’re accustomed to seeing official badges everywhere.”
“It’s real,” he told her, smiling.
“So I really flagged down an FBI agent—by accident—after stumbling across a body?”
He nodded, but he wasn’t about to get distracted from what really interested him. “Where did you get this piece?” he asked her again.
“My friend’s shop. She has a number of them. I’m not much for diamonds, but I do love colored stones.”
“Like rubies, emeralds and sapphires?” he queried. It wasn’t an attack, though he could tell from the way she looked at him that she had taken it as one. She seemed to believe that he suspected her—or her friends—to be guilty of something.
“Citrine, aquamarine, opals—fire opals are my favorite,” she said. She set his coffee on the natural-wood coffee table that stood between what Rocky was pretty sure was a grouping of eighteenth-century carved chairs and a love seat.
“Your questions can’t be about my likes and dislikes when it comes to jewelry,” she said, sitting down. “I don’t know what else I can tell you. I heard a noise outside. I grabbed my hockey stick and went out into the woods, and there she was. My first instinct was to get help—to get the police. I was closer to the road than I was to my house. Okay, I was panicked and afraid the killer might be around and follow me home, so maybe that’s why I ran to the road. I saw her, but I didn’t know her,” she added quietly.
He took a seat across from her.
“What did you hear?” he asked her. “The M.E. reckoned that the time of death was around five o’clock. You found her hours later. That’s why I’m asking.”
She shook her head. She was evading him, he thought. “I don’t know exactly. I just thought that someone might be hurt or something, so I went out.”
He could press it, but he could tell she wasn’t going to say more. So far he’d called her beloved deceased great-aunt a crazy witch and jumped down her throat over a medallion. Not good. He wanted her help.
She turned the tables. “So you’re from here?” she asked him. “You said something about Peabody.”
“Born there. My mother could trace her family back to the Mayflower. She’s proud of it. I have more of a tendency to think the ship was filled with hypocrites. They wanted freedom, so they came here and persecuted others, and, as we both know, their descendants tangled themselves up with the witchcraft trials. My father was from Texas, but he loved my mom, so I was born here. What about you?”
“I grew up in an old Victorian right here in Salem. I could see the House of the Seven Gables whenever I went outside.”
“And you never left?” he asked.
“No, I left. I was a reporter in Boston for a while, then I came back. But I’m sure you didn’t come here to chitchat about growing up in New England.”
She had blue eyes—deep, direct blue eyes. The color of the sapphires on her pentagram. He lowered his head for a minute, hiding a dry smile. She was the perfect image of a witch, or of the Hollywood version, at least. Her hair was as dark as the wings of her pet raven. She was tall and slender, with elegant curves and perfect posture. She was in jeans today, and a soft sweater that hugged her form nicely, but—given a cloak and a scepter—she could have stood on a hill in the wind and, with an evil chant, lifted her face to the heavens and demanded that the lightning strike and the thunder roar.
And there was something she wasn’t telling him.
“I wish there was more I could tell you. I so wish I could have done