He had the damnedest eyes. Deep-set and pale green, like sun catchers in a dirty window, crowded with crow's feet and topped by thick eyebrows that were going to go a dramatic white in a few years.

Timmie flat-out shook her head. "Nope. I have filial duties to perform, and not much time to do them in."

He grinned like a bandit. "Your father? Great. I'll tag along."

The son of a bitch even had dimples. It just figured. Timmie did her best to smile and walk by. "No, you won't."

The reporter kept pace with her, walking backward. "I hear you were threatened."

Only disgust got her to stop. "Evidently everybody's heard about it. Amazing, since I don't remember telling anybody. At least anybody with a badge or a notebook."

He didn't seem particularly repentant. "Did it look like this?" he asked, dipping into a saggy tweed pocket and pulling something out.

Timmie found herself staring. It was her card. The one that had come with her flowers. Same paper, same letters, same threat.

STOP NOW BEFORE YOU GET HURT

"Where'd you get that?" she demanded, making an abortive grab for it.

He stuffed it back in his pocket. "In my mailbox at work. Wanna talk?"

Timmie thought about all the questions she had, and just what would happen if she shared them with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with sharp green eyes. She shook her head. "Nope. I want to ignore it, just like this whole town seems to do. Got a problem with that?"

"On any other day, no. But it seems that I've been dumped into the middle of the same stew pot as you, and it has something to do with the suspicious deaths around here."

"Deaths?" Timmie demanded before she got the chance to think. "There are more?"

She knew she was caught when he raised an honestly surprised eyebrow at her. "There's been one?"

Chapter 8

"What are you talking about?" Timmie demanded.

"What are you talking about?" the reporter echoed, looking as smug as snot.

Timmie stood there like a stunned ox, suddenly not sure what to do. Behind her, the hydraulic doors closed, shutting her friends off from her. The back hall was empty at this hour of the night, the only denizen the housekeeper at the far end polishing floors. Which meant it was going to have to be up to Timmie to get out of this all by herself.

Boy, this kind of thing had never happened to Scarlett when she'd put things off. She'd just had to eat turnips.

"You got a threat," Timmie scoffed. "Big deal. You'd think a world-class reporter like you'd be used to it by now."

"The threat doesn't bother me," he retorted, sounding, oddly enough, angry. "It interests me. Besides, once I found out you'd gotten one, too, I had to come apologize. I think I got you into this."

"What do you mean?"

His grin was sheepish enough for a Rockwell painting. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I was given your name—"

"My name? What for?"

"I got a call the night of the shooting. Mysterious, hushed voice begging me to do something about the deaths here."

"Not a threat?"

Murphy squinted at her. "You getting calls, too?"

Timmie shook her head decisively. She was going to have to learn to keep her mouth shut. "Nah, I just figured..."

She could tell he didn't buy it. He didn't push it, though.

"No threats. Somebody asking for help."

"And they gave you my name?"

"Go figure."

"And we both got notes."

"Well, after I might have mentioned your name a couple of times when asking questions. Yeah."

Timmie rubbed the heel of her hand against her sternum, behind which settled most of her more intense emotions. She sure wished she had a baseball bat in her hands. "So, what are you going to do?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

Timmie screwed up the courage to take another good look at the reporter, who was now standing foursquare, hands on hips, his jacket splayed out behind, foot tapping in staccato bursts. Antsy. Unsettled. As out of place in Puckett as she was.

She could talk to him. Tell him what she'd found without him laughing over the idea that a nurse could have a certification in forensics. She could share war stories and stoke up on them like an exile pulling out old family movies.

She could give him the stuff about Billy and let him run with it.

Or not.

He didn't know Ellen. He wouldn't care why she was doing the horizontal hoedown with the coroner. It wouldn't matter to him that the fallout would contaminate Timmie as much as anybody.

So she shoved her hands in her bulging lab coat pockets and headed off again. "Thank you, no. Now, I really have to go."

"How is your father?" the reporter asked, keeping an easy pace.

"Fine," she answered just like she did to everyone. "Just fine."

"Good. That means he'll be happy to see me."

That brought Timmie back to a dead halt no more than five feet from the elevators. "No. You leave him alone."

"He's a legend."

"He's a sick, lost, childlike old man who can still remember on the odd day that he has immense pride. I won't have him humiliated."

"That's not what I was thinking of doing. I wanted to write about the effect he's had on people around here. The stories they all like to tell." He grinned again, and Timmie had to give him points for looking sincere. "I think it's worth a line or two when I get gas station attendants and pool sharks quoting Yeats and Blake. Don't you think that's pretty incredible?"

Timmie glared at him for a moment, unconsciously rubbing. The last thing she was sure she needed was Daniel Murphy scavenging around in her life for insight. So she turned on her heel and walked. "Public elevators are around the corner."

He walked right alongside. "I don't suppose you want to tell me which death you were talking about."

Reaching the staff elevator, she punched the button.

"I wasn't. I was talking about the fact that the coroner's incompetent, but you can't quote me on that or I'll lose my job, and then you'll get to keep that wonderful old man who quotes Yeats at your house, because I won't be able to afford him."

"But if the coroner's blatantly ignoring the rise in the death rate around here, you could get him out of office."

Suddenly Timmie forgot where she'd been going. In fact, she damn near forgot to breathe.

Murphy leaned toward her, and his eyes widened. "I'm talking about the fact that the death rate has gone up in Puckett since Price U. bought in," he said. "Aren't you?"

The door slid open. Timmie was so busy staring at Daniel Murphy that she completely missed it. "Don't do this to me," she begged.

He all but whistled. "You didn't know, did you? Timmie, I think you and I have been having two completely different conversations here."

Timmie turned to the wall and ignored him. She ignored the silence that built behind her.

"Oh, my God," he suddenly said, truly stunned. "You do think William Mayfield was murdered, don't you?"

Timmie decided she'd damn well better be having a heart attack, or that squeezing in her chest was an omen of disaster.

"Timmie, hi, where are you going?"