For You (The 'Burg Series) (35 page)

“Conference room,” Dave motioned to a big windowed room in the corner of the bank.

“Private, Dave.”

Dave’s eyes got big. “Oh! Yeah, right.” He thought about it and Colt clenched his teeth, thinking the guy was half moron. He had to know the bank like the back of his hand. “Staff room!” Dave announced. “Basement. No windows.”

Jesus, this guy was annoying him. Unfortunately, he also needed him.

Dave led Colt to the windowless, vacant room and said he’d be right back with Julie. He didn’t lie. Five minutes later Dave walked in with one of the two Julie tellers.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Dave said with extreme consideration and closed the door behind him.

Julie McCall eyed him up the way a lot of women did, interest and appreciation clear on her face and she was sure to take in his ring finger. He’d had that kind of thing all his life, even when everyone knew his mother and father were drunk and no good and even when everyone knew that he was taken by Feb or, later, Melanie.
 

He wasn’t interested in Julie McCall and there were a lot of reasons why. Most of them obvious but they also included the fact that she was unattractive and he knew she thought the opposite. She was lean and fit, not from being an athlete, from working out way too much to keep thin, going well past the good look of healthy to hit gaunt. She probably felt disgust for anyone overweight and had no problem saying it or showing it, mostly with her eyes, he was guessing. She was the kind to be able stare at anyone she thought inferior, do it openly and do it in a way that made them feel low. Her hair was two shades too blonde, looking false and not suiting her coloring. It was arranged in a style too young for her years and, unlike some women whose youthful personality let them not only get away with this kind of thing but it was appealing, it made her look desperate.

Colt found even though he hadn’t spoken a word to her or she to him, he didn’t like her and he couldn’t have been more surprised that Amy apparently did.

“How can I help you?” she asked, solicitous and even a bit suggestive, she had all day if he wanted to take it.

“I’m Lieutenant Alec Colton.”

She smiled and it was wincingly shrewd. “I know who you are.”

Definitely suggestive and he didn’t like that she knew who he was when he didn’t know her. But then again, most everyone in town knew him. It came with his history and with the job. The last mainly because any time Monica Merriweather reported on a case he was working and she made certain his picture was included with the article in the paper.

He motioned to the table. “If you don’t mind, Ms. McCall, I’d like to ask a few questions about Amy Harris.”

Her eyebrows shot up, she might have thought a lot of things about him wanting to talk to her but pathologically shy Amy wasn’t one of them.

“Amy?”

“Yes, Amy,” he waited until she sat and he sat close to her, not because he wanted to but because playing her game would get him what he needed.

“You want coffee?” he asked, his glance moving to the staff coffeepot in the corner.

“Nah, that coffee’s terrible. I always wait,” she eyed his cup, “I usually go to Mimi’s on break.”

Shared tastes, she was telling him, they had something in common.

He took a sip from his coffee before stating, “Amy’s no call-no show today.”

“Yeah, weird,” Julie said.

“Dave says you two are close.”

“Wouldn’t say anyone was close to Amy but, yeah, we have a laugh every once in awhile, me more than any of the other girls.” She was reconsidering her casual friendship with Amy, pleased that it finally bought her something she liked.

Colt caught his lip curl and kept going. “You speak to her recently?”

“Not since we left work Friday night.”

“She seem to be acting different lately?”

“How ‘different’?”

“Anything.”

She shook her head. “Nope, except she took that Maroni woman dying pretty hard.”

“Yeah?” Colt prompted.

Julie’s head tipped to the side, trying to read him, get a lock on what this was about. “Yeah. She was always nice to her. The rest of us…” she paused, her face showing her disgust as if a visit from Angie at her station tainted her in some way, “we did her business and got her to move on,” she leaned in and whispered, “Skank City.”

Colt tried to ignore the feel of his blood heating and went on. “They friends? You know, outside the bank.”

“Not that I know of. Amy went to high school with her. Told us all she was nice, always was, she just had a tough life. But Amy’s nice to everyone, much as she could be, seein’ as she’s screamin’ shy.”

“She say anything about Angie?” Colt asked.

“She wound up in this murder business?”

Fuck. He didn’t want his investigating Amy to get around. He wasn’t worried about the town; he was worried about Feb finding out.

“Nope, it’s just she came into J&J’s and she and I had a chat. She seemed distraught, I’m checkin’ up on her.” He forced a smile. “Occupational extra, got a worry about one of my citizens, I can do something about it.”

He was talking out his ass. He just hoped she wouldn’t know that.

She didn’t know it. She probably spent her evenings watching
Survivor
or
Amazing Race
and rooting for the biggest asshole in both, not watching cop shows.

“Only thing I know is, she was cut up about Angie Maroni,” Julie said. “Then again, anyone would be, knowin’ that person for awhile and them endin’ up murdered.”

Dead fucking end.

New direction.
 

It was a risk. Word about Marie was undoubtedly making the rounds. Word about Denny would be close on its heels. Soon, Julie McCall would link their chat to the murders and she’d talk, he had no doubt and he didn’t have the inclination to make any deal she would open to him to stop her mouth from running.

People were dying so he had no fucking choice.

“Do you know Denny Lowe?” he asked.

Another eyebrow raise then, “Um… yeah, sure. He’s a customer.”

“He come in a lot?”

“Sometimes Saturdays. He works.”

“He seem partial to Amy’s station?”

She shook her head, now confused. “Not really,” she was thinking, trying to recall, “actually, thinkin’ about it, can’t remember him ever goin’ to her station at all,” she focused on him again, “though I can’t be sure.”

“They ever talk? She ever mention him?”

She kept shaking her head.

Christ, she was all he had and she was giving him nothing.

“‘Cept…” she started.

“Yeah?” Colt prompted.

“Amy had a bit of a flip out not long ago. It was on a Saturday and it was when he came in.”

Colt felt a spiral of exhilaration in his gut.

“What kind of a flip out?”

She waved her hand. “Well, Amy wasn’t prone to flip outs and it wasn’t a big one. She just said she needed a break early and took it but that’s not her style. When she came back, she looked like she’d been crying. Didn’t have to do with Mr. Lowe, though. I just remember that he was in when it happened. And I only remember because he took a big withdrawal and that doesn’t happen often. Most folks can get their money from the cash machine, have to come to a station to withdraw that kind of dough and it’s still unusual. Usually folks come to us to deposit, move money around, check balances, ask about or pay on their line of credit or mortgage. Stuff like that. You always remember a big withdrawal.”

Colt reckoned you did, especially when you didn’t have thousands of dollars in your own account which he guessed she didn’t considering she wasn’t wearing wedding rings but she was wearing clothes that were too expensive on a teller’s salary. Envy and curiosity about how the other half lived likely baked those memories into your brain.

“You did his withdrawal?” Colt asked.

“That day, yeah.”

“He talk about what it was for? Takin’ a vacation? Buyin’ somethin’ special?”

She shook her head.

“He seem to have a preference in tellers?”

“Nope, there’s just one line, folks come up to whichever one of us is open. Only Angie Maroni waited for Amy.”

“That day you know why Amy was cryin’?”

Julie shrugged. “Sure, I asked after work if she was okay. She said she was it was just that she was thinkin’ about her boy.”

It took everything Colt had not to jerk back at this news and that cold circled his chest, tight and vicious.

“Her boy?”

“Yeah, she had a kid, years ago. Put him up for adoption. She thinks about him a lot, she told me, but she doesn’t get upset. She just got upset that day, somethin’ struck her and she got sad wonderin’ where he was.”

Colt didn’t reply.

Amy Harris had a child. He had no idea.

And she’d got upset about it when Denny walked in, probably not a coincidence.

She was petite but nicely rounded. Very pretty but dark-haired. She had dark brown eyes. That and her curves were the only thing she shared with Feb. Feb was tall, blonde and her curves were more attractive considering the length of her frame and the way she held herself.

Denny Lowe wouldn’t get it up for Amy Harris.

Unless while he was doing it, he was doing something else that would get him off.

Fucking hell.

Poor Amy.

“You would,” Julie said, taking Colt from his thoughts, “you know, think about the kid you gave up. It’s natural.”

“She tell you about the kid’s Dad?”

“Yeah,” Julie was now a font of information, “she knew him but she never told him about the kid. I wasn’t around but she told me she took a sabbatical from work so no one would see her showin’ and came back after it was all done.”

“Why didn’t she tell the Dad? Weren’t they together?”

“Nope, she said it was a one night stand, if you can believe that of Amy, which I couldn’t at first. Thought she was jerking me around when she told me, tryin’ to seem more interesting. But you could tell it was genuine. Said she didn’t want him to know or anyone to know it was him. She was protectin’ him from something, I reckoned. Thought maybe he was married but didn’t ask. She wasn’t big on talkin’ about it and didn’t for years. Most of the girls, though, know now, even though none of us were around when Amy started here and it all went down.” This was, Colt knew because Julie McCall had told them, the bitch. Colt focused as Julie continued. “Only some of the bank officers were around back then but only because, between most of ‘em, they own the bank,” she finished.

Colt leaned forward in order to pull out his wallet, which took him closer to her. Instead of leaning back as anyone would, she leaned forward too and he just caught another lip curl.

He sat back, flipped out his wallet and gave her a card.

“You hear from Amy, you can tell her I want to talk to her, see she’s all right. Or you could just call me.”

She’d call him, she heard from Amy or, he reckoned, even if she didn’t.

She took the card and smiled, back to suggestive. “Sure, Lieutenant Colton.”

He stood, pushing his wallet in his back pocket and grabbing his coffee. “Thank you, Ms. McCall.”
 

He didn’t offer his hand, he should have but he had what he wanted from her and he doubted there was any more to be had. Now she needed to know the limits to his friendliness.

She didn’t take the hint. “Call me Julie.”

He wasn’t going to have the opportunity to call her anything and he found this a relief.

He just smiled and threw his arm toward the door, inviting her to precede him. Interview over.

She walked in front of him deliberately slow, drawing out her time with him and likely away from her job. She moved and he knew she wanted him to watch her ass while she was doing it. He did and almost laughed. He’d been watching Feb’s ass move around her bar for the last two years and Julie McCall? No fucking comparison.