A Match Made for Murder Iona Whishaw (pride and prejudice read .TXT) 📖

Another shot, this time striking much farther west, on the other side of the gully. Lane frowned. What had he seen? She strained her eyes and then, with jolt of panic, saw what he was looking at. Below them, and farther to the west on more open ground, she could see a group of about seven riders following a trail. She looked back up the valley. The shooter was a little closer but still far enough away that he might have mistaken the riding party for his fleeing prisoner—or perhaps he had thought she might be among them.

“See that ridge? We have to get behind it. You go as fast as you can. Keep low. He’s distracted by that riding party.”

Meg shook her head as if she were going to refuse to move, then she got on her hands and knees and began to crawl toward the ridge. There was another shot. It sang into the echoing space. A bird rose in a frightened flutter from behind them somewhere. Meg had stopped and then resumed crawling toward the ridge, moving more quickly.

The shots had spooked the riding party, which was now whirling away in a cloud of dust. The shooter was watching them, perhaps realizing his mistake. It would take only a moment for him to begin looking for them again. Lane looked down and saw that Meg had nearly gained the ridge and was now on her feet lurching toward cover. Her foot slipped, sending a cascade of pebbles down the hill that seemed to Lane as loud as the gunshots they were trying to avoid. She glanced quickly at the figure with the gun. He was still looking away toward the west, perhaps trying to ascertain if one of the riders might be her. It was now or never. She crawled backwards down the incline toward the ridge, trying to keep him in sight and then lunged the last steps and collapsed next to Meg.

They sat silently, waiting for another shot. None came, but now they could hear the faint crunch of his descent.

“Why is he trying to kill us?” Lane asked in a whisper, more rhetorically than not.

“Because that’s what he does,” Meg whispered back with irritation. She was looking at the palms of her hands, which were scrapped and abraded. “Ow!”

From where they were, they could see plainly that the riding party was beating a hasty retreat and disappearing over a hill toward town. Lane had a sinking feeling. It was as if they were being abandoned, for they were now trapped on the side of a hill with a gunman getting closer and no help from anywhere. The next shot was closer. Had he seen them? She had to think of a way out.

Martinez had watched the dawn come and tried to imagine what had happened. Why had Galloway not returned with Inspector Darling? Had they gone off on their own to try to find Darling’s wife? They hadn’t taken one of the police vehicles. He picked up the phone and called the hotel. There was no answer at Darling’s room. Should he call Galloway’s house? This threw him into a quandary. He didn’t want to wake and alarm his wife. He hardly knew how to think about Galloway now. He would have to keep things clear in his head. Galloway had sounded concerned when he told him about Darling’s wife being missing. And Galloway had no idea that Martinez had found the missing evidence, so in theory there should be no overt change in their relationship. He could deal with Galloway as he always had.

Telling himself to forget the hidden Griffin evidence for the moment, he looked at his watch, picked up the phone again, and dialled Galloway’s number. Maybe there was a maid. After four rings, a woman who sounded as if she’d made a laboured run to the phone answered. “Galloway residence.”

“This is Sergeant Martinez. I need to get hold of the assistant chief. Is he there?”

“I will check. One moment.”

The woman spoke with a Spanish accent. He heard the phone receiver put down on a hard surface and then receding footsteps, slow receding footsteps. He pounded a pencil on his desk anxiously. After what seemed an interminable delay, the receiver was taken up.

“He’s not here. I don’t think he slept here last night, either. Have you tried the station? He spends a lot of time there since his wife has been gone.”

Martinez blinked. Gone? His wife left him? Galloway had said nothing about this. But he had heard the assistant chief had been burning the midnight oil down at the station the last few nights.

He spoke to the maid in Spanish. “I’m at the station. He left here last night to pick someone up, and he was supposed to come back. When did his wife leave, again?” It wasn’t entirely relevant, but Martinez couldn’t help asking.

“I shouldn’t really say, but it was a couple of days ago. She left the hospital, and God go with her. I knew she would be strong enough one day. I think her friend from Canada maybe helped her. She sure doesn’t have any other friends.”

“Listen, I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.”

“Fernanda Alvarez.”

“It sounds like you might be worried about him, yes? Listen, Miss Alvarez, do you know if he took his car?”

She reverted to English. “I couldn’t care nothing about him. I was going to give him notice today anyway. With his wife gone, there’s not so much a point in my being here. She wasn’t the nicest person, but with what he was doing to her, I wouldn’t be either. His car, that new one he’s so proud of? It isn’t in the carport, so I guess that’s the one he’s in.”

Martinez hung up the phone and sat in a daze, his hand resting on the receiver. He tried to put what he had learned into some kind of order. Galloway’s wife had