Page 26 of Earning Her Trust

A flicker of shame, or maybe just embarrassment. “Maybe she thought I wouldn’t care. Or maybe she didn’t want to get me all riled up again. I sometimes act before I think. She didn’t like that. It was one of the reasons she left me.”

Naomi filed that away. She stood there, arms folded, letting the silence work for her. Finch fidgeted, eyes darting all over the room but never landing on her for more than a second. The urge to push harder was right there, just under her skin, but she reined it in. Guys like Finch folded better under boredom than pressure.

“Look, are we done?” Finch muttered. “I got work tonight.”

“Where?”

He gestured at the mess around him. “Here. I work from home now. Doing… online stuff.”

She almost rolled her eyes. “What kind of online stuff, Taren?”

He made a face. “Sports betting. They call it ‘freelance analytics’ but it’s really just gambling.”

Why was she not surprised?

She pulled a business card from the slim case in her pocket. “If you remember anything else, you call me.”

Finch nodded, eyes darting to the door. “Yeah, whatever. I didn’t do anything.”

She left him slumped on the couch, pulling the door shut behind her with a snap.

Outside, she sucked in a lungful of the clean mountain air. For a second, she just stood on the porch, staring at the sky and wishing she hadn’t wasted half her afternoon on a dead end.

Except it wasn’t a dead end. Not quite. The part about Craig Foster stuck in her head—the money, the sponsorship. Heprobably had a truck—just about everyone in rural Montana did—and she wondered if it was black.

Something to check into.

But first, she wanted to check Finch’s alibi, as flimsy as it was. She crossed to the trailer next door. This one was in significantly better condition, with pumpkins and potted mums on the small porch and a menagerie of yard ornaments. There was a metal chicken in a flowerpot by the door, and three ceramic frogs saluting from the step. Miss Kay answered the knock promptly enough to tell Naomi the woman had been watching from her lace-covered windows the whole time.

She opened the door with a thud and peered through the screen, face pinched with suspicion and something like delight. “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be mixed up with the likes of Taren Finch.”

Naomi wished she had her badge to show, but she’d left it behind when she left Missoula, knowing even then she didn’t plan on coming back when her leave was done. “Special Agent Lefthand, FBI.”

Miss Kay’s eyes widened, and her hand fluttered up to cover the sagging skin at her throat. “FBI? My goodness.”

“Just have a few questions about your neighbor.”

Miss Kay gave a little huff. “I was wondering when someone would finally come around,” she said, unhooking the screen and stepping onto the porch. She was barely five feet tall and had a helmet of white curls, eyes shrewd behind smudged glasses.

Naomi bit the inside of her cheek. “You keep a good eye on your neighbor, Miss Kay?”

A sniff. “I keep an eye on everything. If more people did, maybe girls like Leelee wouldn’t just… disappear.” She said the word with relish, like it was the best gossip she’d had in weeks.

“Tell me about Tuesday night. Did you see or hear anything unusual from Taren’s place?”

Miss Kay’s mouth pursed, but she was already eager. “That boy’s never done a day of honest work. He sits in there all night with his TV blaring. Always some ball game or another. Tuesday, I called him at twelve thirty-one. I remember because I’d just started a new Sudoku. He didn’t pick up the first time. I had to call twice. When he finally answered, he just grunted and hung up. Rude, but not unusual.”

Naomi scanned her notes. “You’re sure he was home?”

Miss Kay drew herself up a fraction. “I heard the game like it was being played in my own house. He never left. Not till he went to the corner store for beer the next morning, anyway.”

That tracked. Finch might be a mess, but he wasn’t a killer.

“Thanks,” Naomi said, her mind already spinning ahead. She had another name now. Craig Foster.

One more person to add to her suspect list.

A truck was waiting in her drive, black as midnight, paint eating every last bit of light. For a heartbeat, the sight of it flattened her breath. Big, newer model. Black. Tinted windows.