Soldier's Redemption Read Free Page B

interest in the gallery.
    When it came to personal details, he seemed to be open and yet vague. Skylar didn’t know him well enough to say whether he was actually being obtuse or just private, a man caught up in someone else’s drama maybe or beginning to seriously regret an impulsive offer to help out.
    He explained about the chase, as well, describing the man as under six feet wearing dark clothes, age unknown but not too old—going by the way he moved and jumped.
    “And he escaped in a car with Kanistan plates?” Kilo quizzed.
    “Yes.”
    “What color?”
    “Black. It looked like a late-model Mercedes to me but I’m not sure.”
    The detective turned his attention back to Skylar. “You say she had a new lover?” A nearby officer stood poised, pen in hand, to take notes. Kilo himself was on the small side with freckled skin and thinning hair, a wispy mustache accenting a long face. By the outline of a package of cigarettes showing beneath the fabric of his brown suit pocket and the way his hand kept returning to pat it, she assumed he was dying for a smoke. She guessed there must be some rule about fouling a murder scene with smoke and ashes.
    “Yes.”
    “For how long?”
    “Not long. A couple of weeks maybe.”
    “His name?”
    “She never said his name.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “I never saw him,” she said.
    The detective patted the cigarette package as he narrowed his eyes. “He never came to pick her up for a date or a coffee?”
    “No.”
    “Think for a moment,” he coaxed as his hand dropped from his pocket. “Did you get the feeling she was hiding his identity, as though, perhaps, he was a married man?”
    Skylar thought. The truth was that she and Aneta had not been close, had shared few if any confidences and that Skylar didn’t really know her. Had she been friendlier the first couple of weeks Skylar was here? Marginally, maybe. “I can’t be sure,” she said, “but I guess it’s possible.”
    The detective and the uniformed officer exchanged glances. Kilo shrugged. “Her suitcase is half packed as though she was leaving. A jealous lover, a rendezvous, dissension between thieves? Who knows? We will need to meet you back at your shop and look for the missing painting,” the detective continued. “My men will search this apartment when forensics is finished to make sure Ms. Cazo did not steal it and bring it here. That is, if her killer did not take it with him when he fled.”
    Skylar started to protest but didn’t. How did she know what Aneta would or wouldn’t do?”
    “And you should contact the owner of your gallery at once.”
    “No! The owner is my aunt, Eleanor Ables, and she’s not well. She can’t hear news like this on the phone.”
    “Eleanor Ables? You are talking about Luca Futura’s wife?”
    “Yes.”
    “Luca Futura is your uncle?”
    “Yes.”
    “And why did you not mention this at once?”
    “I don’t want to bother my uncle.”
    The detective waved away her concern. “He must be told.” He turned to the uniformed officer and snapped off a few words. The twitch in Kilo’s jaw signaled the regard in which Skylar’s uncle was held. “We will contact him at once,” he said, turning back to Skylar.
    “If you must,” Skylar said.
    “You may go now. We can give you a lift back to the gallery.”
    “That’s okay. I’ll take her,” Cole said from her side.
    The thought of thirty minutes in the car with Kilo as he played catch-up to his nicotine deprivation was enough to sway Skylar’s decision in Cole’s favor though she was pretty sure she shouldn’t be leaning so heavily on a stranger. But Cole didn’t seem like much of a stranger anymore. Since arriving in Traterg, she’d spent her days at the shop and her evenings with her aunt and uncle when he was home. There’d been no opportunity to make friends—only Aneta who hadn’t been the warmest woman in the world.
    Skylar flinched as guilt prickled her skin. Aneta was about the