“No, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you any more than you already have been.” She clasped her hands at her waist and avoided looking him in the eye. “In fact, Irv asked me to tell you—on the outside chance that you and I met again—that he’s grateful for what you did and to give you his thanks.”
“He said that?”
“Specifically.”
He propped his shoulder against the doorjamb and folded his arms. “Now I wonder who that pained the most? You for having to pass along his thanks? Or him for owing me his thanks in the first place?”
“My gratitude is sincere, Mr. Hutton. So is Irv’s.”
“Then he’s changed his opinion of me?”
“Why would you say that?”
“When you two came into the sheriff’s office while I was in custody, the second he saw me he said, ‘Didn't I tell you he was up to no good?’ Meaning that before he’d even met me, before he ever looked me in the eye, he’d drawn that conclusion and shared it with you.”
He uncrossed his arms and pushed off the door frame to face her squarely. Watching closely to see how she would react, he added, “Which I guess is why he went for his shotgun that day I wandered into your yard.”
“Shotgun?”
“No sense in lying. I saw him. Why’d he have that shotgun at the ready?”
Noticeably uneasy, she said, “He’s leery of strangers.”
“Overmuch, I’d say.”
“He kept a shotgun handy as a precaution. To protect Pearl and me if the need arose.”
“But I hadn’t done anything out of line. You said so yourself. You told the sheriff that—”
“I know what I told him.”
“Then why did your father-in-law feel he had to stand guard?”
His persistence had turned her uneasiness into annoyance. “Maybe it’s your overall ma
nner, Mr. Hutton.”
“What manner is that?”
“The way you look at a person. Like you’re trying to figure them out.”
“Sometimes I am.”
“Well, it’s rude and unnerving. It makes people uncomfortable.”
“You especially, I think.”
Dander up, she said, “Not at all.”
“Then why’d you go all jumpy last night?”
“I didn’t go jumpy.”
He snuffled. She’d played right into his gambit.
When she realized it, she looked away from him, then turned and looked behind her toward Irv’s bedroom before coming back around to him. Her expression was now as prim as a nun’s.
“You deliberately got us off the subject of Corrine,” she said. “In good conscience, I can’t send her back to the roadhouse and that Gert who has been so cruel to her.”