Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

Wildcatters were actively soliciting for roughnecks to work in the new oil patches, promising good pay. But he’d be living in a men-only camp and doing a dirty and dangerous job. If that lifestyle had held any appeal for him, he would have stayed in the army.

For the time being, staying in Foley was his best option. But he knew the prejudice he would come up against every day, and that rankled. “Damn. There’ll always be those who think I’m guilty, won’t there?”

“Until proven otherwise. What do you think happened to her?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Venture a guess.”

“What for?”

“Why not?”

Thatcher hesitated, then squatted down, picked up a rock, bounced it against his palm a few times before pitching it overhanded into the creek. The plop sounded loud in the still air.

He squinted up at the sheriff from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “My guess? I’d say the doc had her with him when he left the house that night.”

The sheriff assumed a contemplative expression. “She wasn’t with him at Lefty’s. Or with him when he made the stop to check on that breech delivery.”

“Breech delivery?”

“I haven’t mentioned that to you?” Bill explained Dr. Driscoll’s second stop that night. “All had gone well, but because of that additional delay he didn’t get back home until after one o’clock when he discovered that Mrs. Driscoll wasn’t in their bed where he’d left her.”

“Nobody can vouch for that.”

“Except for the old biddy across the street who put Mayor Croft on to you. She says she saw their bedroom light go off around nine-thirty. That’s consistent with what Gabe told me about their bedtime. The light came back on around ten, then went back off only a few minutes later. Eleanor Wise saw him collecting his medical bag from his office. That light went off. He backed his car out of the driveway a few minutes after that.”

“Is watching other people all that old lady does?”

“Apparently.”

Thatcher looked out across the creek to the opposite bank where a black-and-gray-striped cat was stalking something in the tall grass. “Did the old lady see the doctor walk from the house and get into his auto?”

“He keeps it parked around back.”

Thatcher brought his gaze back to the sheriff, but he didn’t say anything.

Bill said, “You’re thinking Mrs. Driscoll was dead, and he carried out her body without Eleanor Wise seeing him.”

“I’m not accusing anybody of anything.”

“Understood, understood. We’re just talking off the top of our heads here.”

Thatcher didn’t contradict him, but the truth was, he’d given this a lot of thought. Based on what he knew for fact and not scuttlebutt, he’d dismissed the various theories that had been disproved already or were too outlandish to put stock in.

The process of elimination always left Thatcher with only one plausible explanation for Mila Driscoll’s disappearance.

“If she’d died accidentally,” Bill said, musing aloud, “like if she’d fallen down the stairs, something like that, Gabe would have reported it.”

“Um-huh.”

“If they’d had a quarrel that got out of hand, if he flew off the handle and struck her—”

“A quarrel between them wouldn’t have gone that far.”

Bill’s sharp look invited Thatcher to explain why he thought that.

He said, “When she talked about him, her cheeks turned rosier than normal.”

“A woman in love.”

“A woman who worshiped the ground her husband walked on,” Thatcher said.

“Do you have a lot of experience in that area?”

Thatcher smiled. “No. Just wish I had a woman light up when she talked about me like Mrs. Driscoll did when she told me how fond her husband was of her shortbread. I doubt she ever said a cross word to him. But if they did have a squabble, she would’ve given in early. It would never have reached the boiling point.”

Looking troubled, the sheriff ran his hand over his mouth and mustache. “Here’s the thing, Thatcher. If a man kills his wife, it’s usually in a fit of passion. Fed up with her nagging about his multiple failures, he loses his temper and, while teaching her a hard lesson in who’s boss, he kills her, intentionally or not.

“Or a husband finds his beloved in bed with another man, goes blind with rage, kills them both. Afterward, he feels either justified for doing it—‘They had it coming. I’d kill them all over again.’—or mortified, and he lives out the days till they hang him eaten up with regret.

“Of course some wife-killings are plotted. Another woman catches a man’s eye, he disposes of the spouse who’s blocking his path to greener pastures.”

Bill paused and took a breath. “Over the course of my career, I’ve seen all that many times. What I haven’t seen is a man killing his pregnant wife, his very pregnant, devoted wife who thought the sun rose and set in him. Not accidentally, not in a burst of violent rage, but with cold calculation. To take her life as well as his unborn child’s, to do that with aforethought, would call for a total absence of soul. I just can’t feature it.”

Not wanting to interrupt the sheriff’s thought process, Thatcher held his peace. He picked up another rock and tossed it from hand to hand.