Page 17 of Final Inning

“We’re going to do everything we can to find the answers about your daughter.” Miranda looked at the photos on the small half-wall that separated the living area from the kitchenette. Harper had her arms around her youngest sister. She wore a jersey—fan gear. For the uniform the teenager wore. She looked so proud.

Harper had been a good big sister. She’d loved her family; it was obvious.

“That was last year. Her sister had just gotten her first over-the-fence home run in 13U. They’d been working and working on Kayley’s hitting all winter. Those two…really bonded over softball. Harper loved her sisters very much. When we lost her twin—she changed, of course. Grew fiercer over her sisters.”

“I can understand that. I lost…my mother. When I was eleven, living in a foreign country for my father’s work. I have two younger sisters. I had real trouble letting my youngest sister out of my sight for several months after that.”

“I’m sorry about your mother. That is never easy. Harper had a close relationship with all of them. But softball was her and Kayley’s special thing.”

“Did she still spend a lot of time at the ball field?”

“Whenever she needed to think. She’d take a bucket full of balls and just go hit off the tee. Until she recentered herself.”

Miranda nodded. “So it wouldn’t be unusual for her to be at a ball field, even in the evening?”

Hit off the tee. A tee had been found in Harper’s trunk. But…hitting off the tee required something to hit with. Miranda would bet lunch that something was their murder weapon, and was softball-bat-shaped.

If they could find that bat, it would be a first step.

Harper’s mother shook her head slowly. “She was at a softball field every few days at the minimum. But I just don’t know why she’d be at those old fields all the way up in Buckbert. It didn’t make sense. She hadn’t played there in ten years. Most of the time…she was at the fields right here. There is a complex not even two miles from here. Her life was here. If…if she’d been at the fields here this wouldn’t have happened. I just…don’t know why she was there. I just don’t. And no one will give us the answers. Hagan is trying, we know she is, but…she’s just one girl…and…”

“I’m going to do my best to find the answers. I can’t…make any more promises than that. I will do everything I can.”

First order of business, why was Harper Wycoff in Buckbert that night?

That might just get them started.

Chapter 11

His partner was quiet. She was really not her usual Sunny self. And damn it, yes. It was worrying him. She’d been quiet since the moment they’d taken the case. And gotten even quieter after they’d spent the day in Wichita Falls talking to Harper’s family and handful of colleagues and friends. Not even dinner at a diner in Wichita Falls had cheered her up.

And they hadn’t found that many answers, either.

No one knew why Harper had been in Buckbert, Oklahoma, the night she’d died.

They’d spent most of the morning in Deputy Lindhour’s little stationhouse while the deputy did her normal patrols, going over everything they had so far, complete with Deputy Lindhour’s notes. And while Miranda was definitely on the ball with what they were doing—the little quips and snark and the Sunny was just missing.

Knight had finally had enough. “You are going to have to talk to me.”

“Why would I have to talk to you? Are you in charge now?” She shot him that snotty little look she was so good at. But it wasn’t hard for him to see that she was preoccupied. “I am a free agent, you know.”

“Don’t be cheeky. You know what I mean.”

“Cheeky. You are such an old anachronism; did I ever tell you that?”

“No. Never.”

“Why, I think you almost made a joke.”

She still looked like she was hurting. Damn it. But…professional. That was it. He wouldn’t do either of them any good by worrying about her this way. Knight went back to what they were working on. Before he crossed into territory that he shouldn’t. “What did Harper’s mother say again?”

“That Sheriff Johnson is a bit of a total dickhead?”

Somehow he doubted the woman who had played the piano at the nearest Hope Life Church for twenty-plus years had used the word dickhead. But he got the message. “That matches my own evaluation.”

Johnson had made a point of stopping by to check on little Hagan and her new friends that morning. Knight had just sat back and watched Miranda chase him off in less than five minutes. Johnson had said a few things that were designed to get beneath Miranda’s skin, but Knight could have told him to save his breath—Miranda had been playing this game for a long time. Johnson didn’t have a chance against that woman.

The man had kept throwing little looks Knight’s way, though. Like he was testing Knight out as well. Knight hadn’t missed that at all.