“Okay. The little girls’ room is thataway.” He pointed down a narrow hallway.
There was no one in the powder room when she went in, but when she came out of the cubicle, the judge’s daughter was standing in front of the dressing table, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She turned and faced Alex.
Alex smiled. “Hi.”
“Hello.”
Alex moved to the sink and washed her hands. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Alex Gaither.” She plucked two coarse paper towels from the dispenser.
“Yes, I know.”
Alex dropped the used towels into the wastepaper basket. “You’re Judge Wallace’s daughter.” She attempted to break the ice in an atmosphere that was glacial and getting colder by the second. The woman had dropped all vestiges of the shy, insecure maiden she had assumed when Junior had spoken to her. Her face was stony and uncompromisingly antagonistic. “Stacey, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Stacey. But the last name isn’t Wallace. It’s Minton.”
“Minton?”
“That’s right. I am Junior’s wife. His first wife.”
Chapter 20
“I can see that’s news to you,” Stacey said, laughing humorlessly at Alex’s dumbfounded expression.
“Yes,” she replied in a hollow tone. “No one’s mentioned that.”
Stacey’s composure, always intact, deserted her. Flattening a hand on her meager bosom, she cried out, “Do you have any idea the damage you’re doing?”
“To whom?”
“To me,” she shouted, pounding her chest. Immediately she dropped her hand and rolled her lips inward, as though mortified by her outburst. She closed her eyes momentarily. When she opened them, they were filled with animosity, but she appeared to have regained control of herself. “For twenty-five years I’ve had to live down the generally held belief that Junior Minton married me on the rebound from your mother.”
Alex didn’t state the obvious, but guiltily lowered her eyes.
“I see that you hold to that belief, too.”
“I’m sorry, Miss… Stacey. May I call you Stacey?”
“Of course,” she replied stiffly.
“I’m sorry that my investigation has distressed you.”
“How could it not? You’re dredging up the past. By doing so, you’re airing my dirty linen for all the town to see. Again.”
“I had no idea who Junior’s first wife was, or that she even lived in Purcell.”
“Would it have mattered?”
“Probably not,” Alex answered with rueful honesty. “I can’t see that your marriage to Junior has any bearing on the case. It’s a peripheral association that I can’t help.”
“What about my father?” Stacey asked, switching subjects.
“What about him?”
“This petty investigation of yours is going to cause him embarrassment. It already has.”
“How so?”
“The fact that you’re questioning his original ruling.”