Scene of the Crime: Mystic Lake

Cole noted that her cheeks held a heightened color as if the compliment had embarrassed her. That single fact made her more human, and he felt a bit more of the tension around his shoulders slip away.

They moved on from the barbershop, talking to people and shopkeepers they met along the way. The topic of conversation was always the murder the night before.

Cole listened to their impressions and theories about the murders—and everyone had their own theory.

By the time they’d finished their walk down Main, it was close to noon. “I usually eat lunch at the café,” he said and pointed down the street to a red awning. “Want to join me?”

“Sure. To be honest, I’m running strictly on coffee this morning and could definitely use something more substantial.”

Within minutes, they were seated at a booth in the busy café, waiting for their orders to arrive. “I especially like the theory that it is space aliens coming into town to commit the murders and hang the dream catchers,” she said, repeating what Wilma Townsend had said as they’d stopped at her craft store.

Cole smiled. “Every town has a resident kook, and Wilma is ours.” His smile lasted only a moment. “What bothers me is that it’s possible we spoke to the killer this morning, that he greeted us with a smile on his face.”

“It’s also possible he isn’t a local,” she replied. “You get a lot of transient traffic through town because of the unique shops and restaurants.” He tried not to notice how the sunshine drifting through the window caught and gleamed on her hair. “We often find that the first victim holds most of the clues as to what drives the perp. You mentioned that Gretchen Johnson had a boyfriend?”

“Jeff Maynard. A hothead with a nasty reputation. They worked together at the bar, and the night of Gretchen’s death, had a public fight before leaving work. I was so sure he was my man, but several of his friends swear that they all left work together and played poker until near dawn.”

“Are these men who would lie for him?”

“Absolutely, but I haven’t been able to break one of them. Then when Mary showed up dead, I couldn’t find any connection between her and Jeff Maynard.”

She frowned thoughtfully and took a sip of her water. As she placed the glass down, her gaze met and captured his. He’d never been a fan of brown eyes before, but hers seemed to draw him in. “Is it possible Jeff killed Gretchen, and then feeling the heat of your investigation and being your main suspect, he killed the other two to take the heat off him?”

Cole shrugged. “I suppose anything is possible at this point.”

“I’d like to talk to Jeff. Can you make that happen?”

“Jeff kind of drifts during the week. He spends time staying at different friends’ places, both here and in Kansas City. The best time to catch up with him is on a Friday or Saturday night at Bledsoe’s, the bar where he works.”

“Tomorrow is Friday. I’ll plan on heading to the bar around ten. In my experience, nothing much happens before that time in bars.”

“Why don’t you meet me at my house and we’ll go together?” he suggested.

“That isn’t necessary,” she protested.

“Oh, but it is. A beautiful woman like you would be eaten alive in that dive.”

She leaned forward and gave him a smile that torched through him. “Have you forgotten, Sheriff Caldwell, I’m an FBI agent and I carry a gun?”

“And might I remind you that you don’t know the players, you won’t know who else in the bar might be carrying, and as a responsible member of the law enforcement of this town, I can’t allow you to go in there alone.” There was more than a hint of steel in his deep voice.

He had no idea what the hell he was doing. He hadn’t wanted her here in the first place, he didn’t like the way she made him feel, and yet here he was, insisting he go with her to a rowdy bar on a Friday night.

He told himself he’d use her to help solve the crime and that was all he wanted from her, but even as this thought shot through his mind, it battled with the question of what her lips would feel like beneath his own.

Chapter Three

Amberly managed to make it to John’s house by four-thirty that afternoon to pick up Max. Earlier in the day, she and Cole had met with his deputies and compared notes.

Unfortunately, no information that the deputies had gathered had made for any kind of an aha moment. She was used to the cases she worked not being easily solved; what she wasn’t used to was being so ridiculously attracted to a man she was working with.

She was a strong, independent woman, and yet there was something about the broadness of his shoulders that tempted her to lean against him. He had strong features and a square chin that she suspected held more than his share of stubbornness. But his lower lip was full and whispered of sexiness, and the blue of his eyes made her want to lose herself in them forever.

Still, no matter how attracted she was to him, she certainly didn’t intend to follow through on it. She’d made a personal commitment not to date until Max was older. The relationship she shared with John was healthy and good, and Max had adjusted to the divorce very well.

He’d been so young when it had happened she doubted that he even had any memories of her and John together. But she didn’t want to screw anything up by introducing a new man to the mix, especially a man who might not be in her life, in Max’s life, for the long haul.

If she ever decided to move on, whoever she did eventually invite into her life would have to be a very special kind of man. Max didn’t need a father; he already had one of those. Any man who wound up in her life would have to understand that his role to Max would be as friend and confidante, a stepfather who had to work with John as the father.

It all felt so complicated, too complicated. And she wasn’t the type for a random hookup. Although there were certainly times when Max was in bed asleep and Amberly missed having somebody there to talk to, to share the details of her day with, somebody who would hold her through the nights of both good dreams and bad.

Ultimately, the truth of the matter was that she didn’t believe in the state of marriage. She didn’t believe that passion could last for years, that the kinds of compromise that had to be made to make a marriage work was worth the benefit in the end.

As she pulled into John’s driveway she noticed Ed Gershner’s car parked along the curb. Ed was her next-door neighbor, a man in his mid-fifties who loved gardening, fine art and chess. He and the younger John had met at a community center where several people had been trying to form a chess club. The club hadn’t happened, but a friendship based on the love of the game had formed between John and Ed.

Max greeted her at the door with a hug and a kiss and then led her into the kitchen, where Ed and John were in the middle of a match.

Neither man looked up from the board. “Two minutes,” John said. Amberly exchanged a grin with her son. They both knew the routine, that it was taboo to interrupt an active chess game.

She gestured her son back into the living room and pulled him down on the sofa next to her. By the time Max had finished telling her about his day in school, Ed and John joined them.

“He beat me again,” Ed exclaimed in disgust as he raked a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “That makes twice this afternoon.”

Amberly gave him a smile. “You’ll get him next time.” She looked at John. “I can take Max home tonight, but would you mind keeping him for the weekend?”

“You know I don’t mind,” John said.

“That okay with you, Max?”

“Sure. We can finish that puzzle we started,” he said to his father.

John laughed. “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but I think it’s going to take us longer than one weekend to get that sucker put together.” He looked at Amberly with a woeful smile. “It’s Buckingham Palace in 3-D.”

“Whoa, sounds like a big job,” Amberly exclaimed as she rose from the sofa. “Come on, Max. We’d better get out of here. I see Ed is chomping at the bit to have another game with your dad.”

“And this time I’m going to get him,” Ed vowed.

Max grabbed his backpack and ran over to give John a kiss. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll bring him after dinner,” Amberly said. She didn’t intend to go back to Mystic Lake until tomorrow night, when she was meeting Cole to go to the bar. She planned on spending much of the day comparing the files of the murders and the latest information and interviews that had been done during the last twenty-four hours and, of course, hanging out with her son.

As usual, as they drove the three blocks from John’s house to theirs, Max insisted they play their game. He described in minute detail the front yard of a house they passed. He noticed a basketball half-hidden in the bushes, a red-and-white bicycle against the beige house and a patch of dry grass beneath a large pine tree.

“Awesome, Max,” she exclaimed when he’d finished.

“You have to be good at that kind of stuff if you want to be an FBI agent, don’t you, Mom?”

“That’s right, but you also have to get good grades and make good choices when you’re growing up. But you know, Max, you don’t have to be an FBI agent. You’re so smart you can be anything you want to be if you work for it.”