Kitabı oxu: «Cold Feet»

Praise for Brenda Novak’s
Taking the Heat

“Vivid…intense…compelling. You have not read many books like this one.”

—Amanda Kilgore, Huntress Book Reviews

“Novak’s story is richly dramatic, with a stark setting that distinguishes it nicely from the lusher worlds of older romances.”

— Publishers Weekly

“This story started out with a bang and believe me, it didn’t stop…. I eagerly look forward to Brenda Novak’s next book.”

—Kathy Boswell, The Best Reviews

“Terrific! Ms. Novak always comes up with something different. Her characters are three-dimensional and riveting. Don’t miss this one!”

—Suzanne Coleburn, Reader to Reader Reviews

“With Taking the Heat, Brenda Novak has written exactly the kind of story that readers want to read…. Spellbinding.”

—Diane Tidlund, Writers Unlimited

“The story is compelling…a good mix of romance and suspense.”

—Judith Flavell, The Romance Reader

“Ms. Novak always writes a wonderful story, whether it’s her Superromances or her single-title books. I know when I pick up something she’s written, I’ll be totally satisfied.”

—Allyn Pogue, Old Book Barn Gazette

BRENDA NOVAK

is a two-time Golden Heart finalist. (The Golden Heart is a prestigious award given by the Romance Writers of America.) Brenda has sold seventeen books to Harlequin, many of which have placed in contests such as the National Readers’ Choice and the Booksellers’ Best. Her first single title, Taking the Heat (published in 2003), received high praise from readers and reviewers alike.

A busy wife and mother of five, Brenda—who lives in Sacramento, California—calls herself the typical “soccer mom.” She juggles her writing career with daily car pools, helping her kids do homework and driving them to baseball, basketball and soccer games, depending on the season.

Cold Feet
Brenda Novak

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my mother, Lavar Moffitt. I come from a long line

of mentally tough women, and my mother is

one of the toughest. As I grow older, I recognize

more and more the foundation she has built for me,

and the debt of gratitude I owe her. I pray I will live up

to the character she has tried to foster in me and,

for my own children’s sake, that I’ll pass on her legacy….

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Many thanks to Detective Tom Bennett of Colorado for his help with the police and forensic details of this novel. Tom has spent more than thirty years in public service, working for the Arvada Police Department, and has investigated approximately 2000 felony cases. The recipient of numerous departmental honors, including the Medal of Valor, the highest honor the Arvada P.D. bestows on a police officer, Tom is a gifted detective and an honorable man.

Dear Reader,

Like many of you, I’m a big fan of Court TV. But through every criminal profile I watch, I can’t help wondering about the friends and family associated with the perpetrator—especially the friends and family of those guilty of the more heinous crimes. Certainly someone, somewhere, loves or has loved these twisted individuals. At some point they must seem somewhat “normal.” They live among us, go to school with us, work with us…. Or did their mothers/fathers/sisters/brothers have an inkling that they were capable of such violence? What went wrong inside their psyches? What caused one brother to become a rapist and the other to be a law-abiding citizen? How does the wife of a serial killer not know that she’s married to a monster? And how does she live with what has happened once she learns?

My curiosity in this area definitely provided the creative seed for this story. Poor Madison Lieberman has grown up refusing to believe what the police and the media insist is true about her father. In Cold Feet she faces the trial of her faith in him, a man she loves and has always admired. It’s a study of relationships I found intriguing. I hope you’ll agree!

I love to hear from readers! Please feel free to contact me via my Web site at www.brendanovak.com, where I routinely give away great prizes and post information about my backlist and upcoming books. Or write to me at P.O. Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611.

Here’s hoping you know your loved ones as well as you think you do….

Best wishes,

Brenda Novak

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“C ALEB, SHE’S GONE . Disappeared. Vanished,” Holly said.

Caleb Trovato could hear the distress in his ex-wife’s voice, but he wasn’t about to respond to it. Everything seemed to affect her far more acutely than it would anyone else, and by virtue of the fact that they were divorced—for the second time—he didn’t have to ride her emotional roller coaster anymore.

He propped the phone up with his shoulder and swiveled back to his computer to check his e-mail, so the next few minutes wouldn’t be a total waste. “Your sister’s what—twenty-six? She’ll turn up.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Susan’s disappeared before. Remember that time she met some rich guy on an hour’s layover in Vegas and let him talk her into a wild fling? We were positive something terrible had happened to her. Especially when the airline confirmed that she’d boarded the flight out of Phoenix.”

“That was different,” Holly retorted. “She called me the next day.”

“Only because loverboy had started acting a little scary. She finally realized it might be a good thing to let someone know where she was. And she needed money to get home.”

“That was almost five years ago, Caleb. She’s changed. She has a steady job at Nordstrom’s cosmetics counter and she’s kept her own apartment for almost a year.”

The high pitch of Holly’s voice brought back memories of the many outbursts he’d been forced to endure while they were married, and put his teeth on edge. “Listen, Holly, I’m sorry Susan’s giving you a scare, but I’m really busy,” he said, determined to escape this time. “I’ve got to go.”

“Caleb, don’t do this to me,” she replied, openly crying. “I haven’t bothered you for anything since our last divorce.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. Wasn’t that the general idea? It wasn’t as if they had children together. And contrary to her claim of not bothering him, she called often. She called to borrow money. She called to ask how to file her income tax returns. She called to see if he could remember what happened to the X rays that had been taken of her leg when she’d had that waterskiing accident. She even called to see what his plans were for certain holidays.

“I don’t understand what you want from me,” he said in frustration.

“I haven’t been able to reach Susan for almost a week. Mom and Dad haven’t heard from her. Lance, the guy she’s dating, hasn’t heard from her. She hasn’t called in at work—”

“Skipping work is nothing new for Susan, either,” he pointed out.

“Caleb, she was living near the university.”

At this Caleb sat forward, feeling his first flicker of alarm. Eleven women had been abducted and killed near the University of Washington over the past twelve years. Holly had lived right next door to one of them. That was how he’d met her. He’d been working for the Seattle Police Department, canvassing the apartment building of the strangler’s ninth victim, looking for leads, and he’d knocked on Holly’s door to check if she’d seen or heard anything.

But Caleb was certain the man who’d committed those murders was now dead. He should know. He’d spent three years on the task force investigating the case and another four continuing to help after he’d quit the Seattle PD. “Holly, the Sandpoint Strangler shot himself in his own backyard over a year ago.”

She sniffed. “If you’re so sure, why didn’t you ever finish the book you were going to write about him?”

“There wasn’t enough hard evidence to connect Ellis Purcell to the killings,” Caleb admitted. “But you saw him drive away from your apartment building the night Anna was murdered. You’re the one who gave us the partial plate number.”

“But you could never place him inside the apartment.”

“That doesn’t mean he was innocent, Holly,” Caleb said, making a halfhearted attempt to organize his desk while they talked. “Purcell couldn’t account for his whereabouts during several of the murders. He failed two different lie-detector tests. The geographical profile done by the FBI indicated the killer lived within a five-block radius of him and his family. And he was secretive, kind of a recluse. I talked to him twice, Holly, and it always felt as though he was hiding something.”

“I know all that, but when you worked for the department you searched his place three different times and never found anything.”

“Some of the task force searched it. I was young enough, and new enough to the force, that I did what Gibbons told me, which was mainly behind-the-scenes grunt work. Gibbons was lead detective. He always dealt with the really important stuff. But the murders have stopped since Purcell’s death,” Caleb said. “That should tell you something.”

“They stopped for several years after Anna’s body was discovered, too,” Holly argued.

“That’s because the police were watching Purcell so closely he could scarcely breathe. The murders started up again as soon as that custodian, John Roach, killed a kindergarten teacher at Schwab Elementary downtown and almost everyone on the force, including Gibbons, suddenly believed we’d been barking up the wrong tree. But it was only wishful thinking.”

“Then what about the woman who went missing from Spokane a couple of months ago?” Holly asked. “How do you explain that if the strangler’s dead?”

“I haven’t heard anything about it,” he said.

“I just read an article the other day that said the police found some of that date rape drug on the floor of her car. Roach is in prison and Purcell is dead, but that sounds like the strangler to me.”

Caleb still had several close friends on the force. If anything interesting had developed, Detective Gibbons or Detective Thomas would have called him. This case had meant a lot to all of them. “Have they found her body?”

“Not yet.”

“Then they don’t know anything. Roofies are only about two bucks per tablet, and they’re easy to buy. We saw them in that pharmacy when we were in Mexico, remember?”

“So what about Susan?” she asked, with more than a hint of desperation.

She was baiting him, trying to tempt him back into her life. But it wasn’t going to work this time. He no longer felt the same compulsion to rescue her that had drawn him to her in the first place. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“You used to be a cop, for God’s sake! A good one. I want you to come out here and find her, Caleb.”

Shoving his mouse away, Caleb turned in his new leather office chair to stare out the picture window that revealed a breathtaking view of San Francisco Bay. A panorama of blue-green, undulating ocean dotted with at least twenty colorful sailboats was spread out before him. “I live in California now, Holly.” As if to prove how necessary it was that he remain in his current surroundings, he added, “I have someone coming to lay new carpet next week.”

“This could mean Susan’s life!” Holly cried.

Another over-the-top statement? Given Holly’s penchant for theatrics, he figured it was…. “I’m not a cop anymore. I write true crime books. I don’t know what you think I can do.”

“I know what you can do,” she said. “I married you twice, remember? It’s almost uncanny how you turn up whatever you’re looking for. It’s a talent. You’re…you’re like one of those journalists who’ll stop at nothing to uncover a story.”

Caleb wasn’t sure that was such a positive association, but he let it pass because she was still talking.

“You could come if you wanted to. Lord knows you’ve got the money.”

“Money isn’t the issue,” he replied.

“Then what is?”

His hard-won freedom. He’d had to leave the Seattle area to get far enough away from Holly. He wasn’t about to head back now, even though his parents still lived on Fidalgo Island, where he’d grown up, and he loved the place. “I can’t leave. I’m in the middle of another book.”

She seemed to sense that he wasn’t going for the panicky stuff, and made an effort to rein in her emotions. “What’s this one about?”

“A girl who murdered her stepfather.”

She sniffled again. “Sounds fun.”

At her sarcasm, he felt his lips twist into a wry grin. “It’s a living. Somebody I know hated being a cop’s wife and encouraged me to go for my dream of becoming a writer.”

“And is that so bad? Now you’re rich and famous.”

But still divorced. No matter how much Holly professed to love him, he couldn’t live with her. She was simply too obsessive. He’d married her the first time because he’d thought they could make a life together. He’d married her the second time because his sense of honor demanded it. But beyond their initial few months together, their relationship had been fractious at best, and they’d spent more days apart than they’d ever spent as a couple.

“You should come back here and do some more work on the Sandpoint Strangler,” she said in a pouty voice.

“No, thanks. I’ve learned a bit since the early days.” Caleb started doodling on an empty message pad. “Now I typically write about crimes that have already been solved—by someone else. It’s a hell of a lot easier.”

“You helped the police solve the murder of that one young runaway, then wrote a book about it, remember?”

He remembered. Maria had been the most satisfying project he’d worked on to date, because he felt he’d made a real difference in achieving justice for the victim and everyone involved. “That one happened to work out,” he told Holly. “But it’s always a gamble, and I don’t think my publisher would appreciate the increased risk of having each book languish for years while I search high and low for a satisfying resolution.”

“But you were fascinated by the Sandpoint Strangler.”

He’d probably been more obsessed than fascinated. Even after leaving law enforcement, he’d continued to work the case, pro bono, with the hope of eventually putting it all in a book.

“You’ve said yourself, a hundred times, that working the investigation gave you an insider’s view you simply couldn’t achieve when you were writing about someone else’s case,” she went on. “I know a book about him would really sell. Nobody’s done one yet.”

“There’re still too many unanswered questions to make for interesting reading, Holly. People like a definitive ending when they purchase a true crime book. They like logical sequences and answers. I can’t give them that with the Sandpoint Strangler.”

“Things change.”

“I doubt there’s enough new information to make much of a difference,” he said.

“So you won’t come?”

“Holly—”

“Where does that leave me with Susan, Caleb?” she asked, her veneer of control cracking and giving way to a sob.

Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to let Holly’s tears sway him, but her distress and what she’d said were beginning to make him wonder. Susan had been his sister, too, for a while. Although she’d been a real pain in the ass, always getting herself into one scrape or another, he still felt some residual affection for her.

“Have you called the police?” he asked.

“Of course. I’m frantic!”

He could tell. What he didn’t know was whether or not her state of mind was justified. “What’d they say?”

“Nothing. They’re as stumped as I am. There was no forced entry, no sign of a struggle at her apartment, no missing jewelry or credit cards—at least, that we could tell—and no activity on her bank account. I don’t think they have any leads. They don’t even know where to look.”

“What about her car?”

“It’s gone, but I know she didn’t just drive off into the sunset. We would’ve heard from her by now. Unless…”

“Stop imagining the worst,” he said. “There could be a lot of reasons for her disappearance. Maybe she met a rich college boy, and they’re off cruising the Bahamas. It would be like her to show up tomorrow and say, ‘Oh, you were worried? I didn’t even think to call you.’ He rubbed the whiskers on his chin, trying to come up with another plausible explanation. “Or maybe she’s gotten mixed up in drugs. She was always—”

“She left her dogs behind, Caleb,” Holly interrupted. “She wouldn’t leave for days without asking someone to feed them. Not for a trip to the Caribbean. Not for the world’s best party. Not for anything.”

Holly had a point. Susan adored her schnauzers, to the tune of paying a veterinarian six thousand dollars—money she didn’t really have—for extensive surgery when one darted across the street and was hit by a truck.

Caleb rocked back and draped an arm over his eyes. He didn’t want to face it, but this wasn’t sounding good. Even if the Sandpoint Strangler was no longer on the prowl, something had happened to Susan. And the longer she was missing, the tougher it would be to find her.

“When was the last time you saw her?” he asked in resignation.

“Six days ago.”

Six days…Caleb propped his feet on the desk and considered the book he was writing. It wasn’t going very well, anyway. After piecing the whole story together, he was actually feeling more sympathy for the girl who’d committed the crime than the abusive stepfather she’d poisoned.

“All right, I’ll fly out first thing in the morning.” He hung up and looked around his crisp, modern condo. Shit. So much for putting some space between me and Holly.

Somehow she always managed to reel him back in….

M ADISON L IEBERMAN STARED at her father’s photograph for a long time. He gazed back at her with fathomless dark eyes, his complexion as ruddy as a seaman’s, his salt-and-pepper flattop as militarily precise as ever. He’d only been dead about a year, but already he seemed like a stranger to her. Maybe it was because she wondered so often if she’d ever really known him….

“Madison? Did you find it?”

Her mother’s voice, coming from upstairs, pulled her away from the photograph, but she couldn’t help glancing at it again as she hesitantly approached the small door that opened into the crawl space. She’d been raised in this home. The three-foot gap under the house provided additional storage for canned goods, emergency supplies, old baskets, arts and crafts and holiday decorations, among other things.

But it was damp, dark and crowded—perfect for spiders or, worse, rats. Which was one reason Madison generally avoided it. When she was a child, she’d been afraid her father would lock her in. Probably because he’d threatened to do so once, when she was only four years old and he’d caught her digging through the Christmas presents her mother had hidden there.

It wasn’t the fear of spiders or rats, or even the fear of being locked in, that bothered her at age twenty-eight, however. Ever since the police and the media had started following her father around, suspecting him of being involved in the terrible murders near the university only a few blocks away, she’d been terrified of what she might find if she ever really looked….

“Madison?” Her mother’s voice filtered down to her again.

“Give me a minute,” she called in annoyance as she opened the small door. “It’s a twenty-dollar punch bowl,” she grumbled to herself. “Why can’t she just let me buy her a new one?”

The smell of moist earth and rotting wood greeted her as she flipped on the dangling bulb overhead and peered inside. Years ago, her father had covered the bare, uneven ground with black plastic and made a path of wooden boards that snaked through the clutter. These makeshift improvements reminded her that this was his domain, one of the places he’d never liked her to go.

It didn’t make the thought of snooping around any more appealing. Her half brothers, Johnny and Tye, her father’s children by his first wife, stored things here occasionally, but she did her best to forget the dark yawning space even existed. She certainly didn’t want to spend any portion of what had started out as a relaxing Sunday afternoon scrounging around this creepy place.

She considered telling her mother the punch bowl wasn’t there. But ever since her father’s suicide, her mother seemed to fixate on the smallest details. If Madison couldn’t find it, she’d probably insist on looking herself, and Annette was getting too old to be crawling around on her hands and knees. Besides, Madison and her mother had stood by Ellis Purcell throughout the investigation that had ended with his death. Certainly Madison could have a little faith in him now. The police had searched the house about four years after the killings began and never found anything.

She wasn’t going to find anything, either. Because her father was innocent. Of course.

Taking a deep, calming breath, she resisted the fresh wave of anxiety that seemed to press her back toward the entrance, and crawled inside. The punch bowl couldn’t be far. It would only take a second to find it.

A row of boxes lined the wall closest to her. Some were labeled, others weren’t. Madison quickly opened the ones that weren’t labeled to discover some things her father had owned as a young man—old photo albums, school and college yearbooks, military stuff from his stint in Vietnam.

The photos and letters seemed so normal and far removed from the articles she’d read about Ellis in the newspapers that she finally began to relax. A lot of cobwebs hung overhead, almost iridescent in the ethereal glow of the dim lightbulb, but if there were spiders, they were off in the corners. Nothing jumped out to grab her. She saw no indication that anyone had been underneath the house since Johnny had come by to get his summer clothes out of storage two years ago.

Her father might have ended his life with one heck of a finale, but his death and the investigation, if not the suspicion, were behind them now. She could quit being afraid. She could move on and forget….

Shoving the memorabilia off to one side, she rummaged around some more and eventually came up with the punch bowl. She was about to drag it to the entrance when she remembered the box of Barbie dolls she’d packed up when she was twelve. They were probably down here, too, she realized. If she could find them, she could give them to her own daughter, Brianna, who’d just turned six.

Following the curve in the wooden path, Madison came across some leftover tiles from when they’d redone the bathroom, a dusty briefcase, an old ice-cream maker, and some of her baby things. Near the edge of the plastic, where bare dirt stretched into complete darkness, she found a few boxes that had belonged to her half brothers, along with the denim bedding her mother had bought when Johnny and Tye came to live with them.

As she pushed past Johnny’s old stereo, she promised herself she’d write him again this week, even though he never answered her letters. He’d been in and out of prison for years, always on drug charges. But he had to be lonely. Tye stayed in touch with him, but her mother pretended he didn’t exist. And he hated his own alcoholic mother who, last Madison had heard, was living somewhere in Pennsylvania in a halfway house.

She squinted in the dim light to make out the writing on several boxes: “Mother Rayma’s tablecloths…” “Mother Rayma’s dishes…” “Aunt Zelma’s paintings.”

No Barbies. Disappointed, Madison rocked back into a sitting position to save her knees from the hard planking, and hugged her legs to her chest, trying to figure out where that box might have gone. Brianna had had a difficult year, what with the divorce, their move to Whidbey Island thirty-five miles northwest of Seattle, her father’s remarriage, and the expectation of a half sibling in the near future. Madison would love to have fifteen or more vintage Barbie dolls waiting in her back seat when she collected her daughter from her ex-husband’s later today. Danny certainly lavished Brianna with enough toys.

Maybe she needed to dig deeper. Pushing several boxes out of the way, she slid the old mirror from the spare bedroom to the left, and the avocado bathroom accessories that had once decorated the upstairs bathroom to the right, to reach the stuff piled behind. She was pretty far from the light at the entrance, which made it difficult to see, but she was eventually rewarded for her efforts when she recognized her own childish writing on a large box tucked into the corner.

“There it is!” she murmured, wriggling the box out from behind an old Crock-Pot and some extra fabric that looked as if it was from the sixties and better off forgotten. “You’re gonna love me for this, Brianna.”

“Madison, what could possibly be taking so long?”

Madison jumped at the unexpected sound, knocking her head on a beam. “Ow.”

“Are you okay?” her mother asked. Annette stood at the mouth of the crawl space, but Madison couldn’t see her for all the junk between them.

“I’m fine.” She batted away a few cobwebs to rub the sore spot on her forehead. “You can tell Mrs. Howell I found the punch bowl you said she could borrow.”

“I use that punch bowl every Christmas. What’s it doing all the way back there?”

“It wasn’t back here. I’ve been looking for my old Barbies.”

“Don’t waste another minute on that,” her mother said. “We gave them to Goodwill a long time ago.”

“No, we didn’t. They’re right here.”

“They are?”

“Sure.” Madison pulled open the top flap of the box to prove it, and felt her heart suddenly slam against her chest. Her mother was right. There weren’t any Barbies inside. Just a bunch of women’s shoes and underwear, in various sizes. And a short coil of rope.

CHAPTER TWO

S TUNNED , M ADISON BLINKED at the jumble in the box as the pictures the police had shown her years earlier flashed through her mind—grotesque, heart-rending photos of women after the Sandpoint Strangler had finished with them. It made her dizzy and nauseous to even think about those poor women; it made her feel worse to believe her father might have—

No! Surely there was some mistake. The police had searched the crawl space. They would’ve found this stuff.

Steeling herself against overwhelming revulsion, Madison used a towel rod to poke through the box in hopes of finding some evidence that would refute the obvious.

In the bottom corner, she saw something that glittered, and forced herself to reach gingerly inside. It was a metal chain. When she pulled it out into the murky light, she could see it was a necklace with a gold locket on the end. But she was too terrified to open it. Her heart hammered against her ribs and her hands shook as she stared at it until, finally, she gathered the nerve to unhook the tiny clasp.

Inside, she saw an oval picture of Lisa and Joe McDonna. Lisa was victim number two. Madison knew because she’d memorized them all—by face and by name.

Closing her eyes, she put a hand to her stomach, attempting to override her body’s reaction. But she retched anyway, several dry heaves that hurt her throat and her stomach. She’d hung on to her belief in Ellis’s innocence for so long. She’d stood against the police, the media and popular opinion. She’d stayed in the same high school even after the kids had started taunting her and doing vengeful things, like throwing eggs and oranges at the house or writing “murderer” in the lawn with bleach. She’d held her head high and attended the University of Washington, just as she’d always planned. Through it all, she’d refused to consider the possibility of her father’s culpability in the murders, even when the police produced an eyewitness who said she saw Ellis driving away from a neighbor’s house the night that neighbor was murdered. The witness was old and could have been mistaken. There were a lot of blue Fords with white camper shells in Seattle. All the evidence was circumstantial.

But if he was innocent, how could such a personal item belonging to one of the victims have found its way inside the house?

“Ellis saved those Barbies, after all?” Annette said, her words suddenly sounding as though they had an echo. “I could’ve sworn we took them to Goodwill.”

Madison couldn’t breathe well enough to speak. After those hellish years in high school, she’d expected the scandal to die down, especially when the police couldn’t find any DNA evidence. But the suspicion and hatred had gone on long after that, until it had destroyed her marriage. Her husband wanted to be seen as upwardly mobile and a man who had it all. Not the man who’d married the daughter of the Sandpoint Strangler.

“Madison?” her mother said, when she didn’t respond.

She took a few bolstering breaths and managed an answer. “What?”

“Are you going to bring those Barbie dolls out or not? I’m sure Brianna will be thrilled to have them.”

Madison wasn’t about to let her mother see what the box really contained. Annette had been through enough already.

Wiping away the sweat beading on her upper lip, Madison struggled to distance herself from the whole tragic mess. She hadn’t hurt those women. If her father had, she’d been as much a victim as anyone.

“It—it looks like there’ve been some rats in the box,” she said. “I d-don’t think we can give them to Brianna.”

“That’s too bad. Well, drag them out here anyway, and I’ll get rid of them once and for all.”

Madison breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, struggling to remain calm and rational. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll just leave them here. They…there’s a sticky web all over and I’m afraid there might be a black widow someplace.”

“Oh boy, we wouldn’t want to drag that out. You’re right, just leave them. I’ll hire someone to come down here and clean this out when I move.”

When she moved…Ever since her father had shot himself in the backyard, Madison had been trying to talk her mother into relocating. Madison had a difficult time even coming to the house, what with all the bad memories; she couldn’t imagine how Annette still lived here.

But now she wasn’t so sure she wanted her mother to go anywhere. If Annette sold the house, Madison would either have to come forward with what she’d found, which was unimaginable, or she’d have to destroy it—something she wasn’t sure her conscience would allow.

God, she’d thought the nightmare was over. Now she knew it would never be….

H OLLY MET C ALEB at the airport on Monday morning. With her long, curly blond hair, he noticed her in the crowd almost as soon as he entered the arrivals lounge, and steeled himself for the moment she’d come rushing to meet him. Two years his senior, she was taller than most women, thin, and had a heart-shaped, angelic face. She looked good. She always looked good. But looks didn’t matter with a woman whose emotions swung as widely as Holly’s did.

He saw her pushing through the crowd as she made her way toward him. And then she was there, smiling in obvious relief. “Caleb, I’m so glad you came.” She reached up to hug him, and he allowed it but quickly moved on, following the flow of the other passengers toward the baggage claim.

“You haven’t heard from Susan?” he asked, glad to finally stretch his legs. First class had been full. He was too big for the narrow, cramped space allotted him in economy, but without advance booking he’d had to take what he could get.

“Not a word. I check my answering machine every hour, just in case. But…” She blinked rapidly, and he hoped she wasn’t going to cry again. He hadn’t come to be her emotional support. He just wanted to find Susan and get back to San Francisco.

“Have the Seattle police assigned any detectives to the case?”

“Two. Lynch and Jones. Do you know them?”

“I know Lynch better than Jones.”

“They’re driving me nuts,” she said. “They keep talking about searching for fiber evidence and what not, but it doesn’t seem like they’re doing much of anything.”

“This isn’t television, Holly. Fiber evidence takes a long time. You have to track down all the people who visited Susan’s apartment, and collect samples before you can send them to the lab for comparison. And you generally don’t have a lab tech sitting there, twiddling his thumbs while waiting to help you. You have to take your place in line.”

He dodged a woman who’d stopped right in front of him to dig through a bag. “Have you talked to your parents again?” he asked. Caleb knew relations between Holly and her adoptive parents were strained. They had been for most of her life. She hated her birth mother for giving her up, even though her birth mother had been barely sixteen. She hated her adoptive mother for not being her birth mother. And she was frequently jealous of Susan, who’d been born with the assistance of fertility drugs when Holly was seven.

“I called them last night to tell them you were coming,” she said.

“What did they have to say about Susan’s disappearance?”

“At first they said the same thing you did—she’s done this before, she’ll turn up. Now that it’s been almost a week, they’re worried. They’re willing to hire a private investigator, if you think that’s the best way to go. They wanted me to talk to you about it.”

“I think we should do whatever we can as soon as possible.”

“Okay.” She scratched her arm through her sweater, looking uncertain. “You know how we were talking about the Sandpoint Strangler?”

“Yes?”

“There was something on the news earlier….”

They’d reached the luggage carousel. He slipped through the crowd to grab the small bag he’d packed in San Francisco. Besides a few clothes, he’d brought only his cell phone, his day planner and his laptop, so he could work if he got the chance. “What?” he asked, when he had his bag slung over his shoulder.

“Someone desecrated the grave of Ellis Purcell.”

Caleb stiffened in surprise. “How? From what I remember, his widow and daughter went to great pains to keep its location a secret.”

“I don’t know. I just caught a clip while I was eating breakfast.”

Caleb rubbed the stubble on his chin. He hadn’t showered or shaved this morning. He’d had such an early flight, he’d simply rolled out of bed, pulled on a Fox Racing T-shirt, a pair of faded jeans and a Giants ball cap and headed south to the airport.

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” he said. But he had to admit it was strange that a woman would go missing from the Sandpoint Strangler’s old hunting grounds a year after Ellis Purcell was dead. That she’d be related to Holly. And that Purcell’s grave would be desecrated in the same week.

A LTHOUGH M ONDAY AFTERNOON was warm, with a rare amount of sun for Seattle in September, the mortuary was cool. Too cool. It smelled of carnations, furniture polish and formaldehyde, which dredged up memories of every funeral Madison had ever attended—Aunt Zelma’s, Grandma Rayma’s, the skeletal-looking man who’d lived next door when she was five. She couldn’t think of the old guy’s name, but she remembered staring at his waxy face as he lay in his coffin.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to deal with any memories of her father’s funeral. They hadn’t given him one. She, her mother, Tye and Johnny had simply sent out notices of his death to the few friends and family who’d remained supportive, and buried him without any type of viewing or wake. Because of the ongoing investigation, and the damage he’d done with his old rifle, it seemed prudent to handle things as quickly and quietly as possible.

Lawrence Howell, the manager of Sunset Lawn Funeral Home and Memorial Park, had helped make the arrangements. He sat across from Madison and her mother now, his short blond hair neatly combed, his face wearing the same somber expression he always wore.

Fortunately, Madison had been able to reach Joanna Stapley, a senior at South Whidbey High School who often baby-sat for her, in time to have her pick up Brianna from school, so she didn’t have to cope with a wriggling six-year-old during such a difficult meeting.

“How could this have happened?” she asked when Mr. Howell had finished explaining what he’d told her on the phone when he’d reached her at her office earlier—that someone had dug up her father’s coffin last night. “How could anyone have figured out where he was buried?”

Howell rested his elbows on his mahogany desk and clasped long white fingers in front of him. “As I told the gentleman who called me this morning—”

“What gentleman?” Annette demanded.

Madison put a comforting hand on her mother’s arm. “Tye, Mom. I phoned him as soon as Mr. Howell contacted me. I thought he might want to be part of this.”

“Is he coming?” she asked, obviously not pleased that Madison had included him.

“No, he said he has to work.”

“What about his wife? Is she going to be here?”

“Sharon and the kids are visiting her mother in Spokane.”

“Ellis never could count on his boys,” Annette said, her lips compressed in disapproval. She didn’t want Tye or his wife involved, yet she sounded affronted by their lack of support.

Mr. Howell, who’d waited politely through their exchange, cleared his throat. “As I was saying, I have no way of knowing how this happened. There was no headstone or anything else to mark your father’s grave, Ms. Lieberman, just as you requested. Our files are kept private and are always locked up at night. There was no sign of forced entry into the mortuary here, where we keep the files. And it’s been a year since the burial—a year in which we’ve had no hint of trouble.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Annette said, her eyes filling with tears. “Why now? What would anyone want with Ellis’s body after all this time?”

“A year’s not so long, Mom,” Madison said before Howell could respond. “Whoever it was wants the same thing we’ve encountered before, to express their anger and contempt for…for what happened.”

“I just want my husband to be able to rest in peace,” her mother said. “Ellis was innocent. He never hurt those women.”

Madison wished her mother’s words didn’t sound so hollow to her. She still wanted to believe them. But the locket she’d discovered under the house yesterday threatened the last of her faith, was leaching away the righteous anger that had sustained her so far. Without a strong conviction that her father was innocent, she had nothing to cling to, except the desire to protect her mother and Brianna from what was, most probably, the truth.

“Of course he was innocent,” Howell said, his tone placating.

Madison was willing to bet Howell believed more in the extra money they’d paid him to keep her father’s burial place a secret than he did in her father’s innocence. Just as she thought the call he’d made to them this morning, and what he might shortly suggest for her father’s reburial, would come with a hefty price tag. They should’ve gone ahead with the cremation Madison had suggested from the first. But her mother wouldn’t hear of it. Annette had never known anyone who’d been cremated. It seemed foreign to her—certainly nothing she was willing to do with her beloved husband’s body.

“Fortunately, our security guard frightened the culprit away before he could open the casket,” Howell added.

Madison rummaged through her purse to get her mother a tissue. Annette didn’t used to cry so easily, but the past twelve years had taken quite a toll. “Why didn’t the security guard catch him sooner?” she asked.

Howell politely turned his attention her way. “As you know, this is a big cemetery, Ms. Lieberman. Anthony, our security guard, circles the entire area several times a night, but he focuses mostly on the outer reaches. We buried your father close to the mortuary here, to throw off the media and anyone who might be looking for a fresh grave. Most folks buried near the mortuary have been dead sixty or seventy years, which means they’re pretty well forgotten.” He propped his fingertips together. “The lights on the building also serve as a deterrent.”

“Did your security guard get a look at this guy?” Madison asked, handing the tissue to her mother.

“Anthony said he was wearing jeans and a blue jacket with a red Chinese dragon on the back, and he looked small, maybe a hundred and sixty pounds. But that’s all he could see. As soon as Anthony started toward him in the security cart, he threw down his shovel and ran off.” Howell bent to one side to cover a small cough. “We gave these details to the police this morning, of course.”

“So this…guy, he—he just unearthed the coffin?” Madison asked, her muscles aching with anxiety. How many other people had to deal with such a parade of unsettling incidents? “That’s it?”

“He made a few pry marks on the coffin, but Anthony came along before he was able to get it open. We could have reburied your father easily enough, but I thought I’d better check with you and your mother to see if you’d like him moved now that…well, now that the media and everyone else seem to have taken a renewed interest.”

“The media? How did the media find out?” Annette asked, her eyes wide with panic.

Howell unclasped his hands. “They must’ve heard the call go out when Anthony phoned the police.”

Madison was still thinking about the guy in the Chinese dragon jacket. “So the police are looking for whoever did this?”

“We’ve made a report, as I said. Technically, there’s a chance this… disturbance would be classified as a felony. Individual plots are personal property. But…” he hesitated, and this time his glance seemed to hold real compassion “…if you want the truth, Ms. Lieberman, I can’t imagine the police will waste much time chasing down the crazy guy who did this when they’re already so overworked and understaffed. I think you and your mother would be better off to simply move the coffin and put this unfortunate incident behind you.”

Along with everything else, Madison thought bitterly. Only nothing from the past ever seemed to stay there.

C ALEB STOOD AT THE ENTRANCE to Susan’s bedroom Monday evening, surveying the clothes littering the floor, the perfume bottles and makeup strewn across the dresser, and her unmade bed. The place smelled like the expensive perfume so typical of Susan, which brought her back to him more clearly than he’d remembered her so far, and caused worry to claw at his gut. She hadn’t been seen for a week, since last Monday. Where could she be?

Crossing to the dresser, he smoothed out a crinkled piece of paper to see that it was only a quick thank-you from a friend at work, then rifled through some change. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Anything, really. Anything that might lead him to Susan.

Holly hovered behind him. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Why aren’t you checking for pry marks on the window or something?”

He caught his ex-wife’s eye in the mirror. It felt strange to be inside Susan’s apartment with everything so quiet, so motionless. Even when Susan wasn’t around, her dogs had always been here, barking and wagging a welcome. Now Holly had the schnauzers at her place, and other than a few visits from police, the apartment had been shut up. “I’m sure the detectives have done all that.”

“So?”

“I’m focusing on my personal knowledge of Susan’s behavior and habits.”

“Which means…”

“I’m trying to figure out what she might have been wearing and doing the night she disappeared. When I talked to Detective Lynch a few minutes ago, he said you were the last person to see her on Monday afternoon. But she wasn’t reported missing until Wednesday, when she didn’t show up for work. That’s a lot of time to change clothes.”

Holly rearranged the slew of bottles and cosmetics on the dresser, putting them in some semblance of order. “There’s no way to tell what she was wearing. For all we know, she was abducted in the middle of the night dressed in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt.”

“I doubt she was taken from here.”

Holly gave up on the mess and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Just because there was no forced entry? Maybe someone came to the door,” she said. “Maybe she knew who it was so she opened up. She might have even left with him. Detective Lynch seems to believe that’s most likely what happened.”

“Except that her car’s gone,” Caleb said.

Holly shrugged. “She and whoever she was with could have used her car.”

“Susan wouldn’t have wanted to drive if she had a man at the door with his own transportation. This was a woman who spent every dime she had on clothes and makeup and—” He indicated the perfumes, body lotions, mascara and eye shadow that covered almost every horizontal surface “—judging by the looks of this place, that hasn’t changed over the past two years.”

Holly pulled her hair into a ponytail. “I still don’t think we can figure out what she was wearing. When I saw her on Monday, she was telling me about some hot new outfit she was going to buy. How are we supposed to place her in something we might never have seen?”

Caleb turned to study the room again, taking in the pajama bottoms draped over a chair, and noticing underwear on the floor near the bathroom. “Maybe we can’t. But to me it looks like she took a shower, got dressed up and left for an evening out.”

Holly frowned at his assessment and toyed with the hem of her turtleneck sweater. “What makes you say that?”

“I can still smell perfume in the air, as if she sprayed it last thing, and those panties look as though she just stepped out of them. If she was expecting someone, she would’ve at least tossed the underwear in the hamper, don’t you think?”

“Susan was never much of a clean freak.”

Caleb crossed to the closet, which was crammed full of blouses, slacks, suits, dresses, jackets, jeans and sweaters. There were even a few wigs and hairpieces on the shelf above. “Knowing Susan, she’d be anxious to wear the new clothes she told you about. Did she describe them to you?”

“Of course, but I wasn’t really listening. She’s always telling me about some new shade of eye shadow or clothes bargain.”

He fingered a black sweater with faux fur at the wrists and collar. “Have you looked through her closet for anything with the tags still on it?”

“I haven’t looked specifically for tags, but I know there are a few new things.”

“Where are they?”

Holly started examining clothes at the back of the closet, but Caleb stopped her.

“Forget it,” he said. “She wouldn’t shove a hot new outfit all the way to the back. If she’s got any new clothes that far back, she’s never found an occasion to wear them, and they’ve probably been there for some time.”

“So now what?”

“Maybe we could call Nordstrom to see what she’s purchased lately. She’d probably put it on her charge card, wouldn’t she?”

Holly didn’t seem hopeful. “Except that her charge card’s been maxed out since her first two weeks at work.”

Of course. He hadn’t taken Susan’s spending habits into account. Still, there had to be some way to figure out what she’d bought and whether or not she was wearing it….

Caleb took another turn around the room, thinking. She would’ve carried her purchase inside from the car, possibly tried it on, admired herself in the mirror and cut off the tags.

The tags…

Moving to the small garbage can on the other side of the nightstand, he found a crumpled Nordstrom bag with two tags inside. “Bingo,” he said.

Holly took the tags from him. “What’s so exciting about these?”

“We can use the SKU numbers to find out what Susan bought. Maybe she was wearing it when she went missing.”

“What if she wasn’t?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “We have to start somewhere. Susan always liked the unique and ultra-trendy. Maybe she was wearing an outfit that really stood out.”

Holly smiled up at him. “I knew I was right to have you come out here, Caleb.”

“Slow down, Holly. We don’t even know if this means anything.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to help me,” she said, and he hoped to God she was right.

C ALEB GOT HIS WISH —at least in one regard. The short, worn-looking denim skirt and leopard-print halter top the Nordstrom saleswoman draped across the counter thirty minutes later was certainly conspicuous. He doubted that scrap of fabric the saleswoman called a skirt would cover much, but he had more to worry about than Susan’s general lack of modesty.

“You’re positive these items match the tags?” he asked.

“Check for yourself,” the saleswoman—Deborah, according to her badge—held them up for comparison.

“Did you see anything like this in her apartment?” he asked Holly.

“No. I’ve never seen a halter top like this before in my life,” she told him. “And I’d definitely remember it.”

“I know Susan bought this because I sold it to her,” Deborah insisted. “Just last week. She comes up here from cosmetics all the time or—” she looked slightly abashed “—she used to, anyway. And it was on clearance, so she got a great deal.”

A great deal? Caleb touched the flimsy material. “Would someone really wear something like this in mid-September?” he asked. “Seattle doesn’t exactly have beach weather.”

“She was going clubbing,” Deborah volunteered, trying to be helpful. “And it’s so hot in those places. Especially when you’re dancing, you know?”

Caleb knew all about clubs, but not because he’d visited one recently. He’d quickly grown tired of them after his divorce.

“It’s too much of a long shot,” Holly said. “Let’s go.”

She started for the door, but Caleb pulled her back. “Not so fast. It’s better than nothing. I say we take a picture and add it to the flyers, just in case.”

Holly studied the outfit with a critical eye, then sighed and shrugged. “If you say so.”

“We’ll take it,” he told Deborah.

While he was paying for it, Holly looped her arm through his the way she used to while they were married. “This is just like old times,” she murmured.

Caleb carefully extricated himself. “I’m not going to be in Seattle long,” he said, and was determined to make sure she remembered that.

M ADISON WAS EXHAUSTED by the time she returned home, but she felt a definite sense of relief the moment she drove off the Mukilteo-Clinton Ferry, which had brought her across Puget Sound from the mainland. After the unwelcome media attention she’d received during the past twelve years, and the crushing disappointment she’d experienced for her daughter’s sake when Danny announced he was leaving her, she’d wanted to relocate as far from Seattle as possible. Start over. Forget. Or go into hiding until she was strong enough to face the world again.

But her divorce agreement stipulated that she couldn’t move more than two hours away from Danny, who had joint custody of Brianna and lived on Mercer Island. And she felt too much responsibility toward her mother to leave without a backward glance. Annette was talking more favorably about moving than ever before, but she was still set in her ways and didn’t want to go very far from the city where she’d been born and raised.

Whidbey became the compromise Madison had been searching for. With the island’s sandy, saltwater beaches, damp, green woods, towering bluffs and spectacular views of Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains, it felt remote. Yet it was still basically a suburb, with eateries and fast food, gas stations and convenience stores. And it was…familiar.

“Brianna!” Madison called as she let herself into the small cottage she’d used her divorce settlement to buy, along with her new business, the South Whidbey Realty Company. Located just off Maxwelton Beach, tucked into a stand of thick pine trees, the house itself reminded Madison of something from a Thomas Kinkade painting—romantic to the point of being whimsical. Built of redbrick and almost completely covered in ivy, the house was more than fifty years old. But it had always been well-loved and well-maintained, and the previous owners had done a fabulous job with the garden. The garage, which was detached, resembled an old carriage house and had been converted some years ago into a sort of minicottage.

“Hey? Where’s my girl?” she called again, putting her briefcase next to the hall tree.

This time the television went off and Brianna came running, clutching Elizabeth, her stuffed rabbit, in one arm. “Mommy, you’re home!”

“Yes, sweetie, I’m home.” Madison gave her daughter a tight squeeze. “I’m sorry I had to be away. Grandma needed me. And then I had to swing by the office to pick up all the paperwork I didn’t get around to today.”

“Why couldn’t I go with you to see Grandma? She loves it when I come to visit. And Elizabeth misses her.”

“You and Elizabeth see her at least once a week, kiddo, and you weren’t out of school yet,” Madison said. But she wouldn’t have taken Brianna to the Sunset Funeral Home and Memorial Park even if she’d been available. Madison tried to shield her daughter as much as possible from the taint of her grandfather’s legacy.

Joanna Stapley appeared behind Brianna, toting a backpack. “Your timing’s good,” she said. “I just finished my homework.”

“Perfect.” Madison gave her a grateful smile and dug through her purse for the money to pay her. “Did anyone call while I was gone?”

“You had an ad call on the rental place.”

“An ad call?” Brianna echoed. “What’s an ad call?”

Madison shook her head. Her daughter was only six years old, but nothing slipped past her. “I’m trying to rent out the carriage house. Did the caller leave her name?” she asked Joanna.

“It was a he.”

“Oh.” For safety reasons, Madison had been hoping for a female tenant. But at this point, she knew she’d take anyone with good credit and solid references.

“What does it mean to rent out the carriage house?” Brianna asked.

“It means someone else will live there,” Madison said.

“Why?”

To help her financially. When she’d purchased the house and her business, she’d planned for the eight months it would take her to learn what she needed to know and get her broker’s license. But she hadn’t expected business to be so slow once she actually took over. And she’d already lost her top agent, which meant she was down to three. It wasn’t going to be easy to survive if the real estate market didn’t pick up.

“Because it might be fun to have some company once in a while, don’t you think?” she said to Brianna, even though company was really the last thing Madison wanted. She’d dealt with enough curious strangers to last her a lifetime.

Brianna scrunched up her face as though she wasn’t quite sure about company, either, but Madison was more interested in what Joanna had to say. Danny had made some comments that led her to believe he and Leslie might sue for custody of Brianna again. Madison wanted to be ready for him. She needed to save what little money she had left from the divorce for a good attorney.

“Did he leave his name and number?” she asked.

Joanna frowned as she tried to remember. “Dwight…Sanderson, I think. His number’s on the fridge.”

“Good. I’m having trouble finding a tenant. Everyone wants to come for a visit, but the ferry can take as long as two hours, so we’re not exactly in a prime location for people who work on the mainland.”

“This guy definitely sounds interested.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. If you need me again, just call my cell.” The door slammed behind Joanna, then Madison heard the distinctive rattle of her Volkswagen bug as she pulled out of the drive.