"I see it," he said.
Gina looked at her sister. "Shit, we haven't had a murder in Cherrystone since we were kids." "
"That was a suicide," Anna corrected, referring to the case of a local pet shop owner who had been poisoned to death.
Gina made a face. She'd had this argument before. She spoke a bit louder so Jason and Emily could hear.
I never was so sure about that. I mean, he died of arsenic and that's a slow death. His wife said he had Parkinson's for years. Sounded a little feeble to me"
"Some things are never meant to be known," Jason said.
Emily stood up, glad she'd put on a pair of jeans. Her knees were muddy and hurt like hell.
"That won't be the case here," she said. "We will find out what happened to her and her family."
Jason went to the radio for backup. Photos would have to be taken. The debris had to be searched, piece by piece. Mrs. Martin was dead, but there were other potential victims, too.
"Tell the sheriff I've gone home. I'll be back at first light," Emily said. She looked at the illuminated face on her gold watch. It was after midnight. "See you in a few. Nobody touches anything. Where I come from this is a crime scene"
To avoid puncturing a tire, Emily thought it best to back her car out of the long driveway. She looked back at the ambulance and the cruiser as their spinning lights duked it out in the night sky. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. The lights pulsed like a heartbeat. What had happened back there? Who shot Mrs. Martin? Where was the rest of her family? A shiver ran down Emily's spine and she turned up the heat. Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe the injury was the result of the tornado and the gunshot residue she thought she had seen was something else. Dirt. A burn. Anything. She was so tired her eyes blurred; the streetlights passed by like a wand of a light.
It was almost one in the morning; she'd get a couple of hours' sleep and get back to the scene. She probably wouldn't even see Jenna. All she knew was that with the light of day, answers would come. Maybe some hope, too. Hope was so very, very needed.
Weeks before, exact time unknown
A cache of letters was tucked into the back of the scrapbook, a kind of secret meeting place where, whenever the need for arousal or remembering was needed, they'd be there. They were flat as if they'd been ironed under steam and pressure. Though they had once been damp from the heat of fingers, even the wetness of tears, they were stiff now. Crisp. Treasured. Charged.
One missive began:
If only we had a song, Id sing it in your ear, my hot breath, moist and gentle. If only we could touch, Id play my fingers all over your body. Only you know me. Only you know how I feel. Break down the walls. Break down the barriers. Feel me take off your clothes, one button at time ... lingering as they fall to the floor. Your hunger for my touch, insatiable ... but I try. I try ...
The memories were a torrent and the reader's breath accelerated to near gasping as the forbidden feelings of desire washed over head to toe.
... Naked we stand, our arms around each other, our mouths searching for the hotness and wetness of our passion. I look you in the eyes. You stare back, longing for us to become one. Your hands slip between my legs ...
Chapter Three
Tuesday, 1:46 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington
Dead tired. Emily thought that would make the perfect title for a book of her life. So exhausted, but still aware. Frogs that had taken up residence in her neighbor's Home Center terracotta fountain caused a little commotion there, but everything else on Orchard Avenue was calm and benign. The air barely stirred the scent of the old white lilac bush. Jenna had left the porch light on for her mother and a swarm of gray and white moths swirled around without pausing to land. Emily bent down to keep them from her hair and inserted her key. The dead bolt slid. Inside, she dropped her overstuffed handbag on the console and when the contents spilled for the second time that day, she just left everything where it fell. Once down the hall, she peeked in on her sleeping daughter. Jenna was curled in a ball, pink-cheeked and dreaming-her mother hoped-happy dreams. We could use some happiness wherever we can get it in this life, Emily thought.
She shifted the Indonesian batik spread and Jenna moved. Her blue eyes were narrow slits. She half-smiled at her mother, but said nothing.
Good, she's alive. Emily knew the thought was absurd. But nearly every mother experiences that feeling of deep worry whenever they leave their children alone-six or sixteen-a few minutes to get the mail, or a couple of hours to check a crime scene. When they sleep in too long. When they don't come down to dinner right away. The worst always seems possible, even plausible, when love is so strong. All mothers know that.
Emily picked up a small dish and spoon, the apparent remains of a late-night snack. Chocolate ice cream, it seemed. Probably Brownie Batter, Jenna's favorite. For a second the coagulating ice cream made her mind flash to Peg Martin and the dried blood on her chest, but she swallowed hard and tried to pass it out of her memory. She crept across the room, shut the door with her hip, and walked to the kitchen. The red light on the answering machine atop the antique butcher block beckoned once more and though she could barely stand, she pushed the play button.
"I don't like being disregarded, Emily."
It was Cary McConnell. The jerk of a lawyer who made other lawyers seem like marriage material.
"I've called you three times since the storm," he went on. "I want to make sure you and Jenna are all right. I mean, I know you're okay, because I've seen you twice in town, but Jesus, I thought we had something going "
She pushed the FAST FORWARD button and the tape whirled, making Cary sound like a helium inhaler.
"And if you think you can ignore me-"
You really know how to win back a girl, Emily thought, selecting the ERASE button. The machine clicked and shut off. The red eye blinked one final time.
"Good night, Cary. And good-bye," she said, softly to herself.
In her bedroom at the end of the hall, she adjusted her alarm clock to allow three and a half hours' sleep. She was glad she didn't have on any makeup because she'd been raised by a mother who thought going to bed with makeup still applied was akin to a mortal sin. Emily put her head on the pillow and thought of Peg Martin and the one vivid memory she could recall. It was the time she'd seen Peg at a school carnival the October before last. They had worked the bakery booth together for two or three nights. Emily brought chocolate chip cookies from Safeway and rewrapped them in home bakeware. Like a gas thief with petroleum breath caught with a gas can and a rubber hose, she confessed.
"I guess I'm not fooling anyone"
Peg, older than Emily, by ten years, was gracious. "Some people prefer when it's store-bought anyway."
"Yeah, but yours aren't. They look too good to be from any store"
Peg smiled. "I'm not a detective. I'm a homemaker. Ask me to solve a crime and I'll bring in a DVD of CSI and we can watch it together. That's about as close as I'd ever get"
Peg was a lovely woman, the kind who'd always show up with more than what was requested. She gave time to whatever the cause. She'd made the best macaroons outside of a bakery, tall, fluffy, and dipped in dark chocolate. And she always smiled.
"Take two," Peg had said that chilly autumn evening to a boy with a crumpled dollar bill, "They're kind of small." Then she winked the kind of exaggerated conspiratorial move kids make when they know they are being bad and want everyone else to know they know it, too.
But they weren't small, of course. They were like cocoa covered Mount Rainier, Washington's tallest, grandest peak. Peg was just that type of woman. Now she was dead, under a pile of tornado trash, a gunshot wound in her chest, and her family strewn somewhere out in the darkness that enveloped her property. Emily willed herself to think of something positive, the carnival, the cookies, but the image of the dead bake-sale lady, probably murdered, kept materializing.