His drink was ready when he emerged from the restroom and slid the key at the girl. She was pretty. No denying that. Yet not his type. She had a tattoo on her wrist that appeared to be some kind of tropical flower, maybe a hibiscus. The tattoo artist who’d rendered the image was either a hack or a newbie. Either way, it was permanently a very bad tattoo. If her wrist was any indication, she likely had more of them wallpapering her young, lithe body. Probably some piercings, too.
The man liked his women a little more on the traditional side. More conservative. Pretty, like the coffee girl, but not so wild. Not so reckless with the beauty God had bestowed on them by virtue of His grace and their parents’ genetics.
“Whip on this?” the girl asked.
“Oh, yes.” He smiled, set down five dollars pulled from a gold monogrammed money clip, and winked. “I love whip. Keep the change.”
The girl at the counter caught the eye of her coworker, a pudgy brunette who never flirted with customers. They watched as the man with the mocha got into his truck, turned the ignition, and drove away.
“Do you want some creepy with that mocha?” the brunette teased.
“No kidding. Make that a venti creepy.”
“Extra hot, though.”
The young women laughed. Both knew that the man, no matter how handsome or fit, was too old for them anyway. Besides, it was against company policy to even think about hooking up with a customer. The last one to do that got a week of corporate-sponsored ethics training and a new assignment repacking scones in a warehouse. Not worth it by a long shot.
As the truck backed out and pulled past the windows of the shop, the blonde walked to the door and turned the lock. Her coworker flipped the overhead lights and the store went dark. As they looked out at the moving truck, which was slightly shrouded with swirling snow, they noticed something that seemed a little strange. There was no Christmas tree in the truck bed.
It was empty.
“I thought he said he’d been out getting a tree,” the brunette said
“Jesus. It figures. Everything is a pickup line these days.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “You got that right.”
PART ONE
Mandy
Chapter One
Cherrystone, Washington
Emily Kenyon was proud of her deep blue suit and the polished silver star of the sheriff’s office on her jacket, yet the idea of an A-line skirt in late November was more than her thin blood could take. Why wasn’t there a pants option? She was the first female sheriff for Cherrystone, but surely someone had thought that through before. It was an annoyance on chilly November days and thankfully she only had to wear the suit for official occasions that had more to do with public relations than law enforcement. Moreover, she had the sneaking suspicion the getup made her look like a flight attendant as much as anything.
That afternoon she had lunch with the Rotary Club to kick off the annual “Teddy Bears for Tots” fund-raiser, a statewide drive in which officers collected plush teddy bears for the littlest victims of crimes, accidents, and fires. Emily spoke for five minutes, shook the hands of several Rotary officers, and thanked them for the “teamwork that makes us great.”
The line felt hokey; even so the crowd applauded.
As she exited the restaurant banquet room, she knew that she needed a warmer coat than her old trench if she wanted to keep from freezing. She ran through her mental list of things that had to be done. She needed to get her roots touched up at the salon. She also had to do something with the turkey carcass that occupied the top shelf in her refrigerator following Thanksgiving with Jenna, her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Chris Collier, her boyfriend—though she loathed the idea of a grown man being called a boyfriend—and her friend, Olga Cerrino.
Her cell rang. It was Jason Howard, her deputy.
“Kenyon here,” she said.
“Hi, Sheriff. It’s Jason.”
That they even bothered to identify themselves was almost a joke between them. Only a dozen employees made up the Cherrystone Sheriff’s Department. It wasn’t the smallest law enforcement organization, but it certainly wasn’t in Washington State’s top ten. “We got a call from Jeanne Parkinson at the clerk’s office. She’s worried about an employee.”
Emily knew Jeanne. She worried about everything.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“An employee didn’t come to work today.”
Emily wanted to laugh, yet somehow she held it. “Is this what we’ve been reduced to? The attendance monitors for the county?”
“That’s what I thought, but this could be different. They’re worried that something might have happened to Mandy on her way to work.”
“Mandy Crawford?”
“Yeah. She’s pregnant, you know.”
“I know. She’s due any day, isn’t she?” Emily checked her teeth in the rearview mirror of her Kelly green county-issued Crown Vic. Spinach salad was never a good choice for a luncheon. Why didn’t caterers understand that spinach leaves gripped teeth like Velcro?
“Mitch says when he left for work, she was already gone.”
Mitch was Mitch Crawford, Mandy’s husband.
“I’m not far from there,” Emily said. “I’ll stop by and follow her route to the office.”
“Need the address?”
“I know where everyone in Cherrystone lives. That’s how exciting my life is.”
“Gotcha, Sheriff. We’re in the same boat.”
She almost said something about the Titanic, but thought better of it. Jason Howard was her subordinate and admitting to him that they were both in dead-end jobs was counterproductive. The fact was that adrenaline junkies would die a slow death in Cherrystone. Nothing earth-shattering happened in Cherrystone. No murder in five years. There had been three rapes, twenty-eight burglaries/robberies, eighty-three assaults, and a couple hundred drug busts, mostly for meth—the scourge of small towns and rural communities across the West.
No one had to tell Emily who Mandy’s husband was. Mitch Crawford was a good eight to ten years younger than she, but the Crawford family was well known for having the region’s car dealership. Cherrystone was certainly out of the way, with Spokane being its nearest major city. Mitch’s father, Eddie, however, had shown a knack for marketing that turned the car lot into a destination. He’d fly people into Spokane from Seattle or Portland, pick them up in a limo, and make sure they returned home in one of his cars. He ran ads on TV and radio, and was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame in Reno, Nevada. When he died, Mitch took over.
The car lot wasn’t looking so sprightly these days. Mitch Crawford, it seemed, was no Eddie Crawford.
Mitch and Mandy lived in a hopelessly hokey development crafted for those who think showing off their money is the better part of having any. Their address was in the ridiculously named Bristol Estates—ridiculous because Cherrystone was nowhere near England, and the only thing English about the town was that most people spoke the language.
When Emily arrived, she showed her badge and a guard opened the gate. Bristol Estates was a small development with only fourteen homes on “equestrian lots” built with garish architectural embellishments. Each home had a “carriage” house for their cars and a turret that presumably fed fantasies for the would-be princes, Rapunzels, and Lancelots.