LITMIR.BIZ

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else on the planet, “let me take you home. Maybe Byron’s there. Maybe he caught a ride with somebody instead of getting on the bus, or something like that.”

      But Velda shook her head. A tear slipped down her right cheek. Then she pivoted on the worn heel of one flip-flop and marched off down the sidewalk, probably headed toward the trailer park where she rented a single-wide, but maybe not.

      Melissa, feeling as though she’d aged a decade in the last half hour, watched as Velda’s thin frame disappeared into a copse of trees. She hoped Byron would be at home when his mother arrived but, at that point, nothing would have surprised her.

      After checking to make sure the way was clear, Melissa pulled back out onto the road, executed a U-turn, and headed for Ashley’s B&B.

      Mentally, she reviewed her original impressions of young Mr. Cahill. He’d been sixteen when he was convicted and sentenced. Against the advice of his duly appointed public defender, but apparently with his mother’s encouragement, Byron had waived a jury trial.

      Melissa, in her capacity as prosecutor, and the public defender, a newly minted attorney imported from Flagstaff, had tried to negotiate some kind of deal, but in the end, they couldn’t come to an agreement.

      The defense wanted probation, with no jail time, and comprehensive substance-abuse treatment in return for a guilty plea. After all, the argument ran, Byron was very young, and he’d never been in any real trouble before.

      Melissa had been in favor of the treatment program, but probation wasn’t enough. Chavonne Rowan had been young, too. And thanks to Byron Cahill’s reckless actions, she wasn’t going to get any older. She would never go to college, have a career, fall in love, get married, have children. Naturally, the girl’s family was devastated.

      Not that Byron’s going to jail would bring Chavonne back.

      Secretly, Melissa had agonized over the case, but she’d presented a strong, confident face to the public, and even to her own family and close friends. She’d examined her conscience repeatedly, taken her responsibilities to heart, and she had the reputation as a ruthless legal commando to prove it.

      Except for those few who knew her through and through—Brad, Olivia, Ashley and one or two close girlfriends—most people probably thought she was a real hard-ass. Even a ballbuster.

      And when Melissa allowed herself to think about that, it grieved her.

      Sure, she’d wanted an education and a career. She loved the law, complicated as it was, and she loved justice even more. Justice, of course, was an elusive thing, very subjective in some ways, too often more of a concept than a reality, but without the pursuit of that ideal, where would humanity be?

      She thrust out a sigh. Shifted the car and her mood. She’d done the best she could with the Cahill case. And that had to be good enough.

      With no reason to hurry home, Melissa decided she might as well stop by the B&B—the octogenarian guests were due in the night before—thereby fulfilling her promise to Ashley. She’d look in on the old folks, make sure they were having a good time. And still breathing, of course.

      Five minutes later, she bumped up the driveway next to the spacious two-story Victorian house Ashley had turned into the Mountain View Bed and Breakfast several years before.

      Ashley.

      Melissa felt a stab, missing her twin sister sorely. Although they were different in many ways, Ashley domestic, Melissa anything but; Ashley blond, with a love of cotton print dresses and gossamer skirts, Melissa dark-haired, fond of tailored suits and slacks—they had always been close.

      Hurry home, Ash, Melissa thought, as she parked and got out of the car.

      A shrill wolf whistle from the front yard of the B&B stopped her in her tracks.

      She shaded her eyes with one hand, since the sun was still bright, and spotted an elderly gentleman standing just inside the fence, in the shadow of Ashley’s prized lilac bush, wearing white Bermuda shorts, a white polo shirt, white shoes and white knee socks.

      “Now that,” the old man said, gazing past Melissa to the roadster, “is some car.” He shook his leonine head of snowy hair. “Beautiful. Simply beautiful.”

      Melissa smiled. At least he wasn’t a masher. “Thank you,” she said, pausing to look back at the car with undiminished admiration. “I like it, too.”

      “You must be Mrs. McKenzie’s sister,” the man said, shifting his focus from the car to Melissa.

      Mrs. McKenzie, of course, was Ashley.

      Melissa was still getting used to that—Ashley married, and a mother. Sometimes, it seemed incredible.

      “You must be one of the current guests,” she replied, smiling, extending a hand across the picket fence. “Melissa O’Ballivan,” she said.

      “I’m John P. Winthrop IV,” the man replied, with a nod and a very wide—and very white—smile. “But you can call me John.”

      “How’s it going, John?” Melissa asked, thinking she might be able to wrap up this interview quickly and dash off an honest email to Ashley when she got home, assuring her that the B&B was still standing. “Is there anything you or any of the other guests need?”

      He beamed. “Well, we can always use another croquet player,” he said, making a grand gesture toward the nearby side gate, which led into Ashley’s beautifully kept garden of specially cultivated wildflowers.

      A teenage boy from the neighborhood did the watering and mowed the lawn, so the flowers, a profusion of reds and blues and pinks and oranges, looked good, if a little weedy here and there.

      “I wouldn’t be an asset to any self-respecting croquet team.” Melissa smiled. She ran two miles every morning, but that was the extent of her athletic efforts. “But I would like to meet your friends.”

      John P. Winthrop IV rushed to work the latch and swing the gate open. “You look like you could use an ice-cold glass of lemonade,” he said.

      Try a shot of whiskey, Melissa thought wryly, recalling the Velda debacle. She hoped Byron Cahill had been waiting when his mother got home. If he’d taken off for parts unknown, he was in all sorts of trouble.

      “Thanks,” she said aloud, bringing herself back to the moment. “Lemonade sounds good.”

      Mr. Winthrop closed the gate and sprinted to catch up to Melissa on the flagstone walk. He seemed pretty agile for a man of advancing years.

      Maybe it was the croquet playing.

      “There is one thing,” he said hastily.

      Something in his tone, a sort of mild urgency, made Melissa stop and look up into his kindly and somewhat abashed face.

      “We’re a little—different, my friends and I,” Mr. Winthrop said.

      “Different?” Melissa asked, while inside her head, a voice warned, Here we go.

      Mr. Winthrop cleared his throat. “Mabel should have told your sister in advance, when we booked the rooms,” he said. “But we were all counting so on this little getaway and when it turned out we were going to have the whole place to ourselves, well, it all just seemed meant to be—”

      Melissa squinted, still several beats behind. “Mabel?”

      “Mabel Elliott,” Mr. Winthrop said helpfully. “We’re all retired, living in the same community, and relatively comfortable financially, and we take a lot of these little jaunts. Mabel knows how to use the internet, so she’s in charge of arranging accommodations.”

      “I see,” Melissa said, still mystified, and beginning to wish she hadn’t agreed to that glass of lemonade. She could be home in a couple of minutes, taking a cool shower, donning shorts and a tank top and sandals, puttering around in her struggling vegetable garden and generally minding her own business.

      Mr.

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