LITMIR.BIZ

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and space to create in she couldn’t bring herself to pick up a paintbrush. Maybe she would go down to the lake and take photographs?

      Yes. She nodded to herself. That would ease this odd restlessness. She stuffed her feet into sandals, grabbed her camera from the narrow table behind the sofa and went out the sliding doors.

      Aleksy sluiced water over his arms. Standing waist deep in the cold lake might help cure his sexual frustration, but it didn’t do a thing to relieve his itchy mood. After three days of surveillance, he had exactly nothing on Freer. No unexplained absences, no unknown visitors, no unauthorized stores of munitions in the gun dealer’s boathouse.

      Aleksy needed some action. Now.

      A break in the case. A roll in the hay. Anything to kill the mind-numbing boredom and make this exile in Pleasantville feel like something besides a colossal waste of his time. Mowing pretty Faye Harper’s lawn didn’t count.

      He thought of the tiny blonde’s bare, arched feet, her wide, intrigued eyes and grinned. Now there was a woman who could provide a man with a little diversion.

      Yeah, if he was dumb enough to let himself be distracted. Which Aleksy was not. Not yet. Not without some encouragement, anyway.

      He dunked his head. And when he raised it dripping from the water, felt that unmistakable tingle at the back of his neck. His life preserver. The cop’s sixth sense. The awareness that someone, somewhere, was watching him.

      Hell.

      His sweat-soaked jeans were on the rocky bank behind him. His gun was out of reach, under his folded shirt. He’d better hope some vacationing tourist had stumbled on him skinny-dipping or he was in big trouble here.

      He ran his hands over his face, like he needed to wipe the water from his eyes. He turned slowly, squinting through his fingers to scan the sloping bank.

      The rocks were empty. His clothes were undisturbed. But a flash of pale blue—someone’s shirt, he guessed—drew his attention up the bank. There in the bushes, a camera in her hands and pure confusion on her face, stood little Faye Harper.

      Aleksy grinned. The day was looking up.

      He lowered his hands. “Like what you see?”

      Her fair skin made her an easy mark. She blushed bright red. “I didn’t know you were here.”

      He believed her. But he couldn’t resist teasing her. He shrugged. “Whatever.”

      “I didn’t!”

      He smiled.

      She lifted her chin and some of the cream puff air fell away. “I don’t think this arrangement is working. Frankly, Mr. Denko, you’re intruding on my privacy.”

      He felt a moment’s regret. But she couldn’t get rid of him that easily. Not until he had proof one way or the other of Freer’s complicity in Karen’s death. “I’d go easy with the accusations, sweetheart. At least I’m not taking your picture in the buff.”

      “I was not taking your picture.”

      He gestured. “So, what’s with the camera?”

      She looked down at the camera in her hands as if she’d never seen one before. He stifled another grin.

      “Oh. I’m taking backup shots of landscapes.” Her voice gained confidence as she spoke. “To prompt my memory when I’m in the studio.”

      That was actually kind of interesting. Which just went to prove he’d been standing in the water too long.

      “Yeah, well, you better turn your back,” he said. “Or I’m going to give you something else to remember.”

      Her face set in cool, disapproving lines. He could almost see how Miss Pixie might have kept order in a classroom.

      “That won’t be necessary. I’m going into town now.”

      “Running away?”

      “Running errands.”

      “That could be good,” he decided. After five days of bug bites and boredom, he was ready for a new angle. Karen’s lead only took him as far as the town. Maybe all this time, he’d been barking up the wrong tree. Staking out the wrong dock. “I’ll come with you.”

      “No.”

      “It would be good cover,” he said.

      “I don’t want you to come.”

      So she was running away. Aleksy tried to find that encouraging. Maybe he got to her the way she, improbably, got to him.

      He observed her stiff face and the way she held her right arm braced across her chest. Or maybe she couldn’t stand the sight of him.

      “Just into town,” he said. “You can let me out at—what is it?—Harbor Street.”

      Faye shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve let you stay, but I won’t be involved in—in whatever it is you’re doing. You’ll have to drive yourself to town.”

      The unnaturally red-haired woman behind the counter at Weiglund’s Camera—Greta, her name tag read—beamed at Faye as she popped her film into an envelope.

      “You sure do take a lot of pictures for a single gal. Have you heard from your aunt Eileen yet?”

      Faye blinked at the woman’s intrusive interest. Friendly interest, she told herself. It couldn’t hurt her. No one in Eden thought she’d done anything wrong. “I had a postcard from Galway. She thinks she’s found the parish where her grandmother was born.”

      “Isn’t that exciting,” Greta Weiglund said, sealing the envelope and tossing it into a box behind her. “And do you like it at the cottage?”

      “Yes, thank you.”

      “Not your first visit?”

      “I— No. I used to come when I was a little girl.”

      “I thought I remembered that,” Greta said with satisfaction. “Of course, you stayed with your auntie, then. Don’t you find it lonely now?”

      Dear heaven. “No. Are my other pictures ready?”

      “Let me just check. I heard the police were out there the other day. A trespasser, was it?”

      Faye fumbled with her wallet. Living in Chicago, she’d grown used to fending off muggers, purse snatchers and panhandlers. But she was defenseless against Eden’s small town grapevine. “It wasn’t anything. A—a misunderstanding.”

      Greta twinkled knowingly. “A young man, I heard. Are you seeing each other?”

      Faye had a mental flash of Aleksy half-naked in the lake, the damp hair curling on his chest, his dusky nipples puckered with cold. Seeing each other?

      “I— That is—”

      I didn’t want to blow my cover, he’d told her. I’m working a case.

      Faye bit her lip. “I guess you could say we see each other occasionally.”

      Greta Weiglund nodded encouragement. “Isn’t that nice?”

      It was awful.

      Faye did not want to get involved. On her way back to the car, past the Rose Farms Café and Tompkins Hardware, she rehearsed to herself all the other things she could have said to deflect gossip.

      I’m not sure who you’re talking about.

      We’re just friends.

      That’s Raoul. He does the yard work.

      “Faye!”

      A man’s voice. Calling her name. She froze. But it was only Richard Freer smiling at her from the gleaming glass entrance of his sporting goods store, as well-groomed and ruggedly handsome as a race car driver hawking motor oil.

      Eileen

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