LITMIR.BIZ

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squared his hat on his head, the brim shadowing his face even further. “Talk to anyone and sooner or later they tell you about the book they’re gonna write someday. Trouble is that ‘someday’ never comes.”

      “Spoken like a true cynic,” Kelly observed as she buttoned her coat and felt the chill of Montana winter slap her face and cool her blood, which seemed a few degrees higher than normal.

      “Just a reality check. If Randi was writing a book, don’t you think one of us, either Thorne, Slade or I, would know about it?”

      “Just like you knew all about her job and her pregnancy,” Kelly threw back at him, using the same argument he’d given her earlier about the housekeeper’s belief that Randi had penned some literary tome.

      Matt was about to step off the curb, but stopped and turned to face Kelly. “Okay, okay, but even so. Big deal. So what if she was writing her goddamned version of War And Peace? What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China, or more specifically what happened to her up in Glacier Park?”

      “You tell me.”

      “You’re the cop,” he pointed out, his eyes flaring angrily. “A detective, no less. This is your job, lady.”

      “And I’m just trying to do it.”

      “Then try a little harder, okay? My sister’s life is on the line.” With that he stepped off the curb, hunched his shoulders against the wind and strode through the blowing snow to his truck. Kelly was left with her cheeks burning hot, her temper in the stratosphere, her pride taking a serious blow.

      “Bastard,” she growled under her breath, and headed to her own car, an unmarked four-wheel drive. She didn’t know who she was more angry with, the hard-edged cowboy, or herself for her reaction to him. What was wrong with her? She was nervous around him, nearly tongue-tied, so…unprofessional! Well, that was going to change, and now!

      Once behind the wheel, she twisted on the ignition, flipped on the wipers and drove to her town house on the west end of town. With a western facade, the two-storied row house had been her home for three years, ever since she’d scraped up enough of a down payment to buy her own place.

      She parked in the single garage and climbed up a flight to the main floor, where she kicked off her boots in the tiny laundry room, then padded inside. Tossing her keys onto the glass-topped table that served as her eating area and desk, she walked into the kitchen and hit the play button on her answering machine while shedding her coat.

      “Kelly?” her sister’s voice called frantically, bringing a smile to Kelly’s lips as her sibling was nothing if not overly dramatic. “It’s Karla and I was hoping to catch you. Look, it’s about six and I’m still at the shop, but I’m gonna close up soon and pick up the kids at the sitter’s then run out to Mom and Dad’s. I thought maybe you could meet me there…call me at the shop or try and reach me out at their place.”

      Kelly checked the wall clock and saw that it was nearly seven-thirty. There were no other messages so she placed a call to her folks’ house and Karla picked up on the second ring.

      “Got your message,” Kelly said.

      “Kelly, great! Mom just pulled this fantastic pork roast from the oven, and from the smell of it, it’s to die for.”

      Kelly’s stomach rumbled and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything since the carton of yogurt and muffin that had sufficed as lunch.

      “We were hoping you could join us.”

      With a glance at the paperwork on the table, Kelly weighed the options. She wanted to go over every ounce of information she could on Randi McCafferty, but she figured she could wedge in some time for her family first. “Just give me a few minutes to change. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

      “Make it twenty minutes, will ya? My kids are starved and when they get hungry, they get cranky.”

      “Do not,” one of the boys countered, his high voice audible.

      “Just hurry,” Karla pleaded. “The natives are restless.”

      “I’ll be there in a flash.”

      “Good idea. Put on the lights and siren, clear out traffic and roar on over.”

      “I’ll see ya.” Kelly whipped off her uniform and changed into soft, well-worn jeans and her favorite cowl-necked sweater. She took half a minute to run a brush through her hair, then threw on a long coat and boots and dived into her old Nissan, a relic that she loved. Fifteen years old, a hundred and eighty thousand miles on the odometer and never once had the compact left her stranded. At a stoplight, she applied a fresh sheen of lipstick but still made it to her parents’ house, the bungalow where she’d grown up, in fifteen minutes flat.

      “Kelly girl!” her father called as he pushed his wheelchair into the dining room where the table was already set. Once tall and strapping, Ron Dillinger had been reduced to using the chair for twenty-five years, the result of a bullet that had lodged in his back and damaged his spinal cord. He’d been a deputy at the time, and had been on disability ever since. “Glad you could join us.”

      “Me, too, Dad,” she said, and bent down to kiss his forehead where thin strands of white hair couldn’t quite cover his speckled pate.

      “You’ve been busy, I see,” he said, holding up a folded newspaper. “Lots going on.”

      “Always.”

      “That’s the way I remember it. Even in my day, there weren’t enough men on the force.”

      “Or women.”

      Ronald snorted. “Weren’t any women at all.”

      “Maybe that’s why you weren’t so efficient,” she teased, and he swatted at her with his newspaper. She ducked into the kitchen and was greeted with squeals of delight from her nephews, Aaron and Spencer, two dynamos who rarely seemed to wind down.

      The boys charged her, nearly toppling their mother in the process. “Aunt Kelly!” Aaron cried. “Up, up.” He held up chubby three-year-old arms and Kelly obligingly lifted him from the floor. He had a mashed sandwich in one hand and a tiny toy truck in the other. Peanut butter was smeared across the lower half of his face. “You comed.”

      “That I did.”

      “Came, she came,” Karla corrected him.

      “You’re such a baby,” Spencer needled.

      “Am not!” Aaron rose to the bait as quickly as a hungry trout to a salmon fly.

      “Of course you’re not,” Kelly said, swinging him to the ground and wondering just how much peanut butter was transferred to her sweater. “And neither are you,” she said to her older nephew, who grinned, showing off the gap where once had been two front teeth. Freckled, blue-eyed and smart as a whip, Spencer enjoyed besting his younger sibling, a half brother. Karla, two years younger than Kelly, had been married twice, divorced as many times, and had sworn off men and marriage for good.

      “Here, you can mash the potatoes,” Karla said as she snatched a wet dishrag from the sink and started after a squealing Aaron, who took off into the dining room.

      “Papa!” Aaron cried, hoping his grandfather would protect him from his mother’s obsession with cleanliness.

      “He won’t save you,” Karla said, chasing after her youngest.

      Kelly’s mother, Eva, was adding a dab of butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar to already-baked acorn squash. The scents of roast pork, herbs and her mother’s favorite perfume mingled and rose in the warmth of the kitchen as she shook her head at the melee. “Never a dull minute when the boys are around.”

      “I see that.” Kelly rumpled Spencer’s hair fondly, cringed at the wail coming from the dining room, then rinsed her hands and found the electric beaters so that she could whip the potatoes. Over the whir of the hand

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