LITMIR.BIZ

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humbug!” he muttered under his breath as he opened the door to Rawlins Investigations and, without turning on the light, went straight to the small fridge by the window. He pulled out a long-neck bottle of beer, unscrewed the cap and took a drink as he looked down on the small town from his little hole of darkness.

      Outside, snowflakes floated down from a pewter sky, the cold frosting the edges of his window. Inside, the office was hotter than usual, the ancient radiator churning out musty-scented heat.

      He could afford an office in the new complex at the edge of town. But he couldn’t imagine himself there any more than he could imagine leaving this town. He felt rooted here, as if some powerful force held him.

      And he knew exactly what that force was.

      He shook off a chill in the hot room as the phone rang. He’d been expecting the call. “Rawlins.”

      “I heard you were down here a few minutes ago giving my people a hard time,” snapped Police Chief L. T. Curtis.

      Slade relaxed at the familiar rumble of the cop’s voice. He’d heard it all his life. It had been as much a part of his childhood as the smell of his mother’s bread baking. The thought gave him a twinge. Had nothing really been as it seemed?

      “Did anyone tell you it’s Christmas Eve?” Curtis asked sarcastically. “Why aren’t you home decorating a damn tree or something?” Slade’s father and Curtis had both been cops and best friends.

      “I found new evidence in mom’s case,” Slade said, cutting to the chase. It was all he’d been able to think about since he’d discovered the letter. “I think I know who really killed her.”

      Curtis groaned. “Slade, how many times have we been down this road? I don’t for the life of me understand why you keep pursuing this. The case is closed. It has been for twenty damned years. Her killer confessed.”

      “Roy Vogel didn’t kill her,” Slade said, rushing on before the chief could interrupt him. “I found a letter my mother wrote my aunt Ethel before she died.”

      “Aunt Ethel? The one who passed away in Townsend a couple weeks ago?” Curtis said. “I was sorry to hear about it.”

      Aunt Ethel had been a cantankerous spinster a good ten years older than Slade’s mother. Because of some family disagreement years before the marriage, Ethel had never liked Slade’s father, so had hardly ever come around.

      “Yeah, well, she left everything to me, which amounted to several boxes of old letters,” Slade said as he leaned against the radiator, needing the warmth right now. “Did you know my mother was seeing another man?” Even as he said the words, he had trouble believing them.

      “Where the hell did you get an idea like that?”

      “She as much as admits it in the letter.”

      “Bull,” Curtis said. “Not your mother. She worshiped the ground your father walked on and you know it.”

      “I thought I did. But it seems my mother had a secret life none of us knew about.”

      “In a town like Dry Creek, Montana? Not a chance.”

      While relieved that Curtis was having trouble believing it too, Slade couldn’t disregard what he’d found.

      His mother’s murder was one of the reasons he’d become a private investigator. He’d been the one who’d found her. Twelve years old, Slade had come home early from school and had to call his father at the police station to tell him. That day, he’d promised himself—and her—that he’d find her killer—no matter what his father said. Joe Rawlins had been afraid that Marcella’s killer might come after his kids next and had told Slade to let him handle it.

      Later that evening, the troubled young man who lived down the street was found hung in his garage. Roy Vogel had left a suicide note confessing to Marcella Rawlins’s murder. All these years, Slade had never believed it. He’d always been suspicious of anything that wrapped up that neatly. But there had been no other leads. Until now.

      “I just have a feeling about this,” Slade said.

      “Well, I’m telling you, you’re all wrong, feeling or no feeling,” Curtis said. “I wish to hell you’d just get on with your life and let your mother rest in peace.”

      “That’s not going to happen until her murderer is brought to justice.”

      Curtis swore. “Damn, but you’re a pain in the—”

      “But you’ll take a look at the letter tonight at Shelley’s?” They’d all spent every Christmas Eve together as far back as Slade could remember. L. T. and Norma Curtis had been his parents’ best friends and had finished raising Slade and his sister Shelley. But they’d been like family long before that.

      “You haven’t told Shelley?” Curtis asked.

      “Nor do I intend to unless I have to.”

      “It will never come to that,” the chief said. “Because you’re dead wrong.”

      Slade hoped Curtis was right about that. But then there was the letter. The chief would know who had been friends with Marcella Rawlins twenty years ago. And if he didn’t, his wife Norma would.

      “Go Christmas shopping. Buy some eggnog. Give this a rest until after the holidays,” Curtis advised, surely knowing his words were falling on deaf ears.

      Once Slade got something in his head, nothing could stop him. “I’ll see you tonight at Shelley’s. I want you to see the letter. This can’t wait until after the holidays.”

      “Merry damn Christmas then.” Curtis hung up.

      Slade replaced the receiver and turned again to the window. The snow fell in a silent white cloak, obliterating the buildings across the street. But he knew this town and everyone in it by heart.

      Did that mean he’d known the man his mother had been seeing? Still knew him? He’s still here, Slade thought. And he thinks he got away with murder. He doesn’t know I’m coming for him. Yet.

      He thought of what the chief had once told him about people trapped in their own lives, in their own illusions of reality, unable to get out, and wondered if he wasn’t one of them. Well, then so was his mother’s killer, he thought, as he raised his bottle, the snow falling so hard now he could barely see the Santa below his window, although he could still hear the bell.

      It had been snowing the day he’d found his mother’s body. He hadn’t seen her at first—just the Christmas tree. It had fallen over on the floor. As he’d moved toward it, he was thinking the cat must have pulled it over. Then he saw her. Marcella Rawlins lay under a portion of the tree, a bright red scarf knotted tightly around her neck, one of the Christmas ornaments clutched in her hand. On the radio, Christmas music played and, as tonight, somewhere off in the distance, a seasonal Santa jangled his bell.

      Behind him, the soft scuff of a heel on the hardwood floor jerked him from his thoughts. He remembered belatedly that he’d failed to shut and lock his office door. Damn.

      “We’re closed!” he called out, not bothering to turn around. He took another drink and watched the snow fall, waiting for the footsteps to retreat.

      When they didn’t, he turned, a curse on his lips.

      She stood silhouetted against the dim light from the stairs, her body as sleek and curved as the long-neck in his hand and just as pleasing as the cold beer. She didn’t move. Nor did she speak. And that was just fine with him.

      He ran his hand down the neck of the sweating bottle, enjoying the slick wet feel of it as much as he liked looking at her. Something about her reminded him of another woman he’d known and with the lights off he could almost pretend—

      The bell suddenly stopped, the snow silencing everything down on the street. Slade could hear the quickened beat of his heart, the radiator thumping out heat and the faint sound

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