LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Roxy, she’s not here. The door was unlocked. I’ve gone through the entire house and she isn’t here, but her car is in the driveway and her purse and all the baked goods are on the counter ready to transport.”

      A thrum of thick anxiety shot off in the pit of Roxy’s stomach. “But she has to be there someplace if her car is there.”

      “Roxy, I’ve checked every room in the house. I even went down to the basement, and there’s no sign of her.” Marlene’s voice rang with a touch of the anxiety that grew bigger and bigger inside Roxy. “What do you want me to do?”

      “Have you called Sheri?” she asked, referring to their youngest sister.

      “I did, and she hasn’t heard from Aunt Liz since around two o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

      The simmer of anxiety moved into full chest-crunching alarm. “Go home and try not to worry,” Roxy told her sister. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. I’ll take care of things.” That’s what Roxy did—she took care of things when her aunt wasn’t available.

      And why wasn’t she available? Had Roxy’s mother, Ramona, showed up after all these years and asked Liz to go someplace with her? Or had Ramona called and Liz gone running with no thought of anything else?

      That could only mean bad news. Where Ramona went, chaos followed.

      Liz had a soft and forgiving heart for everyone, and despite everything Ramona had done over the years, Liz would easily want to believe the best of her much younger sister. Liz would definitely drop everything if Ramona had called.

      It had now been an hour and a half since she’d expected Liz to show up, and the alarm inside Roxy could no longer be ignored. There was only one thing she knew to do.

      With stiff shoulders and the feeling that the world was suddenly all wrong, she went back into the blue room, where the three detectives were just finishing up their breakfasts.

      “I need your help,” she said without preamble. “We can’t find my aunt. She’s missing, and I need you all to go to her house and see if you can find out what’s happened to her.”

      Jimmy, a handsome Italian, frowned. “How long has she been missing?”

      “Almost two hours,” Roxy replied. “My sister has been over to her house and can’t find her anywhere. Aunt Liz’s car is there, but she isn’t. Something is wrong.”

      “Roxy, we can’t check out someone who has only been missing for a couple of hours,” Frank said kindly. “She’s an adult. She’s allowed to be missing if she wants to be.”

      “I’ll go.” Steve drained his coffee cup and then stood and looked at Roxy expectantly.

      Both of his partners looked at him in surprise, and a sinking feeling swept through Roxy.

      Of the three men at the table, the last one she wanted to have anything to do with was Detective Steve Kincaid. But at the moment her concern for her aunt overweighed her disgust at having to deal with the handsome devil.

      * * *

      Steve had no idea what he was doing. Why had he offered to check this out for a woman who had made it clear in a hundred different ways that she didn’t think much of him?

      The minute she climbed into his unmarked car, the scent of her filled the confines. She smelled of some kind of fresh floral perfume and a combination of exotic spice scents, and he was glad that the passenger seat hadn’t been covered with the usual fast-food wrappers that normally adorned it.

      He knew there were three Marcoli sisters, but he didn’t know any of them well. They had all been younger than him, and the only interaction he’d had with any of them had been Roxy, who both fascinated and repelled him at the same time.

      She was slamming hot with her short, curly dark hair, full lush lips and figure meant for lovemaking. But her tongue was sharp enough to slice a tough cut of meat, and she’d made it clear that she didn’t particularly like him.

      “So I gather your aunt comes in each morning and delivers baked goods for you to put on the menu?” he asked as she pointed in the direction of her aunt’s house.

      “She comes in every morning at six-thirty like clockwork. In the three and a half years that the Dollhouse has been open, she’s never, ever been late,” Roxy said.

      “So she’s responsible for that coffee cake I like.”

      Roxy nodded. “And the pies and cakes that I serve throughout each day. She’s always loved to bake, so when I decided to open the restaurant we came to an agreement about her baking for me.” She began absently chewing on a fingernail.

      “How old is this aunt of yours?”

      “A very spry sixty-five.” She continued working the fingernail.

      “If you draw blood, we’ll have to waste time at the hospital before we get to your aunt’s house,” he observed with a pointed stare.

      She flushed and dropped her hand into her lap. “Aunt Liz always tells me that it’s unbecoming for a thirty-four-year-old to chew her nails, but I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”

      “I’ll bet you were a cute kid,” he replied, the charm easily falling from his lips from long habit.

      He felt her glare on him. “You have a reputation for being a great flirt. I don’t find it great—I find it quite tedious.”

      “Ouch,” he responded with a mock wince.

      For a few minutes they rode in silence, the only communication nonverbal as she directed him where to turn on the winding mountain roads that led to her aunt’s home.

      “So what exactly is your relationship with your aunt besides your business arrangement?” he asked, eager to break the uncomfortable silence between them.

      “Aunt Liz raised me and my sisters from the time we were little. For all intents and purposes, she’s my mother figure, and she’s always been the most dependable person in my life. That’s why this is so unlike her. She’s never late. She’s never unreliable. That’s why I’m afraid something bad has happened.” She raised her hand up toward her mouth as if to begin to gnaw her fingernail again, but then quickly dropped it back into her lap.

      “You said your sister already checked things out at the house?”

      Roxy nodded, her rich dark hair gleaming in the late April sun that drifted through the passenger window. “Marlene. I called her when Aunt Liz was almost half an hour late. She called me just a little while ago to tell me she’d checked out the entire house and Aunt Liz wasn’t there.”

      She sat forward against the seat belt. “That’s it. That’s her place.” She pointed to a neat brick ranch house with beige trim and a well-manicured yard. “That’s her car in the driveway.”

      He felt Roxy’s tension rolling off her as he pulled the car in behind the older Buick and parked. Before he’d shut off the engine, she was out the door and running toward the front porch.

      “Roxy,” he called after her, halting her before she could enter the house. Her sister had already been inside, stirring things up. Although there was no reason to believe that anyone nefarious might be in the house, he didn’t want Roxy just bursting through the front door without knowing what might be on the other side.

      Even though he believed that nothing bad was going on, he pulled his gun from his holster and motioned for her to get behind him.

      “Don’t shoot my aunt,” she said from behind him, and he fought the impulse to turn and stare at her in disbelief. Did she really think him so inept that he might shoot a helpless older woman?

      “I don’t intend to shoot anyone,” he said. “I think you’re probably overreacting to all of this.”

      “I’m not the one who has

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