LITMIR.BIZ

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smiled to herself. It wouldn’t be long now. Soon she would be free. Only this time she would be much smarter. This time she wouldn’t get caught. Nor was she just going to finish the job she’d started. That was the problem with too much time to think—it made you realize there were a lot of people you wouldn’t mind seeing dead.

      THE PHONE RANG THE minute Laci hung up from talking with her cousin. She smiled as she picked up the receiver, sure it was Maddie calling her back.

      “What did you forget to tell me?” she said without bothering to say hello.

      Silence.

      “Maddie?”

      No answer.

      She checked the caller ID. Blocked. Her heart began to pound as she recognized the faint sound of someone breathing on the other end of the line.

      She told herself there was nothing to be frightened about. It was just a bad connection. Then why could she hear the breathing just fine? “Hello?”

      Still no answer.

      “What do you want?” she demanded into the phone.

      The caller hung up with a click.

      Her heart drummed in her chest as she tried to convince herself it was just a wrong number. She hung up and hit star-6-9.

      The recording confirmed that the phone number could not be accessed.

      She hung up, telling herself she was overreacting. As usual. But now she was spooked, the call feeling like an omen.

       Chapter Three

      At the sound of a car, Laci wandered into the living room, still feeling under the weather. And while she was relieved about Maddie, she couldn’t get Alyson out of her mind. Or the strange phone call.

      One of Alyson’s bridesmaids, a younger friend they’d both grown up with, trotted up the front steps.

      Laci opened the door, glad to see McKenna Bailey. McKenna, all cowgirl, was dressed in jeans, western shirt, boots and a straw western hat pulled down over her blond hair.

      “I guess I don’t need to ask how you’re feeling,” McKenna said with a laugh. “I couldn’t believe you last night. I’ve never seen you drink that much.”

      Which could partly explain why she felt so horrible. But she knew the perfect cure of whatever ailed her.

      “Pancakes,” Laci said drawing McKenna into the kitchen.

      “Pancakes? You can’t be serious,” McKenna said as she took off her cowboy hat and set it on the stool next to her at the breakfast bar.

      “Pumpkin pancakes.” As Laci whipped up the batter, she began to feel better. Cooking always did that for her. McKenna talked about the wedding ceremony, the food at the reception—the town women had insisted on doing a potluck, almost as if there were a plot against Laci and her catering company.

      Ever since she’d decided to start Cavanaugh Catering, nothing had gone right. True, her first catered party had ended with a woman being poisoned to death—not Laci’s fault, though.

      Since then, she hadn’t had any business and was starting to wonder if her sister had been right about it being a mistake to run a catering business here in the middle of nowhere.

      Laci spooned some of the golden batter into a sizzling-hot skillet. The smell alone made her feel better.

      “Spencer is really something, huh?” McKenna said.

      Laci shot a look over her shoulder at McKenna. “He’s handsome enough,” she said noncommittally.

      McKenna laughed. “Arlene Evans is positive she’s seen him in one of her movie magazines.” She lowered her voice. “But you should have heard what Harvey Alderson said.”

      Laci could well imagine, knowing Harvey.

      “He said the guy looked like a porn star to him,” McKenna said and laughed again. “Makes you wonder what Harvey knows about porn stars, doesn’t it?”

      Laci laughed and turned back to her cooking. The pancakes had bubbled up nicely. She flipped each one, then brought out the apple-cinnamon syrup and fresh creamery butter and put them on the counter in front of McKenna, happy her friend had stopped by. She wished McKenna was home for more than the weekend.

      “The thing about men as good-looking as Spencer Donovan—you’d have to keep him corralled at home,” McKenna said, only half joking. “Every woman in the county would be after him. Speaking of men…I did something really stupid last night.”

      Laci couldn’t imagine McKenna Bailey doing anything stupid in her life. She hadn’t even had that much to drink last night. “What?”

      “I signed up on Arlene Evans’s rural dating Internet site,” McKenna said and grimaced. “I’m never going to find my handsome cowboy helping Eve with the ranch. Or at vet school. I figured, what would it hurt, you know?”

      “I know,” Laci said with a laugh as she slid a plateful of silver-dollar pancakes in front of McKenna and watched her slather them with butter before making another skilletful for herself.

      Was that all it had been last night? A splash of champagne and a shot of envy, stirred not shaken, with a healthy dose of vivid imagination? She sure hoped so because she really didn’t want her friend to be in trouble. She glanced at the kitchen clock over the stove as she sat down, not even hungry for her favorite pancakes. Alyson would be in Honolulu soon.

      “Laci, these pancakes are to die for,” McKenna said between bites. And the conversation turned to Laci’s catering business—and lack of clients. And for a while Laci stopped worrying about Alyson and worried instead about how to get Cavanaugh Catering cooking.

      BRIDGER DUVALL SNAPPED on his flashlight as he descended the rickety basement stairs of Dr. Holloway’s former house. It was dusty and dark down here, the overhead light dim. The place, he’d learned, had been sitting empty for years. He doubted anyone had been down here in all that time.

      “Can’t be much of interest down there, but you’re welcome to look, I guess,” the elderly neighbor said from the top of the stairs.

      “Thanks,” Bridger called over his shoulder as he descended deeper. He’d managed to talk the neighbor into letting him into the house after discovering it was empty, and the man thought he knew where there might be a key.

      In a town like Whitehorse, neighbors were often given a spare key to the house next door. Bridger loved that about this part of Montana. As it turned out, the door hadn’t even been locked.

      A house that the doc owned—but apparently had never lived in—seemed like the perfect place to store records you didn’t want anyone to ever see.

      The basement smelled of dampness and mildew. He stopped on the bottom stair. He heard something scurry across one dark corner and shot his flashlight beam in that direction quick enough to catch the shape of a mouse before it disappeared into a hole in the concrete.

      Great. Who knew what else lived down here.

      Bridger shone the flashlight around the small, damp basement. It was little more than a root cellar. He brushed aside the cobwebs to peer into a hole that ran back under the house. There was a lot of junk down here, most of it looking as if it had been there since the house was originally built a hundred years before.

      One box held what appeared to be women’s clothing. He held up one of the dresses. Dated. Had the clothes belonged to the doctor’s wife before her death? Or had the doctor had a mistress who’d lived here?

      Bridger dug through several of the boxes, finding more old clothing but no files. No records.

      He couldn’t help his disappointment. He’d hit one dead end after another. In the last box he opened he found an old photo album. He flipped it open. Most of the pages were empty except for a few colored

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