LITMIR.BIZ

      Fletcher ignored Korie’s protests and went out the back door to stand on the deck. He needed to be alone and he needed fresh air. He inhaled deeply, relishing the late-afternoon chill that stung his nostrils.

      She had smelled like sandalwood, all spicy and sweet. He closed his eyes, but all he could see was the way her auburn hair had clung in small curls to her shoulders and the gentle curve of her neck. He was also struck by her almost unnoticeable glances at the Bible on her desk. Clearly, her morals, her faith, were playing hard on her heart, which tugged at something deep in the back of Fletcher’s mind, a sensation he had ignored for a very long time.

      Fletcher opened his eyes and leaned heavily against the deck rail, gazing out over the November landscape, wondering if he should bow out now. His gut still ached from knowing his best friend lay on a morgue slab, and he had never expected the impact Maggie’s emotion would have on him. Her strength, her grief, drew his attention right away, and now he fought the idea that she was involved in Aaron’s murder. But her anger hid something that ran deep, and all of his experience, all of his instincts, told him that she knew who the murderer was. Or she thought she did. Fletcher knew he had to get his own grief back under control if he was going to find any answers at all.

      Because Maggie Weston was grieving not just for Aaron but for the person who had killed him. Fletcher just hoped that it wasn’t her.

      TWO

      Judson was meticulous, insisting especially on a spotless kitchen in which to cook the gourmet meals he cherished. Three maids in the last year had quit, unable to live up to his requirements.

      Fletcher dumped the clothes out of his hastily packed bag onto the rumpled bed and sorted them into piles of clean, dirty and suits. He hung the suits in the tiny cabin closet, then dumped the clean pile into one drawer of the dresser, the dirty into another. He sat on the squeaky bed, trying to ignore the smell of sour food and stale sweat in the cabin, and pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his jacket to look over the notes he’d taken so far. As he went through the list, his left heel bounced nervously against the floor, and the pen clicked as his thumb snapped up and down on its release.

      Aaron Jackson’s body showed that he had apparently died from a severe blow to the right side of his head, crushing his temple. He had been discovered by the estate manager, Maggie Weston, around midnight Monday, lying facedown on the back steps of the lodge house deck. His head was on the last step, his feet near the top. She was found about half an hour later by the groundskeeper, Tim Miller, sitting on the steps beside the body in total shock. He and another resident, Scott Jonas, had to carry her inside.

      The pen clicks picked up speed as he went down the list, and he paused, taking a deep breath, looking at his left hand. This is harder than I thought it would be. Even the pen brought back sharp memories that threatened to break through Fletcher’s tightly restrained emotions. Aaron had hated the clicking pen, recognizing it as one of Fletcher’s control mechanisms. The older man’s voice echoed in his head.

      “Why don’t you go ahead and just lose that Scottish temper, me boyo? Emotions are good! They make life more intriguing.”

      “I’m a cop. I can’t get emotionally involved with my cases.”

      Aaron clucked his tongue. “So you’re made of steel, are you?”

      Hardly, Fletcher thought, forcing his heel to stay flat on the floor and his feelings for Aaron to the far reaches of his mind. He took a deep breath. “Focus,” he murmured, looking down at the notebook again.

      Fletcher’s brief examination of the body at the coroner’s showed that the wound to Aaron’s head was rounded—not flat or sharp—which was the impression a step, or the edge of a step, would have left. His body position was also odd and not that of a man who had fallen down steps. Bits of blood had been found approximately six feet out from the deck, with a few smears between that had been hastily covered. The wound was dotted with tiny bits of some material the ME couldn’t identify and contained almost no sign of wooden slivers. The coroner’s preliminary findings had confirmed this. They were still waiting on a final report.

      Fletcher underlined his next note. So he was murdered and the body moved. No accident. Now, why would anyone want him dead? Fletcher took a deep breath and stood up, stretching, an odd weariness in his bones. He hadn’t slept well while he was at Korie and Aaron’s. Aaron was a midnight prowler, and Korie never seemed to shut up. No wonder Aaron spent dinnertime at the retreat with his writers and Maggie.

      He frowned. Korie and Maggie. Both had been involved with

Скачать книгу