and Peg chatted about nothing much for a few minutes. About Bobby, Peg’s napping one-year-old son, who was already starting to walk. About Joe’s thriving gardening center in Granite Gulch, the Green and Grow. About Chris’s highly successful private investigation business—which he’d thrown himself into even more thoroughly after Laura’s death—and the fourth office he’d nearly decided to add in Arlington.
When Susan’s eyelids began fluttering, Peg reached to take her daughter from Chris, but he forestalled her. “I’ll put her down for her nap,” he told Peg, doing just that. When he came back, Peg handed him a frosty glass of iced tea prepared the way he preferred it, with two lemon wedges, not just one.
They’d just settled back into their spots in the family room, Wally at Chris’s feet, when Peg put her own glass of iced tea down on a coaster on the end table and said, “So what’s wrong?” She didn’t give Chris a chance to answer before she continued, “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Susan—you would not believe how much she understands already. I told Joe he needed to watch his language now that Susan is so aware—and she mimics everything he says...especially the bad words.” Chris laughed, and Peg said, “But something’s up. You wouldn’t be here in the middle of the week, in the middle of the afternoon, if something wasn’t wrong.”
Chris shook his head and smiled wryly. “You must have second sight or something.” He hesitated, considering and then discarding his original idea of pumping Peg for info about Holly McCay on the sly. “The woman who was here a little while ago—”
“Holly?” Peg’s surprise was obvious.
“Yeah. Holly McCay. I’ve been hired by her in-laws to find her.”
Two days later Holly drove away from Peg’s house with her vision blurred from unshed tears. She’d left the twins in her friend’s care one last time, but that wasn’t why she was practically crying. She hadn’t told Peg—she’d chickened out at the last minute—but she wasn’t going to do errands. She’d wanted Ian and Jamie to have one last opportunity to play with Susan and Bobby...while she packed up the contents of their room in the Rosewood Rooming House and loaded everything into her SUV. Then she would pick up her boys, hand Peg the note she was trying to compose in her mind so Peg wouldn’t worry about them...and they’d be gone.
* * *
Chris followed Holly away from Peg’s house, keeping enough distance between his truck and her little SUV so she wouldn’t spot the tail. He was surprised when she didn’t stop at any of the stores in Granite Gulch but kept driving. She kept driving even after she reached the state highway that was the boundary between Granite Gulch and Rosewood. Puzzled but not really worried, Chris let the distance between their two vehicles increase, because there weren’t any cars out this way to hide the fact that he was following her.
When Holly pulled into the Rosewood Rooming House parking lot, Chris was faced with a dilemma. He drove past, then doubled back as soon as he could, just in time to see Holly entering the rooming house’s front door.
“What the hell is she doing?” he muttered to himself, wondering if she’d forgotten something and would be back outside soon. He made a U-turn a hundred yards down, parked close enough so he could watch the front door and Holly’s SUV, but far enough away from the rooming house so he wouldn’t be spotted, and waited. And waited.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind that the Rosewood Rooming House wasn’t really the safest place for a woman on her own with two young children. Not only was the rooming house full of transients, but Regina Willard—whom law enforcement had pretty much identified as the Alphabet Killer—was known to have roomed here not that long ago. Not his baby sister, Josie, thank God. The Alphabet Killer hadn’t been caught yet, but at least now everyone in town knew it wasn’t Josie.
Thoughts of Josie reminded Chris that she was still missing, even after all these years he’d been searching for her. His two most spectacular failures as a PI both had their roots in his family history—Josie...and his mother’s burial place. He touched his heart in an automatic gesture. The pain he felt over those failures ranked right up there with Laura’s death and his guilt over that.
If his serial-killer father could be believed, however, his mother’s burial place might at last be discovered, something all the Colton children devoutly wished for. When their father had killed their mother, he’d hidden her body. She’d never been found, not in twenty years. But Matthew Colton had provided four clues to where Saralee Colton’s body was buried. Not that the clues made any real sense...so far. But they were clues. He’d promised one clue for every child who visited him in prison. Annabel had been the last to visit their father, and her clue—Peaches—had been just as enigmatic as the first three: Texas, Hill and B. The siblings had theorized that maybe—maybe—the clues were pointing to their maternal grandparents’ home in Bearson, Texas. But that house sat on acres of land. Even if their mother was buried somewhere on her parents’ property, they weren’t really much better off than they’d been when they started this sorry mess.
Chris sighed. This month was his turn to visit their father in prison. He didn’t know why Matthew was putting his children through this torture—other than the fact that he could because they were all desperate to locate their mother’s body and give her a decent burial—but it almost seemed as if their father was getting a perverse pleasure out of it. “The serial killer’s last revenge,” he murmured. Matthew Colton was dying. Everyone knew it, especially Matthew himself. “It would be just like that bastard to torture us with these disparate clues...then die. Taking his secret to the grave.” He relieved his anger and frustration with a few choice curse words...until he remembered he was supposed to be giving them up. He’d resolved two days earlier that he was going to clean up his language for Susan Merrill’s sake, and Bobby’s, just as Joe Merrill was supposed to do.
“Heck and damnation,” Chris said now. It didn’t have the same impact.
* * *
Regina Willard groaned as she rolled out of her uncomfortable sleeping bag and staggered outside to relieve herself. She hated this hideout, hated being forced by the Granite Gulch Police Department and the FBI to hurriedly leave the Rosewood Rooming House. Her place there hadn’t been luxurious by any means, but at least she’d had a comfortable bed and civilized facilities at her disposal. Not this hole-in-the-ground living quarters without any running water.
She thought fleetingly of her half brother, Jesse Willard, and his thriving farm. The last time she’d talked to him, years ago, he’d tried to encourage her to move on. To stop grieving for her lost fiancé. Jesse didn’t understand. That bitch had stolen the only man Regina could ever love, and she’d had to pay. No matter how the woman disguised herself, no matter how many times she changed her name, Regina recognized her...and made her pay.
Regina shook her head. She kept killing that woman, but the bitch refused to stay dead. So Regina had to keep killing her again and again. If she killed her enough times, eventually she would stay dead. Then she could relax, move away from this area and try to forget.
She blinked, then rubbed her eyes, trying to focus. How many times had it been altogether? She ticked them off on her fingers. “Seven,” she said at last. She chuckled to herself. Yes, she’d been forced into hiding out in this shelter in the middle of nowhere, but not even the vaunted FBI had been able to stop her. She was on a mission, and no one would stop her until the bitch was dead. Permanently.
* * *
Holly
