would also explain Sheriff Chavaree’s sensitivity.
Had he been living here when Caroline was killed?
That would certainly raise some concerns—un-fairly or not—about his ability to do his job, and she didn’t doubt he had been struggling with those questions ever since.
But Rachel resisted the urge to dig deeper. Had to keep reminding herself that she was not here for a story.
Throw in Maddie’s mention of a ghost, however, and she had to admit she saw a compelling mystery developing.
“I’ll tell you,” Maddie said. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to go into that room. Haven’t even made the bed. So consider yourself lucky, dear. Although, I suppose it’s bad enough you’ll even be this close. Thank goodness I’m staying downstairs.”
Unlike Maddie, Rachel wasn’t bothered that she’d be sleeping down the hall from the victim’s room. She’d gone face-to-face with serial killers and socio-paths, so sharing the house with the specter of a dead girl didn’t really concern her.
She could plainly see that Maddie was dying to keep talking about this, so she remained silent, doing her best not to prompt the woman.
This wasn’t her affair.
Maddie seemed to get the message and five minutes later, Rachel was in her room with the door locked, her suitcase unpacked and a king-size bed waiting for her to crawl into it. Her flight and the trip across the bay had taken their toll, and all she wanted to do right now was nap.
Barring those last few minutes on the ferry, her bouts with morning sickness had passed, but she found herself tiring more easily these days.
There was a time she wouldn’t have dreamed of napping.
But things change, don’t they?
Things always change.
RACHEL WAS ABOUT TO PUT her head on the pillow when her cell phone rang.
She sighed. What now?
Scooping the phone off the nightstand, she checked the screen but didn’t recognize the number. She clicked it on and put it to her ear. “This had better be good.”
“Rachel?” It was Janet Matlin, an assistant D.A. out of Los Angeles.
“Sorry, Janet, I’m a little out of sorts right now.”
“Who wouldn’t be, considering what you’ve been through. I just wanted to give you the heads-up.”
“About what?”
“Lattimore made bail.”
Rachel’s chest tightened.
Emit Lattimore was a stone-cold, unrepentant sociopath, and the subject of Rachel’s book in progress, Ladykiller—the book she had put on hold after Lattimore tried to strangle her during a contentious interview.
Lattimore’s third wife went missing over six months ago, a disappearance that became a media sensation. The more the police looked into the disappearance, the more convinced they were that he was the likely perpetrator, especially since his two previous wives had died under suspicious circumstances.
One had taken a fall down some stairs, and the other had been shot by an intruder while Lattimore was reportedly away on a hunting trip. Lattimore had been a suspect in both deaths, but there had never been enough evidence for an arrest, let alone a trial and conviction.
And it didn’t help that he was a former L.A. County medical examiner. Even Rachel’s father had worked with him once or twice.
But Rachel was convinced his luck was running out and had begun writing the book in anticipation of that inevitability. She had pressed him hard during the interview, pushing a lot of buttons, but he’d been arrogant enough to think he could outmaneuver her. She caught him in a glaring contradiction and apparently his oversize ego couldn’t take it. He suddenly snapped, leaping across the table, his face full of fury.
The memory was fresh in her mind, and she’d never forget those black, malevolent eyes boring into her, or those rough, oversize hands going for her throat. And knowing that he was out on bail after only a week behind bars didn’t give her any comfort. Even if he was three thousand miles away.
“You still there, Rachel?”
She shook off the memory. “Can’t you get a judge to consider revoking bail?”
“We’re working on it but there aren’t any guarantees. In the meantime, you might want to think about getting out of town for a bit.”
“Already done,” she said.
“Oh? Where are you?”
Rachel was about to respond, when Janet cut her off. “Wait, never mind. I don’t want to know. Just stay there for a while.”
That was certainly the plan.
The irony was that Rachel had booked this trip before Lattimore had become a threat. She had intended to use the time to finish writing Ladykiller, but that idea went out the window the moment he tried to wrap his hands around her throat. She couldn’t be objective about him anymore, and objectivity was her stock in trade.
Rachel may have been tough-skinned, but she was also human. And Lattimore scared the heck out of her.
“You think he’d actually try to come after me?”
“He’s a misogynist of the worst kind, Rachel, and you wounded his ego. But if he doesn’t know where you are…”
“Small comfort, believe me.”
“Don’t worry, we’re doing our best to keep an eye on him and I’ll be pushing to revoke. Even if we never find his wife, we at least have enough with the attempted assault to put him away for quite a while.”
“Promises, promises,” Rachel said quietly.
And promises were too often broken.
Chapter Three
Nick Chavaree couldn’t remember a time he’d been so frustrated.
He didn’t generally think of himself as an unhappy guy. He was usually pretty genial, as a matter of fact. But this last month in Waterford Point had been something of a nightmare. A nightmare he wouldn’t wish on any cop in the known universe.
It was bad enough that he had three murder victims in as many weeks, all with their heads bashed in. But the fact that the first one had happened right under his nose, while he was sleeping for godsakes, had him wondering about his ability to serve his community.
It wasn’t as if Nick was a stranger to violence. He’d spent five years in the Marines, running his own squad in the desert. But hunting down the Taliban in Afghanistan wasn’t quite the same as gathering evidence at a local crime scene, and he wasn’t afraid to admit that he was a little out of his depth here.
Throw
