Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

with its gray carpet and cream walls. The only bit of color was the green blotter centered precisely in the middle of his oak desk. A picture sat in the right corner, but it was turned away from me so I couldn’t see its subject. I hardly knew this man, and he had little reason to trust me.

“Why don’t I take her off your hands?” I suggested. No matter what I said, it couldn’t get worse, right?

“You mean let her out of jail? I can only imagine what kind of trouble she could get into if she weren’t in protective custody. Someone might kill her—maybe even me.”

I laughed and sat back. “Give her to me; maybe I can arrange an assassination—” I made my voice gravelly like the Godfather—“in the family.”

He stared at me as if I were the far wall, then sighed. “I had one of our computer techs take a look at the memory card. There’s some deleted material on it that he’s been able to resurrect.”

“Material?” After all his grousing, it had been useful?

“I can’t tell you what it is, but we can’t hold your mother any longer. In fact, they seem more interested in you than her. No photographs of Constance,” he mused, seeming to slip up. So what were the photographs of? And who were they? “However…” He paused for emphasis. “…your intruder has been careful to cover his tracks. You’re still being vigilant, right?”

I nodded, thinking guiltily that I’d forgotten again to set the alarm.

“If he thinks we’ve given up, maybe he’ll get sloppy and we’ll catch him.”

“Sounds like I’m bait. Do you know it’s a he?”

“It could be a woman, although I’m having a hard time seeing Hetty as primary on this.” He sat back in his chair, swung it to the side and put his feet on the desk. “Maybe having Constance around will keep you from dating unsuitable men like my officers and that Winters punk, and asking questions of innocent townspeople.”

My eyebrows rode the escalator to my hairline along with my blush. “Winters ‘punk’?”

He shrugged.

I pulled my purse off my shoulder and set it on the floor, sat back in my chair to mimic his relaxed pose. “Andrew Winters, Junior, is a funny, charming young man who knows how to treat a woman as if she is the only woman in the room.”

“That family is dangerous.”

“Are you and my mother conspiring?”

His feet hit the floor. “What did she say?”

“Avoid the Winters clan.”

“She’s right.”

“Because? Maybe you can offer me something more substantive than my mother’s airy-fairy warnings. Maybe someone around here could give me some facts about how wicked the Winters family is—for real, in this life, on the record.”

I saw him trying to make up his mind, but before he could, an officer yelled across the room, and I heard footsteps behind me. “Chief! There’s a fire on Adams Mill road. It’s a barn on the Winters property. Mr. W. wants us out there, in case it’s arson.”

The chief stood, pulling his jacket off the back of his chair. “Officer Munson, Mrs. Montague is going home with her daughter. Can you see to her release?” I turned to find Joe standing in the doorway. The chief gave Joe a look that seemed to convey something other than his verbal instructions. Joe nodded, and I sent up a silent cheer that competed with the dread in my gut. Having Mother home meant I might be able to corner her and get some answers, since she could no longer use listening jailhouse ears as excuses. It also meant dealing with her disapproval every day. Despite all that, the pains seemed to recede, slightly.

The chief said, “I’ll handle the arson investigation, if we need to do one.”

Joe motioned for me to follow him, and within an hour, my mother and I were on our way home. She’d donated the reading lamp, cushy red pillows and duvet to the police department and had charmed a receipt out of them for tax purposes.

I looked over at her in the passenger seat of the Land Rover. She was staring out the window at the Christmas finery on the passing homes, her fine-boned hands resting in her lap.

They say that girls marry their fathers. I thought about Junior’s casual assumption of my acquiescence to his plans. I thought about Pete’s carefully controlled physical charisma. I thought about my cyclist ex, and his knack for choosing the best. I thought about Mother.

It wasn’t my father that I found in my relationships.

Chapter 15

Mother getting out of jail and the fire at the Winters’s barn were the the hot gossip the next morning. Everyone wanted to know if this meant she had been cleared of the charges. I fudged the truth and said yes: I didn’t have the time or inclination to go into the details. Mary Ellen gave me a startled look and sailed into Andrew’s office. Five minutes later, as we were all sharing horse stories, she came out and insisted I ride with her the next morning. The horses, she said, had been moved to Loretta Gardner’s stables, and, anyway, we had never had that talk I wanted.

So much for avoiding the Winters clan. The slug had stuck around and wasn’t happy, but my questions burned holes in my gut. Did Mary Ellen know about Hetty’s peeping habit? Did Mary Ellen kill Hugh so Mother couldn’t have him, as Mother had implied? What did Andrew think Mother had stolen from him? And why did Mary Ellen and Mother hate each other?

The morning broke with a twenty-degree temperature and spitting snow. Mary Ellen phoned a reminder before I’d even persuaded myself that getting out of bed was a good idea. “See you at eight o’clock,” she said, and hung up before I could reply.

My mother, cloaked in a thick red robe, poked her head in to see who had called. When I told her, she cautioned me again. I pulled the covers over my head. “I