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

have chosen two or three more direct ways to get home from downtown. That fit with the idea of someone in the car making her drive an unusual and slightly more secluded route.

Unsure where she’d been killed, I drove until I saw police tape, a couple of cruisers, and a tow truck, onto which a group of men were maneuvering Hetty’s car. I pulled off to the side of the road, well away from the action.

As I pushed the car door open, the chief, in another nicely-cut suit, turned to look. Pete Samuels was helping the tow truck driver, and Joe Munson sipped a coffee, feet planted wide apart in that macho stance cops seem to learn in cop school.

As I walked closer, the chief said, “Nice of you to show up. I wanted to have a chat about your dinner last night.” He watched as the driver hopped in his cab and turned on the winch. The car jerked slowly up the ramp.

“You’re welcome, but I don’t know anything.”

Like much of Connecticut, the murder site was wooded and quiet. A heavy cover of trees bordered both sides of the long gentle slope, and the next house sat a good half mile away. I was surprised she’d been found here in the middle of the night. It was a pretty deserted stretch of road.

“Did you find other car tracks?” I asked.

“You doin’ my job for me now?” The chief was still watching the car.

Pete yelled and the operator shut the winch down. He hopped out of the cab and began to secure the car to the truck and draw up the ramp.

“Just curious.”

“Remember the relationship between curiosity and the cat?”

With the car secured, the driver jumped back in the cab, gesturing to Pete, who opened the opposite door and got in.

“Well, that’s that. It’s up to the forensics guys now,” Munson commented to the air. He walked to one of the cruisers, got in, and pulled out to follow the truck. The chief gestured to the second cruiser. “Care to take a ride to the station?”

“I don’t have anything to tell you. Bailey and I had dinner at The Peak last night, and Hetty arrived partway through our meal.”

“Do you know when she left the restaurant?”

“About eleven-thirty. I wasn’t paying much attention to time.”

“How’d she seem?”

“Her emotional state?”

He nodded, his eyes hooded and watching.

“She was wary of us…there was, um, an incident when we were younger.”

“Tell me,” he said.

I did.

“You apologized?”

“I did.”

Something softened, almost as if he approved of me, and I suddenly felt happy.

“Why do you think Bailey chose this particular night to apologize?”

“We’d been talking about it, then Hetty appeared. We’d waited far too long to say something: carpe diem.”

“How did Hetty react?”

“She got angry, told us we couldn’t make the hurt magically disappear. She was right and we started to talk about it, but Andrew Winters Junior interrupted us.”

“What did he want?”

“To be social, I think.”

“Have you been seeing a lot of Mr. Winters?” He folded his arms across his chest.

“We went to dinner once,” I said. “He wanted to complain about his father.”

He grunted. “How did Hetty and Mr. Winters get along?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Junior was talking about his father’s campaign and how loyal some of the campaign workers had been, and that’s when Hetty freaked out, grabbed her stuff and ran out.”

“Where were you between midnight and three a.m.?”

“I’m a suspect?”

“I have to ask.” His brown face gleamed in the sunlight.

“Bailey and I hung out with Junior for another hour or so. Then I drove home and crashed on the couch, where my mother woke me at two to chat.”

“No wonder you look like hell.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Any time. So there’s an hour-and-a-half window when your time is unaccounted for. Did your mother see you come home?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Not that she’s the most reliable witness,” he muttered under his breath.

I stifled a laugh. “Trust me. I wasn’t doing anything that took thought or planning during that ninety minutes.”

He acted as if he hadn’t heard me. “If we need anything further, we’ll be in touch.” He slid into his car, all business.

I wondered what he would think if he knew what I planned to do the moment he left. I might have to tell him, if we ever got further than growling at each other. I turned from his disappearing taillights and walked back to my car, feeling some trepidation. I hadn’t tried this before, no matter what I’d told Bailey about scoping out Winters that night at his party. Asking for visions implied I had control, and I wasn’t convinced controlling them was possible or desirable. How did I know my unconscious mind wasn’t merely serving me up the answer I wanted?

I leaned against the door and shut my eyes, inhaling the cold dampness of snow vaporizing, the mud, the exhaust fumes. I tried to empty my mind, as Paul taught me, to let in other images. As I got quiet, I felt the cold metal seep through my jacket, the door handle press into my back. I let my breath slow, and tried to forget that I felt a little dumb standing with my eyes closed by my car on a deserted country road.

Then, it worked. I didn’t get an image, as in the past. Instead, I got color: dark green, like the inside of a forest. It swirled around Hetty like a cloud in a fairytale, like ink in water. A thin strand of lighter yellowy green slithered through the cloud and disappeared. I opened my eyes. Colors. What the hell did they mean?

My cell phone rang. It was Mother.

Chapter 19

A half-hour later, I was seated in Ernie and Loretta’s living room, chafing at the bit to get to my own agenda: the vision, the DNA report, Winken’s strange accusations. But before I could, I had to deal with Mother’s agenda.

Loretta looked completely washed out. Her hair hung in black and silver strands along her face, framing the pale freckles