Praise for Brenda Novak’s
Taking the Heat

“Vivid…intense…compelling. You have not read many books like this one.”

—Amanda Kilgore, Huntress Book Reviews

“Novak’s story is richly dramatic, with a stark setting that distinguishes it nicely from the lusher worlds of older romances.”

— Publishers Weekly

“This story started out with a bang and believe me, it didn’t stop…. I eagerly look forward to Brenda Novak’s next book.”

—Kathy Boswell, The Best Reviews

“Terrific! Ms. Novak always comes up with something different. Her characters are three-dimensional and riveting. Don’t miss this one!”

—Suzanne Coleburn, Reader to Reader Reviews

“With Taking the Heat, Brenda Novak has written exactly the kind of story that readers want to read…. Spellbinding.”

—Diane Tidlund, Writers Unlimited

“The story is compelling…a good mix of romance and suspense.”

—Judith Flavell, The Romance Reader

“Ms. Novak always writes a wonderful story, whether it’s her Superromances or her single-title books. I know when I pick up something she’s written, I’ll be totally satisfied.”

—Allyn Pogue, Old Book Barn Gazette

BRENDA NOVAK

is a two-time Golden Heart finalist. (The Golden Heart is a prestigious award given by the Romance Writers of America.) Brenda has sold seventeen books to Harlequin, many of which have placed in contests such as the National Readers’ Choice and the Booksellers’ Best. Her first single title, Taking the Heat (published in 2003), received high praise from readers and reviewers alike.

A busy wife and mother of five, Brenda—who lives in Sacramento, California—calls herself the typical “soccer mom.” She juggles her writing career with daily car pools, helping her kids do homework and driving them to baseball, basketball and soccer games, depending on the season.

Cold Feet
Brenda Novak

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To my mother, Lavar Moffitt. I come from a long line

of mentally tough women, and my mother is

one of the toughest. As I grow older, I recognize

more and more the foundation she has built for me,

and the debt of gratitude I owe her. I pray I will live up

to the character she has tried to foster in me and,

for my own children’s sake, that I’ll pass on her legacy….

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Many thanks to Detective Tom Bennett of Colorado for his help with the police and forensic details of this novel. Tom has spent more than thirty years in public service, working for the Arvada Police Department, and has investigated approximately 2000 felony cases. The recipient of numerous departmental honors, including the Medal of Valor, the highest honor the Arvada P.D. bestows on a police officer, Tom is a gifted detective and an honorable man.

Dear Reader,

Like many of you, I’m a big fan of Court TV. But through every criminal profile I watch, I can’t help wondering about the friends and family associated with the perpetrator—especially the friends and family of those guilty of the more heinous crimes. Certainly someone, somewhere, loves or has loved these twisted individuals. At some point they must seem somewhat “normal.” They live among us, go to school with us, work with us…. Or did their mothers/fathers/sisters/brothers have an inkling that they were capable of such violence? What went wrong inside their psyches? What caused one brother to become a rapist and the other to be a law-abiding citizen? How does the wife of a serial killer not know that she’s married to a monster? And how does she live with what has happened once she learns?

My curiosity in this area definitely provided the creative seed for this story. Poor Madison Lieberman has grown up refusing to believe what the police and the media insist is true about her father. In Cold Feet she faces the trial of her faith in him, a man she loves and has always admired. It’s a study of relationships I found intriguing. I hope you’ll agree!

I love to hear from readers! Please feel free to contact me via my Web site at www.brendanovak.com, where I routinely give away great prizes and post information about my backlist and upcoming books. Or write to me at P.O. Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611.

Here’s hoping you know your loved ones as well as you think you do….

Best wishes,

Brenda Novak

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“C ALEB, SHE’S GONE . Disappeared. Vanished,” Holly said.

Caleb Trovato could hear the distress in his ex-wife’s voice, but he wasn’t about to respond to it. Everything seemed to affect her far more acutely than it would anyone else, and by virtue of the fact that they were divorced—for the second time—he didn’t have to ride her emotional roller coaster anymore.

He propped the phone up with his shoulder and swiveled back to his computer to check his e-mail, so the next few minutes wouldn’t be a total waste. “Your sister’s what—twenty-six? She’ll turn up.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Susan’s disappeared before. Remember that time she met some rich guy on an hour’s layover in Vegas and let him talk her into a wild fling? We were positive something terrible had happened to her. Especially when the airline confirmed that she’d boarded the flight out of Phoenix.”

“That was different,” Holly retorted. “She called me the next day.”

“Only because loverboy had started acting a little scary. She finally realized it might be a good thing to let someone know where she was. And she needed money to get home.”

“That was almost five years ago, Caleb. She’s changed. She has a steady job at Nordstrom’s cosmetics counter and she’s kept her own apartment for almost a year.”

The high pitch of Holly’s voice brought back memories of the many outbursts he’d been forced to endure while they were married, and put his teeth on edge. “Listen, Holly, I’m sorry Susan’s giving you a scare, but I’m really busy,” he said, determined to escape this time. “I’ve got to go.”

“Caleb, don’t do this to me,” she replied, openly crying. “I haven’t bothered you for anything since our last divorce.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. Wasn’t that the general idea? It wasn’t as if they had children together. And contrary to her claim of not bothering him, she called often. She called to borrow money. She called to ask how to file her income tax returns. She called to see if he could remember what happened to the X rays that had been taken of her leg when she’d had that waterskiing accident. She even called to see what his plans were for certain holidays.

“I don’t understand what you want from me,” he said in frustration.

“I haven’t been able to reach Susan for almost a week. Mom and Dad haven’t heard from her. Lance, the guy she’s dating, hasn’t heard from her. She hasn’t called in at work—”

“Skipping work is nothing new for Susan, either,” he pointed out.

“Caleb, she was living near the university.”

At this Caleb sat forward, feeling his first flicker of alarm. Eleven women had been abducted and killed near the University of Washington over the past twelve years. Holly had lived right next door to one of them. That was how he’d met her. He’d been working for the Seattle Police Department, canvassing the apartment building of the strangler’s ninth victim, looking for leads, and he’d knocked on Holly’s door to check if she’d seen or heard anything.

But Caleb was certain the man who’d committed those murders was now dead. He should know. He’d spent three years on the task force investigating the case and another four continuing to help after he’d quit the Seattle PD. “Holly, the Sandpoint Strangler shot himself in his own backyard over a year ago.”

She sniffed. “If you’re so sure, why didn’t you ever finish the book you were going to write about him?”

“There wasn’t enough hard evidence to connect Ellis Purcell to the killings,” Caleb admitted. “But you saw him drive away from your apartment building the night Anna was murdered. You’re the one who gave us the partial plate number.”

“But you could never place him inside the apartment.”

“That doesn’t mean he was innocent, Holly,” Caleb said, making a halfhearted attempt to organize his desk while they talked. “Purcell couldn’t account for his whereabouts during several of the murders. He failed two different lie-detector tests. The geographical profile done by the FBI indicated the killer lived within a five-block radius of him and his family. And he was secretive, kind of a recluse. I talked to him twice, Holly, and it always felt as though he was hiding something.”

“I know all that, but when you worked for the department you searched his place three different times and never found anything.”

“Some of the task force searched it. I was young enough, and new enough to the force, that I did what Gibbons told me, which was mainly behind-the-scenes grunt work. Gibbons was lead detective. He always dealt with the really important stuff. But the murders have stopped since Purcell’s death,” Caleb said. “That should tell you something.”

“They stopped for several years after Anna’s body was discovered, too,” Holly argued.

“That’s because the police were watching Purcell so closely he could scarcely breathe. The murders started up again as soon as that custodian, John Roach, killed a kindergarten teacher at Schwab Elementary downtown and almost everyone on the force, including Gibbons, suddenly believed we’d been barking up the wrong tree. But it was only wishful thinking.”

“Then what about the woman who went missing from Spokane a couple of months ago?” Holly asked. “How do you explain that if the strangler’s dead?”

“I haven’t heard anything about it,” he said.

“I just read an article the other day that said the police found some of that date rape drug on the floor of her car. Roach is in prison and Purcell is dead, but that sounds like the strangler to me.”

Caleb still had several close friends on the force. If anything interesting had developed, Detective Gibbons or Detective Thomas would have called him. This case had meant a lot to all of them. “Have they found her body?”

“Not yet.”

“Then they don’t know anything. Roofies are only about two bucks per tablet, and they’re easy to buy. We saw them in that pharmacy when we were in Mexico, remember?”

“So what about Susan?” she asked, with more than a hint of desperation.

She was baiting him, trying to tempt him back into her life. But it wasn’t going to work this time. He no longer felt the same compulsion to rescue her that had drawn him to her in the first place. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“You used to be a cop, for God’s sake! A good one. I want you to come out here and find her, Caleb.”

Shoving his mouse away, Caleb turned in his new leather office chair to stare out the picture window that revealed a breathtaking view of San Francisco Bay. A panorama of blue-green, undulating ocean dotted with at least twenty colorful sailboats was spread out before him. “I live in California now, Holly.” As if to prove how necessary it was that he remain in his current surroundings, he added, “I have someone coming to lay new carpet next week.”

“This could mean Susan’s life!” Holly cried.

Another over-the-top statement? Given Holly’s penchant for theatrics, he figured it was…. “I’m not a cop anymore. I write true crime books. I don’t know what you think I can do.”

“I know what you can do,” she said. “I married you twice, remember? It’s almost uncanny how you turn up whatever you’re looking for. It’s a talent. You’re…you’re like one of those journalists who’ll stop at nothing to uncover a story.”

Caleb wasn’t sure that was such a positive association, but he let it pass because she was still talking.

“You could come if you wanted to. Lord knows you’ve got the money.”

“Money isn’t the issue,” he replied.

“Then what is?”

His hard-won freedom. He’d had to leave the Seattle area to get far enough away from Holly. He wasn’t about to head back now, even though his parents still lived on Fidalgo Island, where he’d grown up, and he loved the place. “I can’t leave. I’m in the middle of another book.”

She seemed to sense that he wasn’t going for the panicky stuff, and made an effort to rein in her emotions. “What’s this one about?”

“A girl who murdered her stepfather.”

She sniffled again. “Sounds fun.”

At her sarcasm, he felt his lips twist into a wry grin. “It’s a living. Somebody I know hated being a cop’s wife and encouraged me to go for my dream of becoming a writer.”

“And is that so bad? Now you’re rich and famous.”

But still divorced. No matter how much Holly professed to love him, he couldn’t live with her. She was simply too obsessive. He’d married her the first time because he’d thought they could make a life together. He’d married her the second time because his sense of honor demanded it. But beyond their initial few months together, their relationship had been fractious at best, and they’d spent more days apart than they’d ever spent as a couple.

“You should come back here and do some more work on the Sandpoint Strangler,” she said in a pouty voice.

“No, thanks. I’ve learned a bit since the early days.” Caleb started doodling on an empty message pad. “Now I typically write about crimes that have already been solved—by someone else. It’s a hell of a lot easier.”

“You helped the police solve the murder of that one young runaway, then wrote a book about it, remember?”

He remembered. Maria had been the most satisfying project he’d worked on to date, because he felt he’d made a real difference in achieving justice for the victim and everyone involved. “That one happened to work out,” he told Holly. “But it’s always a gamble, and I don’t think my publisher would appreciate the increased risk of having each book languish for years while I search high and low for a satisfying resolution.”

“But you were fascinated by the Sandpoint Strangler.”

He’d probably been more obsessed than fascinated. Even after leaving law enforcement, he’d continued to work the case, pro bono, with the hope of eventually putting it all in a book.

“You’ve said yourself, a hundred times, that working the investigation gave you an insider’s view you simply couldn’t achieve when you were writing about someone else’s case,” she went on. “I know a book about him would really sell. Nobody’s done one yet.”

“There’re still too many unanswered questions to make for interesting reading, Holly. People like a definitive ending when they purchase a true crime book. They like logical sequences and answers. I can’t give them that with the Sandpoint Strangler.”

“Things change.”

“I doubt there’s enough new information to make much of a difference,” he said.

“So you won’t come?”

“Holly—”

“Where does that leave me with Susan, Caleb?” she asked, her veneer of control cracking and giving way to a sob.

Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to let Holly’s tears sway him, but her distress and what she’d said were beginning to make him wonder. Susan had been his sister, too, for a while. Although she’d been a real pain in the ass, always getting herself into one scrape or another, he still felt some residual affection for her.

“Have you called the police?” he asked.

“Of course. I’m frantic!”

He could tell. What he didn’t know was whether or not her state of mind was justified. “What’d they say?”

“Nothing. They’re as stumped as I am. There was no forced entry, no sign of a struggle at her apartment, no missing jewelry or credit cards—at least, that we could tell—and no activity on her bank account. I don’t think they have any leads. They don’t even know where to look.”

“What about her car?”

“It’s gone, but I know she didn’t just drive off into the sunset. We would’ve heard from her by now. Unless…”

“Stop imagining the worst,” he said. “There could be a lot of reasons for her disappearance. Maybe she met a rich college boy, and they’re off cruising the Bahamas. It would be like her to show up tomorrow and say, ‘Oh, you were worried? I didn’t even think to call you.’ He rubbed the whiskers on his chin, trying to come up with another plausible explanation. “Or maybe she’s gotten mixed up in drugs. She was always—”

“She left her dogs behind, Caleb,” Holly interrupted. “She wouldn’t leave for days without asking someone to feed them. Not for a trip to the Caribbean. Not for the world’s best party. Not for anything.”

Holly had a point. Susan adored her schnauzers, to the tune of paying a veterinarian six thousand dollars—money she didn’t really have—for extensive surgery when one darted across the street and was hit by a truck.

Caleb rocked back and draped an arm over his eyes. He didn’t want to face it, but this wasn’t sounding good. Even if the Sandpoint Strangler was no longer on the prowl, something had happened to Susan. And the longer she was missing, the tougher it would be to find her.

“When was the last time you saw her?” he asked in resignation.

“Six days ago.”

Six days…Caleb propped his feet on the desk and considered the book he was writing. It wasn’t going very well, anyway. After piecing the whole story together, he was actually feeling more sympathy for the girl who’d committed the crime than the abusive stepfather she’d poisoned.

“All right, I’ll fly out first thing in the morning.” He hung up and looked around his crisp, modern condo. Shit. So much for putting some space between me and Holly.

Somehow she always managed to reel him back in….

M ADISON L IEBERMAN STARED at her father’s photograph for a long time. He gazed back at her with fathomless dark eyes, his complexion as ruddy as a seaman’s, his salt-and-pepper flattop as militarily precise as ever. He’d only been dead about a year, but already he seemed like a stranger to her. Maybe it was because she wondered so often if she’d ever really known him….

“Madison? Did you find it?”

Her mother’s voice, coming from upstairs, pulled her away from the photograph, but she couldn’t help glancing at it again as she hesitantly approached the small door that opened into the crawl space. She’d been raised in this home. The three-foot gap under the house provided additional storage for canned goods, emergency supplies, old baskets, arts and crafts and holiday decorations, among other things.

But it was damp, dark and crowded—perfect for spiders or, worse, rats. Which was one reason Madison generally avoided it. When she was a child, she’d been afraid her father would lock her in. Probably because he’d threatened to do so once, when she was only four years old and he’d caught her digging through the Christmas presents her mother had hidden there.

It wasn’t the fear of spiders or rats, or even the fear of being locked in, that bothered her at age twenty-eight, however. Ever since the police and the media had started following her father around, suspecting him of being involved in the terrible murders near the university only a few blocks away, she’d been terrified of what she might find if she ever really looked….

“Madison?” Her mother’s voice filtered down to her again.

“Give me a minute,” she called in annoyance as she opened the small door. “It’s a twenty-dollar punch bowl,” she grumbled to herself. “Why can’t she just let me buy her a new one?”

The smell of moist earth and rotting wood greeted her as she flipped on the dangling bulb overhead and peered inside. Years ago, her father had covered the bare, uneven ground with black plastic and made a path of wooden boards that snaked through the clutter. These makeshift improvements reminded her that this was his domain, one of the places he’d never liked her to go.

It didn’t make the thought of snooping around any more appealing. Her half brothers, Johnny and Tye, her father’s children by his first wife, stored things here occasionally, but she did her best to forget the dark yawning space even existed. She certainly didn’t want to spend any portion of what had started out as a relaxing Sunday afternoon scrounging around this creepy place.

She considered telling her mother the punch bowl wasn’t there. But ever since her father’s suicide, her mother seemed to fixate on the smallest details. If Madison couldn’t find it, she’d probably insist on looking herself, and Annette was getting too old to be crawling around on her hands and knees. Besides, Madison and her mother had stood by Ellis Purcell throughout the investigation that had ended with his death. Certainly Madison could have a little faith in him now. The police had searched the house about four years after the killings began and never found anything.

She wasn’t going to find anything, either. Because her father was innocent. Of course.

Taking a deep, calming breath, she resisted the fresh wave of anxiety that seemed to press her back toward the entrance, and crawled inside. The punch bowl couldn’t be far. It would only take a second to find it.

A row of boxes lined the wall closest to her. Some were labeled, others weren’t. Madison quickly opened the ones that weren’t labeled to discover some things her father had owned as a young man—old photo albums, school and college yearbooks, military stuff from his stint in Vietnam.

The photos and letters seemed so normal and far removed from the articles she’d read about Ellis in the newspapers that she finally began to relax. A lot of cobwebs hung overhead, almost iridescent in the ethereal glow of the dim lightbulb, but if there were spiders, they were off in the corners. Nothing jumped out to grab her. She saw no indication that anyone had been underneath the house since Johnny had come by to get his summer clothes out of storage two years ago.

Her father might have ended his life with one heck of a finale, but his death and the investigation, if not the suspicion, were behind them now. She could quit being afraid. She could move on and forget….

Shoving the memorabilia off to one side, she rummaged around some more and eventually came up with the punch bowl. She was about to drag it to the entrance when she remembered the box of Barbie dolls she’d packed up when she was twelve. They were probably down here, too, she realized. If she could find them, she could give them to her own daughter, Brianna, who’d just turned six.

Following the curve in the wooden path, Madison came across some leftover tiles from when they’d redone the bathroom, a dusty briefcase, an old ice-cream maker, and some of her baby things. Near the edge of the plastic, where bare dirt stretched into complete darkness, she found a few boxes that had belonged to her half brothers, along with the denim bedding her mother had bought when Johnny and Tye came to live with them.

As she pushed past Johnny’s old stereo, she promised herself she’d write him again this week, even though he never answered her letters. He’d been in and out of prison for years, always on drug charges. But he had to be lonely. Tye stayed in touch with him, but her mother pretended he didn’t exist. And he hated his own alcoholic mother who, last Madison had heard, was living somewhere in Pennsylvania in a halfway house.

She squinted in the dim light to make out the writing on several boxes: “Mother Rayma’s tablecloths…” “Mother Rayma’s dishes…” “Aunt Zelma’s paintings.”

No Barbies. Disappointed, Madison rocked back into a sitting position to save her knees from the hard planking, and hugged her legs to her chest, trying to figure out where that box might have gone. Brianna had had a difficult year, what with the divorce, their move to Whidbey Island thirty-five miles northwest of Seattle, her father’s remarriage, and the expectation of a half sibling in the near future. Madison would love to have fifteen or more vintage Barbie dolls waiting in her back seat when she collected her daughter from her ex-husband’s later today. Danny certainly lavished Brianna with enough toys.

Maybe she needed to dig deeper. Pushing several boxes out of the way, she slid the old mirror from the spare bedroom to the left, and the avocado bathroom accessories that had once decorated the upstairs bathroom to the right, to reach the stuff piled behind. She was pretty far from the light at the entrance, which made it difficult to see, but she was eventually rewarded for her efforts when she recognized her own childish writing on a large box tucked into the corner.

“There it is!” she murmured, wriggling the box out from behind an old Crock-Pot and some extra fabric that looked as if it was from the sixties and better off forgotten. “You’re gonna love me for this, Brianna.”

“Madison, what could possibly be taking so long?”

Madison jumped at the unexpected sound, knocking her head on a beam. “Ow.”

“Are you okay?” her mother asked. Annette stood at the mouth of the crawl space, but Madison couldn’t see her for all the junk between them.

“I’m fine.” She batted away a few cobwebs to rub the sore spot on her forehead. “You can tell Mrs. Howell I found the punch bowl you said she could borrow.”

“I use that punch bowl every Christmas. What’s it doing all the way back there?”

“It wasn’t back here. I’ve been looking for my old Barbies.”

“Don’t waste another minute on that,” her mother said. “We gave them to Goodwill a long time ago.”

“No, we didn’t. They’re right here.”

“They are?”

“Sure.” Madison pulled open the top flap of the box to prove it, and felt her heart suddenly slam against her chest. Her mother was right. There weren’t any Barbies inside. Just a bunch of women’s shoes and underwear, in various sizes. And a short coil of rope.

CHAPTER TWO

S TUNNED , M ADISON BLINKED at the jumble in the box as the pictures the police had shown her years earlier flashed through her mind—grotesque, heart-rending photos of women after the Sandpoint Strangler had finished with them. It made her dizzy and nauseous to even think about those poor women; it made her feel worse to believe her father might have—

No! Surely there was some mistake. The police had searched the crawl space. They would’ve found this stuff.

Steeling herself against overwhelming revulsion, Madison used a towel rod to poke through the box in hopes of finding some evidence that would refute the obvious.

In the bottom corner, she saw something that glittered, and forced herself to reach gingerly inside. It was a metal chain. When she pulled it out into the murky light, she could see it was a necklace with a gold locket on the end. But she was too terrified to open it. Her heart hammered against her ribs and her hands shook as she stared at it until, finally, she gathered the nerve to unhook the tiny clasp.

Inside, she saw an oval picture of Lisa and Joe McDonna. Lisa was victim number two. Madison knew because she’d memorized them all—by face and by name.

Closing her eyes, she put a hand to her stomach, attempting to override her body’s reaction. But she retched anyway, several dry heaves that hurt her throat and her stomach. She’d hung on to her belief in Ellis’s innocence for so long. She’d stood against the police, the media and popular opinion. She’d stayed in the same high school even after the kids had started taunting her and doing vengeful things, like throwing eggs and oranges at the house or writing “murderer” in the lawn with bleach. She’d held her head high and attended the University of Washington, just as she’d always planned. Through it all, she’d refused to consider the possibility of her father’s culpability in the murders, even when the police produced an eyewitness who said she saw Ellis driving away from a neighbor’s house the night that neighbor was murdered. The witness was old and could have been mistaken. There were a lot of blue Fords with white camper shells in Seattle. All the evidence was circumstantial.

But if he was innocent, how could such a personal item belonging to one of the victims have found its way inside the house?

“Ellis saved those Barbies, after all?” Annette said, her words suddenly sounding as though they had an echo. “I could’ve sworn we took them to Goodwill.”

Madison couldn’t breathe well enough to speak. After those hellish years in high school, she’d expected the scandal to die down, especially when the police couldn’t find any DNA evidence. But the suspicion and hatred had gone on long after that, until it had destroyed her marriage. Her husband wanted to be seen as upwardly mobile and a man who had it all. Not the man who’d married the daughter of the Sandpoint Strangler.

“Madison?” her mother said, when she didn’t respond.

She took a few bolstering breaths and managed an answer. “What?”

“Are you going to bring those Barbie dolls out or not? I’m sure Brianna will be thrilled to have them.”

Madison wasn’t about to let her mother see what the box really contained. Annette had been through enough already.

Wiping away the sweat beading on her upper lip, Madison struggled to distance herself from the whole tragic mess. She hadn’t hurt those women. If her father had, she’d been as much a victim as anyone.

“It—it looks like there’ve been some rats in the box,” she said. “I d-don’t think we can give them to Brianna.”

“That’s too bad. Well, drag them out here anyway, and I’ll get rid of them once and for all.”

Madison breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, struggling to remain calm and rational. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll just leave them here. They…there’s a sticky web all over and I’m afraid there might be a black widow someplace.”

“Oh boy, we wouldn’t want to drag that out. You’re right, just leave them. I’ll hire someone to come down here and clean this out when I move.”

When she moved…Ever since her father had shot himself in the backyard, Madison had been trying to talk her mother into relocating. Madison had a difficult time even coming to the house, what with all the bad memories; she couldn’t imagine how Annette still lived here.

But now she wasn’t so sure she wanted her mother to go anywhere. If Annette sold the house, Madison would either have to come forward with what she’d found, which was unimaginable, or she’d have to destroy it—something she wasn’t sure her conscience would allow.

God, she’d thought the nightmare was over. Now she knew it would never be….

H OLLY MET C ALEB at the airport on Monday morning. With her long, curly blond hair, he noticed her in the crowd almost as soon as he entered the arrivals lounge, and steeled himself for the moment she’d come rushing to meet him. Two years his senior, she was taller than most women, thin, and had a heart-shaped, angelic face. She looked good. She always looked good. But looks didn’t matter with a woman whose emotions swung as widely as Holly’s did.

He saw her pushing through the crowd as she made her way toward him. And then she was there, smiling in obvious relief. “Caleb, I’m so glad you came.” She reached up to hug him, and he allowed it but quickly moved on, following the flow of the other passengers toward the baggage claim.

“You haven’t heard from Susan?” he asked, glad to finally stretch his legs. First class had been full. He was too big for the narrow, cramped space allotted him in economy, but without advance booking he’d had to take what he could get.

“Not a word. I check my answering machine every hour, just in case. But…” She blinked rapidly, and he hoped she wasn’t going to cry again. He hadn’t come to be her emotional support. He just wanted to find Susan and get back to San Francisco.

“Have the Seattle police assigned any detectives to the case?”

“Two. Lynch and Jones. Do you know them?”

“I know Lynch better than Jones.”

“They’re driving me nuts,” she said. “They keep talking about searching for fiber evidence and what not, but it doesn’t seem like they’re doing much of anything.”

“This isn’t television, Holly. Fiber evidence takes a long time. You have to track down all the people who visited Susan’s apartment, and collect samples before you can send them to the lab for comparison. And you generally don’t have a lab tech sitting there, twiddling his thumbs while waiting to help you. You have to take your place in line.”

He dodged a woman who’d stopped right in front of him to dig through a bag. “Have you talked to your parents again?” he asked. Caleb knew relations between Holly and her adoptive parents were strained. They had been for most of her life. She hated her birth mother for giving her up, even though her birth mother had been barely sixteen. She hated her adoptive mother for not being her birth mother. And she was frequently jealous of Susan, who’d been born with the assistance of fertility drugs when Holly was seven.

“I called them last night to tell them you were coming,” she said.

“What did they have to say about Susan’s disappearance?”

“At first they said the same thing you did—she’s done this before, she’ll turn up. Now that it’s been almost a week, they’re worried. They’re willing to hire a private investigator, if you think that’s the best way to go. They wanted me to talk to you about it.”

“I think we should do whatever we can as soon as possible.”

“Okay.” She scratched her arm through her sweater, looking uncertain. “You know how we were talking about the Sandpoint Strangler?”

“Yes?”

“There was something on the news earlier….”

They’d reached the luggage carousel. He slipped through the crowd to grab the small bag he’d packed in San Francisco. Besides a few clothes, he’d brought only his cell phone, his day planner and his laptop, so he could work if he got the chance. “What?” he asked, when he had his bag slung over his shoulder.

“Someone desecrated the grave of Ellis Purcell.”

Caleb stiffened in surprise. “How? From what I remember, his widow and daughter went to great pains to keep its location a secret.”

“I don’t know. I just caught a clip while I was eating breakfast.”

Caleb rubbed the stubble on his chin. He hadn’t showered or shaved this morning. He’d had such an early flight, he’d simply rolled out of bed, pulled on a Fox Racing T-shirt, a pair of faded jeans and a Giants ball cap and headed south to the airport.

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” he said. But he had to admit it was strange that a woman would go missing from the Sandpoint Strangler’s old hunting grounds a year after Ellis Purcell was dead. That she’d be related to Holly. And that Purcell’s grave would be desecrated in the same week.

A LTHOUGH M ONDAY AFTERNOON was warm, with a rare amount of sun for Seattle in September, the mortuary was cool. Too cool. It smelled of carnations, furniture polish and formaldehyde, which dredged up memories of every funeral Madison had ever attended—Aunt Zelma’s, Grandma Rayma’s, the skeletal-looking man who’d lived next door when she was five. She couldn’t think of the old guy’s name, but she remembered staring at his waxy face as he lay in his coffin.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to deal with any memories of her father’s funeral. They hadn’t given him one. She, her mother, Tye and Johnny had simply sent out notices of his death to the few friends and family who’d remained supportive, and buried him without any type of viewing or wake. Because of the ongoing investigation, and the damage he’d done with his old rifle, it seemed prudent to handle things as quickly and quietly as possible.

Lawrence Howell, the manager of Sunset Lawn Funeral Home and Memorial Park, had helped make the arrangements. He sat across from Madison and her mother now, his short blond hair neatly combed, his face wearing the same somber expression he always wore.

Fortunately, Madison had been able to reach Joanna Stapley, a senior at South Whidbey High School who often baby-sat for her, in time to have her pick up Brianna from school, so she didn’t have to cope with a wriggling six-year-old during such a difficult meeting.

“How could this have happened?” she asked when Mr. Howell had finished explaining what he’d told her on the phone when he’d reached her at her office earlier—that someone had dug up her father’s coffin last night. “How could anyone have figured out where he was buried?”

Howell rested his elbows on his mahogany desk and clasped long white fingers in front of him. “As I told the gentleman who called me this morning—”

“What gentleman?” Annette demanded.

Madison put a comforting hand on her mother’s arm. “Tye, Mom. I phoned him as soon as Mr. Howell contacted me. I thought he might want to be part of this.”

“Is he coming?” she asked, obviously not pleased that Madison had included him.

“No, he said he has to work.”

“What about his wife? Is she going to be here?”

“Sharon and the kids are visiting her mother in Spokane.”

“Ellis never could count on his boys,” Annette said, her lips compressed in disapproval. She didn’t want Tye or his wife involved, yet she sounded affronted by their lack of support.

Mr. Howell, who’d waited politely through their exchange, cleared his throat. “As I was saying, I have no way of knowing how this happened. There was no headstone or anything else to mark your father’s grave, Ms. Lieberman, just as you requested. Our files are kept private and are always locked up at night. There was no sign of forced entry into the mortuary here, where we keep the files. And it’s been a year since the burial—a year in which we’ve had no hint of trouble.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Annette said, her eyes filling with tears. “Why now? What would anyone want with Ellis’s body after all this time?”

“A year’s not so long, Mom,” Madison said before Howell could respond. “Whoever it was wants the same thing we’ve encountered before, to express their anger and contempt for…for what happened.”

“I just want my husband to be able to rest in peace,” her mother said. “Ellis was innocent. He never hurt those women.”

Madison wished her mother’s words didn’t sound so hollow to her. She still wanted to believe them. But the locket she’d discovered under the house yesterday threatened the last of her faith, was leaching away the righteous anger that had sustained her so far. Without a strong conviction that her father was innocent, she had nothing to cling to, except the desire to protect her mother and Brianna from what was, most probably, the truth.

“Of course he was innocent,” Howell said, his tone placating.

Madison was willing to bet Howell believed more in the extra money they’d paid him to keep her father’s burial place a secret than he did in her father’s innocence. Just as she thought the call he’d made to them this morning, and what he might shortly suggest for her father’s reburial, would come with a hefty price tag. They should’ve gone ahead with the cremation Madison had suggested from the first. But her mother wouldn’t hear of it. Annette had never known anyone who’d been cremated. It seemed foreign to her—certainly nothing she was willing to do with her beloved husband’s body.

“Fortunately, our security guard frightened the culprit away before he could open the casket,” Howell added.

Madison rummaged through her purse to get her mother a tissue. Annette didn’t used to cry so easily, but the past twelve years had taken quite a toll. “Why didn’t the security guard catch him sooner?” she asked.

Howell politely turned his attention her way. “As you know, this is a big cemetery, Ms. Lieberman. Anthony, our security guard, circles the entire area several times a night, but he focuses mostly on the outer reaches. We buried your father close to the mortuary here, to throw off the media and anyone who might be looking for a fresh grave. Most folks buried near the mortuary have been dead sixty or seventy years, which means they’re pretty well forgotten.” He propped his fingertips together. “The lights on the building also serve as a deterrent.”

“Did your security guard get a look at this guy?” Madison asked, handing the tissue to her mother.

“Anthony said he was wearing jeans and a blue jacket with a red Chinese dragon on the back, and he looked small, maybe a hundred and sixty pounds. But that’s all he could see. As soon as Anthony started toward him in the security cart, he threw down his shovel and ran off.” Howell bent to one side to cover a small cough. “We gave these details to the police this morning, of course.”

“So this…guy, he—he just unearthed the coffin?” Madison asked, her muscles aching with anxiety. How many other people had to deal with such a parade of unsettling incidents? “That’s it?”

“He made a few pry marks on the coffin, but Anthony came along before he was able to get it open. We could have reburied your father easily enough, but I thought I’d better check with you and your mother to see if you’d like him moved now that…well, now that the media and everyone else seem to have taken a renewed interest.”

“The media? How did the media find out?” Annette asked, her eyes wide with panic.

Howell unclasped his hands. “They must’ve heard the call go out when Anthony phoned the police.”

Madison was still thinking about the guy in the Chinese dragon jacket. “So the police are looking for whoever did this?”

“We’ve made a report, as I said. Technically, there’s a chance this… disturbance would be classified as a felony. Individual plots are personal property. But…” he hesitated, and this time his glance seemed to hold real compassion “…if you want the truth, Ms. Lieberman, I can’t imagine the police will waste much time chasing down the crazy guy who did this when they’re already so overworked and understaffed. I think you and your mother would be better off to simply move the coffin and put this unfortunate incident behind you.”

Along with everything else, Madison thought bitterly. Only nothing from the past ever seemed to stay there.

C ALEB STOOD AT THE ENTRANCE to Susan’s bedroom Monday evening, surveying the clothes littering the floor, the perfume bottles and makeup strewn across the dresser, and her unmade bed. The place smelled like the expensive perfume so typical of Susan, which brought her back to him more clearly than he’d remembered her so far, and caused worry to claw at his gut. She hadn’t been seen for a week, since last Monday. Where could she be?

Crossing to the dresser, he smoothed out a crinkled piece of paper to see that it was only a quick thank-you from a friend at work, then rifled through some change. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Anything, really. Anything that might lead him to Susan.

Holly hovered behind him. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Why aren’t you checking for pry marks on the window or something?”

He caught his ex-wife’s eye in the mirror. It felt strange to be inside Susan’s apartment with everything so quiet, so motionless. Even when Susan wasn’t around, her dogs had always been here, barking and wagging a welcome. Now Holly had the schnauzers at her place, and other than a few visits from police, the apartment had been shut up. “I’m sure the detectives have done all that.”

“So?”

“I’m focusing on my personal knowledge of Susan’s behavior and habits.”

“Which means…”

“I’m trying to figure out what she might have been wearing and doing the night she disappeared. When I talked to Detective Lynch a few minutes ago, he said you were the last person to see her on Monday afternoon. But she wasn’t reported missing until Wednesday, when she didn’t show up for work. That’s a lot of time to change clothes.”

Holly rearranged the slew of bottles and cosmetics on the dresser, putting them in some semblance of order. “There’s no way to tell what she was wearing. For all we know, she was abducted in the middle of the night dressed in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt.”

“I doubt she was taken from here.”

Holly gave up on the mess and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Just because there was no forced entry? Maybe someone came to the door,” she said. “Maybe she knew who it was so she opened up. She might have even left with him. Detective Lynch seems to believe that’s most likely what happened.”

“Except that her car’s gone,” Caleb said.

Holly shrugged. “She and whoever she was with could have used her car.”

“Susan wouldn’t have wanted to drive if she had a man at the door with his own transportation. This was a woman who spent every dime she had on clothes and makeup and—” He indicated the perfumes, body lotions, mascara and eye shadow that covered almost every horizontal surface “—judging by the looks of this place, that hasn’t changed over the past two years.”

Holly pulled her hair into a ponytail. “I still don’t think we can figure out what she was wearing. When I saw her on Monday, she was telling me about some hot new outfit she was going to buy. How are we supposed to place her in something we might never have seen?”

Caleb turned to study the room again, taking in the pajama bottoms draped over a chair, and noticing underwear on the floor near the bathroom. “Maybe we can’t. But to me it looks like she took a shower, got dressed up and left for an evening out.”

Holly frowned at his assessment and toyed with the hem of her turtleneck sweater. “What makes you say that?”

“I can still smell perfume in the air, as if she sprayed it last thing, and those panties look as though she just stepped out of them. If she was expecting someone, she would’ve at least tossed the underwear in the hamper, don’t you think?”

“Susan was never much of a clean freak.”

Caleb crossed to the closet, which was crammed full of blouses, slacks, suits, dresses, jackets, jeans and sweaters. There were even a few wigs and hairpieces on the shelf above. “Knowing Susan, she’d be anxious to wear the new clothes she told you about. Did she describe them to you?”

“Of course, but I wasn’t really listening. She’s always telling me about some new shade of eye shadow or clothes bargain.”

He fingered a black sweater with faux fur at the wrists and collar. “Have you looked through her closet for anything with the tags still on it?”

“I haven’t looked specifically for tags, but I know there are a few new things.”

“Where are they?”

Holly started examining clothes at the back of the closet, but Caleb stopped her.

“Forget it,” he said. “She wouldn’t shove a hot new outfit all the way to the back. If she’s got any new clothes that far back, she’s never found an occasion to wear them, and they’ve probably been there for some time.”

“So now what?”

“Maybe we could call Nordstrom to see what she’s purchased lately. She’d probably put it on her charge card, wouldn’t she?”

Holly didn’t seem hopeful. “Except that her charge card’s been maxed out since her first two weeks at work.”

Of course. He hadn’t taken Susan’s spending habits into account. Still, there had to be some way to figure out what she’d bought and whether or not she was wearing it….

Caleb took another turn around the room, thinking. She would’ve carried her purchase inside from the car, possibly tried it on, admired herself in the mirror and cut off the tags.

The tags…

Moving to the small garbage can on the other side of the nightstand, he found a crumpled Nordstrom bag with two tags inside. “Bingo,” he said.

Holly took the tags from him. “What’s so exciting about these?”

“We can use the SKU numbers to find out what Susan bought. Maybe she was wearing it when she went missing.”

“What if she wasn’t?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “We have to start somewhere. Susan always liked the unique and ultra-trendy. Maybe she was wearing an outfit that really stood out.”

Holly smiled up at him. “I knew I was right to have you come out here, Caleb.”

“Slow down, Holly. We don’t even know if this means anything.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to help me,” she said, and he hoped to God she was right.

C ALEB GOT HIS WISH —at least in one regard. The short, worn-looking denim skirt and leopard-print halter top the Nordstrom saleswoman draped across the counter thirty minutes later was certainly conspicuous. He doubted that scrap of fabric the saleswoman called a skirt would cover much, but he had more to worry about than Susan’s general lack of modesty.

“You’re positive these items match the tags?” he asked.

“Check for yourself,” the saleswoman—Deborah, according to her badge—held them up for comparison.

“Did you see anything like this in her apartment?” he asked Holly.

“No. I’ve never seen a halter top like this before in my life,” she told him. “And I’d definitely remember it.”

“I know Susan bought this because I sold it to her,” Deborah insisted. “Just last week. She comes up here from cosmetics all the time or—” she looked slightly abashed “—she used to, anyway. And it was on clearance, so she got a great deal.”

A great deal? Caleb touched the flimsy material. “Would someone really wear something like this in mid-September?” he asked. “Seattle doesn’t exactly have beach weather.”

“She was going clubbing,” Deborah volunteered, trying to be helpful. “And it’s so hot in those places. Especially when you’re dancing, you know?”

Caleb knew all about clubs, but not because he’d visited one recently. He’d quickly grown tired of them after his divorce.

“It’s too much of a long shot,” Holly said. “Let’s go.”

She started for the door, but Caleb pulled her back. “Not so fast. It’s better than nothing. I say we take a picture and add it to the flyers, just in case.”

Holly studied the outfit with a critical eye, then sighed and shrugged. “If you say so.”

“We’ll take it,” he told Deborah.

While he was paying for it, Holly looped her arm through his the way she used to while they were married. “This is just like old times,” she murmured.

Caleb carefully extricated himself. “I’m not going to be in Seattle long,” he said, and was determined to make sure she remembered that.

M ADISON WAS EXHAUSTED by the time she returned home, but she felt a definite sense of relief the moment she drove off the Mukilteo-Clinton Ferry, which had brought her across Puget Sound from the mainland. After the unwelcome media attention she’d received during the past twelve years, and the crushing disappointment she’d experienced for her daughter’s sake when Danny announced he was leaving her, she’d wanted to relocate as far from Seattle as possible. Start over. Forget. Or go into hiding until she was strong enough to face the world again.

But her divorce agreement stipulated that she couldn’t move more than two hours away from Danny, who had joint custody of Brianna and lived on Mercer Island. And she felt too much responsibility toward her mother to leave without a backward glance. Annette was talking more favorably about moving than ever before, but she was still set in her ways and didn’t want to go very far from the city where she’d been born and raised.

Whidbey became the compromise Madison had been searching for. With the island’s sandy, saltwater beaches, damp, green woods, towering bluffs and spectacular views of Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains, it felt remote. Yet it was still basically a suburb, with eateries and fast food, gas stations and convenience stores. And it was…familiar.

“Brianna!” Madison called as she let herself into the small cottage she’d used her divorce settlement to buy, along with her new business, the South Whidbey Realty Company. Located just off Maxwelton Beach, tucked into a stand of thick pine trees, the house itself reminded Madison of something from a Thomas Kinkade painting—romantic to the point of being whimsical. Built of redbrick and almost completely covered in ivy, the house was more than fifty years old. But it had always been well-loved and well-maintained, and the previous owners had done a fabulous job with the garden. The garage, which was detached, resembled an old carriage house and had been converted some years ago into a sort of minicottage.

“Hey? Where’s my girl?” she called again, putting her briefcase next to the hall tree.

This time the television went off and Brianna came running, clutching Elizabeth, her stuffed rabbit, in one arm. “Mommy, you’re home!”

“Yes, sweetie, I’m home.” Madison gave her daughter a tight squeeze. “I’m sorry I had to be away. Grandma needed me. And then I had to swing by the office to pick up all the paperwork I didn’t get around to today.”

“Why couldn’t I go with you to see Grandma? She loves it when I come to visit. And Elizabeth misses her.”

“You and Elizabeth see her at least once a week, kiddo, and you weren’t out of school yet,” Madison said. But she wouldn’t have taken Brianna to the Sunset Funeral Home and Memorial Park even if she’d been available. Madison tried to shield her daughter as much as possible from the taint of her grandfather’s legacy.

Joanna Stapley appeared behind Brianna, toting a backpack. “Your timing’s good,” she said. “I just finished my homework.”

“Perfect.” Madison gave her a grateful smile and dug through her purse for the money to pay her. “Did anyone call while I was gone?”

“You had an ad call on the rental place.”

“An ad call?” Brianna echoed. “What’s an ad call?”

Madison shook her head. Her daughter was only six years old, but nothing slipped past her. “I’m trying to rent out the carriage house. Did the caller leave her name?” she asked Joanna.

“It was a he.”

“Oh.” For safety reasons, Madison had been hoping for a female tenant. But at this point, she knew she’d take anyone with good credit and solid references.

“What does it mean to rent out the carriage house?” Brianna asked.

“It means someone else will live there,” Madison said.

“Why?”

To help her financially. When she’d purchased the house and her business, she’d planned for the eight months it would take her to learn what she needed to know and get her broker’s license. But she hadn’t expected business to be so slow once she actually took over. And she’d already lost her top agent, which meant she was down to three. It wasn’t going to be easy to survive if the real estate market didn’t pick up.

“Because it might be fun to have some company once in a while, don’t you think?” she said to Brianna, even though company was really the last thing Madison wanted. She’d dealt with enough curious strangers to last her a lifetime.

Brianna scrunched up her face as though she wasn’t quite sure about company, either, but Madison was more interested in what Joanna had to say. Danny had made some comments that led her to believe he and Leslie might sue for custody of Brianna again. Madison wanted to be ready for him. She needed to save what little money she had left from the divorce for a good attorney.

“Did he leave his name and number?” she asked.

Joanna frowned as she tried to remember. “Dwight…Sanderson, I think. His number’s on the fridge.”

“Good. I’m having trouble finding a tenant. Everyone wants to come for a visit, but the ferry can take as long as two hours, so we’re not exactly in a prime location for people who work on the mainland.”

“This guy definitely sounds interested.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. If you need me again, just call my cell.” The door slammed behind Joanna, then Madison heard the distinctive rattle of her Volkswagen bug as she pulled out of the drive.

“Dwight Sanderson,” Madison mumbled to herself, heading straight to the kitchen.

“I don’t want a man to live in the carriage house, Mommy,” Brianna complained, trailing after her. “That’s where you draw, and me and Elizabeth play.”

“It’s nice to have the extra room, but we can do without it,” she replied.

“Daddy said we live in a closet.”

Daddy doesn’t know everything, Madison wanted to say, but she bit her tongue. “Our house isn’t as big as his, but I like it here, don’t you?”

Brianna nodded enthusiastically. “This is a cottage for princesses.”

Hearing her own words come back at her from the day they’d moved in, Madison smiled. “Right. And we’re princesses, so it’s ideal.”

“Will the man who moves in be a prince?” she asked.

Madison stared down at the Post-it note Joanna had stuck on the fridge, and thought about her father, her two half brothers and her ex-husband. She hadn’t met very many princes in her life. She was beginning to believe they didn’t exist.

“I doubt it,” she said, and picked up the phone.

CHAPTER THREE

C ALEB STOOD in the antique-filled living room of his parents’ white Victorian, staring out the window at Guemes Channel and the wooded island beyond as he wondered what he was going to try next. He’d already spent three days doing everything he could think of to dig up some kind of lead on Susan. But he’d had no luck at all. Along with the police and the private investigator hired by Holly’s parents, he and Holly had talked to Susan’s friends, neighbors and work associates. They’d visited nightclub after nightclub with Susan’s picture and checked her bank account again.

Still they’d come up empty.

“Holly called while you were in the shower,” his mother said from the doorway.

Caleb glanced over his shoulder. Justine Trovato was in her early sixties, but she looked at least ten years younger. Today she’d pinned up her white hair and was wearing a tasteful pair of brown slacks and a silky blouse, with pearls at her neck and ears.

“If she calls back, tell her I need to do a few things on my own today,” he said.

“If she calls back? Aren’t you going to respond to her message? She thought you might need a ride somewhere.”

Caleb didn’t want to talk to Holly. They’d lost their tempers yesterday while canvassing the apartment building, and she’d stormed off for a couple of hours. She came back when she’d cooled off, but they were both pretty tense. He thought they could use some time apart. Which was the story of their whole relationship. “I’ll rent a car.”

“You know you can take my Cadillac.” Justine moved into the room to straighten a doily, and Caleb immediately recognized the lavender fragrance she’d worn since he was small.

“I don’t want to put you out. I don’t really know my schedule.”

“I’m sure I could live without a car for the day. Your father’s out back tinkering in his shed. He could drive me in his little pickup if I need to go somewhere. Or there’s always your sister.”

Tamara, Caleb’s older sister, lived next door with her husband and twin boys in a home his parents had helped them buy. “I appreciate the offer, Mom, but I’ll feel more mobile if I have a car of my own.”

“If it makes you more comfortable, dear.”

More comfortable? Caleb wasn’t feeling very comfortable about anything. He’d already spent far more time than he’d hoped it would take to find Susan—and he wasn’t any closer than the day he’d arrived in Seattle.

She’ll turn up…. He’d told Holly that when she first called him. But those words seemed terribly glib now. He was beginning to think that if Susan did turn up, she’d turn up dead. Otherwise they would’ve found some trace of her.

“Where are you planning to go?” his mother asked.

“I spoke to Detective Gibbons this morning and—”

“Oh, he called here yesterday saying he’d received a message from you.”

“He got hold of me on my cell.”

“Can he help?” His parents were as worried about Susan as he was. They’d met her at his wedding—the second time, they’d eloped—and had seen her at a few family functions since.

“He doesn’t know much about Susan’s case. It’s not his to worry about.”

“Then why did you contact him?”

“He worked on the Sandpoint Strangler task force with me.”

“Those poor women.” His mother shuddered. “But you’re not interested in the Sandpoint Strangler anymore, are you? I thought you put that book aside.”

Caleb had always been interested in the Sandpoint Strangler. Probably because he’d been brand-new to the police department when the killings first started, so he’d followed them from the very beginning. The Sandpoint Strangler was the biggest case he ever worked, too, and the most frustrating. He felt as though they’d come within inches of unraveling the whole mystery—only to have Ellis Purcell check out before they could hit pay dirt. When the killings stopped and the case went cold, the task force disbanded and the police naturally changed their focus to finding those rapists and murderers who were still living and breathing and capable of violence. Caleb had given up the search then, too. But he’d never stopped wondering how, exactly, the strange Mr. Purcell had managed to kill so many women and dump their bodies in such public places without leaving more of a trail. He’d since done several books about murderers: on Angel Maturino Resendiz, who was convicted of murdering a Houston woman but was linked by confessions and evidence to at least twelve other killings nationwide. On Robert L. Yates, Jr., who admitted to fifteen murders, and Aileen Wuornos, a female serial killer convicted of murdering six men while working as a prostitute along highways in central Florida. Or Jeffrey Dahmer, who’d been convicted of seventeen homicides, most in Milwaukee. Caleb had written several other books, as well, mostly isolated cases where a husband killed his wife for the insurance, or a wife killed the man who’d been cheating on her. Whoever did the killing always took a significant misstep somewhere.

But not Ellis Purcell.

“Holly told me something at the airport that’s bothered me ever since,” he said.

“What’s that?” his mother asked.

“Ellis Purcell’s grave was disturbed the night before I arrived.”

“I read that in the paper.”

“I’m wondering how whoever it was found out where he was buried.”

His mother twisted the clasp of the necklace she was wearing around to the back. “Maybe someone in the family let it slip.”

“Maybe,” he said, jingling the change in the pocket of his chinos. But when he remembered Madison Lieberman and her mother, and how staunchly they’d supported Ellis throughout the whole affair, he doubted they’d revealed anything at all.

T HAT AFTERNOON Caleb pulled his rental car, a silver-and-black convertible Mustang, in front of 433 Old Beachview Road, the small brick house that corresponded with the address Detective Gibbons had given him for Madison Lieberman. Then he bent his head to look at the place through the passenger-side window.

It was small but charming, not unlike Langley, the closest town, which boasted the highest density of bed-and-breakfasts, country inns and guest cottages in the state. An arched entry covered with primroses partially concealed the front windows. But he didn’t see activity anywhere, and there weren’t any cars in the drive. Chances were Madison wasn’t home.

The dull-gray mist that shrouded the island made it seem much later than midafternoon. Caleb glanced at the digital clock on his dash to see that it was just after three, close to the time school let out, and wondered if he should wait. When he’d still been researching her father’s case a couple of years ago, Madison had been working as a Realtor and living in a house not far from Bill Gates’s mansion on Mercer Island. But Detective Gibbons had told him this morning that she and her husband had split and Danny Lieberman had bought her out. Now she owned a small real estate company with office space only a few miles away, in Clinton.

Caleb parked next to a stand of pine trees and got out to have a look around. He’d never approached Madison Lieberman in person before. When he was an officer on the task force, he was new enough that he’d been relegated to the work least likely to bring him in contact with her. And since he’d quit the department and started writing full-time, he’d seen too many news clips of Madison turning her face resolutely away from the camera, read too many comments spoken in defense of her father, to harbor any illusions that she might be willing to cooperate with him. But, using his pseudonym, he had sent her, as well as Danny, several letters over the years. Danny had responded a time or two, but it quickly became apparent that he didn’t have the answers Caleb needed. Madison had finally replied by threatening him with a restraining order if he so much as tried to speak with her.

He hoped she didn’t feel quite so strongly about the issue now that her father was dead.

Shoving his keys in his pocket, he strode up the walk. The yard was generally well-kept but had once known a more diligent hand; he could tell that right away. A couple of hummingbird feeders and a birdbath sat in a meticulously tended herb garden off to the right, but the trees and shrubs everywhere else were overgrown and the grass was a little too long. What with being a single mom and trying to run a small business, Madison probably didn’t have the time or money to maintain what had been in place before she came here. No doubt money was the reason for the For Rent sign Caleb saw attached to the small cottage at the side of the main house.

For rent… He hesitated briefly at the arch before changing direction and heading toward what had once been a garage. It was renovated now. Through a mullioned window exactly like those in the main house, he could see a studio apartment, complete with kitchen-living room, a single bedroom and a bath. A brown wicker couch with giant yellow-and-blue cushions faced a television in the large main room, which had a wooden floor and lots of rugs. A chair that matched the couch and the drapes sat off to the side, next to a rack of magazines. White cupboards lined the kitchen in the corner, which contained a round wooden table with plaid place mats in the same blue and yellow as the couch and drapes.

He could see only a slice of the bedroom and bath through two open doorways, but he could tell the bedroom was furnished with a four-poster bed, a fluffy down comforter and more pillows—these in red, white and blue. The bathroom had an old-style sink with brass fixtures.

He liked the place, he realized. It had the sort of country charm his mother had taught him to appreciate.

Taking a narrow path that led through the herb garden, he crossed over to the main house, where he saw a similar decorating theme. Madison’s home wasn’t quite as light and airy as the garage, certainly not as new, but it had a warm, cozy atmosphere.

The sound of a car pulling up made Caleb jerk away from the window and start toward the drive.

A petite woman he recognized as Madison Lieberman jumped out of a Toyota Camry as soon as she cut the engine. “Oh, my gosh! I never dreamed you’d beat me here,” she exclaimed, obviously flushed from hurrying. A thin, strawberry-blond girl got out much more slowly, clinging to an old stuffed rabbit. “The ferry must be moving quickly today.”

Caleb hadn’t taken the ferry. He’d come south over Deception Pass from Fidalgo Island, which was due north. But he didn’t correct her. He was enjoying the warmth of this reception—especially when he compared it to the “Get off my property” he’d most likely receive the moment he identified himself as the crime writer who’d contacted her before.

“Did you peek in the windows?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “Actually, I did.”

“I think you’d be very comfortable here.”

Madison was much more attractive in person. Maybe it was because this was the first time Caleb had ever seen her smile. Only five foot four or so, she had a gymnast’s body, which made him believe she stayed active, and almond-shaped brown eyes. Her hair was auburn—not his favorite color—but it looked soft and swayed gently around her chin in a stylish cut. And other than a few freckles sprinkled across her nose, her complexion was smooth and slightly golden.

“I know you’re worried about privacy,” she was saying, “but we’d never bother you. It’s quiet here.”

The little girl with Madison glared at him. He could definitely see a family resemblance, mostly through the mouth. They both had full, pouty lips. “Is this your daughter?” he asked.

“It is. Say hello, Brianna,” Madison prompted.

Brianna said nothing. She folded her arms around her stuffed toy and jutted out her sharp little chin.

“She’s not happy about renting out the carriage house,” Madison explained. “She called her father last night and he told her—” she waved her hand “—oh, never mind. I’ve got the key right here. Why don’t we take a look inside?”

Caleb realized that now was probably a good time to explain that he wasn’t who she thought he was. But he didn’t see any need to hurry. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to catch a glimpse of what Madison Lieberman was really like. That could only help him understand her family and, by extension, her father.

“Sounds good,” he said, following her to what she’d labeled the carriage house.

Brianna glanced back at him several times, as if she thought she could scare him away with her dark looks. But he merely smiled and, when Madison swung the door wide, stepped past her.

The place smelled like an expensive candle store, Caleb decided as he began to notice several things he’d missed before—the vase of fresh wildflowers on the kitchen table, the small shower in the bathroom he’d been unable to see from the window, the mahogany entertainment center in the bedroom that housed another television.

“You know, from your voice, I thought you’d be older,” Madison said as she watched him look around.

Opening what appeared to be a pantry, he pretended not to hear her. “How soon did you want to get someone in here?”

“As you can see, it’s ready. I’ve had a phone installed and everything. You could move in tomorrow.”

The hope in her voice and the modest car she was driving reinforced Caleb’s impression that, considering Danny Lieberman’s wealth, she hadn’t managed to get a very good divorce settlement. “How long has it been on the market?”

“A little over a month. But I’ve lowered the price.” She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear in a self-conscious movement. “I’m only asking eight hundred.”

He nodded and walked back into the living room, wondering how to turn the conversation to her father—while feeling a peculiar reluctance to do so. “This place is small but…nice,” he said.

Brianna was sitting on the couch with her stuffed rabbit and had spread several sheets of paper on the coffee table in front of her.

“These are very good,” he said when he realized they were sketches, and that she meant for him to see them. “Who drew them?”

“My mom.”

He studied the first, a pencil drawing of an old, gnarled hand gripping a cane, then the second, a set of clasped hands—one male, the other female—and the last, an intriguing pair of eyes. Were they Ellis Purcell’s eyes? Caleb could have sworn they were. They seemed to hold all kinds of dark secrets.

He wondered if Madison knew those dark secrets, and if he’d ever be able to get them out of her.

“Brianna, what are you doing with my sketches?” Madison asked, coming up from behind.

“I think she’s proud of you,” Caleb said. “And it looks as though she has reason to be. You’re very talented.”

Madison quickly gathered up her drawings. “Thanks, but it’s just a hobby.” After setting them aside, she clasped her hands in a businesslike manner. “So, do you like it? Do you want the place?”

He was about to explain that he hadn’t really come to rent the carriage house when there was a knock on the door.

Brianna grabbed her stuffed rabbit and ran to open it. A tall, white-haired gentleman who looked to be in his late fifties stood on the stoop. “Is your mommy here?”

Brianna turned expectantly, and Madison approached the door. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Dwight Sanderson.”

“Who?” she said.

Caleb watched the man’s face cloud with confusion at Madison’s startled reaction. “I spoke with you a few days ago and then again this morning, remember? I’m here to see the house.”

“But—”

“I’m afraid you’re too late,” Caleb interrupted, joining them at the door. “It’s already taken.”

Madison blinked at him in surprise, and Caleb felt a good measure of surprise himself. What the hell did he think he was doing?

“I thought you were…Who are you?” Madison asked, turning to him.

“Caleb Trovato.” He stuck out his hand, fairly confident she’d never recognize his name. He wrote under the pseudonym Thomas L. Wagner, his mother’s grandfather’s name, and had signed the letters he’d sent her and Danny the same way, since they’d been written in a professional capacity.

“Caleb Trovato,” she repeated, hesitantly accepting his handshake. “If you called, my baby-sitter forgot to write it down.”

Her fingers felt slim and dainty, and she was close enough that he could smell a hint of her perfume. “I didn’t call. I just happened to see the sign as I was driving by. I actually live in San Francisco, but business has brought me here.”

“For how long?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Oh.” She glanced from him to Sanderson. “So is either of you willing to sign a lease?”

“I told you on the phone that I can’t commit long-term,” Sanderson said. “My situation is too tentative right now.”

“I’ll sign a lease,” Caleb said, even though he knew he was crazy to offer. He’d recently furnished his new condo in San Francisco and planned to return there. But he couldn’t miss this opportunity. Maybe now he’d finally be able to crack the Sandpoint Strangler case and achieve some closure—for himself, the public, the force and, most importantly, the families of the victims. Maybe he could even ease the foreboding that had settled over him since he’d learned of Susan’s disappearance. If the deceased Purcell was really the Sandpoint Strangler, she certainly stood a better chance of being found alive. Random murders were rare. Most homicides of women were the result of a love relationship gone bad and, according to Holly, Susan hadn’t been involved with anyone for over three years. She’d only been seeing Lance, the guy she was dating before she disappeared, for a couple of months.

In any case, Caleb could look for Susan from here just as easily as his parents’ place on Fidalgo, and simply buy out the lease when he was ready to head home.

“Do you have any pets?” she asked.

“Would that be a problem?”

“Not necessarily. One dog or cat would be fine. I’m not sure I’d be happy with a whole houseful of Doberman pinschers.”

“No animals.”

“Not even a hamster?”

“Not even a hamster.”

“What about kids?” she asked.

He cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t want a houseful of those, either?” He could understand it if they were all as sour as her daughter.

“I’d expect you to make sure they don’t trample the flowerbeds.”

“The flowerbeds are safe,” he said. “I don’t have any kids.”

“Fine.” She looked as though she wanted to smile but wouldn’t allow it. “What kind of business brings you to Seattle, Mr. Trovato?”

He searched his mind, trying to come up with something that wouldn’t give him away. “I’m a small-business consultant,” he said, because it was the first thing he could think of.

“So you’re regularly employed?”

“Definitely.”

“And how long a lease are you willing to sign? A year?”

“Six months,” he replied, letting her know by his tone that she wasn’t getting any more out of him.

“And when would you like to move in?”

“Tomorrow morning, if that’s okay with you.”

“That’s fine.” Now she did smile, right before she turned back to Sanderson. “I’ve got your phone number, Mr. Sanderson,” she said. “If Mr. Trovato’s references don’t check out, I’ll give you a call.”

Sanderson didn’t appear too pleased with the situation, but there wasn’t much he could do. Madison followed him out, probably to apologize for the wasted trip. Brianna stayed behind, still eyeing Caleb warily.

“You don’t want me to live here?” he asked.

Her bottom lip came out. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is our house. My mommy draws here, and me and Elizabeth dance.”

“I won’t be staying long,” he admitted. Then he remembered that Madison had started to tell him something out in the drive. “What did your dad have to say about the idea last night?”

Brianna tucked her stuffed bunny protectively under one slender arm. “He said you should never rent out part of your house.”

“Why not?”

“Because you never know who might be moving in with you.”

CHAPTER FOUR

P OUNDING ON THE FRONT door dragged Madison from the depths of sleep.

She glanced, bleary-eyed, at the alarm clock on her nightstand. It was only eleven o’clock. Generally she wasn’t in bed so early on a Friday night. She stayed up on weekends, handling paperwork, e-mail, or working on the computer. But this hadn’t been a regular week. Ever since she’d found that box under her mother’s house, she’d been so tired it felt as though someone had tied ten-pound weights to each limb. She’d climbed into bed a mere thirty minutes ago but was already sleeping like the dead.

Like the dead? Considering the recent disturbance of her father’s grave, that seemed rather chilling. She rubbed her arms as she shivered and groped for her robe. The knocking continued.

“Mommy?” Brianna’s confused voice came to her from the other room.

“Yes, honey?”

“Is it morning-time?”

“Not yet.”

“Who’s here?”

“I’m sure it’s just our new renter. He probably can’t find the remote for his television or doesn’t know how to run the dishwasher or something.” Madison tied the belt to her robe. “And he didn’t bother to notice that our lights are out,” she added under her breath.

“We shouldn’t have let him move in,” Brianna said, as if this incident proved the point she’d been trying to make from the start.

Brianna sounded like an echo of Danny. Sometimes Brianna also behaved a great deal like her father. Today she’d pouted and glowered at Mr. Trovato all afternoon while he was carrying in his belongings, which were rather sparse, along with a few groceries. “Try to go back to sleep, honey,” she said.

Bang, bang, bang. The knocking was impatient. Demanding.

How could Brianna sleep with all that noise? “Give me a minute,” Madison called out. As she stuffed her feet into the frumpy “housewife” slippers Danny had given her a year ago last Christmas, she pictured the diamond tennis bracelet he’d presented to his new wife the day she’d announced her pregnancy. After dropping out of college to finish putting him through school, Madison had come away from their seven-year marriage with probably a fifth of Danny’s net worth, a real estate license and a pair of ugly house shoes, while Leslie was living in Madison’s old mansion and dripping in diamonds. Somehow it didn’t seem fair. But Madison didn’t want Danny if he couldn’t stand by her “for better or worse”—although she hated the fact that her daughter had lost the firm foundation of having both parents in the home.

“I’m coming,” she said when she neared the door. “Who is it?”

There was no answer, but the banging didn’t subside. It came in loud, staccato bursts that grated on Madison’s nerves.

“Who is it?” she repeated more insistently, and snapped on the porch light so she could peer through the peephole.

It definitely wasn’t Caleb Trovato. She could see that right away. Mr. Trovato was probably six foot four, two hundred ten pounds of well-defined muscle. He was the kind of man who could turn a woman’s head from forty feet away. This person was skinny to the point of looking emaciated. His hair was almost as dark as Mr. Trovato’s, though not nearly as thick. And—

Her visitor moved and she caught a glimpse of his face.

Oh, God! It was Johnny.

Unlatching the safety chain, Madison opened the door for her half brother. “Johnny! What are you doing here?”

He sniffed as though he had allergies and shifted on the balls of his feet, regarding her with red-rimmed eyes. Behind him, headlights from some kind of car bore down on her, but the engine was off.

“I need a few bucks,” he said, point-blank. “Can you help me out?”

Johnny and Tye had come to live with Madison and her parents for the first time when Johnny was fifteen and Tye was sixteen. From the beginning, they’d been in and out of trouble with her parents, the school, even the authorities, and didn’t bother much with a little sister who was only eight. But for the eighteen months Johnny was living at the house, Madison had liked him a lot better than Tye, who was far more remote. She’d sort of idealized Johnny, because he did sometimes do her a kind deed. He’d let her play with the stray cats he brought home occasionally—before her mother made him turn them loose again. He’d share whatever candy filled his pockets. Tye ignored her completely.

“Are you alone?” she hedged, caught completely off guard. Last she’d heard, Johnny was supposed to be in prison for another three years.

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re alone.” She shaded her eyes against the headlights and squinted, making out a shadowy figure sitting in the driver’s seat of what was probably an old Buick Skylark.

“So I’m with a friend. Does it matter?” More nervous energy. More restless movements. From the way he was acting, he had to be on something.

Evidently there wasn’t much about Johnny’s lifestyle that had changed over the years. “When did you get out?”

He sniffled again. “Couple weeks ago, I guess.”

He was so strung out, Madison wasn’t sure he could tell one day from the next. Maybe he hadn’t been released at all; maybe he’d escaped, and whoever was waiting in the car was his accomplice.

She tightened her robe, wondering what to do. If she gave Johnny money, he’d only use it to buy more drugs. But she had to help him. Except for Tye, she was his only family. And she felt guilty for having had the love and support of their father and for having a good mother when theirs was so neglectful and abusive.

“I’ve got twenty bucks,” she said.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“Then how ’bout a drink? You got a beer for your brother?”

Madison hesitated. Johnny had his better moments, but he could also be unpredictable and moody. And, for all she knew, the person waiting in the car was another ex-convict. But Johnny was her half brother and he’d never done anything truly threatening to her in the past.

“Come in and I’ll get you a Coke.” She opened the door wider, to admit him, then locked it against whoever was waiting in the car.

“When was the last time you ate?” she asked as she led him to the kitchen.

He didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at something in the hall.

Madison turned to see what that something was, and felt her stomach drop when she realized Brianna was standing there. “Go back to bed, sweetheart,” she said. She didn’t want her daughter around Johnny. The fact that he had a drug habit didn’t necessarily make him dangerous. But they hadn’t spent any time together in years, and Madison didn’t feel she knew him all that well anymore.

“Who’s he? ” Brianna asked, peering at Johnny with the disdain she’d practiced on Caleb Trovato.

Johnny hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his filthy, tattered jeans and smiled. “Don’t you remember me, pipsqueak? I saw you once, just before your grandpa blew his brains out.”

“Johnny, don’t,” Madison said.

“Mommy, how do you blow your brains out?” Brianna asked.

Madison sent Johnny a look that was meant to silence him. “Never mind, honey. Grandpa went to heaven. You know that.”

Johnny gave a disbelieving snort when she said “heaven,” but Madison ignored him. Brianna was too little to understand everything that had happened, and she saw no reason to explain the gritty details, at least, not while Brianna was so young.

“You never could stand the truth,” he said, shaking his head.

“There’s no need to upset her. She’s only six,” Madison replied. But she didn’t blame Johnny for being bitter. He’d been the one to find Ellis, and everyone knew Ellis had meant it to be that way. Just before Madison and her mother went on an all-day shopping trip, he’d called Johnny and said he needed to talk to him.

A few hours later, Johnny had found what was left of their father in Ellis’s workshop.

“She doesn’t look upset to me,” he said.

Brianna was clinging to Elizabeth while giving him a challenging glare. “My name isn’t pipsqueak,” she told him. “And I don’t think my father would like you very much.”

Horrified, Madison gaped at her. “Brianna!”

“It’s true. ”

“I don’t care if it is,” she said. “Johnny’s your uncle. You’re not to be rude to him or anyone else. Now please go back to bed.”

Brianna didn’t budge, so Madison gave her a frown designed to let her know there’d be serious consequences if she didn’t obey. Finally, she turned and walked resolutely down the hall.

“I’ll be there shortly to tuck you in,” Madison called after her.

Johnny’s twitching seemed to grow more extreme. “You’re gonna have your hands full with that kid.”

“Brianna’s usually very sweet. It’s just been lately, after I get her back from her father’s, that I’ve run into these attitude problems.” Anxious for Johnny to leave, she handed him a can of Coke. “Sorry I don’t have any beer. I don’t drink it.”

He accepted what she offered him. “You wrote me about your divorce,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure you got that letter. You never answered it.” He’d never answered any of her letters.

“I wanted to believe you were still living the good life.” He said the words accusingly, as though she’d had some choice in the matter.

“No one lives a fairy tale.” She leaned against the counter. “Does Tye know you’re out?”

The can hissed as Johnny popped the top and took a long pull. “I went by his place a couple days ago. No one was home.”

“His wife’s been visiting her mother. Maybe he drove to Spokane to get her and the kids.”

“Visiting her mom?” Johnny chuckled, scratching his shoulder, then his elbow, moving, always moving. “You mean she left him. Again.”

Again? This was the first Madison had ever heard of any serious marital strife between Tye and Sharon. “Why would she leave?”

“They haven’t been getting along.”

“Are you sure?” she said, disappointed that Tye hadn’t trusted her enough to share this information with her.

“You know Tye has a temper. They’ve been on and off for years.” Johnny downed the rest of the soda, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and tossed the empty can toward the garbage. When he missed, it hit the floor with a rattle, and Madison quickly bent to pick it up.

“About that money…” he said.

She glanced down the hall to see Brianna poking her head out of her bedroom, and knew she needed to get her half brother on his way. “Here you go,” she said, handing him a twenty.

He frowned at the bill. “You sure that’s all you’ve got?”

She told herself to remain firm. But when she took in the state of his clothing and the old tennis shoes on his feet, she immediately began to second-guess her decision not to give him more. He looked so needy, so desperate. She hated watching him ruin his life. “Are you okay, Johnny?”

He blinked at her as though surprised by the question. “Does it matter?”

“Of course.” She searched through the bottom of her purse. “Maybe I can scrounge together another few dollars.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” She gave him an additional fistful of change, and he started for the door.

She should have breathed a sigh of relief and let him go, but something made her call him back. “Johnny?”

He peered over his shoulder at her. “Yeah?”

Except in general terms, Madison had never spoken to her brothers about the crimes their father had been accused of committing. Neither Johnny nor Tye had good feelings toward Ellis, so Madison had never expected them to be supportive. Her brothers were too busy trying to recover from their unhappy childhoods to worry about what was happening to their father—a father who’d let them down so badly. But she suddenly felt the need to talk to Johnny now, before he disappeared for another five years.

“Do you think he really did it?” she asked softly.

For a moment, Johnny looked more lucid than she’d seen him in years. “You mean Dad?”

She nodded. She longed to tell him what she’d found beneath the house. She had to tell someone. The burden of keeping the secret was too heavy. And there was no one else….

He stared at the floor for several seconds. “He did it.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“You never heard or saw anything…out of the ordinary, did you?”

He was moving toward the door again. “I wasn’t around.”

“You showed up every once in a while, for short periods of time,” she said, following him.

“I never saw anything.”

Madison wished she could erase from her mind the image of opening that locket in the dank atmosphere of the crawl space. “Did you hear what happened to Dad’s grave?” she asked as he opened the door and stepped outside.

He turned, scowling at her. “I don’t want to know.”

“But—”

“Look at me, Maddy,” he said, calling her by the nickname the kids in the neighborhood had given her when she was young.

She met his gaze.

“You see what I am,” he said. “I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself. You want a shoulder to cry on, call Tye. He’s the one who never flinched, no matter how bad it got.”

Then he hurried to the car, the motor revved and he was gone.

C ALEB LEANED CLOSER to the house to avoid being seen by the men in the Buick Skylark. Who were they? And what did they want? Judging by the late hour, the rattletrap condition of their car and the “drifter” appearance of the guy who’d gone inside Madison’s house, they weren’t insurance salesmen.

He muttered the license plate number to himself a few more times, planning to have Detective Gibbons run a check on it in the morning, and started back to the cottage. When he’d heard the car pull up, he’d been in bed watching television, and hadn’t bothered to put on anything but a pair of jeans. It was chilly to be walking around without a shirt and shoes. But he hesitated when he passed Madison’s window and glanced in to find her sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was crying. Even if she wasn’t, there was something so weary, so hopeless about her posture….

Was she okay? His natural reluctance to intrude on her privacy warred with the desire to capitalize on a golden opportunity. After all, he’d moved in to get close to her.

Hurrying to the cottage house, he scribbled down the license plate number, put on a T-shirt and a pair of shoes and jogged back.

It took several seconds for her to answer his knock. When she finally came to the door, her cheeks were dry, but her eyes were red and damp.

Caleb studied her for a moment, wishing she were middle-aged and frumpy. That she was single and attractive only complicated matters. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

There was an insincere smile on her face and, when she spoke, her voice carried the high pitch of false cheer. “No, of course not. Why?”

He jerked his head toward the drive. “Those guys who were here. They didn’t look very reputable. I thought maybe I should check on you.”

“Oh.” Her smile faltered. “That was just my brother Johnny.”

Johnny Purcell. Caleb had come across that name years ago while he was researching Ellis. As a matter of fact, he’d interviewed Johnny once, in prison. But Johnny must have lost a lot of weight since then. Caleb hadn’t recognized him.

“I know he doesn’t look like much,” she said. “But he’s basically harmless. Fortunately, he doesn’t come around very often. I’m sorry if he woke you.”

“It’s no problem. I wasn’t sleeping. Is he in some sort of trouble?”

“No.”

An awkward silence ensued, during which Caleb racked his brain for some other way to learn more about Johnny’s visit.

Madison spoke first. “Did you get settled?”

“For the most part.” He grinned, hoping to charm her. “I loaded up on the important things—peanut butter and bread.”

“Well, if there’s anything you need, a cup of sugar or an egg or whatever, feel free to ask.”

“I appreciate that.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, wishing she’d invite him in for a cup of coffee. Other than moving onto the property, he hadn’t considered how he was going to get close to Madison. Especially when she seemed so remote.

“Is Brianna asleep?” he asked.

“She’s in bed. I don’t know that she’s asleep.”

“I realize she feels I’m encroaching on her space, but with any luck she’ll get used to having me around, don’t you think?”

“I hope so,” Madison said. “I know space shouldn’t be an issue. She’s got plenty of space. Especially at her father’s. He lives in an eight-thousand-square-foot house, complete with a giant water fountain worthy of a casino.”

“Sounds…ostentatious.”

“It is.” She finally gave him a genuine smile. “I hated living there. It felt like a mausoleum.” She folded her arms, unwittingly revealing a fair amount of cleavage.

Caleb wished again that she was older, or significantly younger, or considerably overweight…

“Brianna’s had a rough year,” she was saying. “I’m guessing this is some sort of delayed reaction.”

He pulled his attention away from the smooth skin of her breasts. “How long have you been divorced?”

“A little less than a year.”

“It’ll get easier.”

“You sound as though you speak from experience.”

“I went through a divorce two years ago.” He didn’t mention the first divorce. There’d been no one in between so it didn’t count.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Things are better now.”

“They are for me, too,” she said, but he didn’t get the impression she really believed it.

Caleb considered being direct and simply asking if he could join her for a cup of coffee. With Susan missing, he felt the clock ticking. But he didn’t dare come on too strong. If he frightened Madison or made her leery of him in any way, he’d only defeat his purpose.

“Well, thanks for checking on me,” she said, and started backing up to close the door.

Caleb had no choice but to step off the porch. “Have a good night.”

“You, too.”

Reluctantly, he walked down the stone path that led to his new home, frustrated that he hadn’t managed to wrangle any type of invitation out of her. Then he caught sight of her car. A nice car was important in the real estate business. He had no doubt that if she could afford it, she’d be driving a Mercedes instead of a Camry. “By the way,” he said before she could close the door.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to hire someone to do my laundry and make me a few meals. I was wondering if you’d be interested.”

“You’re going to hire someone to cook and clean for you?”

He was if he could get her to take the job. “I’ll be coming and going a lot.”

“How much are you willing to pay?”

Caleb had always taken care of himself. He had no idea what such services should rightfully cost. But he wasn’t afraid of being generous. He thought that helping her out financially might ease his conscience about having ulterior motives in befriending her. “Six hundred dollars a month sound fair?”

She coughed. “That’s almost as much as you’re paying in rent.”

Evidently he’d been a little too generous. “That would include the price of groceries, of course.”

Her teeth sank into the soft flesh of her bottom lip, distracting him again. “What constitutes ‘a few meals’?”

“Dinner every night, unless you have other plans, and breakfast on the weekends.” For a moment, he thought she’d refuse, and wished he’d asked her for less of a time commitment. She was trying to run a business and already seemed harried. But he needed to gain her confidence quickly. “I’m flexible, though. So if you think that’s too much…”

“What kind of menu?” she asked.

“You can choose.”

“Do you want me to bring it over to you?”

“If you’d prefer. But if you’re open to company, I’d rather not eat alone.”

She hesitated for another moment. “All right,” she said at last. “I’m already cooking for Brianna and me. It won’t take long to add an extra plate for dinner and do a few more loads of laundry each week. I think it might help Brianna adjust to having you here if she gets to know you a little.”

“My laundry isn’t difficult,” he told her. “Mostly jeans and T-shirts.”

“Sounds as though you live a pretty easy life, Mr. Trovato,” she said.

“Call me Caleb.”

“When would you like me to start, Caleb?”

He smiled as he moved away, feeling a sense of victory. It was only a matter of time before he knew everything Madison did. “How about tomorrow?”

CHAPTER FIVE

“C ALEB, WHERE have you been? I’ve been calling your cell for the past hour.”

Holly. Again. Between Caleb’s run to his folks’ house for his things that morning, and his trip to the grocery store in the afternoon, he’d met her at the university and helped pass out flyers with Susan’s picture and description. Every time his ex-wife had called since then, he’d jumped for the phone, thinking she’d heard from someone who’d seen Susan. Shortly before Johnny had pulled up outside, Caleb had finally realized she was just stressed and worried and wanted to go over the same things she’d been saying all day. Only he’d already done everything he could until morning and didn’t want to hold her hand anymore. He was comfortable in bed, once again flipping through satellite channels on television and enjoying the solitude.

“It’s after midnight, Holly,” he said. “Can’t this wait until we get together in the morning?”

“No, it can’t,” she replied. “Someone called me about the flyer a little while ago.”

At last! Caleb hit the off button and sat up, giving Holly his full attention. “Who was it?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I get there. I have something to show you.”

“ Show me?”

“I’m on my way.”

“Wait, I’m not staying at my folks’ place,” he said before she could hang up.

“You’re not?”

“No, I rented a small house.”

Silence. Eventually she asked, “Why would you rent a place? You could’ve stayed here for free.”

“Holly, we’re divorced.”

“I know that, Caleb. It isn’t as though I’m asking you to sleep with me. I only offered to put you up for a few weeks. You’re helping me, after all. I feel it’s the least I can do.”

“There’s no need,” he said. “I’m fine where I am.”

“And where is that?”

“Whidbey Island.”

“Whidbey! What made you move there?”

“It’s closer to the mainland.”

“If you wanted to be close to the mainland, why didn’t you rent an apartment on the mainland?”

Caleb considered telling Holly that he was renting from Ellis Purcell’s daughter, but decided not to. He didn’t want her badgering him for information until he was ready to share it. Just because he might come across answers no one else had been able to glean didn’t necessarily mean he would. It was possible that Madison was too secretive to let anything slip. It was also possible that she didn’t know anything. But he was willing to bet against both of those possibilities. She’d been living with Ellis during his killing spree. At a minimum, she should be able to tell Caleb bits and pieces of conversation she’d overheard between her parents, whether her father was really at home when he’d claimed to be, whether she sometimes heard things go bump in the night, whether she ever saw him move something heavy that just might have resembled a dead body….

“This place is nice,” he said instead.

“How much is it costing you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Waste your money, then. I don’t care,” she said. “You’re so stubborn. I don’t know why I married you once, let alone twice.”

He thought she might hang up in a huff, but she didn’t. “Are you going to give me directions?” she asked after an extended silence.

A quick glance at the clock told him it was even later than he’d realized. But she’d said she had something to show him. “What do you have?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

If she had a lead, he needed to know about it as soon as possible. He told her how to find him. Then he got up, dressed and put on some coffee.

Across the yard, he could see that the lights were still on in Madison’s house, and he wondered what she was doing. Earlier, it had looked as though she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders….

Guilt about masquerading as a random renter flickered inside him. He could already tell Madison wasn’t the ice princess he’d assumed from her television interviews and that one strongly worded letter. Her behavior wasn’t strange, either, like her father’s. Actually, she seemed pretty…normal. And there was no question she’d been through a lot.

Leaning against the wall, he stared out the window at her light. She might be nice. She might even be one of the most attractive women he’d ever met—but being nice and attractive didn’t change the fact that the truth had to be told.

M ADISON COULDN’T SLEEP . She was tired yet wound up, and didn’t dare take a sleeping pill, for several reasons. Brianna could wake up in the night. Johnny, or whoever had been with him, could come back. And she wasn’t yet comfortable with having a stranger living on her property. Especially one who knew she and Brianna were alone. Caleb Trovato’s credit references had checked out; he seemed like a pretty solid citizen. But still…

Pulling out her sketchpad, she sat at the kitchen table and began to draw. She had tons of paperwork to take care of. She needed to review the purchase offers her agents had generated in the past week. As their broker, she was liable for any legal repercussions if they made a mistake. She also needed to revise the independent contractor agreement she was having her agents sign when they came to work for her, decide whether or not she was going to hire the young woman she’d interviewed this afternoon, and review the lease for the new copier she was buying for the office. But she was too tense to delve into work-related matters tonight.

Because she couldn’t forget Johnny, she drew his eyes. Because she was worried about Brianna, she drew her daughter’s full lips. She even sketched Danny’s angry brow—something that had come to symbolize their relationship. The scratch of her pencil and her intense focus usually eased the stress knotting the muscles in her back and neck. But nothing seemed to help tonight. She still felt as though she were walking a tightrope with the ground frighteningly far below.

Her eyes slid to her briefcase. The urgency to make her business successful was part of the problem. Sales weren’t going nearly as well as she’d hoped when she’d purchased South Whidbey Realty. She knew she was crazy to be wasting time while Brianna was sleeping, but Madison simply couldn’t face the work she’d brought home with her.

Flipping to a new page, she considered drawing her mother’s hands. But anything to do with her mother reminded Madison of her father, and she didn’t want to confront her doubts about him. Not right now. Not in the middle of the night with the clock on the wall ticking and the rest of the house so silent.

She sorted through the faces she’d seen lately: an obese woman with beautiful blond hair she’d met at Brianna’s school; a wiry, angular man who’d just started doing the janitorial work at the office building where she leased space; a baby she’d seen at the mall. None interested her enough to attempt them. But the gruff old man who worked on the ferry seemed to have potential—

A car pulled into the drive, and Madison’s heart began to race. Was Johnny back? What could he possibly want now?

Dropping her pencil, she went to the window, but the car that parked behind Caleb’s Mustang didn’t look anything like the one Johnny had been riding in earlier. This car was a late-model Honda. And the person getting out of it was a woman—a tall woman who wasn’t approaching her house.

A moment later, Caleb Trovato’s door opened and he stepped out under the eaves. His broad shoulders blocked most of the light spilling from the cottage behind him, but Madison could see that his visitor was blond and most likely very pretty. Was she a friend? A lover? Coming this late she could even be a call girl.

No, Caleb would have no need to hire a prostitute, Madison decided. He probably had more female attention than he knew what to do with. He was ruggedly handsome. More than that, he carried himself with the sort of beguiling indifference most women found so appealing.

Most women, but not Madison. She’d trusted her father. She’d trusted Danny. She would have trusted Johnny and Tye, except they’d never let her get close enough. For some reason, when it came to men, she wasn’t a very good judge of character. Which meant she was better off alone.

Even if she wanted a new love interest, how could she get close to anyone while guarding her father’s terrible secret?

“T HIS IS A CUTE PLACE ,” Holly said.

Caleb stretched out on the couch and flipped on the television. “Thanks.”

“How did you find it?”

“I stumbled across the For Rent sign.”

“So you leased it?” She snapped her fingers. “Like that?”

“Pretty much.” He waved to the chair at the end of the couch. “Sit down and show me what you’ve got.”

She didn’t move toward the chair. “If you didn’t want to stay with your mother or me, why not get a hotel? That’s what most people do.”

“Does it matter?” he asked, trying to head her off. She’d brought up the Sandpoint Strangler a number of times and was already frightened that Susan’s disappearance might be connected. He didn’t want to fuel her fears by admitting he suspected the same thing. At least until he had more to go on than gut instinct and a few wild coincidences.

She shook her head as she gazed around. “I just never expected it.”

He buzzed past a commercial for dandruff shampoo. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, Holly. Now I have a place of my own while I’m here. That’s it.”

“And the downside is you’re paying by the week?”

“ Forget the cottage.”

At the irritation in his voice, she propped her hands on her hips and faced him. “Why’d I have to fall in love with you?”

Caleb had asked himself the same question about her, many times. She’d just been so…lost when he met her. And he’d always been a sucker for a woman down on her luck. He liked feeling needed, liked taking care of others. Unfortunately, she’d exploited that tendency to its fullest. “I wish I knew.”

“I’ll never understand you or what happened between us—”

“That’s the beauty of being divorced,” he interrupted. “We no longer have to analyze what’s wrong with us. No more teary talks that carry on through the night. No more debilitating guilt. Surely you’re as relieved as I am.”

“But we loved each other.”

Caleb scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “We just hated each other more.”

“I never hated you,” she said.

“God, Hol, would you let it go?” He blew out a sigh, hoping some of his frustration would go with it. “We couldn’t be together for more than two days in a row. Now, do you have something on Susan or not?”

It took her a moment to regain control. But she managed to do so, for a change, and Caleb relaxed.

Leaving the remote control on the arm of the couch, he went to the refrigerator to get a beer. “Well?” he said when he’d popped the top and drunk almost half of it.

She finally sat down and stared at the television, probably so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “I’m not sure if it’ll tell us much in the end, but a woman named Jennifer Allred saw Susan the day after she and I had our nails done.”

“Where?” He leaned one hip against the kitchen counter, enjoying the smooth taste of his Michelob Light and letting it siphon off some of the tension he’d been feeling only moments earlier.

“At a vegetarian pizza place not far from the university.”

“She’s sure it was Susan?”

Holly reached into her purse and withdrew a photograph. “She gave me this.”

Surprised, Caleb left his beer on the counter and walked over to get a better look. “ How did she give you this?” he asked. “I thought you said she called you.”

“She did. Then she asked me to meet her on campus because she had some proof to give me.”

“And you did it? Don’t tell me you went there alone, Holly.”

“What else was I supposed to do? Drag someone out of bed and coerce him or her into going with me? You weren’t picking up.”

He’d been outside creeping around, trying to figure out what was going on at Madison’s—not the type of errand on which he wanted to carry a cell phone. “Twelve women, if you count Susan, have been snatched from that campus or the surrounding area! What were you thinking, meeting someone so late?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you care about me,” she said, coming right back at him. “If you cared, you never would’ve given up on me.”

“Damn it, Holly, would you quit twisting the knife? I wanted to be there for you. I married you twice, remember? We aren’t a good fit. I don’t know how much more proof you need!” He hadn’t planned on shouting, but she always managed to snap the control that was sufficient for every other situation and relationship.

She stared at him for several seconds, her glare challenging enough to make him believe they were going to end up in another of their famous rows. She was probably going to start in on the miscarriage. She always used that as some sort of trump card, as if he hadn’t felt the loss of their baby just as deeply.

Instead, she covered her eyes and shook her head, obviously backing down. “Look at the picture, okay?”

Caleb felt the anger drain out of him. No one made him as crazy as Holly did. But this wasn’t about their marriages or their divorces. This was about Susan, he reminded himself, gazing down at the picture. “I don’t recognize any of these people,” he said.

“That’s because you’ve probably never seen them before. That’s Jennifer and her two roommates. They’re celebrating because the guy on the left just won an art grant.”

“So what does this have to do with Susan?”

“Look behind them, in the background.”

Caleb held the picture closer to the light, trying to make out the slightly blurred figure beyond the open door of the pizza place. It could have been any woman of Susan’s general size, shape and coloring. But then he saw a slice of leopard print halter beneath a short black jacket and knew it was her.

“She’s wearing just what I thought she was wearing,” he said in amazement.

“Notice anything else?”

Caleb’s blood ran cold. Next to Susan, parked at the curb, was a blue Ford pickup with a white camper shell. He cut his gaze to Holly. “Purcell’s truck?”

“Or one just like it.”

Another connection. At this stage, Caleb saw no benefit in keeping his reason for renting the cottage a secret. With the appearance of Purcell’s truck in this picture with Susan, Holly’s fears were already confirmed. “You wanted to know why I rented this place,” he said.

“You’re finally going to tell me?”

“Madison Lieberman lives next door. She’s my landlady.”

Holly’s brows drew together as if she couldn’t quite identify the name. “Madison Lieberman…”

“Ellis Purcell’s daughter.”

“Of course! I heard about her over and over when you were researching the Sandpoint Strangler. But she’d never talk to you. Has she changed her mind?”

“Not exactly. She doesn’t even know that Caleb Trovato and Thomas L. Wagner are the same man. She was looking for a renter, and I happened to get here first. That’s it.” He tapped the picture against his palm. “Tell me how Jennifer came across one of our flyers.”

“She’s a graduate student at the university and saw it posted at the library.”

Holly had insisted on putting her phone number on the flyer, which made sense because hers was local and not long distance. Also, Caleb knew a woman’s name and number would seem less threatening. But Holly and this Jennifer woman had both been stupid to meet on campus so late at night—not that there was any point in arguing about it now. “What I don’t understand is why she noticed something so obscure in one of her pictures,” he said.

“Susan was involved in an argument that drew everyone’s attention. When Jennifer saw the flyer, she looked through the pictures she’d taken that night and, voil, there was Susan.”

With a truck like Ellis Purcell’s in the same vicinity. Was it another strange coincidence? Or did the police have a copycat killer on their hands?

“Did Jennifer say what the argument was about?” he asked.

“She wasn’t sure. She thinks Susan bumped someone’s fender while trying to park or something like that. Jennifer and her friends weren’t really aware of anyone else until Susan screamed a curse. Then they all craned their heads to see what was going on. A male voice answered by calling her a stupid bitch. Then Susan got in her car and peeled off.”

“What did the guy who called her a bitch look like?”

“He was beyond their view. After Susan left, Jennifer and her friends went back to their fun. She said if she hadn’t seen the flyer, she probably wouldn’t have thought about the incident again.”

Caleb returned his attention to the picture, trying to figure out what it meant.

Holly watched him closely, fiddling with the cuff of her long-sleeved, black cotton blouse. “This might or might not have any relevance to my sister’s disappearance, though, right?” she said. “I mean, for all we know that truck’s a coincidence and Susan was arguing with Lance, the guy she was dating.”

“At least this picture narrows down the time she could have disappeared,” Caleb said. “Jennifer said this was taken on Tuesday?”

Holly nodded.

“She was reported missing when she didn’t show up for work on Wednesday, which means she disappeared sometime Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.”

“Do you think it was Lance she was arguing with at the pizza place?” Holly persisted.

“We’ve talked to Lance. The last time he saw Susan was when they spent the night together on Saturday, remember?”

“That’s what he says. Maybe he’s afraid to tell us about the argument for fear it’ll make him a suspect in the case.”

“He’s already a suspect,” Caleb said. “In any homicide, the police look at the husband or boyfriend first, then extended family members and friends. But Gibbons doesn’t believe Lance is our guy.”

Her eyes narrowed. “When did you talk to Gibbons?”

“Last night.”

“You didn’t mention it to me.”

“I haven’t had a chance.”

“We were passing out flyers together all day!”

“It’s a moot point,” he said. “Lance has a good alibi.”

“For when?”

“For Monday and Tuesday nights.” And for Wednesday and Thursday, as well, but Caleb didn’t want to go into that.

“Where was he?” she asked.

Caleb raked his fingers through his hair, wondering how to frame his answer.

“What is it?” she pressed when he didn’t respond right away. “You know something you’re not telling me.”

What the hell, he decided. The truth was the truth. “Lance is engaged to be married,” he said. “He’s been living with his fiancée and seeing Susan on the side.”

“What?” Holly scrambled to her feet. “Susan told me he was living with his sister.”

“If it makes you feel any better, his fiancée didn’t know about Susan, either. She kicked him out as soon as she learned. But she maintains that he was home by six o’clock both Monday and Tuesday nights. She works evenings and needed him to sit with her mother, who just had surgery to replace a knee. The mother confirmed that she and Lance watched television together for several hours both nights.”

“I can’t believe it,” Holly cried. “What scum! Men are all alike!”

“Hey, I never cheated on you,” he said.

“You quit loving me. That’s even worse.” Burying her face in her hands, she dissolved into tears.

Her crying tugged at Caleb’s heart, but he told himself not to feel any sympathy. He couldn’t afford sympathy. Where Holly was concerned, the softer emotions always got him into trouble. But he couldn’t stand to see her, or any woman, cry.

Leaving his beer on the counter, he went to see if he could get her to settle down. “Holly, you’ll meet someone else,” he told her.

She slipped her arms around his neck. His immediate impulse was to pull away, but she looked so crestfallen he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Someone who’s more compatible with you than I am,” he added, patting her awkwardly. “And we’ll find Susan, okay? Don’t give up hope. Not yet. She needs us to believe.”

Holly clung to him, nestling her face into his neck. “What if we don’t find her? I’ll live my whole life never knowing what happened to my own sister. I’ve lost you already, Caleb. I can’t bear to lose her, too. She’s all I’ve got left.”

Caleb thought of the other families suffering through the same kind of loss. He didn’t relish the idea of lying to Madison Lieberman, but it seemed a small price to pay to resolve the mystery that had affected so many lives.

“I’m going to help you find Susan,” he said. “Have some faith.”

Holly shifted slightly in his arms, fitting her body more snugly to his. “If we don’t find her, you’ll eventually have to give up.”

“We’ll find her.” He got the impression she was making her body accessible on purpose, and decided he’d given her all the comfort he could.

But when he tried to release her, she held on tight.

“Caleb?”

“What?”

“Is it really over between us? Because sometimes it doesn’t feel like it is.”

It had been more than two years since he’d made love to Holly. After his second divorce, he’d gone on a brief womanizing rampage, trying to repair what his failed marriage had done to his ego, he supposed. But he’d soon found the lifestyle too empty to bother with and had thrown himself back into his work. Now it had been ten months since he’d made love to any woman.

He had to admit he was beginning to feel his body’s long neglect, but Caleb wasn’t about to make another mistake with Holly. After their first divorce, a moment’s weakness had left her pregnant and, for the baby’s sake, he’d married her again. He certainly didn’t want a repeat performance.

“It’s really over,” he said, putting her firmly away from him.

“Is there someone else?” she asked.

After tolerating Holly for so many years, Caleb suspected he wasn’t naive enough to ever fall in love again. “No.”

“You came back here to help me, even though we’re through?”

He nodded. He had come to help her, and Susan. And because of Madison, he just might get lucky enough to solve the murders that had obsessed him for years.

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