He didn’t like that her facts, given to her by her aunt, didn’t coincide with town records. Didn’t like what he hadn’t found at the courthouse. If her aunt had lied to her, how did he prove that?

  And he most certainly didn’t like the tension she created within him—professionally, and personally, too? He couldn’t be sure. Couldn’t figure her out.

  He just knew that he didn’t like the unanswered questions she’d brought to his town. Or the fact that she’d involved the Evergreen estate.

  And he didn’t like the way her big brown eyes became pools that seemed to want to suck him in as she turned to look at him.

  “I’d like to do the interview,” she told him. “I need peace.”

  The response relieved him, but it also sent a rock of dread to his gut. The woman was deadly serious. He had a strong sense that she was on the up-and-up. She wasn’t playing some kind of game, or visiting Evergreen on a whim. Something deep was driving her.

  And based on what he knew, there was very little chance that the answers she sought, if she ever found them, were going to be good.

  Chapter 5

  The trip to Flagstaff served one good purpose. Aimee witnessed, firsthand, the loyalty and respect Jackson Redmond earned from those who knew him. Buzz Lopez, the forensic guru who put aside what he was working on to look for DNA or any other identifiers that might possibly have survived the heat of the bullet’s detonation, clearly not only respected Jackson, but was fond of him as well. He didn’t owe Jackson the favor; he was just happy to help out a good friend.

  Turned out they’d gone to the university together right there in Flagstaff. Had been in many of the same classes. Turned out that Jackson was godfather to Buzz’s four-year-old son Julius. Also turned out that Jackson had never been married. Buzz made mention of the fact. Twice. Egging Jackson on to make him a best man and a godfather. He didn’t mention any specific prospects who could help complete that journey.

  The bullet didn’t turn up anything. Other than it was one of the most common around, could have come from any number of make and model handguns, and with Arizona being a state that didn’t require licensing to open carry a gun, tracing its shooter was going to be pretty much impossible. If Jackson happened upon a gun he thought could have been used to shoot at Aimee, he at least had bullet striations on file which could prove whether or not the bullet had come from that gun. But only if he had the weapon. There were no fingerprints or DNA.

  Jackson spent a good bit of the time on the way home on the phone, hands-free with his Bluetooth earpiece, trying to get a hold of Kelly Chase, for one, but also talking to people at the station, while Aimee dealt with email on her own phone. Before she’d died, Aunt Bonnie had been in the process of acquiring pieces from a gourd artist in Arizona and the deal was threatening to go sour. Something Aimee couldn’t let happen.

  She was glad to have something else to focus on, though. Was glad not to have to make conversation with the powerfully compelling man expertly driving not only the car, but apparently much of the world around him. She needed to get her life in order, to give her subconscious mind safe space to emerge, not get all tangled up with someone else.

  Anyone else.

  To that end, she declined his invitation to grab a quick supper at the diner as they came into town, preferring, instead, to be dropped at her car still parked at the cabin so she could make a run for groceries before it got dark.

  When she returned, she stopped as she first entered the cabin, certain that someone had been there in her absence. The smell...it wasn’t soapy, or bad, just different from the clean mountain scent she’d inhaled when she’d first checked in. After pausing on her first instinct to pick up her phone and call Jackson, she was glad she had as she noticed the freshly laid wood in the fireplace grate. Part of the service for which she was paying.

  It had been somewhat warm during the heat of the afternoon, but with the evening’s chill, and her need to relax, she figured a fire sounded like a complement to the microwave pasta dinner and glass of wine she had on the agenda.

  The plan worked. Right up until she fell asleep on the couch without a blanket and woke up freezing sometime after midnight. She’d actually been sleeping well, no memory of any dreams. Shivering, she sat up, was just deciding to leave the wine and plate of grape stems, all that was left of the food she’d practically inhaled, on the table until morning when she flipped on the table lamp and noticed movement by the fireplace.

  No one was there. She’d have seen a person in the shadows. She stood up. Took a step. And froze. She’d seen spiders before. Not one as hairy or big as the one that was slowly moving across the floor in front of the hearth. Pulling her phone out of the side pocket of her skirt just by instinct, she stopped herself from actually calling anyone. Even the sheriff needed to sleep. And she’d been raised to do for herself. Not to think she needed to call a man to do for her.

  Shaking, she stood there, keeping the creature in sight with peripheral vision, but too frozen to do anything. Even from a side view the hairy thing looked...evil.

  Her best guess, it was a desert tarantula. Which meant the venom was basically harmless to humans. But from what she’d read, the bite hurt.

  She wanted to run from the room. Hide in the bath or bedroom. Slam the door shut. And if she did, she’d hover there the rest of the night, imagining the thing coming in under the door.

  She wanted to call Jackson. And the force of that desire propelled her to the kitchen area of the one-room living space. Pulling a large plastic bowl from the cupboard, she marched with purpose toward the thing still moving slowly along the floor. Shuddered. Twice. Aimed. And landed the bowl on top of the creature, screaming as she did so.

  Backing up, she fell against the couch, staring at the bowl. It was really light. Would the spider be able to move it? The thought had her up and moving again, back to the kitchen, where, in the bottom of the stove, she came up with a big double broiler pan—the kind Aunt Bonnie used to use to cook strawberries for jam.

  The heavy pan fit perfectly over the bowl. The nocturnal visitor wasn’t going anywhere before morning. She’d be better equipped to figure out what to do with it in the light of day.

  In the bedroom, she couldn’t stop pacing. Back and forth along the bottom of the bed. A spider in a mountain cabin wasn’t reason to call the press.

  But a tarantula by the wood someone had carried in only that evening? On top of a rattlesnake at her door? Was someone trying to scare her off?

  Or was her angst getting the better of her? Making her paranoid?

  She was out of her element. Stuck in a small town in the mountains where wildlife had equal housing opportunity...

  She hadn’t imagined the bullet that morning. Jackson had pried it out of her car himself.

  And he and Buzz had talked about it most likely coming from a poacher—an illegal hunter who’d not only been on private land, but shooting toward the road.

  She’d had a rough day, but it had to be because she was in such an unfamiliar land.

  Who could possibly want to harm her? No one but the Mr. Burley who’d rented to her and Jackson Redmond even knew she was in town. Only Jackson knew why.

  It wasn’t like anyone who could possibly, maybe have known her before would recognize a thirty-two-and-three-quarters-year-old woman from her three-year-old self.

  Her gaze landed on the round plastic laundry basket in the corner, beneath a clothes rod with empty hangers. Grabbing up the basket, she carried it out to the living area, turned it upside down and dropped it on the pan.

  There. She’d jailed the pan.

  Feeling ridiculous, but better at the same time, she checked her sheets thoroughly, inspected every corner of the room and under all pieces of furniture, went in to brush her teeth and crawled into bed.

  She’d conquered one demon.

  Bring on the rest.

  * * *

  Saturday morning came a little too early for Jackson. The night before he’d stopped at The Monkey Bars—the diner and pub he frequented often enough to be considered a regular—for a burger and beer and had ended up having to arrest a guy who’d had too much to drink and was all up in another man’s politics. Something to do with legalizing the use of tracer bullets for hunting which made no sense to Jackson, but then he’d never been into hunting innocent prey, either, regardless of overpopulation.

  Probably because he spent so much of his life tracking down criminal lives.

  Still, tracer bullets? A guy had to see his bullet heading toward the animal in his sights?

  He didn’t know either of the men involved in what had turned out to be one guy pulling a gun on the other. He just knew his burger had gone cold and his beer warm by the time he had the gunman locked up. Then a couple of his deputies had been called out to a domestic violence situation which they hadn’t been able to de-escalate in time, and a woman he’d known most of his life was currently in the hospital.

  Jackson had seen to her kids, two boys, getting them safely to an aunt’s house in a nearby town while his men got the perp locked up.

  Three men in custody overnight wasn’t a statistic that pleased him.

  But it was summer. There were six times as many visitors in town as there were residents. Just as there had been his entire life. It wasn’t like he could expect it to change just because he had a cold case that was occupying a massive majority of his brain.

  Brewing coffee in the kitchen of the large triangular-shaped log home he’d bought against his father’s wishes—the old man had wanted him to raise a family in the house where he’d been raised—he glanced around at the thousand square feet of open living space on the ground floor, thinking about Maria’s two boys, about the life they knew.

  About the unused space he had. All in all, his place had four bedrooms, two on the ground floor off the main room, one which he used as an office, and then the two in the loft upstairs.

  He could see himself happily growing old in the space.

  Just wasn’t sure he’d be as content doing it alone as his father had been. At the same time, like his dad, he was definitely married to the town of Evergreen. To her people, visiting and full-time. And couldn’t see himself marrying anyone knowing he’d be asking her to play second fiddle to the town’s first seat.

  So...did he start looking around for a boy or two who needed a good home? Not Maria’s two. They had a mother who adored them fiercely. Who’d taken a beating meant for her oldest son, and who’d sworn to Jackson that she was pressing charges this time.

  But there were others...foster kids...

  Something to think about.

  Another day...when he didn’t have a heavy list of possible sources of information to check out.

  First on the list was back at the courthouse and with it being closed on Saturday, he’d have the place to himself.

  On his way into town, he put in a call to Boyd Evergreen, just to let the man know there was a potential poacher about and to assure him the sheriff’s office had already checked out his land, finding nothing suspicious, and would be doing extra patrols and keeping an eye on things.

  Boyd thanked him, gracious as always, and let Jackson know that he’d be gone for a bit, looking into alternative possibilities for his brother’s new home, and vacationing for a few days as well. He had staff at the house, but asked that Jackson contact him on his personal cell if anything else came up. He absolutely did not want anyone coming to any danger on his land. Before they rang off, Jackson asked Boyd if he’d ever heard of Adele, Mason or Aimee Cooper, and, as he’d known, the man had no idea who they were.

  Feeling better about that aspect of Aimee Barker’s sheriff’s report, he put his mind to any and every way he could help her find the answers she needed. She was taking up far too much of his mental energy for a cold case and he needed the matter closed.

  And told himself he was most intrigued, that his interest was so piqued, because cold cases in his office were rare to nonexistent.

  His detective, Sandra had already told him what she’d found from the Arizona Department of Transportation website—a small pickup truck titled to Mason Cooper, with no lien, that wasn’t registered after the year of his supposed death. And a car in Adele’s name, with a lien, that was repossessed after her death. Still, he looked for himself. He looked not only through property records, driver’s license and car registration records, but then, after making some phone calls, had access to old city services—water, sewage, trash—records. He’d already accessed criminal records, late the night before. He put Sandra on similar searches for surrounding cities, some of which were digitized so would be much quicker to find.

  And he distributed copies of the photos of Aimee’s parents, asking his department to ask around among people who’d been in town thirty years ago, to see if anyone knew anything about them. And by noon, after receiving a phone call from the professional organization of mortuaries in Phoenix, he headed down the street to Blooming Bridges, cabin number five, only to find Aimee Barker’s car absent from the lot. He tried her door, just in case, but got no answer to his knock.

  That’s when he pulled out his phone and made the call he’d been avoiding since dropping off Aimee the night before. He’d hoped to keep everything less personal than calling her private line, even while recognizing that the distinction didn’t bode well for him. The fact that he’d made such a distinction at all. Phone calls were a regular part of his job. Why should one more number make any difference at all?

  He didn’t think about wanting to call anyone else on his list all day long. He didn’t lie in bed at night, as he had the night before with Aimee’s number newly added to his phone’s database, wondering if other people on his contact list were alright.

  Or think about calling them upon waking in the morning.

  Nor did his gut leap when anyone else picked up the way it had when he heard Aimee’s voice. Telling himself he was just hungry, coffee for breakfast and no lunch weren’t his norm, he arranged to meet Aimee back at her cabin in an hour. She was out driving, trying to see if any sight sparked a memory as the tree had the day before. And he had to grab something to eat.

  A burger that wasn’t cold.

  Something he could eat at his desk while signing forms and checking in with his teams. All three new prisoners were awaiting arraignment—something that could happen electronically on a Saturday, but he wasn’t requesting the privilege on their behalf.

  And at exactly the agreed upon time, he was back at Blooming Bridges, knocking on the door of cabin five.

  She was in a tie-dyed brown-and-fuchsia sundress with spaghetti straps, and black with fuchsia bling flip-flops accenting those slim, tanned feet. Reminding him of when he’d dropped into bed the night before and thought about those toes sliding up from his ankle to his calf. He’d never, not even in his pubescent youth, had a fantasy about toes.

  And his uniform would be the barrier that kept him from having one now.

  “You’re on duty?” she asked, looking beyond his shoulder, as though seeking out his cruiser.

  “I was until noon.” Though his official hours only meant that he’d for sure be available, not that he wouldn’t be equally available any other time, day or night, if needed. “If I’d gone home to change, I wouldn’t have had time for lunch.” The added explanation was unlike him. And bothered him.

  He’d never felt a need to justify his actions. Not even to the old man.

  Another trait he’d inherited from the former Evergreen sheriff.

  “If you’ve got time, I’d like to run you by a couple of places.” He got right to the point of his presence in her day. He could fill her in on the way.

  She nodded, turned to grab her purse—a large cloth floral bag, with a wide shoulder strap he recognized from the day before—and he caught a glimpse of the room beyond her. Wasn’t going to say anything.

  Told himself her activities or personal habits were none of his business. As long as they were legal.

  He couldn’t come up with a single law having to do with pans being trapped in laundry baskets. But... “You playing some kind of game over there?” he asked, staring at the odd arrangement of household items not far from her fireplace. “Some kind of toss game?” Trying to throw a basket over a pan was a better scenario than thinking she might have used the upside down basket as some kind of step stool—with the pan beneath it so it didn’t collapse?

  She didn’t turn to look where he’d pointed. He was pretty sure she shuddered, though she’d also been hitching her bag over her shoulder so he couldn’t be certain.

  “It’s a problem I solved in the moment, waiting for me to come up with a more permanent solution.”

  Was there nothing this woman did that didn’t intrigue him?

  She moved toward the door, as though urging him out. He stood still, staring at the basket. “Mind telling me what the problem is?” he asked. Maybe some kind of artistic thing. Spatial. She ran an art shop. And from the look he’d taken at her website the night before—a much longer look than intended, while lying in bed unable to sleep—he’d learned that she was also an artist whose work was featured in the shop. Floral pieces. Old window frames, for instance, with dried flowers pressed between the panes of glass.

  There’d been one that would...

  “A spider if you must know,” she said, her wild short brown hair covering more of her forehead as she frowned. “I’ve got it trapped and I’m growing enough of an armor around me to be able to actually get it out of here. Until then, it stays were it is.”

  A little spider was underneath that boiler pan and laundry basket? He grinned inside at the thought of her dealing with a lizard—something else prevalent in Arizona wildlife—and in residential yards.

  “If you wait long enough, it’ll die.”