Within Range. Janice Kay Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ floor because she’d done or said something earlier that had displeased him. Even with his housekeeper and a nanny as a buffer, an active boy would try his nonexistent patience. He’d search for her qualities in Jacob and determine to eradicate them, along with Jacob’s every memory of her.

      This kind of terror was like being shaken by a vicious earthquake. Even though she’d been sure he had found them once before, she’d let herself get complacent since she moved to Lookout. She liked her job, and Jacob was a happy boy. Their little house had felt safe.

      They would never be safe. She couldn’t forget again. He wouldn’t give up; she knew that. Monsters didn’t. The best she could do was stay a step ahead. Which meant leaving, as soon as she could figure out how.

      Oh, dear God. What if Richard, too, was staying at the Lookout Inn.

      With a muffled cry, she darted across the room to test the lock on the slider that led out onto a balcony.

      * * *

      SETH LAY AWAKE for long stretches that night. Every time he dozed off, he’d find himself starting awake, adrenaline firing through his body like an electrical shock.

      Gritting his teeth and punching his pillow into a new shape, he had to convince himself repeatedly that there wasn’t anything else he could have done before morning.

      Except, maybe, sleep in the hall outside Helen Boyd’s room at the inn to make sure she didn’t disappear—and that a killer didn’t get to her and that cute kid of hers.

      He groaned and rested his forearm over his eyes. Damn it, the woman was right; his initial focus should be on the actual victim’s life, her character, her husband, friends and acquaintances. And it was—he’d talked to her husband for the first time this evening, but he’d go back as many times as he had to. Tomorrow, he’d talk to her boss and coworkers, get the names of friends. Find out if there was even a whisper suggesting she had a lover or might be up to something illicit.

      But he’d always paid attention to his gut, and while Helen was trying hard to play the outraged innocent, she wasn’t a good liar. And she was lying; he had no doubt about that. All he had to do was look at the turmoil in her eyes that should be transparent instead of clouded with a darkness he didn’t think was entirely caused by her discovery today of a dead body in her house.

      He couldn’t see her as a killer, but he had to be damn sure he was thinking like a cop, not a man drawn to a woman. He couldn’t afford to let himself have even a momentary thought about her as an attractive woman.

      Damn. Seth sat up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. He remained there for a minute, head hanging. If he fell asleep with that picture in his head, he risked having an erotic dream involving a woman he would almost certainly interview again in a murder investigation. A woman who’d looked like she hated him by the time she insisted he leave her hotel room.

      Not happening.

      Even though he wasn’t hungry, he scrambled eggs and ate breakfast to fill the last dark hour before dawn. Then he showered and drove to Hood River to attend the autopsy.

      The medical examiner didn’t come up with any surprises. Andrea Sloan was in good health generally. She had been killed by a blow to the head. The ME thought the weapon used was a short length of pipe, considerably fatter than the tire iron in the trunk of Ms. Boyd’s car. The victim had also taken a blow to her side that had broken ribs, probably postmortem. A kick, the ME suggested.

      Seth would walk through the house again today now that he had a warrant, but felt sure he wouldn’t find the weapon. The garage was his best possibility, but he’d looked in the window and guessed Ms. Boyd, at least, went in there only to retrieve the lawn mower and return it when she was finished cutting the grass.

      He was at the real estate office when it opened, where he started with the victim’s coworkers, all horrified by the news of Andrea’s death. He was assured that she was likable, charming, energetic, with the best sales record in the office. He also learned that she didn’t work on the property management side of the business.

      The owner of the office, a woman in her fifties, explained that Andrea had sold a couple of properties for a man named Dean Ziegler, as well as a house to him, and as a favor had agreed to manage his rentals. At Seth’s request, Tina Daley dug in the records, reporting that Ziegler owned an apartment house with ten units and three rental homes.

      The only key to any of those units missing was the one Seth had collected as evidence.

      Andrea’s assistant, a young woman in her twenties named Brooke Perry, insisted she’d have known if Andrea had received a phone call about a problem at one of the rental homes.

      “The only reason I can imagine she’d have been there was if the renter had asked to see her.” Her forehead creased. “Or if Mr. Ziegler wanted to meet her, or insisted she inspect the house, I suppose. But I really think she’d have said if he’d called.” She hesitated. “I was surprised when she left at five thirty. That was early for her.”

      “Did she say anything about where she was going?”

      Brooke bit her lip. “She said something like, ‘I don’t have any appointments, and anything else can wait for tomorrow.’”

      A tomorrow that would never come for her.

      Seth asked for Ziegler’s number and address. The man was evidently retired as a vice president with a local bank. Seth called, found he was home and drove to a spectacular Tuscan-style mansion on a bluff above the river. Turning, he saw Mount Hood seemingly hovering almost near enough to touch, too. Hell of a view all around.

      Ziegler turned out to be a slim, silver-haired man who was well-preserved for the seventy-three years old the DMV records said he was.

      “I’m shocked,” he repeated several times. “Why would anyone want to hurt Andrea? She’s good at her job because people like her.”

      Once they were seated in an enormous living room with gleaming wood floors and a wall of windows looking out at the river, he spread his hands and said, “Tell me how I can help you.”

      Seth couldn’t decide how genuine that was, but explained that, at this point, he was trying to get to know the victim, in a manner of speaking. “Hobbies, friends, any problems in her life, of course.”

      “Problems? I really don’t think she had any. Well, maybe two.” Ziegler smiled wryly. “Both teenagers.”

      “The stepkids.”

      “Defiant fifteen-year-old boy, sulky thirteen-year-old girl.” He shrugged. “My sense is that she actually had an okay relationship with them. She’d laugh telling me about them. They’re just at difficult ages.”

      Fifteen-year-old boys had been known to kill before...but to follow a stepmother to a house where she wasn’t supposed to be, then take her down with a single, powerful blow? Seth didn’t believe it.

      “I’ve met her husband a few times,” Ziegler continued. “Nice guy. Did you know he’s in banking, too? Manages a branch here in town.”

      Seth did know that. It had crossed his mind that a real estate agent and a banker could be up to something questionable together, but again...why was Andrea at the rental? In fact, trespassing in it?

      “Andrea СКАЧАТЬ