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The tear dripped onto her cheek, and he halted its downward path with his thumb. “I’m going to find this guy, Michelle. And he’s not some whistling homeless dude.”
Sniffling, she pulled back her shoulders. “I—I might have another clue.”
“Something you remembered?” He stepped back from her warmth, squashing his desire, shelving it…for later.
“Emails.”
“Emails?”
She ducked around him and headed for her kitchen table. “It actually occurred to me before, but I was too embarrassed to tell you about it. But now that my pathetic insecurities are out in the open, I may as well lay it all out there.”
She didn’t have the corner on pathetic insecurities.
“Has someone been threatening you?” That’s why she was calling in the help of the bicycle geek. The fact that she’d planned to open up to Alec before him irritated the hell out of him.
“Sort of… I don’t know.” She hovered over her laptop, clicking keys on the keyboard. “Darn. I should’ve been saving them.”
He joined her at the table as she scrolled through her inbox. “What did the emails say?”
“I was too chicken to open them.” She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “But the subject line said, Like mother, like daughter?”
“That sounds like a threat to me. Or at least harassment.” He sat in front of the computer and opened her Deleted Items.
“Don’t bother. I did a hard delete and sent them to cyberspace oblivion.”
“Do you think Bicycle Boy can help?”
She huffed and punched him in the arm. “He’s a good guy.”
“I hope he knows how to retrieve those messages.” He rubbed his biceps where her delicate hand had nailed him. “Do you know if Amanda had been receiving any emails? Any threats?”
“She didn’t mention anything to me.” She hugged herself and wedged a hip against the kitchen table. “Amanda didn’t have any enemies.”
“Had she been on any dates since the separation from her husband?”
“No. She talked a good game, but she missed Ryan.” Michelle’s face tightened and she pursed her lips. If she was going to burst into tears, he had a strong shoulder.
Her cell phone played some hip-hop song and Colin raised his brows.
“I like to keep current with the kids.” She answered the phone and moved to the window.
Colin clicked around Michelle’s computer as she talked in a low voice across the room. He’d have to give over to Alec’s computer skills and hope the guy knew what he was doing and could retrieve those messages. Maybe someone was trying to scare Michelle, put her on edge. Killers played games, especially the smart ones.
“That was Chief Evans. He wants to see me this afternoon. You, too.”
“Is he still convinced he has his man?”
“He wouldn’t go into it with me.
“Any luck?” She pointed at the laptop screen.
“No. I’m going to have to defer to Alec. Dammit.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why you took an instant dislike to Alec. He’s harmless.”
Harmless is not the way Colin would describe the way Alec had looked at Michelle. Did the woman have no clue how sexy she was? She’d probably be uneasy to hear herself described as sexy…thanks to that mother of hers. Hootchie-cootchie mama. What had he been thinking?
“I hope Mr. Harmless can get those emails.”
“They may be nothing, Colin, totally unrelated to Amanda’s…death.”
“Anything out of the ordinary needs to be examined.” He smacked his forehead. “I completely forgot.”
“What?”
He shoved his hand into his pocket to dig out the chain he’d found in the basement at Columbella House. He dangled it from his finger. It was a bracelet.
“I found this in the basement right before you screamed bloody murder. Do you recognize it? Is it Amanda’s?”
Michelle fingered the bracelet and the charms hanging from it. She plucked one charm out from the rest and squinted at it. Then she dropped her hand as if the charm had scorched her.
CHAPTER SIX
MICHELLE RUBBED THE tips of her tingling fingers against the leg of her shorts, trying to erase memories.
“Is it Amanda’s?” Colin cupped the charm bracelet in the palm of his hand.
“N-no.”
“But you know the owner?”
Warmth flared in Michelle’s cheeks. It’s like the woman had come back to haunt her this summer. “It’s my mom’s.”
“This is your mom’s bracelet?” Colin hooked his index finger around the chain and dangled it in front of his face.
“It didn’t belong to my mom. She made it.”
“Oh.” He dropped the bracelet next to the laptop, where it coiled like a snake. “She made jewelry?”
“Yeah. No big deal. She crafted the pieces at home and sold them to her friends and some of the teenaged girls.”
“But it didn’t belong to Amanda.”
Michelle poked at the bracelet, a bit tarnished and forlorn. “There’s a charm with the initials MS. I’m assuming it belongs to one of the St. Regis twins since they were both in and out of the house when they were last here.”
“Mystery solved. I won’t bother turning it over to the police today.” He glanced at his watch. “Do you want to head to the police station now?”
“Sure. Do you have a car or do you want me to drive?” She swept the bracelet into her hand and stuffed it into her pocket.
“I have a rental.”
She hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her shorts where the bracelet burned against her leg. Maybe she should leave it here. She didn’t need the constant reminder of her mother gouging her thigh. “You know, I never even asked you where you live now. Are you in San Francisco?”
“L.A., although I’ve been thinking of requesting a transfer to San Francisco. One of my buddies is with the Bureau up there. He’s the one who first told me about Tiffany Gunderson’s murder.”
“The local cops realize now that you’re not here in any official capacity.”
“I know, but I still feel obliged to share my opinions with them—that the Gunderson and Frank murders are related, and I believe Amanda’s death is tied to theirs. This is the same guy.”
“But why? Does he plan to work his way through the entire Coral Cove class that graduated ten years ago? Does he have something against those particular women…or me?” She couldn’t stop the goose pimples that rushed across her arms.
Colin must’ve noticed her shiver because he took a step forward and rubbed his knuckles along her skin. “That’s what I’m here to find out, whether the local cops like it or not. My parents were friends with the Gundersons. I at least owe it to them.”
Michelle practically purred at his touch. If the local cops didn’t like Colin’s presence in Coral Cove…she did.
Two hours later, Colin stepped onto the sidewalk outside the Coral Cove Police Station and squinted at the sky. The sun was staging a valiant attack against the stubborn marine layer, hurriedly pricking through the gray muck before it was time to sink into the ocean.
Settling his shoulders against the brick facade of the building, Colin crossed his arms and dug his heels into the sidewalk. The small-town cops hadn’t appreciated his meddling. They’d found a smear of blood on the transient’s sleeve and had closed the case before the blood analysis had come back from the lab.
They hadn’t been interested in rose petals, class connections or class reunions. The summer tourist season loomed less than two weeks away, and the chief and the mayor wanted to make sure nothing more than the haze from the ocean was hanging over Coral Cove by the time the crowds staggered in from L.A. and San Francisco.
Michelle rounded the corner, accompanied by a pumped-up guy in jeans and a Coral Cove High School sweatshirt, and waved. After she’d had her turn with the police, she’d gone to the high school to collect an answer key for some quizzes she had to grade. Looked like she’d brought the mascot with her.
Colin pushed off the wall of the police station. Michelle had been holding up well under the shock of her friend’s murder and her proximity to the killer. But Colin had sensed her busywork and interest in helping him investigate sprang from a desire to keep her sadness at bay. Whatever worked. God knows, he’d employed a million devices to hold his own sorrow at arm’s length.
“That didn’t take long.” Her eyes sparkled above flushed cheeks. “Colin Roarke, this is Larry Brunswick. He’s head of the math department.”
Colin shook the man’s hand. Brunswick looked familiar. Must’ve been teaching when he’d attended CCHS. “I don’t think I had you for any classes, but I think you were teaching when I was in high school.”
“I started at Coral Cove the year your brother, Kieran, was a senior. So I had the thrill of watching him play. Helluva quarterback.”
Colin schooled his face into a bland smile. If he went off on Brunswick like he had with that other teacher, Michelle would have him pegged as a loose cannon. And her opinion of him mattered more than he cared to admit.
“Yeah, he was.”
“Not that you weren’t an amazing player yourself.”
Colin held up his hands and twisted his lips into a grin. “I’m not looking for kudos. Kieran was the better athlete.”
The better man.
Brunswick’s eyes clouded as he drew his brows together. “They still haven’t… I mean, is he still considered missing?”
“Yeah.” Colin felt Michelle’s sharp glance like a needle poking his flesh. He kept his gaze pinned to Brunswick’s sympathetic face.
“That’s rough.” Brunswick adjusted the satchel on his shoulder. “And now this in Coral Cove, Amanda’s murder, I mean. And practically on Michelle’s doorstep. I hear they got the guy.”
“Maybe.” His training had taught him never to give away too much information…to anyone.
“I hope so. My wife, Nancy, is nervous.” Brunswick clicked his tongue. “Glad I decided to clean out my desk today and ran into you at school, Michelle, and had that answer key you needed.”
“You’re a lifesaver. I didn’t want to do all those quadratic equations myself to grade the quizzes.”
“Anytime.” He rolled his wrist and checked his watch. “I’d better hurry or I’m going to be late picking up my wife. Good to see you, Colin.”
One quick wave and Brunswick was practically jogging down the sidewalk. “Does his wife keep him on a short leash or what?”
“She’s a judge’s daughter, kind of a diva.” Michelle studied his face, and he smiled to avoid her scrutiny, to mask any residual pain that might be marking his features. “Do you want to grab a late lunch, compare notes?”
“Yeah, let’s compare notes.”
He steered her toward his buddy’s restaurant, Burgers and Brews, but she shook her head.
“I just can’t, I just…that’s where Amanda and I had dinner last night.”
“I’m sorry. Stupid of me to suggest it.”
“I know Bryan Sotelo’s your friend. I hope the macabre association doesn’t hurt his business.”
“In my experience, it tends to help a business—curiosity seekers.”
“Ugh. I don’t get that.” She pointed across the street. “The Great Earth is pretty good.”
He grabbed his throat and stuck out his tongue. “I don’t do vegetarian.”
“They have burgers and brews over there, too. Don’t worry. I won’t force you to eat alfalfa sprouts.”
Five minutes later they were ensconced at a corner table, and Colin was running his fingers down a short list of burgers. “The sweet potato fries sound good.”
“They are.” Michelle’s menu covered her entire face and she had a white-knuckled grip on its edges.
Colin tapped a finger on the top of the plastic menu. “Are you okay in there?”
She inched the menu down so that her big, brown eyes appeared over the top. “Everyone’s talking about the murder. I keep catching snippets of conversation, and people keep throwing me sidelong glances. Maybe I shouldn’t be out.”
“Stop.” He clapped the menu closed with his hands and she flinched. “Of course everyone’s gossiping about the murder. It’s a big deal for a small town. Remember when that girl disappeared a few years ago from the music festival? I even heard about that and I wasn’t living here.”
“I hate it.” She dropped her lashes, where they created dark crescents on her cheeks. “The gossip.”
“It’s a small town. And you have every right to be out for lunch. It doesn’t mean you mourn your friend any less.”
She grabbed a napkin and bunched it up at her nose. “I’m going to miss Amanda. You have to catch her killer, Colin. Amanda needs justice. She deserves justice.”
“Maybe the Coral Cove P.D. has already caught him.”
She snorted and then blew her nose. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”
“Did the chief tell you about the blood on Chris’s shirt?”
