SNOW ANGELS

BARBARA W. KLASER

Copyright © 2004 Barbara W. Klaser
All Rights Reserved

http://www.mysterynovelist.com
Please visit the author's website for donation
ISBN 0-9713921-4-5
Edgestone Books HTML format
electronic edition released April 2004

All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

To Mom, in loving memory.

Prologue

ELEVEN YEARS AGO

"You should've turned there, to get to my house."

"I know." The young man in the driver's seat kept his gaze on the road.

"Where are we going?"

"My place." He shot her a grin full of straight teeth. "It's early yet."

He was incredibly good looking. Why couldn't she like him? That would make her parents happy, and make this not such a wasted evening. She wouldn't feel guilty about agreeing to go out with him in the first place. It had been dishonest to accept his invitation merely to please her parents, in an attempt to make them less suspicious of her. Why, to gain their trust, did she have to commit this lie?

She glimpsed the name on the mailbox as he turned into an asphalt driveway. This must be his parents' house, this grand structure at least four times the size of her own home. There were no other cars in the driveway. "Are your parents here?"

"They're out of town with my sisters." He shot her another grin, this one clearly intended to be seductive, an implication of shared conspiracy. A conspiracy she didn't share, or want to.

"I live here." He parked in front of a guest cottage, a hundred feet or so from the main house. It was a miniature replica of the larger structure.

"Do you have a telephone in there? I need to check in with my parents. They wanted me home by ten." She didn't like that he'd brought her here without asking her first.

"Your dad said eleven." He narrowed his eyes.

"I don't think my mom knew he said eleven. I should call, and I have to get home soon."

When they entered the little house, he put his keys on a table by the door and pointed her toward the sofa. "Make yourself comfortable in here, while I get us something to drink."

She put her purse down next to his keys. "No soda or caffeine for me, please. Maybe ice water." She headed for the phone on the desk in the front room.

He paused in his kitchen doorway and pursed his lips. "How about a glass of wine. Don't tell me you've never had alcohol? You're nearly eighteen."

She shrugged. "I have to be up early for work tomorrow." Besides, she was sure her parents hadn't urged her to go out with him so she could drink. That was the last thing they'd intended, and if this was a test she intended to pass.

While he was in the kitchen she quickly phoned her mother and let her know where she was. Then she phoned a friend. "Do you have the keys to the van tonight?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"If I page you from this number, will you come get me? This doesn't feel right." She gave her friend the number and directions.

"Okay, but you're the only girl I know who wouldn't be thrilled to go out with him."

When he returned with their drinks she was seated on the sofa staring at the painting over his mantle, a particularly gruesome hunting scene. He brought her a tumbler of ice water and a glass of red wine. "In case you change your mind." He nodded toward the painting. "Like it?"

"It's not my kind of thing. Do you hunt?" She had friends who hunted, but she'd failed to ever understand their attraction to the sport.

"Since I was a kid, every chance I get." He sat beside her and leaned over to kiss her.

She turned her cheek to meet his lips. "I don't kiss on the first date."

He stared at her as if she'd spoken a foreign language. "My dad gave me the impression you were a wild child, that I was supposed to tame you."

"He said that?"

"Not exactly, but my mom heard your parents are worried that you're hanging out with a bad crowd--some kind of Satanists who always dress in black?"

She sighed, tired of how people twisted things. "I've been dating a guy who's a Pagan. That's not the same thing as a Satanist. He believes in a God and a Goddess, and in following the cycles of nature. My parents don't understand anyone who doesn't believe the same way they do. He wears black a lot because it's his preference, not because of his religion. He's an artist. So am I."

Her date nodded, but the vacant look in his eyes made her pretty sure he didn't understand. "I thought you'd at least give me a kiss after I bought you dinner. Just following the cycles of nature." He grinned.

"If you wanted me to pay for my dinner, you should've said so. I'll pay my share now." She started to get up for her purse.

He chuckled and took her hand. "Will you relax? I was joking. Sit here with me, have a sip of wine. We'll just talk for a while if you want."

She sat back, thinking maybe she wasn't being fair. She resigned herself to an hour more of his company before it would be polite to insist he take her home. The water glass looked cloudy and she wondered how good a dishwasher he was. She decided a sip or two of the wine wouldn't hurt, and she picked it up.

"Cheers." He raised his glass and clinked it against hers, then sipped his. "You're a senior next year, right? What will you do when you graduate?"

It was the first time tonight he'd shown any interest in her plans. He'd spent most of the time talking about himself. The wine was bitter and astringent. She took a sip and put it down.

"I'm going to college on the East Coast. After that I want to travel, see the world outside Cedar Creek. I'll come back eventually and open my own business here, maybe a bakery."

He shook his head. "Once I leave I'm not coming back."

"Not even to visit your family?"

He didn't answer. He stroked her forearm and studied her face. "You're pretty. I never noticed you when we were younger. I wonder why. What if I just kiss your hand?" He raised her hand to his lips.

She giggled, she couldn't help it. Was he serious, or mocking her? He made a low, growling noise, his eyes darkening. He kissed her hand again, then the inside of her forearm. It made her tingle inside, in spite of herself. He stroked her hair, and a moment later her cheek.

He gently raised her wine glass to her lips, and she sipped again, then again, deliberately taking the smallest possible sips, deciding he could be charming when he made the attempt. She took the glass from him, and only pretended to sip after that. She was beginning to relax. In fact she thought the wine must be stronger than normal, because it made her fuzzy headed after a few sips.

She'd risen early this morning to work in the kitchen at the resort, and it was near her usual bedtime, maybe that was why she felt drowsy. She yawned, and when he got up to put on some music, she leaned back on the sofa. She found herself looking at that painting on the far wall again. Still finding it revolting, she closed her eyes.

It took her several seconds to realize he had his arms around her, and was kissing her lips forcefully, his tongue in her mouth, and one hand inside her blouse. He'd rearranged himself and eased her back on the couch. She was lying under him. He started unbuttoning her blouse. She couldn't get enough air.

"Wait." She started to sit up, feeling lightheaded, though she was certain she'd only had a few sips of the wine.

Instead of listening to her, he yanked her blouse open, tearing it.

"No. Stop!"

He dove his hands inside her bra.

Alarm spread through her. She tried to fight his hands off. "No! I said no!" She tried to move away, but he was strong and heavy, with nearly his full weight on her. She struggled harder, and he grasped her wrists tightly, his legs pinning hers to the couch. "No!"

He wasn't listening, or responding to her words, and he was stronger. He removed her shoes, pulled up her skirt and tugged at her panties. "Relax," he said, his tone short, urgent, demanding.

"Let me go!" She fought him. It hurt now to struggle. He gripped her wrists tightly with one hand above her head.

"Should've had more wine," he snarled, breathing fast.

His phone rang, and he ignored it, continuing to struggle with her. It rang again.

"That's my mother, calling to check on me."

He paused and glared at her.

"She doesn't trust me, I told you. She'll keep calling, and if she doesn't reach me, she'll come looking for me."

"She'll think I'm driving you home."

Seconds later the phone had stopped ringing, and she knew he wasn't going to let her go. Not before he got what he wanted. She had to think.

She stopped struggling and lay still. He looked her in the eye, suspicious. She made out to be drowsy, remembering how her baby brother looked when sleep overtook him. She let her eyes close, pretending to fall asleep. She was certain now that he'd drugged the wine, probably the cloudy water, too, and she hoped he'd think it had taken its full intended effect. He sat still, on top of her, with his grip loosening on her wrists. Testing her? She slackened every muscle in her body and felt drowsy again. Whatever the drug was, it was potent. She didn't remember drinking much of the wine, yet she had to grapple to keep her feigned sleep from drowsing into the real thing.

He believed her act, finally, and let go of her wrists. She let one arm drop, then lay perfectly still, willing her muscles to relax. He lifted her skirt, and it was all she could do not to go rigid or fight him, as he took her panties off. Finally he moved farther away, until he wasn't touching any part of her but her legs. She took a deep, slow breath as she cracked her eyes open, feeling sleep tug at her in spite of her fear. He was turned the other way, slipping off his own shoes, unzipping his pants.

Several seconds later he moved a foot or so away from her. He'd pulled a condom packet out and was opening it with his teeth. Now he had his pants down to his knees and was lifting a leg to remove them.

She moved.

He snatched at her blouse as she moved, tearing it more.

She kept going. She ran to the door and grabbed her purse and his keys before he could catch his balance and move far.

She ran. She had no idea how fast he would be, but he looked athletic and he could slip his shoes back on, while hers were still on the floor beside his sofa. She kept running, barefoot, wondering only briefly what objects her feet struck as she moved, running as fast as her legs and her newest surge of adrenaline could carry her.

When she heard his car turn onto the road, she realized he must have had a spare key. A rise of alarm sent her into the woods, out of sight of the road. There she couldn't move nearly as fast, but she kept going, keeping herself out of sight of the road. He passed her.

A moment later he'd turned around and was heading more slowly back in her direction. He shone a flashlight into the woods, first on one side then the other, as he moved slowly up the road.

She stood out of sight behind a large tree and some brush, breathing hard, again fighting sleepiness. She gripped his keys so tightly they dug into the flesh of her hand. She kept the keys tightly balled so they didn't make a noise, and placed them on the ground near her feet, afraid to let them jingle, afraid to breathe too loudly.

How long would it take her to get home on foot? Could she make it through the woods? How far was it to her house? She was too confused, her thoughts scrambling with her fear and the drug. How would she find her way in the dark?

He passed her a second time with his light. She started through the woods in what she hoped was the direction of the resort, staying as close to the road as she dared, to avoid getting more disoriented.

He must've given up, because after his second sweep with the light he didn't come back. Had he gone on into town?

She walked, less panicked now, her adrenaline surplus gradually fading. Her feet hurt. Her wrists ached where he'd gripped her. She became aware that her blouse was ripped and wouldn't button. It hung open, exposing her lace bra. Her skirt was rumpled and crooked; her panties were back at his house. Her hair was a ragged mess, falling down around her face and neck, lopsided and tangled. Her hands shook whenever she tried to hold her blouse together. She gave up and concentrated instead on where she was going, and on blinking away the tears that threatened to blur her vision.

Finally she heard another vehicle on the road. Not his car, but something big. Its headlights were higher off the ground and wider apart. She moved out and waved at it.

It was the van from the resort. It stopped beside her, and she opened the door. Her friend was driving.

"My God, what happened? Hurry and get in. I got to feeling weird about your call, and I called you back, but no one answered. I decided to drive out this way. There's a blanket in the back."

Chapter 1

Success doesn't mean happiness.

Tess Hunter read the words she'd written on the paper in front of her, and blinked at them a few times. They were a portion of her silent argument with a thesaurus in a computer program, this electronic listing on the screen of her laptop that ranked success right in there with words like satisfaction, contentment, happiness. Could the program be wrong about the meaning of success, or was she? Tess Hunter thought she'd found success, at a young age, but it didn't feel like happiness to her. It felt more like a trap.

She sighed and swiveled her chair back to the drafting table, where the half-inked drawing of a Victorian tea party mocked her with its sterility. Tess glanced out the window to her left, focused through the brown band of smog above the horizon visible between hundreds of other structures, and imagined she glimpsed the pale glint of the ocean beyond. This was wishful thinking. She couldn't see it from here. She took a deep breath of the filtered, conditioned air of the building from which she and her partners ran their magazine and publishing business, then looked down at her drawing, and sighed again. "This isn't working."

"It looks great to me." This came from the doorway behind her. Her secretary Debbie held a paper bag out to Tess as she entered her office. "I come bearing lunch. You looked preoccupied earlier, and I didn't think you heard my offer to bring you something, so I assumed you'd want the usual. Tuna salad on rye?"

Tess thanked her and realized how hungry she was, as she took the bag. She removed the sandwich wrapped in white paper, along with a bundle of paper napkins. She unfolded a napkin, then unwrapped and picked up half the sandwich.

"What don't you like about it?" Debbie was looking at the drawing again, her face placid.

Tess paused to chew and swallow her first bite of tuna on rye before she admitted, "I wasn't actually thinking about the drawing. I was . . . muttering to myself."

The drawing hadn't progressed since yesterday, and Tess had spent most of this afternoon sitting here daydreaming, caught up in her thoughts of escape, of rebellion--possibly total abandon.

"Tess." Her partner Harry Ryker leaned his head in the doorway behind Debbie. He spoke in a clipped British accent. "Have you got a moment to meet with Paige and me about the name change?"

Tess glanced down at her sandwich, in an inexplicable instant of panic. She put the sandwich down as Harry Ryker and their other partner Paige Chandler pressed into the office, and Tess's secretary Debbie was the one who escaped.

"Oh, you're having lunch." Paige Chandler was a tall woman with chestnut brown hair and piercing dark eyes. Her glance moved from the sandwich to the drawing on Tess's drafting table. She moved into the room and sat in one of the chairs across from Tess's desk. Harry Ryker followed suit, maneuvering his lean frame into a chair in one swift movement.

Tess sighed and wiped her hands with her paper napkin. "I'm sure we will eventually decide on a new name for the magazine. But today isn't a good day. I'm not making any progress at all on this." She waved at the drawing. "I doubt I'll be much more creative about a name."

"We want to present you with an idea," Paige Chandler said, her face bright with enthusiasm.

Tess wondered what they would both say if she told them she didn't care what they called the magazine because she was leaving. She was in fact making plans to go away for a few weeks to think through what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She glanced at each of them, afraid she'd spoken those thoughts out loud.

"Harry thinks we should add your name to the magazine title, something like Tess Hunter's Treasured Home. Only not Treasured Home anymore, of course. The point of this exercise is to get rid of that. We'd go from Treasured Home to Tess Hunter's Simple Pleasures, or Tess Hunter's Creative Living Magazine. You see?"

Tess shook her head. She saw, yes. They didn't see. Hadn't they noticed how silent she'd been on many decisions of late? Couldn't they hear in her tone that she was backing away from the business, from caring about the business? That she'd been doing so for months? She didn't see how it could be anything but clear to everyone around her that she no longer had the passion about their magazine that a publisher should have.

"You don't understand." Tess hesitated. They weren't just her partners, they were her friends--especially Paige, who'd been Tess's best friend since their first year of college. Tess dreaded letting them down, but she certainly didn't want the magazine named after her!

Paige looked at Harry. "I told you she wouldn't go for it." She leaned toward Tess, "Look, just think about it. Now we do need to go over the names. Let's brainstorm. That doesn't take too much creative genius. Even Harry can manage that."

"Thank you." Harry sent her a look.

"I'm taking a vacation," Tess blurted out. "I don't want to make any decisions, about the name change or anything else, until I've had some time away."

Her words halted Paige, who blinked. "You never take vacations." Then Paige narrowed her dark eyes. "What's going on?"

"I want some time away, to think. I'm planning to visit my family in Cedar Creek, I haven't seen them in years. I've recently been needing to . . . well, to rethink some of my decisions about my career, about my place in the business."

She'd said it.

Paige looked as if she'd been slapped. Harry wore a blank expression, his eyes a bit glazed over.

"Rethink?" Paige repeated. "Your career?"

"Yes. I can't contemplate the name change--especially putting my name on the magazine--before I do that." Tess nodded toward her laptop computer. "I've finished up my columns for the next few issues, and I'm hoping you'll be able to do without me for a few weeks--until the New Year."

Paige and Harry exchanged looks. Both leaned forward. Paige said, "Tess, why haven't you said anything before? You know we're serious about the name change. I mean, I know we go through this drill every year, but that's why I entertained the idea of using your name. Because we're serious about it this time. I thought we all were. You--"

"I know, and I'm sorry I haven't spoken up before now. I should have, but I've been having a terrible time concentrating on anything to do with the business. I've been working shorter days for months. Surely you've noticed. Maybe I'm burned out, and the time off will help me re-light the fire in myself again, but for now I feel this need . . . to escape."

Paige stood up. "Escape?" She wore the look of someone who'd been struck a blow. She looked at Harry. "I need to escape. Right now."

Paige left the room.

Harry stood and looked after Paige, then at Tess. "I thought we were the ones coming in here with a bomb to drop in the workings. I--well--I'll let you get on with . . ." He moved slowly, glancing at her sandwich, her unfinished drawing, and finally the surface of her desk. He paused and took on a sorrowful expression. Then he left the room.

Tess looked down at the desk where he'd focused, and saw her doodle in the center of the paper blotter, where she'd scrawled in bold black letters with her Rapidograph technical pen, "Success doesn't mean happiness."

###

Tess spent Saturday morning trying to avoid all thought of the office, her business, or her partners' reactions to her announcement. The more she resisted thinking about it the more it preoccupied her. She hadn't intended her news to come out that way. She'd hoped to have a meeting with them and calmly lead up to the possibility of her leaving, for a vacation at first, an extended leave, and then discuss the possibility that her absence might become permanent. She'd hoped to take the first few weeks off to prove to them she wasn't needed.

Anyone with some editorial and home arts background could do what Tess had been doing for the past five years. Any decent commercial artist could provide the same caliber of artwork. They didn't carry that many of her illustrations in the magazine and cookbooks these days, most of the time they used photographs. Theirs was no longer a struggling new business. They'd paid off their debts to Paige's father, the publishing business was growing, magazine circulation had increased, and most of the effort didn't directly involve Tess's culinary or fine arts background, or for that matter her ideas. She'd been thinking Paige and Harry could continue the business easily without her. They didn't see it that way, and now she'd blown her chance to ease them into the idea, by blurting out her escape plan in an inept and upsetting way.

Tess moped around her little house overlooking a canyon near the beach. She fiddled around in a haphazard way in the room she'd set aside for painting, then in the kitchen. When she'd moved here months ago, she'd equipped it as a duplicate of the test kitchen at the office, so she could bring work home. She looked around at the appliances with their cold, slick surfaces and suddenly felt lost in her own house.

###

Early Saturday evening Tess picked up the phone and called information, asked for the number of Stoneway Resort in Cedar Creek, and dialed the number. When the reservations clerk at Stoneway answered, Tess asked to speak to her former schoolmate Angie Norwood.

From the time Tess had been eight years old until she'd left Cedar Creek at seventeen, Angie Norwood had been her closest friend. But Tess hadn't been in touch with Angie since she'd left home eleven years ago. She recalled her mother mentioning, during one of their infrequent phone calls, that Angie owned Stoneway now.

"Tess?" A pause. "Tess Hunter? Oh my gosh! Where are you?"

"Angie, I'll tell you my whole life's story since we last spoke, once I'm there, but I'm calling to make reservations to stay at the resort for a few weeks." Tess told Angie the date she wanted to arrive and explained that she planned to stay through the end of the year. "I'm hoping to surprise my family, so please don't tell anyone about my visit yet. I'm also wondering if you'll discreetly check with my parents to find out if they plan to be in town over Thanksgiving and the winter holidays."

Angie agreed to help Tess plan her surprise. She reserved a room for her and said she'd call Tess back on Sunday about the Hunter family's plans. "Pack plenty of warm clothes. It's been snowing like crazy up here, for days. I can't wait to see you!"

###

Tess arrived at work late Monday morning and found Paige Chandler and Harry Ryker waiting for her. She hadn't gotten a cup of coffee or put down her bag before they entered her office, ready to talk about her plans.

"Okay, I'm over my initial shock," Paige said. "I want to know how long you've been feeling this need to escape. It hasn't been for the entire five years, has it? I know I have a forceful personality, and I tend to steamroll people, but I thought you knew me well enough not to let yourself get carried away by my crazy schemes unless you wanted to. Tell me you haven't been involved in this whole business just because I wanted it."

"No, Paige," Tess said. "I wanted it too, but I've been doing a lot of painting, at home, since I bought the house. The drawings I've done for this book are lifeless in comparison. There's the test kitchen, working in an environment that isn't anything like a house, trying to feel inspired to nurture a nonexistent family. It's all become a sham for me. I don't feel anything nurturing or homey at all in this anymore. I look at all the magazines on the racks in the supermarket, and I think the people who put them together have no idea at all what makes a house a home. Including us, to a certain degree. I mean, look at the three of us. We're single, and we spend most of our time here."

Tess stopped, because Paige wore a stormy look in her dark eyes. "There, you see? I can't talk about it without offending you. I'm saying what I feel, Paige." Tess looked at Harry. "I know it's business, that's what it's supposed to be. It's a good business. I'm just not certain I want it to be my business anymore. How can I, feeling this way about it? I'm hoping all I need is some time off, that I'll get over this--whatever it is I'm going through. But I might not, and I want you both to be prepared for that possibility. Can we call it a hiatus, for now, and try not to draw any conclusions from my need for it, until I've had some time away to get a grip on myself?"

Harry and Paige both nodded in grim silence.

"I know this couldn't come at a worse time. I know you're serious about the name change this year. I couldn't let you go any further without saying something." Tess took a deep breath and leaned toward them, over her desk. "What do you need from me before I take my leave of absence?"

Paige met her gaze, her brown eyes still dark and troubled. "You're going home?"

Tess nodded. "For the holidays, for a start. I've made reservations at an inn that an old schoolmate of mine owns, a couple miles outside Cedar Creek. I'm planning to be there in time for Thanksgiving."

"That's week after next," Harry said with a renewed look of panic.

"I don't see any reason to delay, now that you know. The sooner I get away the sooner we'll all be able to decide what direction we're headed."

An hour later, they were conversing like partners again, like business people, Tess thought. They made plans to turn over Tess's work, but Paige stalled at Tess's mention of the book she was working on. "That's your project."

"We haven't even named it. We keep calling it the tea party book," Tess argued.

Paige nodded. "I know. It makes me think of the Boston Tea Party. More now than ever." She said this in a grim tone, with a pointed look at Tess. "But it's your project."

"It's a vacation, Paige, not a revolution."

"It feels like a revolution to me."

"Tess." Debbie stood at the office door, wearing a tragic look. "You have an urgent call."

"Who is it, Debbie?" Tess spoke with an uncharacteristic sharpness, annoyed by the interruption. She needed Paige to understand her. She turned back to Paige, prepared to continue their discussion.

"It's Sheriff Les Kendall. From Wilder County." Debbie's voice was subdued but emphatic. "It's urgent, Tess."

Tess paused and turned back to Debbie as the significance sank in, of receiving a call from the sheriff of the county where her family lived. She picked up the phone. "This is Tess Hunter."

Instead of leaving as she normally would, Debbie walked over to Paige and Harry and spoke softly to them.

On the phone Sheriff Kendall said something to Tess about a van going off a mountain road, over an embankment. Something about people killed in the crash. Tess couldn't absorb the sheriff's words. They jumbled in her mind. She wanted to change them around, to make this not about her family. Then he said the names of those who'd been killed: James Hunter, Catherine Hunter, and Spencer Hunter. Her parents' and brother's names. Killed. In the crash.

Spence is only seventeen. The single thought resounded in her mind, and she was sure she'd said it out loud, but when she did try to speak, her voice broke, and she could only listen to the sheriff go on about what had happened and how sorry he was.

His words hit her like a weight pressing against her chest, constricting her breath. Tess fought past that weight and stood up. She drew in her breath as though she'd been too long underwater. Her mind fought comprehension, wrestled with it. The hand that held the phone dropped to her side. Harry took the phone from her and spoke calmly, quietly to the sheriff. Paige put her arms around Tess, speaking in a comforting tone, words Tess didn't grasp.

Some time later, Tess walked outside to a car under Harry's big black umbrella. She realized later it must have been raining when he drove her to her house overlooking the canyon. She didn't remember the rain, only the sheltering blackness of the umbrella.

Chapter 2

Cedar Creek, California, lay in a small mountain valley north of the Wilder County seat, surrounded by the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Stars lit the sky at dusk, between the soft clouds of a late fall edging early into winter. The silvers, grays, and dusky blues of the sky and distant peaks were only a bit paler than the indigos of the nearer mountains. The blues of dusk enveloped the snowy mountains, softening them. A few bright stars shone like diamonds in the wintry nightfall.

Tess Hunter drove through the town as its lights twinkled on in the deepening twilight. Autumn snow blanketed the ground. The old high school Tess had attended was gone, replaced by a new one half a mile nearer the center of Cedar Creek. Her brother Spence had attended this one, until he died. The thought struck at Tess in the dusk like a blunt object, but she shook off her grief for the moment, concentrating on the drive.

Outside town, the road meandered around mountain slopes covered with trees. A layer of fresh snow lined the road. Tess cautiously rounded the tight curves, especially the one from which the sheriff had said her family's van skidded into the deep ravine only this morning.

Farther up the road, Tess turned, and a minute after that she spotted the amber lights of her parents' house, where it stood alone, set off from the road, surrounded by meadow and backed up by forest, all currently buried under at least a half foot of snow. She parked the rental car in the long driveway beside a dilapidated old pickup truck.

Smoke curled from a chimney. Another light came on in the living room, and Tess imagined her father bending to feed the fire, her mother turning on a lamp.

"Stop torturing yourself." She pushed back the grief that stuck in her chest like a physical object making each breath a labor. Angie Norwood had said she would try to meet Tess here. It must be Angie who was warming up the house. Tess wondered about the old truck. It didn't strike her as something Angie would drive. She gathered one suitcase and an overnight bag from the trunk, hoping Angie wouldn't want to visit. Tess longed to be alone with her grief and to rest from the grueling drive.

She paused beside the driveway and stared at the wooden ramp that had been added alongside the porch. A wheelchair ramp. The sheriff had said something about a wheelchair that Tess hadn't understood in her confusion and shock this morning.

As she climbed the steps, the front door opened. A tall male figure stood in the foyer with the bright overhead light behind him. He was silhouetted against it. Tess paused again, vaguely alarmed, trying to think who he could be. He reached out to take her bags, and then she caught his profile as he turned to place the luggage on the floor. Recognition flickered in Tess's mind.

"You'd better come in out of the cold." His voice was deep and resonant. He reached out and guided her into the house, and his firm hand on her arm warmed her. When he moved it away to close the door behind her she shivered. It was then that she got a good look at him.

He'd been only seventeen when she'd last seen him. Now he stood at least six-foot-two, with wavy black hair and a thick, neatly trimmed moustache above sensuous lips. His eyes were dark green and glinted with gold flecks in the lamplight, their corners lined with tiny creases. His nose and jaws were sturdy and handsome.

"I'm Tess Hunter," she said, in case there was any doubt in his mind as to who she was and why she was here.

"You were only about twelve years old the last time I saw you, Tess, but I think I'd recognize you anywhere. The question is, do you remember me?"

She relaxed. "Joseph Latimer. I used to follow you around everywhere when I was little." As she spoke she pictured the tall, lanky, athletic boy he'd been. She'd had a crush on Joe Latimer from the time she was seven or eight, until he went away to college when Tess was twelve. She'd cried, at fourteen, when her mother heard from his mother that Joe had married.

"As I recall, at the time I rather liked it." He wore a sober expression.

"Liked what?"

"You following me around." He shifted his attention to her luggage on the floor, and motioned toward it. "Do you have more bags?"

"The rest can wait." She took off her gloves and dropped them on top of her bags. "I expected Angie Norwood."

"Angie called and asked me for the key, but I know she's busy at Stoneway this time of year, so I told her I'd open the house for you. I have a key for you, and I've brought in firewood. You'll find the pantry and freezer full. Everything you'll need." He started his last sentence with a vague half-smile that faded into regret.

Tess thanked him and looked around the living room. Nothing here had changed except for the emptiness. The furnishings were the same ones she remembered, though the old couch and armchairs had been reupholstered. The wood furnishings gleamed, and the piano stood in its old place with the keyboard open as if her mom had just finished playing. Her family had been here just this morning, before that last drive.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee drifted from the kitchen, and a small stack of unopened mail lay on the table near the door. Tess recognized the envelope on top. It contained a card she'd addressed to her family days ago.

"I was going to visit them--" The words caught in her throat and threatened to choke her with the intensity of feeling they aroused. She had pushed her grief deep inside, to get through the flight from L.A. and the drive here in the rental car. Now it rose inside her like a great chunk of ice bobbing to the surface, refusing to be ignored. She took a deep, shuddering breath and turned at a movement beside her. Joe Latimer watched her with an indecipherable expression. "I was going to surprise them for the holidays."

Joe's eyes narrowed and a frown deepened the lines on his forehead. "It's too late now, Tess." He spoke in a low voice, as if talking to himself, but he stood beside her so every word was clear, and resounded with emotion. "Why did you wait so long? What were you punishing them for?"

His words hit her with a force that made her step backward. "I didn't--they--my parents--didn't want--"

His look was fierce. A glint in his eyes disappeared when he blinked. His voice shook. "Don't you mean you didn't want to see them, even though your dad was sick? Even though your mother was one of the most nurturing people ever known? What about Spence? They missed you, Tess. I knew them, I loved them. Don't tell me they didn't want to see you. You discarded them, and it's too late to change that now."

He turned toward the hall, cleared his throat, and grabbed a jacket off the rack. He pulled it on, keeping his face averted, then he said a gruff goodnight. He had his hand on the doorknob by the time Tess found her voice.

"Wait. Joe. What was wrong with my father?"

He shook his head and rumbled in a gravelly voice, "He had MS. I'm sure you knew that. He was forced to retire because of it." Then, clearing his throat again, he looked suddenly regretful. He drew in his breath as he opened the door, and uttered more calmly, "If you need anything while you're here, you can call me or Rose. We're in the book." He closed the door and was gone.

Tess turned away, stunned by his words. She switched off the overhead light and stood with her back to the door, staring into the unlit foyer, at her bags on the floor beside the ceramic umbrella stand. The deeper darkness of her father's study yawned to her left. The stairs in front of her rose into a part of the house that seemed to both beckon and oppose her, from beyond the barrier of the stair railing.

Joe Latimer's truck started outside, loud at first and then dropping to an idle as he warmed it up. Seconds later it moved, and eventually the sound droned away onto the road below the driveway.

The chill of Joe's words hung in the foyer, and pushed Tess toward the warmth and light of the living room to her right. A door beside the living room fireplace led to the guestroom. To the left of that lay the open dimness of the dining room. Behind the wall that lined the stairs the kitchen-family room beckoned, reminding Tess of her mother. Tess moved in that direction, through the dining room, then abruptly to her left.

Joe had lit a fire in the big family room fireplace. She threw another log on the fire. On the hearth lay a few copies of Treasured Home. At the sight of them Tess stopped, and her tears startled her, surfacing all at once.

Long minutes later, Tess sat warming herself with a cup of coffee in front of the family room fire, still brooding over Joe Latimer's words, with her coat flung over the rocking chair where she'd removed it. She heard a car outside, and she wondered whether Joe had forgotten something, or if he'd returned to apologize. The vehicle didn't sound like a truck. Tess reached the front door as someone pounded on it.

A young blonde woman stood on the porch, dressed in a long fur coat that looked like sable, with her fur-clad arms folded across her chest. One elegant brown shoe tapped impatiently. Her golden hair fell in loose curls over her shoulders, while her striking face conveyed annoyance. Tess stared, amazed to see this glamorous-looking woman on her parents' doorstep.

The woman brushed past Tess in a cloud of perfume. "I'm looking for Joe Latimer. Is he here?" She didn't ask. She demanded. She turned inside the living room and looked at Tess, her arms still folded. There was something both expectant and imposing about her.

Tess closed the door against the cold. "Joe lives a quarter mile farther along the--"

"I know where he lives. I was told he came here hours ago." The girl swept her gaze around the living room.

"He just left. I think he was headed home."

The blonde cursed and actually stamped her foot.

"Can I help you? I'm Tess Hunter." Tess held out her hand.

The young woman turned a cold gaze on Tess, and a curious expression entered her large brown eyes. "How could you possibly help me?" The brown eyes quickly dismissed Tess.

That was enough for Tess. She moved into the living room, where she faced the blonde. "If you'll treat me civilly by telling me your name and asking politely, I might let you use the telephone. It could save you running around in the cold. If you can't behave, the door is that way." She pointed.

The blonde looked startled, then thoughtful. Finally she shrugged, lowering her dark eyelashes. She murmured coolly, "I'm Jessica Laine." She spoke her name as though she thought Tess should know who she was. "I would like to use your phone. Please. I didn't catch your name."

"Tess. Hunter. The phone is through there." Tess nodded in the direction of the kitchen, wanting the woman to hurry and leave her alone with her grief and her feelings still wounded by Joe Latimer's harsh words.

"Do you mind if I take off my coat? It's nice and cozy in here." Jessica Laine, her tone suddenly sweeter, took off the fur and handed it to Tess, who couldn't help a second look at Jessica's dress. It was made of soft brown wool with gold threads woven through.

"Do you like it?" Jessica asked as she noticed Tess's attention focused on the dress.

"It's very becoming," Tess ventured objectively.

"It's a designer original. I picked it up at a New York fashion show a few weeks ago," Jessica said blithely.

"Really." Tess knew the dress wasn't haute couture. It was reasonably priced in the department stores. Tess knew because she owned the same dress. The coat, on the other hand, felt like real fur. Tess hung it on the rack in the corner beneath the stairs, a little loath to touch it. "The phone's through the dining room there, to the left, in the kitchen." She pointed.

"Have you known Joe long?" Jessica removed beige kid gloves to reveal long, manicured fingernails.

"Since we were children."

"I see." The blonde nodded and left the room. Tess didn't follow. She simply waited, for what seemed an eternity, trying not to hear the sugary tone of the voice in the other room and unwilling to make out what it said to Joe Latimer.

"Joe's at home of all places," the blonde said when she returned to the front room minutes later. She donned her coat. "He was supposed to be up at my place an hour ago. We're having dinner with my uncle tonight. Thank you for the use of your phone, er--Teri?"

"Tess."

Jessica shrugged. "Nite-nite now." With that she left Tess to close the door behind her.

"Nite-nite," Tess mimicked her with a grimace. "You've got to be kidding!"

###

Daisies. Tess held a bunch of white daisies, in the dream, and looked into the deep green eyes of the older boy, Joseph. Tess wakened, and realized the dream was a memory of something that had actually happened when she was seven years old. Joseph Latimer had given her flowers. He couldn't have been more than twelve at the time. She recalled his smile, his kindness, and her affection for him in those years past, when they'd been neighbors.

It was only a dream, brought on no doubt by seeing Joe as soon as she arrived home last night. Tess shrugged it off as she looked around the cold room in which she'd slept, the downstairs guestroom at her parents' house. She hadn't wanted to go upstairs at all, last night. Even so, she hadn't avoided her family's things, because she'd discovered that her father had been sleeping in this room. The bathroom was fitted with hand grips, as well as other amenities clearly intended for someone with a disability. Tess hadn't found any of her mother's things in the bathroom, dresser, or closet. She could only conclude that her parents had been sleeping apart.

Tess had been too tired to puzzle long over these discoveries last night. She'd unpacked only her nightgown and robe and had gone to bed, there to toss and turn on the unfamiliar mattress and wake up at every creak of the old house.

The room was freezing now. Tess got up and quickly put on her robe, turned on the heat, built up a fire, and then crawled into bed with her robe on and pulled the quilt back over her to wait for the room to warm up. She had forgotten how cold mornings could be up here.

The kitchen phone was the only one in the house. Once Tess had dressed she sat on a stool at the counter near the back door, and phoned the sheriff's office in Wilder. After that call she searched for her parents' address book, and found it in a kitchen drawer. It was held together by a rubber band, with old addresses scratched out and new ones entered wherever space permitted, in her mother's neat, elegant hand.

Tess finally came across the listing for a Dr. Peter Lloyd in neighboring Wilder. She wanted to know more about her father's illness, which Joe Latimer had mentioned to her, the illness behind the ramp out front and the wheelchair the sheriff had mentioned. Tess planned to drive to Wilder this morning to see the sheriff and to make funeral arrangements. She called the doctor's office.

Dr. Lloyd answered the phone himself. He knew about the accident and offered his condolences at once. He confirmed that he'd been her father's primary care physician, and he agreed to meet with Tess this morning. "I've been hoping for a chance to speak with you. Did your father call you sometime in the last day or two before his death?"

"No. Why?" Her parents had rarely called her, and when one of them did it was usually her mother.

"We can talk about that when you get here." Dr. Lloyd gave her directions to his office.

As Tess hung up, she glimpsed a pair of beige kid gloves on the counter beside her, and she picked them up. They were Jessica Laine's. She must have left them here last night when she used the phone.

Tess finally found the number for her parents' attorney. When she phoned his office, she learned he was out of town on a tour of Europe and wouldn't return for weeks. She left a message, hoping, as his secretary suggested, that he'd check in sometime during the next few days. Next she called the sheriff, then looked up the mortuary in Wilder, and the small weekly newspaper there.

Tess had her coat on and was about to leave, when the phone rang. She hurried back to the kitchen to answer. Angie Norwood spoke before Tess could say hello.

"Joe Latimer was just here to look at one of our horses. He started grilling me about you. He asked if you'd planned to visit for the holidays. What's going on?"

Tess wondered the same thing. "What did you say?"

"I told him you'd planned to stay here at Stoneway and surprise your folks for Thanksgiving. I didn't like his attitude, though. Was he there last night when you arrived? Had he warmed up the house? He told me he would."

"Yes, he was here." Tess heard an engine out front, and thought it sounded a lot like the old truck Joe had driven last night. Tess thought she'd never get out of the house in time to meet Dr. Lloyd.

"When you're ready, let me help you go through your family's things. Remember, I went through all that when Granddad died. I know how hard it can be."

The doorbell rang.

"Thanks, Angie. I will. I have to go. Someone's at the door." Tess hung up, and shrugged on her coat as she went out to the foyer.

It was Joe Latimer. Tess started to speak, but paused as her gaze followed the lines of the cables in his pale blue Aran sweater down his broad chest to where they met the V of the ice-blue jacket he wore partially zipped over it. Good grief, he was magnificent, she thought, seeing him for the first time in daylight and without fatigue clouding her impression as it had last night.

"Good morning, Tess."

Tess lifted her gaze to meet his deep green eyes. He smiled, and she recalled her dream, of the boy Joseph handing her a bunch of daisies. She couldn't help a baffled smile in return.

"May I come in?"

She nodded, and he moved past her, turning to face her as soon as she'd closed the door. He stood so near that Tess could feel his warmth in the cold air left by the briefly open door.

"I asked Angie this morning about your plan to visit home. She told me it was true." Joe wore a serious expression now. He was so close that his words blew the warmth of his breath onto the top of her head, and she felt light headed as she tilted her chin up to meet his gaze.

"I'm sorry you needed proof." She was determined to keep her cool.

"It didn't fit your pattern."

"My pattern?"

"Your pattern of staying away from here." He watched her intently through narrowed eyes.

"Look, I was about to leave. I have an appointment in Wilder." She needed to escape the sphere of his magnetism, or whatever it was that disoriented her.

Joe remained where he stood, so close she felt cornered between him and the door. She reached up to straighten the collar of her coat. She was too warm in it, with him so near. What did he want? If he'd come to apologize, he hadn't done so yet. He kept looking at her, his expression unreadable. She silently cursed his masculine presence, and its unmistakable effect on her. She wondered how he could make her feel this way, so many years after her silly girlhood crush. She was a businesswoman. She didn't habitually fawn over every good-looking man she met.

A bang on the door behind her made Tess jump. Joe put a hand on her shoulder. She relaxed, leaning into his touch without thinking about it. He was closer now, and his gaze drew her in.

The pounding on the front door continued. Tess turned to open it. Jessica Laine, the blonde visitor from last night, stood there wearing a silver fox fur jacket over a gray suede dress. Her liquid silver necklace shone in the morning sunlight slanting under the eave of the porch.

"Joe, darling, what are you doing here?" She skimmed past Tess into the front hall, without a glance in her direction, and it was suddenly far too crowded with all three of them there in the foyer. "You're supposed to be on your way to meet Uncle Ned. Don't you ever want to get this project off the ground?" Jessica put her arm around Joe's neck and reached up to kiss him. He turned his cheek to meet her lips as she crooned, and Tess squeezed past them into the living room.

"Jessica, we're guests in Tess's home." Joe pulled away from the blonde with a bemused smile. "Why are you here?"

"I left my gloves here last night when I came looking for you."

"You came here?" He glanced at Tess, then again at Jessica. "When?" He was the one who looked disoriented now.

"I called you from here, silly." Jessica turned an insolent look at Tess. Then she smiled. "How are you holding up? When I lost my father, I was devastated, but I understand you weren't that close to your parents and, being older, perhaps you're better able to handle your loss. My cousin Trent asked me, last night, about what happened to your family."

"Trent?" An alarm rose in Tess's mind at mention of the name.

"Trent Cambridge. He's my cousin."

"Your--Trent is here, in Cedar Creek?"

"Of course he's here, he lives here. His father is my Uncle Ned." Jessica turned to grasp Joe's arm. "Joe, we have to go."

"I'll get your gloves." Tess rushed back to the kitchen for them, and returned to find the blonde clinging to Joe's arm, leaning up to murmur in his ear.

As soon as Joe saw Tess he sidled away from Jessica, guided her toward the front door, and opened it. He took the gloves from Tess and placed them in Jessica's hand. "Go on ahead."

"But Joe."

"I'll follow you in a few minutes." He held the door for her and she went out wearing a petulant look.

Joe closed the door and turned to Tess. "Sorry, I have a breakfast meeting with Ned Cambridge to ask for his help financing a project of mine. Jessica's . . . part of the project."

"I have to leave for Wilder," Tess said with a glance at her watch. "I'm running late myself." She grabbed her purse off the coat rack and went to the door, hoping Joe would follow her and leave, so she could as well.

He touched her shoulder. She turned and found herself once again between him and the door.

"Were you all right here alone last night? Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes." Everything she could want, except her family. She met his gaze, and again he had that mesmerizing, warming and arousing effect on her. She didn't understand it. She told herself to turn away, to open the door and say goodbye to the man. Did she have to shoo him out of the house? Instead she stood there gazing into his eyes, the warmth of his body affecting her like the pull of a magnet.

Joe leaned nearer, with a serious, wondering look in his eyes, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

Tess felt a heat from his kiss that she could neither ignore nor explain. She moved back, into the door.

Joe's expression altered. "I shouldn't have done that." He moved around her and she squirmed to one side as he opened the door. He closed it behind him, leaving Tess standing there stunned once again by his behavior, and this time by her own as well, for letting him kiss her. For liking it.

She decided to wait until he drove away before going out to her rental car, and she peered out the sheer curtains in the living room--in time to see him locked in an embrace with Jessica Laine. Joe and the stunning blonde stood between his truck and Jessica's yellow sports car, kissing. They appeared oblivious to anything else including the cold.

Tess could only watch for a split second before she turned away, flushed with humiliation and anger that she'd allowed him to get a physical reaction from her with that single light kiss, when the object of his romantic preference was clearly the glamorous, fur-clad Jessica Laine.

Tess reminded herself why she was here, of her family's deaths, only yesterday, and the arrangements she needed to make, the questions she needed to answer. She couldn't believe she'd let herself get so carried away by Joe Latimer in the few minutes he'd been here. It must be grief, bringing all her emotions close to the surface, that made her react this way. She shook off her lingering images of him, and shifted her thoughts to the unappealing tasks ahead.

Chapter 3

In spite of being the county seat, Wilder wasn't a much bigger town than Cedar Creek. From the main street where Tess parked, the peaks overlooking the town appeared to loom close, obscuring a large expanse of sky. Sunlight brightened patches of deep green and a few thickets of deciduous trees clad in fall color peeked from under their coats of snow on the timbered mountainsides. Conifers marched, straight and tall, down to mingle with the historic streets, shading the false fronts of buildings from an earlier era and filling the sun-warmed air with their resinous perfume.

Tess had arrived a few minutes early, after all, so she stopped in at the diner next to the doctor's office and bought coffee in a paper cup. It turned out to be so bitter and thick it was undrinkable. She took only a couple of sips before she paused to pour the dark liquid into the gutter in front of the doctor's office.

Dr. Lloyd opened his door. "You must be Tess Hunter." He chuckled when he saw what Tess was doing. "I should've warned you about that. I've made us some decent coffee inside. I honestly don't know how they stay in business." He held the door for her.

The doctor was tall and lean, in his late thirties. He was a good looking man, with pale, blue-gray eyes, a largish nose, and golden tanned skin. His hair, possibly once the darker shade of brown still evident in his eyebrows, was bleached by the sun to a flaxen shade. He must spend a lot of time outdoors. In fact he appeared ready to spend today outside, for he was clothed in casual clothes and boots suitable for hiking in the snow. Tess spotted what appeared to be a tackle box on the reception desk.

She followed him through the tiny front waiting room lined with windows and furnished with threadbare chairs, and she recalled this had once been a barbershop. He led her into the reception office, where a coffee maker gurgled its last few drips into a glass carafe. Dr. Lloyd busied himself pouring their coffee, and Tess asked him how long he'd been here.

"In Wilder about four and a half years. In this office, if I may be so bold as to call it that, only about three months. How do you take your coffee?" He smiled, a relaxed, easy grin that made her feel at ease. Tess thought his patients must like him. He exhibited none of the distant coldness too many doctors adopted as a professional demeanor. Even her father had been a bit brusque, and frequently too serious to invite open conversation.

Eventually they both sat in the back office space, which was separated by a thin wall partition and privacy curtain from the single small examining room Tess glimpsed as they walked through. Dr. Lloyd brought out a file folder, and Tess sat in a chair forced too close to his desk for comfort in the tiny office. She sipped her coffee and delayed asking her questions, by inviting his.

"Why did you want to talk to me, Dr. Lloyd?"

He shook his head. "That can wait. First, I understand you have questions about your father. Joe Latimer called me last night. He said you didn't know your dad had MS?"

"MS." She repeated the acronym, wondering why her mother had never mentioned it to her. Of all the things she'd kept from Tess over the years, that made the least sense of all.

"Multiple sclerosis."

She nodded. "I know what MS is, and the sheriff mentioned a wheelchair, but I didn't know my father was ill. I only learned about it after I got here last night--from Joe. My family never mentioned his illness."

Dr. Lloyd's face registered deepening concern. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I had the impression you and your family kept in touch." He placed the folder on the desk and focused his attention on her.

"We exchanged cards and letters, and occasional phone calls, but I haven't actually seen them in years. My parents didn't want to see me."

Dr. Lloyd's troubled look intensified, but he said nothing.

"You see, something happened, when I was seventeen." There was a kind acceptance in his silence that made her feel comfortable enough to explain. "There was an auto accident that I was blamed for. I'd stayed home that night to baby-sit Spence. He was six years old. They said later I took off in my mother's car and smashed it into a shop at the bottom of the first hill heading into town. I was injured, and they found alcohol and barbiturates in my blood. I don't think my parents ever forgave me, or believed me about it." She stopped because of the look on his face.

Dr. Lloyd's pale eyes remained intent on her. "What do you say happened?"

"I don't remember. I recall baking cookies and playing a board game with Spence, then getting him ready for bed. I don't remember getting into the car, or having an accident. I wouldn't have gotten drunk at all, let alone while I was watching Spence. I didn't use drugs--I never have--and I would never have gone off and left him alone in the house. My parents believed I did, though. They had . . . mistaken ideas, about my friends and me. They thought we were getting into trouble, but we weren't, and I've never understood why they thought that. I kept up my grades, and I had a part-time job. I wasn't an angel, but I was basically a pretty good kid. I'd stopped going to church, and I know that upset my mother. My newer friends from my art classes wore clothing my parents didn't like. We explored different spiritual paths. My boyfriend at the time was a Pagan, and he gave me a pentacle necklace. My mother found it in my room along with some books he'd loaned me to read, and, well, she had a fit. She and I had a horrible fight, and my parents made me stop seeing him. That was a few days before my accident."

After forcing her to break up with Alan Stewart, her parents had set her up with Trent Cambridge, a local banker's son whose father her father knew socially. Tess recalled Trent with a shudder, and she avoided that memory, focusing on the night of her accident.

"Something happened, that night, something I don't remember. I was unconscious for a couple of days, in the hospital. When I woke up, I learned the sheriff believed I was at fault for the accident. My parents did too, I'm sure. They sent me to live with my great-aunt in Seattle, after I got out of the hospital, and I stayed with her until I left for college. They kept me away. I've always suspected my parents were afraid to have me around Spence after that."

Tess went on. "That's not why I'm here, Dr. Lloyd. There are things I need to know, about my family's recent lives. Can you tell me how long my father had MS, and do you know when he retired?"

Dr. Lloyd was silent, his gaze now on the far wall, a frown darkening his pale blue eyes. He seemed to have withdrawn from her.

"You don't want to talk to me now," Tess said, her old feelings of rejection coming to the fore, easily taking hold of her. She started to get up.

"Wait. Yes, of course I want to talk to you, Tess. I'm sorry, you reminded me of someone else for a minute. I had no idea there was anything like this--mistrust, or the distance you describe--in your parents' relationship with you. They spoke of you affectionately. I understand your need to gain some closure."

He took wire framed eyeglasses from his pocket and put them on. Then he read from the file he'd opened on the desk in front of him earlier. "Let's see when your father first reported symptoms." He read off the date, a day in April, the spring following her accident.

Tess had been living with her great-aunt in Seattle then. Aunt Christine had been her father's aunt, surely she'd known about his diagnosis. Tess blinked tears from her eyes, but they kept coming. Dr. Lloyd put the file and his glasses aside and produced a box of tissues. He remained silent, letting her cry.

"Dr. Lloyd," she finally said, folding her hands in her lap.

"My name is Peter." When she hesitated, he added, "Your parents called me Peter. Your father wasn't only a patient. Jim was a friend, and a source of sound advice. I arrived in Wilder with a lot of misconceptions about this type of medical practice, and I shared several dinners at their house with your parents and brother, while Jim brought me up to speed."

"Peter, when did my father retire?"

He consulted the folder again. "I helped him with the documentation. He applied for disability retirement four years ago."

"Can you think of any reason why they would keep all of this from me? Should I know about anything else? Could they have intended not to worry me?" She felt disgusted with herself. It seemed self-centered to worry about what they'd thought about her all these years, or what they'd kept from her, more than about the course of her father's disease. But her father was gone now. She dried her tears and sat up straighter. "I've always hoped they had other reasons, besides the ones I've suspected."

Dr. Lloyd shook his head. "I don't know of anything else. I was your father's primary care physician. You might want to talk to the specialist he was seeing." He gave her the name and phone number.

Tess thanked him. "You had something you wanted to ask me."

Dr. Lloyd's eyebrows bunched together. He hesitated. "Your father didn't call you the day before his accident?"

"No. It was usually my mother who called, but she hadn't recently. I'd called her a couple weeks earlier. Why?"

"Your dad told me during our last meeting, the day before he was killed, that he planned to contact you, to approach you about a problem here. I hesitate to ask you now. This is a bad time for you, but it is pressing."

"Tell me. I can always say no, right?" She was curious to know what her father would've wanted her help with.

"He was going to ask if you'd be willing to talk to someone about Trent Cambridge's attack on you eleven years ago."

Tess went rigid, and felt a sudden, intense need to escape. "No--" She stood up. "No. I can't tell you anything about that." She left his cramped office, moving quickly out to the waiting room. He got up and followed her.

A sheriff's car pulled up out front as Tess reached the front waiting room. She paused, looking out the front window. A uniformed officer got out of the car. Tess turned back to Dr. Lloyd.

"Why? Tell me why." She glanced outside again. The officer appeared to look in the front window at her, then leaned against the car, his back to the office. "Is that who you wanted me to talk to?" Tess gestured at the uniformed man.

Dr. Lloyd stood with his hands on his hips, looking resigned. "Duane Prescott, yes. He's investigating the sexual assault of a teenage girl a few days ago."

Tess turned fully around to face the doctor. "By Trent?"

"He's not sure, but he thinks so. She says so. Tess, I'm sorry I've upset you with this. I thought maybe you could help. Your father seemed to think you might be willing, but I realize this is the worst time to remind you of that."

"There's nothing I can tell him, in any case."

"Are you certain? They don't have anything but the victim's word to go on about who assaulted her. No DNA evidence."

"They wouldn't--" Tess froze, looking at Dr. Lloyd's eyes but not seeing them. Remembering. She shook her head. "No. I'm sorry, I truly am, but I have to go."

She went outside, where she looked only briefly in the deputy's direction. He met her look and nodded. Tess started up the sidewalk in the opposite direction. She hazarded another glance back as she continued in the direction of the county building, and she saw the deputy had walked over to talk to Dr. Lloyd, who stood outside on the sidewalk.

Tess walked past her car, and entered the county building a short ways up the block. She told the woman at the desk that she needed information about the Hunter family's accident. She identified herself, and the woman said Sheriff Kendall would speak to her himself. Tess sat on a hard wooden bench in the outer office and fidgeted for the next two minutes.

Her dad had wanted her to talk to the sheriff about Trent. Why? Her dad hadn't believed her about anything, back then, including her accident. Now she was about to talk to the sheriff about her dad's death in an accident. "It's too late," she murmured, and realized she was repeating Joe Latimer's words to her. It's too late now, Tess.

Tess dreaded walking into the sheriff's office. If he planned to ask her about Trent, she wasn't prepared to answer. How could she think about that when she still hadn't digested the news about her family, still hadn't convinced herself they were gone, hadn't begun to fathom the depths of her grief?

Sheriff Kendall came out of his office wearing a grim expression. He appeared to be in his mid fifties. He greeted Tess in a subdued manner, clearly conscious of her loss. He led her into his office and offered her coffee, which she refused. She wanted to get down to business, to get this ordeal over with.

His office was larger than the doctor's, but stark and cold, with a frosted window reinforced with chicken wire and no blinds. Tess found herself gazing at the blind window, feeling as trapped as she had in her office in L.A.

As it turned out, Sheriff Kendall didn't mention Trent Cambridge at all. He spoke only of the accident that had killed Tess's family. He told her there was unusual tire damage and his department was still investigating the crash.

"When we spoke on the phone, you mentioned the possibility that ice caused the crash?"

He shook his head. "It was a fair assumption to start with, and there was patchy ice on some roads that morning, but the witness who saw the van go over reported no ice on that stretch of road. It had been plowed the afternoon before, and the van left skid marks. We found damage to one tire--"

"There was a witness? Were other cars involved?"

He shook his head. "The witness saw the van roll down the bank from a distance away. She also spotted a snowmobile in the area, but whoever was riding it hasn't come forward. They may not have seen anything. These things can happen in an instant." He went on to describe the exact location of the accident, a curve Tess easily recognized from his description.

She shivered involuntarily. "Can you explain the tire damage?"

"It appears to be from a sharp object. It made a clean cut in the sidewall of the tire. The forensics people have it now. We didn't find any hazard in the road."

"If it wasn't an accident, then it was. . ." Tess hesitated, trying to think of another alternative.

"Foul play." Sheriff Kendall said this with a concerned frown. "For now we're considering all possibilities, including that of an accident. We haven't drawn any conclusion yet. We're still examining the evidence."

"You mean murder?" She had trouble wrapping her thoughts around that notion. Who would want to kill the three of them? Why?

He nodded. "That's one possibility."

"Who was driving?" Her question brought back a flood of memories for Tess, and they seemed to hang in the air. The sheriff's silence made Tess imagine for a moment that he remembered, too, but if he did remember another accident, eleven years ago, it would've been hundreds of accidents ago for him. Surely it wasn't as memorable to him as it was to Tess, who'd been blamed for it. The strange thing was, she knew less about her own accident than she knew about the one that killed her family.

Sheriff Kendall's expression grew more grim. "Your brother Spence was driving. I'm truly sorry for your loss, Ms. Hunter." He gave her the information she needed to have her family's remains moved to a mortuary. "We'll release their personal effects to you as soon as we're finished with them."

Tess got up to leave, then turned to the sheriff at the door. "Who was the witness?"

"A neighbor. Rose Latimer."

###

Tess went from the sheriff's office to the mortuary, where she arranged for her family to be cremated and scheduled a simple memorial service for Thursday. At the newspaper office she wrote up an obituary. The paper was a Sunday weekly, so it wouldn't appear prior to the funeral. She had a lot of calls to make, to ensure people knew about the service.

Tess returned to her rental car, still parked in front of Dr. Lloyd's office. The doctor came out to get into his truck, carrying the tackle box she'd seen earlier.

He nodded to her. "I thought I'd fit some fishing in while the sun's out." His expression reminded her of a boy sneaking out of school midday.

She paused beside his truck. "Peter, you mentioned you ate dinner with my family a few times. Do you have any idea who might be a good choice to offer a eulogy? The funeral director suggested it should be someone who was close to all of them."

The doctor sobered and thought for only a few seconds before he said, "What about Joe Latimer? He was a frequent visitor at the house, and his sister Rose was a good friend of your mother's."

Chapter 4

Tess returned to her parents' house and went to the kitchen, where she built up the fire and then set to work, cooking. Her trip to Wilder had left her feeling fragmented, and cooking had often made her feel whole again. She hoped it would do the same for her now.

She needed to use up the perishables in the refrigerator, and there was enough food stored away in the pantry and freezer to feed the entire family for a year. That had always been her mother's way, Tess recalled. She'd spent many a hot summer day helping her mother can and freeze the abundance of fruit and vegetables from their home garden and from local growers.

Tess had no idea what she would do with all this food before closing up the house and leaving Cedar Creek. With her family gone there was nothing to hold her here.

She kneaded whole grain dough for rolls and left it to rise on the warm counter near the stove, where she started a pot of chicken stock simmering. Then she sat down to review the food on hand and decide what to prepare for a gathering here after the funeral.

Midmorning she made a quick call to Paige, to ensure all was going well at the office.

"Harry and I plan to fly up for the funeral. What's the name of the resort you were going to stay at?"

"Stoneway, but you can stay here with me. There's plenty of room." Tess had sensed a distance widening between herself and Paige, ever since Tess had announced her decision to take a leave of absence. She wanted to bridge it somehow. She'd lost her family. She couldn't stand to lose her best friend at the same time.

"We don't want to impose, but it will only be one night."

"Stay with me, please. When we were in college you and your family put me up plenty of times for the holidays," Tess reminded her.

After the call, Tess adjusted the seasonings in the chicken stock and left it on the lowest heat to simmer.

Finally she ventured upstairs and looked through those rooms. She'd avoided coming up here at all since her arrival last night.

The bedroom Tess had occupied as a teenager remained as she'd left it, furnished in pale ivory, with eyelet ruffles on the sheets and curtains, and old fading art posters on the cream colored walls. Old sketches she'd drawn as a girl were still tacked up on the wall above the small desk.

She turned around, wondering why her parents had left the bedroom this way, when they'd so often given her the impression they wanted to forget her. Why had they allowed her to have the largest room in the house in the first place? It was immense, taking up the entire space over the two-car garage.

Tess opened drawers, knowing they'd be empty because she'd taken all her things with her when she left home. But inside the night table she found two necklaces, and she held them up to the light pouring through the windows. One delicate silver chain held a Celtic cross her mother had given her, and the other held a pentacle given to her by a boy named Alan Stewart, whom she'd dated shortly before she left home. Both were sterling silver, simple in design and close to the same size. Seeing them brought back one of the worst arguments she'd ever had with her mother, and Tess hurriedly put them away, but on a second impulse she removed them again from the drawer and held onto them. She turned to look around the room.

She didn't want anyone else to sleep here. She felt a need to reclaim this space where she'd first begun to grow into adulthood, to learn her own likes and dislikes, her own way of being. It was here she'd first dipped a brush in paint. This big room had served as a sanctuary where she could explore her creativity during unbroken hours of solitude.

She looked at the big windows facing east, north, and west, and the entire wall of built-in cabinets, and she thought what a nice studio the room would make. The light was good, there was plenty of storage, and a large work table. She could use the typing table from her father's study for her laptop computer.

Next she went into Spence's room, where the sports-theme wallpaper reminded her of the boy Spence had been when Tess was seventeen. At six, he'd been emerging from babyhood, eager to grow up. Tess sat on the bed and looked around at the room where she'd read to Spence that night, eleven years ago. Her memories of that evening converged. Tess sat on her brother's bed and wept, remembering their last game, the last cookies, and the last bedtime stories they'd shared.

Their parents had gone out with friends. Her mother had left a note on the refrigerator with the phone number. Tess was to stay home and baby-sit Spence, who'd turned six that summer.

As soon as they finished eating dinner and cleaning up, Tess got out his favorite board game, and she and Spence played it there at the kitchen table. As promised and expected on a night the two of them spent at home together, Tess baked cookies. Chocolate chip, Spence's favorite. It was a hot August night, so she kept all the kitchen windows and back door open, with only the old-fashioned, wooden screen door closed against the night and mosquitoes, so the oven wouldn't overheat the house.

Alan Stewart called. He was the boy Tess had been dating, until her parents had pressured her to break up with him a few days earlier. He wanted to know if she'd changed her mind and would see him. She told him no, and ended the call, while an impatient Spence waited to continue their game. Then a girl from her mother's church called, inviting Tess to a social event. Tess wasn't interested and again ended the call as soon as she could.

Her other friends all knew she was babysitting tonight and didn't want to be distracted. Spence was growing fast, and Tess planned to go away to college the following year. She had decided to savor this evening, make it an oasis of childhood for both of them.

So they played, and she baked. She sipped lemonade, and she let Spence eat warm cookies with a glass of milk while they played his game. He got chocolate all over his face, and had a milk moustache, and he was laughing and prattling happily because he'd won the game, when they finally went upstairs for his bath and pajamas. Once he was in bed Tess read to him.

Then there were new smells and sounds, white sheets, people in white lab coats. Pain. A bright light in her eyes, and her mother crying.

"Why? Why would you go off and leave Spence all alone in the house? What were you thinking, driving off like that? You could've been killed. You nearly killed yourself. Do you understand?"

Tess didn't understand her mother's words, or how she'd wound up in the hospital. Her mother broke down in tears, and Tess didn't understand much else she said that day.

Later a sheriff's deputy questioned Tess about an accident he said she'd had with her mother's car. Tess didn't remember an accident. She didn't remember taking her mother's car anywhere. She only remembered reading to Spence, baking him cookies, putting him to bed.

Her father told her she'd had alcohol and barbiturates in her blood. He told her she'd taken her mother's car and driven it through the front of the Masons' flower shop at the bottom of the hill. She'd been unconscious for two days. She'd nearly been killed. He said Tess had gone off and left Spence alone in the house.

Tess didn't believe any of it. Why would she do that?

Her father demanded to know what she was thinking, what was going on with her. Why she'd stayed out all night two nights before she left Spence at home alone. That was when she finally told him about Trent Cambridge trying to rape her and her narrow escape that other night. That night she remembered with crystal clarity.

Her father listened, silent. He nodded as she spoke, but didn't say another word.

Neither of her parents spoke to her much after that. They were quiet, somber, reserved. They took her home and told her to rest. They spoke in low voices in another room. School was supposed to start that week, but they didn't encourage her to get ready. Instead they called Aunt Christine, who drove down from Seattle and packed Tess, her clothing, books, and art supplies back to Seattle with her.

Tess had spent her senior year of high school and the following summer in Seattle. She'd stayed with Aunt Christine until she went away to college in New York the following fall. She hadn't set foot in her parents' house or seen her family since the summer of her accident.

###

Tess decided to use her mother's bedroom and give Harry the downstairs guestroom her father had recently occupied. Paige would sleep up here in Spence's room. Keeping Tess's old bedroom available to her as a studio posed a minor problem, since it was the only room with an empty closet and dresser, and she dreaded the task of going through her family's things to accommodate guests.

Tess spent the next few minutes transferring her luggage up to her mother's room. She then packed the contents of her brother's and her father's dressers and closets into empty cartons she found folded in the garage. She marked each box according to where its contents came from. Instead of going carefully through their things and making decisions about what to do with them, she blindly packed items into boxes, unwilling to make decisions or examine them today.

In the midst of this task, while cleaning out the bedside tables in her father's room downstairs, Tess found some of her mother's personal things tucked away in the nightstand on the side of the bed farthest from the door. Tess paused for the first time in her packing and looked at them. Her mother had spent time here, possibly had slept here every night. Her father would've needed the downstairs room because of his need for a wheelchair.

Finally Tess packed her mother's things away. She didn't pause until she came to the bookcase above the old writing desk near her mother's bedroom door.

The titles on the top shelf included a set of Jane Austen novels, two Thomas Hardy novels, and a book of poems by William Wordsworth. A row of smaller, clothbound volumes on the bottom shelf caught Tess's eye. They were all covered with the same printed cloth, in different colors. Tess took one out for a closer look. It was a journal, filled with her mother's handwriting. Each journal was marked with a different year inside the front cover and on the outside binding. They were arranged on the shelf by year. They more than filled the bottom shelf, with a few stacked horizontally on top of the others.

Tess opened the first one, and glimpsed her mother's name in the first line of the inscription on the front page:

"To my beloved daughter Cathy on your wedding day, from your mother, Sara."

Tess's mother Cathy had mentioned these journals to her when Tess was younger. Tess's maternal grandmother had given them to Tess's mother as a wedding gift. Tess counted twenty-eight of the journals on the shelf, all filled with her mother's writing. Her parents had been married less than twenty-nine years. There was no book with this year's date on the shelf, so Tess went to the bedside and opened her mother's night-table drawers. She found more of the books tucked inside the bottom drawer, but they were all blank. There hadn't been one among her mother's things in the downstairs bedroom, either. The current year's journal was missing.

Tess returned to the bookcase and the completed journals. They'd obviously been important to her mother. She was curious to know what her mother might have written about her in these books. They might contain answers to why her parents had kept her away. She wanted desperately to believe it wasn't because they thought her guilty of abandoning Spence on the night of her accident, or because they suspected she'd been using drugs, or was otherwise unfit to be around her younger brother any longer.

Tess found the first journal Cathy Hunter had started after she married, and placed it on the bed, intending to start reading it that night.

###

For the remainder of Tuesday morning Tess wore a grim track through her parents' address book, making phone calls to tell her family's friends and acquaintances about the funeral service on Thursday. She sat at the kitchen counter, and took deep breaths between calls to regain composure and steel her nerve. At first she had thought the task would grow easier as she went along, but each person she called expressed either shock at the news, or grief of their own. They related memories that fed the intensity of hers, until Tess felt drained.

When she came to the listing for the Latimers, Tess considered making a quick, polite request for Joe Latimer to offer a eulogy, but she remembered his words last night, and she dreaded speaking to him again about her family. She marked the page and continued with her other calls, saving that one for last.

By afternoon Tess was emotionally exhausted, and she still hadn't called the Latimers. She opened the address book to their number, and looked at it for a minute. Finally she dialed--and was infinitely relieved when a woman answered.

"Rose Latimer? This is Tess Hunter."

"Oh, Tess. I'm so sorry about what's happened. I was planning to call you to ask if you need help with anything. The funeral arrangements, or--?"

"Thank you. I'm actually calling to tell you about the service and to ask Joe if he would be willing to offer a eulogy."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure he won't mind, but of course you'll have to ask him. I'll have him call you when he gets in. He should've been home half an hour ago for lunch."

"He works near home?"

"He has a veterinary clinic in town."

When he was a boy, Joe Latimer had always had his dog following after him, tail wagging lazily, and its mouth open in a smiling expression. He'd had pets of all kinds. Once he'd allowed Tess to hold a baby rabbit, instructing her how to grasp it so it didn't jump away. She smiled as she recalled that tiny rabbit, sitting warm and furry in her hand. She supposed it made sense that Joe had become a veterinarian.

"When is the funeral?" Rose's voice brought Tess back to the present. She told her the time and place, and her plans for a buffet lunch at the house afterward.

"Let me bring the beverages. I can contact people you may not know, about the services."

"That would be a great help. Thank you." Tess was stunned by Rose's warmth, after Joe's demeanor last night and his puzzling behavior this morning. Tess tried to remember what she could about Rose Latimer, but it had been Rose's brother Joseph who'd commanded Tess's attention when they were young. Tess recalled his kiss earlier, and her face warmed with the memory--then with a different emotion, as she pictured him kissing Jessica Laine less than a minute later.

Rose was saying, "Your mother was a good friend. I'm going to miss her a lot."

"I understand you saw the accident happen."

Rose was silent for a few seconds. "I was on my way to work, at the school. I was some distance away, but I saw the van go over. I used my cell phone to call for help." After another pause she said in a quivering voice, "Yesterday was the worst day of my life. Joe's too. He came along right afterward, on his way to work, and he helped get them out."

After the call, Tess felt restless. She checked her chicken stock, still simmering on the stove, and then decided to take a short walk outside. She pulled on a jacket at the front door.

The sun had slipped behind clouds in the early afternoon, and now the wind was rising. The fresh, vigorous feel and scent to the air energized Tess and reminded her of snowstorms she'd experienced growing up in these mountains. She used to love to hear the wind sing and bustle in the trees as it did now. Her mother had once told her that trees gave the wind its voice.

Tess walked briskly down to the mailbox at the end of the long driveway and pulled out the mail. There were ads, bills, envelopes that she guessed contained sympathy cards, and one business size envelope with no stamp and no forwarding or return address. The envelope was sealed, but completely blank. It caught her interest at once, because whoever left it had driven some distance to place it in the box without ringing the doorbell--unless they'd come up this morning while she was in Wilder.

Tess stood by the mailbox and opened the blank envelope. She pulled out a single sheet of paper folded in thirds, a typed letter without salutation, signature or date.

"You don't know how lucky you are to find success in your business at such a young age. A magazine and cookbooks. How nice for you. But that can change. If you don't leave town and pay $50,000 cash, newspapers and television stations all over the state will learn that the publisher of Treasured Home ran off and left her baby brother alone while she ploughed her mother's car into the florist's shop. They'll learn about the drugs and alcohol, and we'll see how successful you feel then. Don't go to the police, and don't ignore this! Start packing your bags and putting together the cash. Instructions for payment will follow."

Tess stood there in the cold wind, and read and reread the letter, trying to understand, to think what to do about it. She wanted to wad it up, throw it away and pretend she'd ever seen it. She wanted to ignore it. Who would do this? Who here knew about her business? She hadn't mentioned it to Angie Norwood during their brief phone calls over the past few days. The only people in Cedar Creek she'd ever spoken to about it were her family.

She recalled a phone call from her mother after she'd seen Tess's first slender, plum-colored cookbook in a Sacramento bookstore, with Tess's watercolor painting of a three-tiered dessert tray crammed with pastries reproduced on the dust jacket. Cathy Hunter had purchased the book for herself and called Tess the same evening.

"Recipes and illustrations by Tess Hunter. I can't tell you how proud I was when I saw a whole stack of those books in that store. I wanted to tell everyone in the store that my daughter wrote them. They're beautiful. We're so proud of you, Tess."

Tess's eyes filled as she remembered her mother's words. The day of that call had been the first time in years that she'd thought either of her parents could be proud of her.

Now she felt empty, and incapable of doing anything but going to sleep. She trudged through the snow, up the driveway, and into the house. She returned to the kitchen and went numbly through the motions of preparing food for the funeral gathering. She didn't know what else to do. She couldn't do anything about this letter, now, except go to the police, which the blackmailer had warned against. She thought of calling Paige and Harry, since it was a threat to them as well. Instead Tess worked in her mother's kitchen. Cooking had always been a balm for Tess, as it had been for her mother. She tried to lose herself in that familiar activity, but it didn't work the same magic for her this afternoon that it had in the past. A dark, onerous cloud hung over everything. As if the weight of her grief hadn't been enough, now fresh fear for her business, friends, and employees--in addition to a new and profound loneliness--weighed her spirits.

Late that afternoon snow fell.

Chapter 5

Early in the evening Tess chopped leeks and sorrel from her mother's supply in the refrigerator and used them, along with her chicken stock, to make soup. She added potatoes and let them soften enough to mash with a spoon. Finally she added cream, and chopped roast chicken from the refrigerator. She adjusted the seasonings as the thickened mixture reheated to serving temperature. Then she ladled herself a bowl of the soup and sat at the kitchen table to eat it with a hot buttered roll and a simple lettuce salad, attempting to regain some semblance of peace from the silent, solitary meal.

After dinner she bathed and put on her warmest nightgown, then crawled under the electric blanket in the upstairs bedroom that had been her mother's.

She picked up her mother's first journal, and soon found herself caught up in events that had occurred years before her earliest memories, seeing them vividly from her mother's point of view.

She read of her own birth and her mother's first blissful, if tiring, days of parenthood. The early worries and joys of watching an infant take her first steps into childhood unfolded with the turn of the pages. It touched Tess deeply to realize those loving words had been written about her. Could this be the same woman who years later made transparent excuses to keep her daughter from coming home for semester breaks and holidays?

Tess dozed off while reading, and the ringing of the doorbell wakened her. The bedside lamp was still on, and the journal she'd been reading lay open beside her where she'd dropped it. It was eight o'clock. She got up and put on her fleece robe and slippers and hurried down to answer the persistent ringing, brushing hair back from her face with her fingers as she went.

Tess left the chain lock fastened and inched the door open. "Who is it?" she called against a gust of freezing air that nearly compelled her to swallow her words.

Joe Latimer peered through the opening at her. "It's Joe. May I come in?"

Tess slid the chain off the door and opened it.

Joe game in with a gust of cold, and quickly closed the door. "Whew! Thanks. It's a mess out there."

He turned around, took in Tess's appearance--her robe and fuzzy slippers--and grinned. "Uh-oh. I thought you city people stayed up later than this." Snow clung to his hair and eyebrows, quickly melting in the warmer air of the house.

"I guess I'm still a country girl at heart." Tess watched him coolly, hiding her bafflement. Why had he come here on a cold, snowy night, when he'd made it plain he thought badly of her? Why had he kissed her this morning?

"I don't suppose you have a fire going?" Joe glanced toward the darkened living room, then turned his gaze on her again. The warmth in his eyes was an embrace. They held her attention, and Tess took a moment to register what he'd said.

"A fire. No, but--here, you'd better take these things off." Without thinking she reached up and took his knitted hat, while he removed his gloves.

He smiled again at her familiar action, then unzipped his jacket, and sat down on the nearest living room chair to unlace his boots. "Do you mind if I make us both some hot chocolate?"

Tess stared at him curiously. Then she looked down at his hat in her hand. He took it from her with a quick "Thanks," and strode toward the kitchen in his socks, carrying his boots. Tess followed. Joe placed his boots, hat and gloves on the family room hearth and started to add wood to the coals.

"Let me do that," Tess said, and took over.

When she turned away from the fire a minute later, Joe already had the milk heating, and as Tess watched he took cocoa and mugs out of the cabinets. He was obviously as familiar with the kitchen as she was. Tess sat in the old rocking chair near the fireplace to watch him.

He looked up with a sheepish grin. "I got used to making myself at home here. I never did get to eat dinner tonight. I was hungry, and I found myself pulling into your driveway out of habit, thinking about your mom."

Tess stood up. "You haven't eaten? I have soup and some bread I can warm for you."

He watched her with a half smile lighting his eyes as she came over and joined him in the kitchen. She took out the soup and started it warming alongside the pan of milk and cocoa, then placed a couple of the whole-grain rolls in the toaster oven. Tess returned to the center island stove to find him still watching her. He abruptly looked away and gave the pan in front of him a stir.

"What brings you out in this weather?" she said.

"I had an emergency call this afternoon. I was on my way home. Visibility got bad below the turnoff to your place, and the heater's out in my truck. I used to visit your folks a lot. Sorry, it looks as if you were asleep."

"I was reading in bed." A glance at him told her he didn't believe her. "I may have dozed a little."

He gave her a slow, knowing smile. "You took a long time to answer."

She grinned back at him. "Okay, I was sound asleep at eight o'clock. Stop looking so smug about it."

He held her gaze for several seconds. "I was always fascinated by the way your eyes lighten in color when you smile. They're a pale blue now, a shade lighter than your robe." He continued to study her. "You look a lot like your mom."

"Do I?" Tess's voice faltered.

"That photo of you on the living room mantle deceived me. It made me picture this cool, savvy business woman in a suit, someone I've never met and never wanted to." His look turned solemn. "You know, I miss them a lot."

She nodded and said nothing. She wanted to ask him about her family, but she was afraid he'd rebuke her again, or she wouldn't like the answers.

Neither of them spoke again until the soup, bread, and hot chocolate were ready. Joe carried mugs over to the table for both of them while Tess ladled out his soup and arranged warm rolls on a plate with a pat of butter. She placed the food in front of him, sat down and picked up her mug.

"This smells wonderful." He took a spoonful of the soup and made a pleased sound in his throat, his eyes half-closed.

"It's potato leek with roast chicken." She sipped her cocoa and watched him take another spoonful, then quickly bite into the warm buttered roll. Joe was so intent on his food, she wondered if he'd missed lunch as well as dinner.

Tess continued to sip her cocoa. Once she raised her eyes to find him studying her. Her heart gave a lurch as their eyes met.

"Watch your cocoa," Joe said as she tilted it. There was a hint of laughter in his voice. Tess shifted her gaze to the fire, unable to still her thoughts with him watching her like that. His attention made something come alive in her, something that felt restless to answer. She was wide awake now.

He gestured at his empty bowl as he put down his spoon. "I needed that. Did your mom make the soup?"

"No, I did. With her roasted chicken."

"That's right, you write cookbooks." He continued eating, finishing his second roll. She couldn't help noticing that he knew about her cookbooks, as did the blackmailer, but Joe hadn't lived here in Cedar Creek when she was hurt in that accident. Did he know about it?

"You never married." He didn't ask it, he stated it.

"No."

"Too busy with your career?"

Tess shrugged. "There's always been time to date. No one held my interest for long."

"You had a crush on me for years. Has your attention span shortened since then?"

Tess smiled. "I thought that was my secret. Was I so transparent?"

"Remember how you used to follow me around, back then? You never guessed how enchanted I was by that. Other boys were falling for girls their own age, but I thought you were the dreamiest thing I'd ever seen. There, your eyes lit up again."

She had paused, watching him. "I was thinking how it would have thrilled me, back then, to hear you say that."

"I don't suppose it would give you the same thrill now."

"I hardly know you now. Besides, we were children." Why did you kiss me today? Tess wanted to ask it, but she didn't.

They finished in silence. Tess took their dishes to the sink while Joe went to the fire to put on his boots. He sat in the rocking chair to lace them while Tess washed dishes. She brought a sponge over to wipe off the stove, where she faced in his direction. Joe had his boots on now and stood watching her work. He moved closer.

"How long will you stay?" His green eyes glinted at her.

"I don't know. There are a lot of things to settle. I'd planned to spend a few weeks here, before I received the news."

His glance slid away. He nodded toward the window. "It's coming down out there. At least I don't have much farther to go. Are you all right alone here?"

"I'm fine, Joe. I live alone. I'm used to it." She turned and picked up the dish towel. She wasn't used to living in this particular empty house, surrounded by memories of her childhood, with no family here to share them, but she wasn't about to admit that to him. Then she thought of the blackmail letter. She felt a great need to tell someone about that, but she'd decided to wait until after the funeral. She wouldn't let the blackmailer drive her away before then.

He turned to face her. "Do you need help making final arrangements?"

"Um, yes. Did Rose mention I phoned your house earlier?"

He shook his head. "I haven't been home since morning."

"I called to ask if you would give the eulogy."

His eyes darkened, but he nodded. "I have a lot I'd like to share about them."

Tess sighed, realizing what a weight that simple yet critical detail had been for her today. "I don't know how to thank you."

He looked reluctant, but said, "There is one thing. Your father had a cane I gave him. It was a gift, an antique made of hardwood, with a brass handle. I'd like to have that, as a keepsake."

Tess had to think for a minute. With all the packing she'd done of her family's things she'd never considered that her father might have used a cane. "I haven't seen it, but the sheriff still has their belongings from the accident." She still called it an accident, unable to get her mind to contain the idea that it might be murder. She recalled the sheriff had mentioned her father's wheelchair was found among the wreckage. "Would he have had the cane and his wheelchair with him?"

Joe nodded. "He took the cane everywhere. He hated the wheelchair, and used it as little as possible. I bought him that cane because he detested anything that looked like it came from a medical supply." Joe was frowning now. He looked away for a moment.

"Consider it yours. Tell Rose, too, if there's anything she wants, to let me know. I don't know what I'll do with all their things."

"If you need help going through them, let us know." He faced her again with a pained look. Then he came around in front of the stove and faced her. "You know, Tess, I had my reasons for feeling the anger I expressed last night. I loved your family. I thought you did too, when you were a girl. I've never understood why you stayed away."

She considered telling him why, but if he loved them as he said he did, she doubted he'd accept what she had to say. "It was between my parents and me."

He looked incredulous. "What about Spence? He missed you. Did something between your parents and you have to affect him as well?"

"I didn't want it to."

Joe leaned forward and put his hands lightly on her shoulders. He looked into her eyes and spoke quietly. "But it did, Tess."

"I can't change that now. I wish I could." Tears stung her eyes, tears she didn't want to shed in his presence.

"Didn't you ever want to see him? Didn't you miss them?"

"Of course I did." Tears stung her eyes. "How do you think I felt when--" Her throat constricted. She didn't want to cry with him so close, watching her this way. She cleared her throat. "I had reasons for not visiting, reasons I don't want to go into. That's in the past. Isn't it bad enough they're gone? Do we have to go over every wrong thing that ever happened?" Tess blinked back her tears and raised her chin to meet his gaze.

"I've made you cry. I'm sorry." Joe raised a hand to her chin, touched it lightly. His touch, his nearness somehow warmed and comforted her. He looked into her eyes, his own brilliant, searching. His expression changed, softened.

He moved closer, until his lips touched hers. She drew in her breath, and started to move out of his grasp, but then her hands met the hard expanse of his chest, and his lips touched hers, warm and supple. She let her lips linger on his for a few seconds, on the edge of surrendering in a single-minded response, before she backed away.

Joe stood there looking after her, wearing a dark gaze that Tess couldn't read. Then he moved.

"Goodnight." He uttered this in a low, raspy voice with an abrupt nod of his head, and he strode out of the kitchen.

Tess followed and watched him pull on his jacket at the door. "Drive carefully," she said as he opened it.

He glanced back at her, nodded again, and closed the door quickly behind him. Her lips still tingled from his kiss as Tess turned away. She touched them and listened to the sound of his truck as he started it.

Upstairs, Tess nestled under the warm bed covers, picked up her mother's second journal, and opened it to where she'd left off.

It took some time and effort to get her mind off Joe Latimer so she could concentrate on reading, but she eventually did with the help of her worries about the blackmail letter, which nagged at her with greater intensity as the hours passed. There was a chance her mother's journals could help solve that mystery, once she worked her way into the more recent ones. She was determined to read them in sequential order, to get a fix on when her parents had begun to change in their feelings, suspicions, and eventually their behavior toward Tess.

She read late into the night, skimming over everyday events and seasonal celebrations. She skipped over the humorous account of how she'd lost her first tooth. She knew these things. She could go back to them later. She wanted to get to the bottom of her questions about her family. She wanted to have answers for Joe if he asked again.

Finally, shortly after one in the morning, Tess put down the eighth volume and switched off the bedside lamp.

As she lay awake, her thoughts kept returning to the last page she'd read. It was her mother's account of how seven-year-old Tess followed young Joe Latimer everywhere and never stopped talking about what Joseph had said, or what Joseph had done. Her mother described Joe as a "tall, lanky, black-haired boy with thoughtful green eyes. He never seems to tire of Tess tagging after him, and he brought her a bunch of daisies this morning. Tess's first flowers from a beau?"

Tess tossed and turned that night, her dreams full of the boy Joseph Latimer, whom she'd sought out so persistently as a child.

Later in the night her dreams changed. She ran barefoot down a road, away from a car that pursued her. The faster she tried to run, the slower she moved. Tess wanted to escape into the woods, but she couldn't make her legs move in that direction. Finally she stood still in the middle of the road, unable to move at all, while the headlights bore down on her. Closer.

Tess woke with a start.

Had that been a noise? An engine? She didn't hear anything now, but something had roused her completely from sleep a second ago.

She sat up and listened, sensing a stillness in the old house that seemed remarkable, considering all the strange noises it had made to keep her awake her first night here. She listened for a few minutes, but heard nothing out of the ordinary. Still feeling anxious, restless, she attempted to reason herself into relaxing. The dream must have wakened her.

Then another sound caught her attention, and adrenaline sent her heart racing. This sound had come from downstairs.

Tess crept out of bed and listened, mouth open, as she made her way out to the stairs. She stood on the upstairs landing and waited. It was a rattle, like that of a doorknob. The front door. Someone was fiddling with the door lock. Trying to pick it?

A scream rose in her throat, threatening to let loose along with her panic. She put a hand over her mouth. Whatever the person wanted, there was no good reason she could think of that they'd try to pick her lock in the middle of the night rather than use the doorbell. She had to do something.

She switched on the light over the stairs, then continued down the stairs into the foyer, where she switched on the foyer and porch lights with one swipe of her hand across the wall panel.

The rattle of the doorknob stopped abruptly. Then Tess was certain she heard movement on the floorboards of the front porch. She pictured someone darting down the porch steps.

Silence, except for Tess's heartbeat pulsing in her ears as she imagined a figure running off through the snow out there, but she couldn't be sure unless she saw them. She turned off the two inside lights. Leaving the porch light on, she went into the living room and parted the drapes a crack to peer outside.

A gust of wind whined in the trees or the chimney. Branches scraped the roof of the porch. The dark shapes of the trees outside danced in their snow blankets, shrouded by falling snow. The front door shook with the gust, and the doorknob rattled. Snow spattered against the big living room window in front of her, and Tess backed away from it with a startled cry.

Finally she laughed, and berated herself for panicking at the wind. She returned upstairs to bed. She'd settled down again, gotten her pillow back into the right shape, her head into the right depression on the pillow, when she heard another noise that wasn't the wind.

Somewhere outside, down near the road or up on the hill beyond the driveway, an engine started and whined away into the night, too quickly for her to get a handle on the sound. It was drowned out by another gust of wind.

Chapter 6

Paige, Tess and Harry rode to the funeral together in Paige's rental car on Thursday. The mortuary in Wilder stood at the nearer end of town. When they arrived, Tess spotted Joe Latimer standing on the steps beside a woman, who thankfully wasn't Jessica Laine. Joe spoke to the woman, and she waved discreetly to Tess. Moments later Joe introduced her as his sister Rose.

Rose Latimer was tall, brown-haired, and unremarkable except for her eyes, which were the same dark green and gold as Joe's. She wore a long beige coat, open over a sedate forest green dress of the type Tess's mother used to wear to church. She was a lot thinner than Tess remembered, when she was eventually able to recall her as a young adult. Rose had been two years ahead of Tess and Angie in school, and Tess recalled with an inner cringe the time Angie had made fun of Rose's round shape. Tess hoped Rose didn't remember--but how did one forget an experience like that? Tess introduced Paige and Harry. A smile transformed Rose's face, and she was suddenly beautiful. The transformation caused Tess to take pause.

Joe held the door for all of them and they went inside.

Tess sat through the ordeal of the funeral, conscious of the sea of people seated in the large room. She hadn't expected so many. The minister from her mother's church officiated, and Joe offered the eulogy, which ended too soon, leaving the gathering in a silence broken only by sniffles and low murmurs. At the conclusion of the service, the minister announced on Tess's behalf that those in attendance were invited back to the house for a buffet lunch.

Tess returned to the house with Paige and Harry, where she went directly to the kitchen, to stress over the amount of food she'd prepared. Harry pitched in, helping to set the food out in the dining room. They heard cars drive up, and Tess was filled with unaccountable panic at the prospect of running out of food within minutes, when Paige answered a knock at the back door.

Joe and Rose Latimer had arrived with the beverages, as promised, and more food, which they carried in the back door. Lots of food, Tess realized as she watched them carry in one dish after another from Rose's car. Stunned by the sudden and miraculous abundance, Tess stammered her thanks as the first guests arrived and filtered into the living and dining rooms. Rose and Joe set to work, arranging the buffet as though Tess had given them detailed instructions, when she hadn't said a word.

They turned to find Tess watching them, dumbfounded by their generosity, and Joe said simply, "We realized you wouldn't know how many people to expect. Rose wanted to help."

"Thank goodness for you and Rose." It was all Tess had time to say. More guests were arriving, and she turned her attention to them.

Within a short time two dozen or more people were gathered in the big country kitchen and family room, where they'd visited with Tess's mother Cathy numerous times through the years.

"This was her favorite room," Tess heard someone say.

"Tess," a familiar voice called, and Tess turned as Angie crossed the living room to hug her tightly. They spent a few minutes talking, and Tess promised to come out to Stoneway to spend time with Angie while she was in town. Then another guest approached Tess with a story about her father. Another to talk about something her brother had done. This went on, and finally Paige brought Tess a plate of food and suggested she sit for a few minutes.

Tess's head spun with her own memories, mingled with the kind words and memories of her guests, and she suddenly wanted some time alone to cry. She hadn't realized the funeral would have this impact on her, and she told Paige so. Paige sat in a corner with her to eat and they kept their backs to the crowd, allowing the other people to fade into the background for a few minutes.

Tess was in the dining room a short time later when a male voice beside her said, "I'm so sorry, Tess." She turned, and took a moment to realize who the man was.

"Alan." Tess hugged him tightly. This was Alan Stewart, whom she'd dated for several months before she left home that last summer.

"I wasn't sure you'd recognize me."

Alan had been a skinny eighteen year old. Now his shoulders were broader, and he was taller than Tess remembered. His hairline was receding, and he had given up the immature goatee he'd worn back then along with the black clothing. Today he wore a neat gray suit and tie. He was clean shaven, with short brown hair. His face, once babyish, now appealed with a kind of reasonable, adult sensitivity. His hazel eyes lit up as he regarded Tess. "I'm relieved to see you here, looking so well. I wish it wasn't under these circumstances. Will you be in town long?"

Tess nodded. "I'm taking a leave of absence from my business. I'd planned to be here next week, and I was going to stay through New Years. I haven't changed that plan, it's just changed itself, dramatically. It's hard to take it all in." She found herself dipping toward tears again, and shook them off. "How are you doing, Alan? Are you painting?"

Tess and Alan had met in art class, during high school, and they, along with a few other students who'd considered themselves budding artists, had formed a tightly knit group, encouraging each other and learning together.

"I spent a few years working as a graphic artist, doing some web design on the side. Now I work part time at a local print shop, in addition to my metal sculpture and painting. I've opened a gallery in town. You should come see it while you're here. Did you ever open your bakery? And more importantly, do you still paint?"

"No bakery, but I have been painting. In fact, I'm turning my old bedroom upstairs into a studio to work in while I'm here."

"You'll have to come see my gallery. Laura Reynolds is one of the contributing artists. So is Ed Greene. They're a married couple now, you know. I'm renting the space for the gallery from Joe Latimer. Laura has a bookkeeping service there, too. It's an old Victorian house where Joe used to have his clinic before he moved into his new building across the street. Jessica Laine is opening a bath products boutique there. Only I think she's in it for fun, and to have an excuse to be in contact with Joe on a regular basis. Joe's sister Rose is opening a bookstore. Here are Laura and Ed now."

Tess turned alongside him to greet her old friends. Ed Greene and Laura, who was now his wife, had been a part of their informal artists' circle when they were teenagers. Both of them greeted Tess enthusiastically, subdued at first over her loss. Soon they were deep in conversation about their artwork. Laura, Ed and Alan were excited at the prospect of having Tess in town for at least a month, and they all agreed she needed to get some of her work into Alan's gallery.

Angie Norwood joined them, and turned the conversation with Alan and Ed to skiing and hunting. Angie's attention suddenly focused on a teenage girl who stood in the buffet line, and Angie went over to bring the girl, her plate half full, over to meet Tess. The girl looked reluctant, troubled.

"Tess, this is Karen Jensen, Spence's girlfriend. Karen worked for me at Stoneway until a few days ago." To Karen, Angie added, "Tess and I were best friends when we were girls."

Karen sent Angie a sideways glance, but greeted Tess with her hand extended.

"Karen, I'm so sorry to have to meet you like this." Tess hadn't known Spence had a girlfriend.

The girl nodded shyly and turned away. Tess thought she was headed back to the buffet, but instead she brought two adults over and introduced them to Tess as her parents, Margaret and Hank Jensen. "Spence's sister, Tess." Karen appeared close to tears.

A few minutes later Angie had to leave, to see to her guests at Stoneway, and Tess excused herself to walk her out. "I'm sorry we didn't get to talk more, Angie."

"You'll have to come out and spend some time with us, like we planned, before you leave. You will, won't you?" Angie turned at the door to face Tess.

"Of course."

"I have some old photos I'm dying to show you. Oh, and my brother Kevin's birthday party is in a few days. I'm sure he'll want you to be there. Remember Kevin?" She made Tess promise to attend the party.

After Angie left, Tess remained in the foyer for a minute, savoring the moment to herself before heading back to be with her guests.

She overheard two women talking in the living room, just the other side of the partial wall that divided the living room from the foyer where Tess stood.

"I don't see any alcohol here," the first woman said, arguing with her companion. "No drugs, no weird religious symbols, not even a stick of incense."

"Of course you wouldn't, after that funeral, with the minister from their church and all," the second woman said. "She hasn't lived in this house for years, but if she'd been here when the accident that killed them all happened, you'd wonder if she was the one driving. Nearly killed herself that other time. They were sued because of it. She tried to blame it on someone else, but the drugs were in her blood. I think she may have served time in jail, or a juvenile detention center. They said she was staying with relatives, but if so why didn't she come back to visit, after she was an adult? She left and never came back, until now."

Tess walked away in the other direction, through the study, to avoid seeing who it was who said those things. She knew they were talking about her and her accident, the reason she thought her parents had sent her away.

It crossed Tess's mind that it might be one of her guests today who was blackmailing her. She stood in the study, stunned for a moment by the idea that they might have the nerve to come here, eat, and pretend to grieve with her, while they harbored such diabolical motives. Tess returned to the kitchen and visited with the people there, trying to forget, trying not to wonder whether everyone here had heard gossip about her, trying not to believe she had an enemy here among all her family's friends.

By late afternoon, nearly everyone had gone home. The weather had turned stormy again, and people wanted to get home before driving became difficult.

Rose Latimer collected her clean, empty dishes, and Joe helped her load them into her car. Tess hugged Rose gratefully, thanking her again for her help. Then Paige went to the door with Harry. Both had their suitcases in hand.

"Thank you both for being here. I wish you could stay another night." Tess wanted to beg them to. She hadn't mentioned her prowler of two nights ago to them, or the blackmail letter, afraid they'd insist she return to L.A.--as if that were a safer place. Now she dreaded sleeping alone in this house.

Paige shook her head. "We'd better get to a lower elevation before we get snowed in here." She didn't miss Tess's look of disappointment. She hugged her tightly and gave her a sisterly kiss. "Take care, sweetie."

Harry followed with a hug and kiss for Tess as well. "We've a magazine to get to the printer, but we'll call you soon. Take care." Then he was out the door behind Paige. Tess held the door, noting theirs was the last car remaining out front, besides her rental.

She closed the door, locked it, and went to the kitchen to check the back door. She locked it, and looked around the kitchen. Rose and Paige had cleaned so well that Tess couldn't tell anyone had eaten a meal here today. Leftovers were packed neatly into the refrigerator, so Tess wouldn't have to cook tonight. A stack of firewood was freshly heaped on the floor near the fireplace.

Tess was about to turn off the kitchen light when she heard a thump at the back door. She hesitated to open it, but when she peered out the window there was Joe, with another load of wood, his breath steaming. She let him in and he deposited the wood on top of the stack already there. Tess remembered now that he'd parked out back when he arrived with Rose and the food and beverages.

"With a storm coming you can't afford to be without enough fuel in the house. The wall heaters aren't enough when the cold sets in." He brushed his hands and sleeves off, watching Tess. "I overheard you say you're staying on through New Years." He smiled mildly. "I'm glad to hear it."

"I can't thank you and Rose enough, for all your help today, and for the words you shared at the service."

"Will you be all right here tonight?" He seemed genuinely concerned, which touched her.

She paused, wanting more than anything to ask him to stay a little longer, but she feared allowing herself to learn to want his company any more than she already did--and she only now realized how much she did.

"I'll be fine."

"Storms don't frighten you?"

"Storms don't frighten me. I find them exciting. Honestly, I'll be fine." She lifted her chin and met his gaze.

"I'm sure you will." He buttoned his overcoat. "I'd better get home before this gets any worse. It's blowing up already out there. Remember to lock up." With a curt goodnight he went out the back door.

Tess moved through the rest of the house, closing up, drawing curtains against drafts. She stopped at the upstairs hall window and listened to the wind in the trees behind the house, their branches rattling against the roof. She looked down when a bright light made her realize that Joe was still there, seated in his truck behind the house, starting his engine and turning on his headlights. He let the engine warm up for a minute before he eased the truck around to the driveway.

On her return to the foyer downstairs, to turn on the front porch light, Tess noticed an envelope on the hall table addressed to her. Her name was typed on the outside. If not for the shape of the envelope she would've expected it to be another sympathy card, but this was a long business envelope, like the blank one she'd found in the mailbox yesterday. She opened it and unfolded the single sheet of paper it contained.

It was another blackmail letter, a printed copy, identical to the first.

Tess stared at the page, wanting to laugh, to believe it was someone's idea of a sick joke, a joke they felt they needed to repeat because no one had laughed the first time. Yet she knew this was serious. She remembered the gossips she'd overhead hours earlier, and felt sure everyone in town was aware she'd been blamed for that accident years ago, although she'd never been charged. If word of who she was in the publishing world got out, along with the story that she'd left her little brother at home alone that night, what would it do to her business? What would it do to Paige and Harry, and all their employees?

Tess carried this second blackmail letter over to the sofa and sat down to think. She got up, after a few minutes, and went to the study for paper and a pen. She sat at her father's desk and made a list of everyone she remembered being here this afternoon. One of those people had left this letter. She realized after a few minutes that she didn't know all their names. She would need to ask Rose and Joe to tell her who some of the guests had been.

Meanwhile the wind howled outside, and the snow didn't fall, but drove against the windows.

Eventually Tess went upstairs and got ready for bed. Again she felt exhausted, and she wondered if this was depression, seeping into her bones, cold, slogging and hopeless. That would be natural, a part of the grieving process. She shrugged. This was more than grief, it was grief combined with blackmail, grief combined with the possibility of murder. She'd never felt so alone in her life.

She resolved to call Paige and Harry tomorrow, give them a heads up about this letter, and offer to dissolve her part in the partnership right now. Somehow she'd make things right. Tonight it would be enough to sleep through this storm.

She wondered again if her mother's journals would have an answer to this blackmail question. Would she find information in them about her accident? Something Tess herself didn't remember? Something her parents learned after Tess went to live in Seattle with her aunt?

Then her thoughts turned to Dr. Lloyd's words, to his mention of her father planning to call her. Tess searched through her mother's journals again for the current year's book. Of course it was futile. Nothing had changed. It still wasn't there.

Chapter 7

Friday morning revealed a world layered with a new accumulation of white. Snow had fallen all night long, the storm easing up toward dawn. Now the sky was clearing, and the sun reflected off snow, blinding Tess when she first opened the west-facing front door. Snow had drifted onto the porch and steps, so she had to take a broom out with her and sweep it out of her path. She shoveled the walkway and driveway. Then she watched the snow removal service's red truck labor up the road with a snowplow on the front of it. She was heading back into the house when she again noticed the smooth, virgin blanket of snow on the front yard.

Tess couldn't help herself, it filled her with the same urge she'd felt as a girl when faced with new snow. She ran over and plopped down in the cold stuff, and moved her arms and legs to make a snow angel. She got up and repeated her action twice more, once on each side of the asphalt walkway. Three snow angels soon graced the yard, beckoning her back to the house, where she changed clothes and ate a hot breakfast.

When it came time to plan her day, all Tess could think about were the blackmail letters. She took out her list of the people who'd come to the house yesterday and looked it over. She needed more information before she broke the news to Paige and Harry. She dialed the number for the Latimers, but got their answering machine. Frustrated, Tess drove into town. She planned to visit Joe at his veterinary clinic and request his help with her list.

On the drive, she slowed as she approached the curve in the road where her family's van had gone over. There was a pullout across the road from the spot, on the inside of the curve. On an impulse, Tess parked there, got out, and crossed over to the outside curve, which edged a steep drop off into a ravine filled with rocks, brush and trees, under the fresh covering of new snow. She had to watch her footing, because snow had been piled at the side of the road by the snowplow, and she couldn't tell for sure where the shoulder ended and the drop off began, beneath the dirty ridges of cleared snow. She kept her distance, and peered over into the ravine where the van had rolled into a stand of trees, way down there near a creek bed. It was a long way down. She'd been told the van had rolled a few times before it hit the trees and rocks below.

She wondered if her father's missing cane was somewhere down there, buried under snow. If it was wood, it could have been thrown from the wreckage and landed among tree branches where it had been virtually invisible to the sheriff's people.

Tess found herself shivering as she visualized the crash scene. She scrambled back into the car, cranked up the heater, and drove on into town.

Cedar Creek's main street was a fantasy scene this morning. Everything was frosted with new snow, and Tess drove through with a feeling of being inside the pages of a fairy tale. She'd joked, while living in L.A., about shoveling snow and the cold, and the long winters in a mountain climate, while secretly she'd missed it.

Downtown Cedar Creek was quiet. It was early for shoppers to be out. Tess slowed in front of a big white Victorian house, and spotted a sign across the street for Cedar Creek Animal Hospital, which must be Joe Latimer's veterinary clinic.

She parked nearby, got out and looked around. Joe's office was still closed. Across the street from it, the old Victorian's front yard sported a crude, unfinished plywood sign.

"Sierra Lights--Fine Arts Gallery
L. R. Greene Bookkeeping
Coming Soon:
The Boudoir--Fine Bath Products
Fabled Rose--Books and Gifts
Retail, Business, Restaurant
Space Available 555-2392"

Maybe she could get a look at Alan's gallery before Joe arrived at his office. She crossed the street to the majestic old house and tried the front door. It opened with the jingle of a string of bells that hung inside the door.

"Be right with you!" a voice called from somewhere inside. It sounded like Joe.

"Take your time," Tess called.

"Tess?" Joe appeared in the far doorway, clothed in a plaid shirt and faded, paint-spotted jeans. "You're out early this morning."

"A lot of city people rise early too, you know."

He came toward her with a claw hammer in one hand, his smile wide.

"Are you remodeling?" She nodded at the hammer.

He glanced at his hammer. "I'm building display shelves for Jessica's shop. The Boudoir," he added with a wry grin.

Tess recalled Jessica's mention of her cousin Trent, and she shivered.

"Cold out, after L.A., isn't it? You're not used to this."

"I'm fine. How many businesses are you going to house here?"

"So far, there are four. Alan Stewart's gallery, Jessica's bath products shop, Rose's books and gifts, and Laura Greene's bookkeeping service, but we have space for at least five more. I thought I'd leased the kitchen and dining space for a restaurant, about two weeks ago, but that fell through." As he said this, he headed toward the kitchen and dining area, and she followed. It was a large, old-fashioned kitchen, partly refitted for commercial use. The dining room and parlor had been opened up to make room for seating.

"This used to be a veterinary office?" Tess noted the crown molding, wainscoting, and hardwood floors that must be vintage oak. The decorative detail on the arched entrance to the parlor was exquisite, the work of craftsmen of an earlier era.

Joe's gaze moved affectionately over the rooms. "I used to live here, along with my business. It took up the front rooms on the other side, and the back of the first floor. I lived upstairs, but used this as my kitchen. It wasn't ideal for my purposes, and it's too big for one person to live in, which is why I built the new place. This is perfect for several small businesses. Laura and Alan are already open for trade."

Tess turned to him purposefully. "Is Rose here at her shop this morning?"

"No, she's been working weekday mornings at the high school library. She'll be here later, if you try back. Did you need something?"

"I'm hoping you and she can help me recall the names of everyone who attended the buffet at my house yesterday." Tess pulled her list out of her purse. "I've made this list of everyone I remember being there, but I didn't know some of the names, and I'm sure I've left some out."

Joe said nothing. He appeared to wait for a reason she would want to do this. She handed him the list and he scanned it, nodding his head a couple of times. Then he reached into his breast pocket for a pen, and went over to the kitchen counter to add some names. Finally he handed the list back to her. "That's all I remember. Why the list?"

It was an innocent question, but Tess wasn't prepared to explain. She hadn't spoken to Paige and Harry yet about the threat. She felt she owed it to them to let them know before she told anyone else.

"Tess! Hey, you made it." Alan Stewart stopped in the front hall, looking into the kitchen. He came in, hugged Tess, and kissed her cheek. "I knew you'd come see the place. Let me show you around. The gallery is upstairs." He took her hand and drew her out of the room, saying over his shoulder, "Did you ask her yet, Joe?"

"No," Joe replied.

Alan started up the stairs, with Tess in tow.

"Ask me what?"

"If you want to lease his kitchen for your bakery."

"What?" She stopped and stared at Alan.

"That's what you always wanted, isn't it?"

"But I--"

"You used to say you wanted to come back here after college and open a bakery. Did you ever change your mind?"

"Yes. I mean, no. I--" Tess realized she'd never changed her mind at all. It had been changed for her, by her parents, by the magazine, by circumstances beyond her control. Or had they been beyond her control? Ever since hearing of the crash that killed her family she'd been asking herself why she hadn't come back to visit years ago, regardless of what her parents wanted. What would they have done, thrown her out of the house? At least then she would've known how they felt about her. She wouldn't have this big, empty, gnawing question left unanswered by the suddenness of their deaths.

"Well which is it?" Alan grinned at her.

She studied his face. "You look so happy. You didn't used to smile all the time like this. You must love putting your gallery together."

"I'm having the time of my life. Come on." Alan continued up the stairs. "It's risky, finally putting all my ideas to the test, investing my savings. Still, I had to do this sooner or later, or die wondering if I could've made it work."

Tess felt an odd sensation and looked over her shoulder. Joe Latimer stood at the foot of the stairs watching them, his face a mask of--what? Anger? Bitterness? She couldn't read it, and Alan was above her on the stairs, urging her to follow.

The gallery took up most of the second floor, including the hallway and balcony overlooking the entrance below. The walls weren't filled yet, but Alan was steadily working his way in that direction. "A lot of what's here so far is Laura's, Ed's and my work, but I'm finding other artists in the area. Rose's shop is on this floor too. We thought artwork and books fit well together. The Boudoir, Jessica's bath products shop, is up in the garret. You'll have to meet Jessica later. I think she rises at the crack of noon." He chuckled.

"I've already met her."

"Yeah? Why don't you take a look around here, while I go down and talk to Joe for a minute. He looked about to spit nails a minute ago. I'd better make sure my rent check didn't bounce or something."

Tess wound her way through the gallery, following the walls. There were pieces on display in the walkways as well, out of the path but viewable from all sides. These were mostly metal sculptures of plants, their leaves shaped into receptacles for water fountains. They must be Alan's work. Tess took it all in, but her mind kept returning to Alan's mention of a bakery. Her bakery. She couldn't get it off her mind. Finally, when she'd absorbed as much of the artwork as she could in one visit, she ventured back down to the kitchen, interrupting a joke between the two men, who both laughed.

Alan appeared to be having more fun, of the two. Joe's laughter was forced, and he didn't look all that happy. He glanced at Tess as she entered, and he sobered at once. He'd been leaning on the counter, but now he stood straight, facing the other way, appearing not to want to meet her gaze.

"Well?" Alan entreated Tess's opinion, looking eager, hopeful. "What do you think?"

"It's incredible. You have something special here. It's a beautiful house, Joe. What are you going to call it?"

Alan looked at Joe. "We were discussing that."

"Why don't you hold a contest? Have people submit name ideas. Are you going to have a grand opening?"

Joe turned and looked at her. "Are you interested in leasing the kitchen and dining space for a bakery? Alan seems to think you'll jump at the chance."

She looked at Alan, but Joe was the one putting the pressure on. She felt the weight of his gaze. His deep green eyes were lit up like a forest on fire.

"I'll consider it, but I'm only on a leave of absence. I'm not making any decisions now, just--well--drifting a bit, getting back in touch with myself."

"You sound like a teenager, talking like that." Joe turned away. "When you decide to be serious, give me a call." He stalked out the front door.

Alan watched Tess. "What is it with you and him?"

Tess looked after Joe, wondering the same thing. "He's grieving too, you know. He was closer to my family than I was in recent years." She couldn't believe she was making excuses for him, but it was true he'd been closer recently. Maybe that explained his behavior.

"Why did you stay away so long?" Alan asked the question quietly, with no accusation in his tone. His eyes flickered.

Tess wasn't sure she wanted to answer, or could. She headed for the front exit, and Alan walked beside her.

"You know what you could do. It would be a great help to us, and give you a handle on what you want. Sell baked goods at our grand opening. That would help you gauge what it would be like to run the business, as well as what the customer traffic would be. Decide what you want to do after that. Maybe you can get Joe to give you an ultra-short-term lease for the opening. He doesn't have any new prospects for the space, that I know of. That might be why he's acting so peeved at the moment. He's not normally a wet blanket. Why don't we go ask him what he thinks. He's right across the street."

"Not this morning, Alan. I have some things I need to take care of. Let me give it some thought."

###

At home, Tess placed her call to Paige and Harry. She got them on the conference phone and read the blackmail letter to them.

"Oh no," Paige groaned as soon as Tess finished reading it. "Look, I have some savings. Twenty thousand or so--"

"Paige. Wait. We're not going to pay them."

"What do you mean? It says you have to pay them and leave, or they'll go to the press. They haven't left you any option, Tess."

"They're breaking the law! Extortion is a crime. I'm not going to pay them. I'm not going to leave, either, until I'm ready. I've received two of these letters now. I'm taking them to the sheriff. I've made a list of everyone who was here yesterday when the second one was left."

"What if they go to the press as soon as they find out you've reported it? It could ruin us. Harry, aren't you going to say anything?"

"I'm afraid I agree with Tess. If you pay this person, they'll simply come back later and want more. Then what do you do? It does no good to try to save our business from bad press, if we're going to the poor house by way of blackmail. There's not a lot we can do aside from go to the police. It's not a perfect answer, but there it is."

"There's nothing we can do, once they go to the press," Paige argued. "Then the damage will be done and there's no undoing it. Then we're dead!"

Tess thought she could hear, between the lines of Paige's words, that Tess was responsible for this.

"I'm sorry." Tess's past shouldn't affect their business this way, whether she was at fault or not.

"You know, Tess," Paige said, "if I could reach through the phone line I'd strangle you right now. Don't you dare apologize for this. It's not your fault!"

"I'm going to the sheriff as soon as I hang up."

"No. Wait. Let's give this more thought. They said they'd contact you again, with instructions. Give us time to think this through. Maybe we'll come up with an answer." Paige said those last words with much more conviction than Tess felt.

Tess hung up the phone, frustrated. Who was doing this? Why? She felt certain there was more to it than an opportunistic grapple for money. It was someone who knew her, someone with an axe to grind. Could it be someone who resented the damage from her accident? The owners of the flower shop? The women gossiping yesterday had mentioned a lawsuit, but Tess's parents had never told her about any lawsuit. Had there been one?

Tess had no memory of her accident, and too little knowledge of the events after it. She still felt certain she would never have done what the sheriff and her parents and all the gossips thought she had done that night. What had really happened? What would happen to her business, her magazine, if word got out? What could the sheriff do about it?

She could only think of one thing to do if the blackmailer went to the press, and that was for her to leave their partnership. She'd been considering doing that, but she didn't want to be forced out this way. What about the next business she chose to enter into? Would that be jeopardized as well by these kinds of threats? She wanted to clear this up once and for all, but how?

The doorbell interrupted her thoughts.

Spence's girlfriend Karen Jensen stood on the doorstep, with her hand raised to press the bell again. She smiled mildly at Tess. Karen was curvy, for a sixteen-year-old, slightly plump. She wore her thick, chestnut brown hair long, with feathered bangs surrounding her lustrous brown eyes and long lashes. "Hi. Do you remember me?"

"Of course. Come in, Karen. How are you?"

Karen followed Tess into the living room, where she paused, looking around. "Are you staying on here at the house?"

"Until the end of the year. I've been planning to get back in touch with you, to ask if you'd like to have anything of Spence's."

Karen's eyes widened, and she glanced around the room. She shook her head with a sad expression. "I can't think of anything right now." She reminded Tess alarmingly of how she herself had felt a few hours ago, when she'd peered over the side of the road at the crash scene--traumatized and lost.

Tess urged Karen to sit down, and Tess took the armchair next to the sofa. "How long had you and my brother been dating?"

"About two years, but we weren't really dating at first. My mom wouldn't let me until I turned sixteen. We hung out together, and saw each other at school activities. We've known each other all our lives. We just started dating this past summer."

"Well, give some thought to whether you want any of his things, and let's make a date for you to come over for lunch one day next week, or after the holiday, when we're both better recovered from the shock."

Karen nodded. "I'd like that. I came to ask if you found a key that Spence was going to return to Stoneway for me."

"A key? No, but I haven't gone through his things yet. I'll keep a lookout for it. Do you need it back right away?"

Karen chewed her lower lip.

They both heard a vehicle park outside. Tess recognized the sound of Joe's truck, and mused over the fact that she knew it as she got up. "Excuse me."

Joe started talking as soon as she opened the door. "I'll only take a minute of your time. I want to give you something to think about." He glanced back toward the driveway where Karen's car was parked. "You have company?" Now he looked at Tess.

"Karen Jensen is here." Tess moved aside and invited him in.

Karen got up to leave. Joe greeted her in a relaxed and friendly manner, while he'd been nothing but tense with Tess a few seconds ago. Karen said hi to him and continued to the door.

"I'll look for the key, and I'll call you," Tess told her as she left. Then she invited Joe into the living room, but he refused.

"I'll only be a minute. I came to make you an offer. Alan mentioned his idea of letting you bake for the grand opening as a trial for a possible business. He told me you're thinking of moving back here." Joe looked away for several seconds. "I'm not putting this well. I want you to consider doing that. Staying, leasing the bakery--er, restaurant space. If you decide you want to lease the place, I'll do whatever modifications you need, to make it work. I'd like to do business with you." He met her gaze, his own eyes stormy with tension.

Tess wasn't so sure Joe would feel the same desire to do business with her if he knew her current business was being threatened by blackmail over her past, but she nodded. "I will consider it. When is your opening?"

"In two weeks. We wanted to open the weekend after Thanksgiving, to catch the first holiday shoppers, but we're running behind, so it will be the following weekend. It would mean a lot to us to have you there, Tess. I asked Rose to come by later and talk to you about the plans for the opening. Is that all right?"

"Yes, of course." After all, exploring her dreams was the whole reason she'd decided to come here, before tragedy intervened.

"Good." Joe held out his hand. Tess shook it. He was keeping his distance now. She wondered at the change. Tess stood on the porch and watched him drive away.

As he was turning out of the driveway, another car turned in past him and pulled up out front. A blue sedan. Alan Stewart got out and waved at Joe, a big smile on his face as he approached the door, and Tess.

"I wanted to come with Joe, to help persuade you, but he was on his way home for lunch. I forgot to send these with him. They're just a couple of flyers for you to take a look at." He handed her a few sheets of paper, with an ad for the grand opening of his gallery printed on them.

Tess thanked him, and couldn't help seeing his glance toward the door. He was hoping she'd invite him in, but she wanted a little time alone.

The phone rang, its sound muffled by the door. "Um--I have to get that. It's business." She nodded over her shoulder, her hand on the doorknob.

"Oh. No problem. I need to get back. I'll . . . see you soon." Alan turned back toward his car with another wave, no longer smiling, and Tess hurried inside to answer the phone.

Chapter 8

Tess made two more snow angels that afternoon, one on either side of the front walkway, in an attempt to release tension. A car turned into the driveway while she lay on the ground pushing snow around. She felt foolish, but she finished the second snow angel before she stood up to find Rose Latimer leaning against her car, smiling at her.

Rose waved. "That's a fine troupe of snow angels."

"I suppose it looks silly, but I needed to unwind." Tess looked down at her clothes caked with snow and lifted her hands. "Now I need to change. Come on in." She led the way into the house, and headed for the stairs. "Make yourself at home. I'll only be a minute."

"No problem, and I like your idea of how to unwind," Rose called after her.

When Tess returned downstairs she found Rose in the kitchen. The fire had been fed, and Rose was carrying the teapot over to the table, along with a plate of cookies.

"I hope you don't mind, I made us some tea."

"Not at all. It will warm me up." Tess brought cups over to the table and sat down. "I want to thank you again for helping with the food yesterday. I don't know what I would have done without you and your brother. I was a bit lost over the whole business. I'm still--"

"In shock? So are we. We were so close to your family. Your mother was a great source of support to me. I miss them a lot." Rose poured the tea. "Joe asked me to bring you up to speed on our plans for our grand opening."

"First tell me about your bookstore."

"It's a book and gift shop, actually. Books, small gift items, greeting cards. Books are my passion, but I'm told they don't bring in a lot of trade these days, so the other items are there to entice people to take a walk past the books."

"I love books. I can't walk into a bookstore without spending money."

Rose laughed. "I'm hoping there are lots of your kind here, more than I know about. You know, I have three of your cookbooks, and I subscribe to your magazine. What are you working on now?"

Tess sighed and sipped her tea. "I'm not working at all right now. I'm trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I may leave the magazine and book business altogether. I don't know yet. Right now I'm taking it easy, reading Mom's journals, trying to figure out the mysteries of my own family."

Rose took this in with a nod. "She mentioned to me that she kept journals. You might learn new things about her."

"That's what I'm hoping, but she wrote mostly about us--the family. She didn't talk about herself when I was growing up. Did she to you?"

"Not much. Cathy was one of those people who focused on others, to the exclusion of herself."

Tess nodded. Yet someone may have killed her. Why was that? "How could anyone not love her?"

"Why--" Rose stopped, but her face asked the question for her.

"Why didn't I visit?" Tess wasn't sure she wanted to break the spell for Rose, any more than she wanted to for Joe. They believed her mother was no less than a constant source of support for her family, as she had apparently been to Rose. Tess shook her head. "I won't go into that. I don't know all the reasons, for certain, and my parents aren't here to tell their side of the story. Do you know about my accident, eleven years ago?"

Rose nodded, looking down at her teacup. "Yes, I'd heard about it, but I hate gossip." It was all she said, and it made Tess wonder.

"So you didn't hear about it from my family. What did you hear about it, and from whom?"

"I don't want to repeat it." Rose wore a look of distaste.

Tess dropped the subject, frustrated, wondering how she would ever figure out who was blackmailing her. The culprit wasn't likely to volunteer the information, but who would? She took a cookie and offered the plate to Rose.

Rose stiffened. "No, none for me, thanks."

"Would you look at a list of the guests who were here after the funeral yesterday, and tell me if I've left anyone out? I already showed it to your brother." Tess got up and retrieved the list.

Rose looked it over, and added a few names, mostly people who attended the same church she and Tess's mother had. She shook her head eventually. "I don't recall anyone else. What's the list for?"

"It's--to jog my memory. Tell me about the grand opening."

Tess and Rose spent hours, first talking about the grand opening of Joe's business center, and then visiting. Rose brought up the subject of Tess's artwork in her cookbooks. "I've always envied that kind of creative talent. Of course I see cooking as an art, and I do love to cook." Rose glanced at Tess with longing in her expression. Then she smiled shyly.

Tess nodded. "Any pursuit can be artwork. It's embracing what you're doing, and forgetting yourself completely while you do it. I've seen people make a dance out of directing traffic."

She took Rose upstairs to show her what she was doing with her old bedroom, turning it into a studio to work in while she was here.

"Oh, did you get to see Alan Stewart's gallery this morning?" Rose hesitated then. "Your mother told me you used to date him."

It amazed Tess that her mother would share that information with Rose. Alan was the boy her mother had insisted she break up with, right before her parents set her up on her ill-fated date with Trent Cambridge.

"How interesting." Rose picked up the two silver necklaces, the Celtic cross and pentacle, which Tess had left on the typing table beside her laptop. Rose blushed as she glanced at Tess and put them down. Tess thought she could see the wheels turning in Rose's mind. Was she wondering about the pentacle? Did she understand its significance? Tess waited for her questions, but Rose never asked them.

"Your mother and I went to the same church," she said quietly, and that was all. Tess took a deep breath and didn't reply. Rose was different from anyone she'd ever come across, but Tess understood shyness in a way that more extroverted people likely couldn't, and she found that she liked Joe's quiet, understated sister, in spite of her awkward pauses and unspoken questions.

"It was a gift," Tess told Rose. "The points of the pentacle represent earth, air, fire, water, and spirit, to Pagans. At least that's my understanding."

Rose nodded, silently taking in her words.

"My mother gave me the cross."

"She gave me one just like it."

Tess felt a powerful tug of envy, in that instant, for Rose and her closeness to Tess's mother. She hated the feeling, and immediately wanted to turn it around. "Rose, Joe told me about a cane he gave my father, that he'd like to have as a keepsake. Would you like anything of my mother's? Let me know, because I have no idea what I'll do with all their things. I'm overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning out this house, if I decide to sell it, and I--"

Rose turned abruptly with a gasp and a surprised look that made Tess pause mid-sentence. "What is it?"

"I--that's kind of you. I'll think about it. I can't think of anything right now. Maybe--" Rose shook her head, blushing again. "Maybe you should wait until after the funeral, until after you have a chance to--" She broke off again and appeared not to know what to say. "Until you have a chance to straighten out all their affairs." Rose looked at the door of the studio then, as if seeking an escape.

They were on their way down to the kitchen again when the doorbell rang. Rose looked at her watch. "I should be going. I didn't realize it was so late."

Tess opened the front door, and Angie Norwood nodded in the direction of the snow angels. "I see you've been playing in the snow. That's a healthy sign. I was able to get away for a few hours, and I wondered if you could use some company. Oh, hi Rose." Angie's voice took on a note of humor and a look of amusement entered her eyes.

Rose greeted Angie quietly and put on her coat, saying she had to go. Angie looked after her as she closed the door. Then she turned to Tess. "What did she want?"

"We were visiting."

Angie shrugged and clamped her lips shut as if changing her mind about something. "I didn't think you knew her that well."

"No, but she and my mother were good friends. Come into the kitchen. I'll make us some fresh tea."

"I'd love some coffee."

They sat in the kitchen and nibbled at the plate of cookies. The conversation started out slow, as the two women warmed up again after years of separation. It gave Tess an opportunity to take in the physical changes in her former schoolmate.

Angie and Tess had been told numerous times when they were girls that they looked like sisters. They looked less so now, but both had blue eyes and dark brown hair. Tess's eyes tended more toward cerulean, while Angie's were aquamarine. Tess's taller, slender frame contrasted with Angie's more robust, athletic build. Tess wore her hair longer, and it waved naturally. Angie's was thicker, and she wore it in a short, straight style that curled under right at her neckline.

"Your partners mentioned yesterday that you're on a hiatus." Angie bunched her eyebrows. "How is your magazine doing?"

"Oh, it's coming along." Tess regretted that they'd talked about the business at all yesterday, because now she wouldn't be able to discern who'd already known about it and may have left her that first blackmail letter two days earlier.

The coffee finished burbling, and Tess got up to pour it. "Angie, do you still hear much gossip about the accident I was hurt in years ago?"

Angie didn't say anything at first. When Tess sat down and looked at her she shrugged. "It's old news, and most of the people I talk to are from out of town, so they wouldn't know about it. I heard some old biddies talking about it yesterday, comparing it to your family's accident. That was right before I left. Why?"

"I heard what must have been the tail end of the same conversation."

Angie's eyes flickered. "I was worried you'd overhear and it would upset you." She studied Tess's face. "How are you doing? It has to be some shock, losing your parents and brother all at once."

Tess shrugged. "I'm doing about as well as you'd expect."

"How are you planning to spend your time here?"

"There's plenty of work to do, settling my family's affairs. I'm thinking of helping Joe and Rose with their grand opening, too. Have you seen what they're doing with that old house?"

Angie made a face. "They don't know what the hell they're doing. We have two restaurants at Stoneway, and a gift shop. What do they think we need that place for?"

"It will be nice to have a bookshop so close, won't it? You're not worried about the competition, are you? I'm thinking about getting involved with it myself. You know how I always used to want to open a bakery here."

Angie's eyes opened wide. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean to discourage you. They came up with this so suddenly, I don't get the impression they've put much thought into it. I'm not convinced they have a lot of business sense between them. They're sinking a lot of money into inventory and renovations. I guess I've become cynical about such things."

Tess had heard from others yesterday that Angie had done a lot of renovations at Stoneway, so this made her wonder. "Is Stoneway doing well?"

"It takes up all my time, I barely have a private life anymore, but it's doing well."

"So there are no money problems?" Tess had to ask. She hated to, but the blackmail letter weighed on her mind.

Angie laughed. "There are always money problems with a business, you know that. Don't get me started. Oh don't look like that. Things are going okay. So you're staying? Maybe for good?" Her eyes were wide with interest.

"I don't know. I planned to come here for some quiet time, to think things through. Now I have my family's affairs to settle, and a mystery to boot. I haven't had a chance to think. There's not a lot to hold me here with them gone."

"What about old friends?"

Tess returned Angie's smile. "Old friends are wonderful."

"What's the mystery?"

Tess regretted that slip. She didn't want to talk about the blackmail letter. She reached for a cookie, but only held it, thinking. "I'm reading through my mother's journals, trying to learn from them why my parents kept me from visiting all those years."

"Your mom kept journals?"

Tess nodded, looking at the cookie in her hand. "They discouraged me from visiting, you know. They sent me away, after my accident, and they found some excuse or another for me not to visit, whenever I told them I wanted to. It hurt me a lot, when I was younger. Then I guess my skin thickened, or I developed an attitude about it. I made my own life, and let them grow more distant as time went by. I feel as if I hardly knew them in the past few years. I hated that, though, and my surprise visit this year was intended to break through that. I was going to confront them and demand to know why they kept me away. I wanted to know if they thought I abandoned Spence that night, whether they still believed in me at all, after that accident."

"You disappeared without a word." Angie's taught voice revealed more than her narrowed eyes. Angie had been hurt as well, and Tess had done that. "Your parents wouldn't tell anyone how to reach you."

"I'm sorry I didn't contact you. They sent me away right after my accident, as soon as I got out of the hospital. They didn't want me to come home for the holidays. They were so distant after that, I didn't know about my dad's MS, or that he'd retired. When I was in college, they came up with any excuse they could for me not to visit during breaks or holidays."

Angie got up and went to the window. She sighed. "You and I weren't very close that last summer to begin with. I was always busy at Stoneway--and with Granddad while he was sick."

Tess had been too busy with her new friends, dreaming about her future, to realize Angie had been lonely and needed support through her grandfather's illness. Angie and Kevin both depended on their grandfather. Their parents were hopeless drug addicts, who'd been living on the streets in Sacramento and had essentially abandoned the two into their grandfather's care when they were children. Few people knew that about them, but Tess had known, and she'd let Angie down when she needed her.

"I'm so sorry, Angie. I never meant to hurt you."

"That was a long time ago." Angie returned to sit facing Tess. She picked up her coffee mug and reached for a cookie. "How long had it been, since you'd heard from your folks?"

"I called them two weeks before the accident, to feel out the situation before the holidays without actually asking them about their plans. For all the good it did. I learned more from you than I did from them. Dr. Lloyd thought my father planned to call me, before their accident, which is odd because my dad never did. It was always my mom."

"Why did Dr. Lloyd think your dad planned to call you then? I mean, how would he know? Was it about your dad's health?"

"It was something to do with Trent Cambridge. Apparently he hasn't reformed." Tess shook her head. "I wouldn't have been able to help them."

"Oh, I know about that. Trent's supposed to have raped a teenage girl. I heard there was no evidence though, only her word against his."

"Still, the man she's accusing happens to be Trent, whom we both know to have done things like that in the past."

Angie shrugged, then looked Tess in the eye and said in a quiet tone, "There was no evidence in your case either. You didn't report it. You didn't tell your parents."

Tess puzzled over Angie's words. "I told my parents about it, after my accident. Didn't they ask you about it?"

Angie wore a blank look.

"Angie, didn't my parents ever ask you about Trent trying to rape me?" Tess had pleaded with them to ask Angie about it. It had been important to Tess that they believe her.

Angie shook her head. "They never mentioned it to me. I didn't know they knew."

Tess looked down at the cookie she'd absently crumbled into pieces. She got up, brushed the crumbs into her hand and carried them to the sink. "I was right then. There's not much point in feeling guilty for refusing to talk to the deputy and Dr. Lloyd about it." She wondered if there was any point in continuing through her mother's journals.

Angie looked at her watch, then she gathered her jacket from the back of the kitchen chair. "I'd better run. I'll call you tomorrow and we'll set up some time for fun, all right?"

Tess followed her to the door and hugged her. Angie closed the door behind her, and Tess looked around the front room, her thoughts returning to that curve in the road where her family's van had gone over.

Tess put on her coat and walked down to the road for the mail. It was too cold to stay out, so she just grabbed the stack and hurried back inside to sort through it in the warmth of the living room.

She sorted out the ads, sympathy cards, and bills. One envelope had no return address, no postmark, and no stamp. Tess paused, looking at it with trepidation. It was the same type of envelope the other blackmail letters had been in.

She went to the kitchen and put on her mother's rubber gloves, then took a knife from the drawer to open the envelope. Inside, the letter was folded the same way as the others, and contained the identical threat. It looked like a copy, or a computer laser printout.

Now she'd received three identical blackmail letters, three days in a row. Why? Was the blackmailer worried she hadn't found the others? Or did they think she wasn't taking the threat seriously enough? There were still no further instructions, only the promise of more to come. Tess placed the letter inside a plastic bag.

She put on her coat and walked down to the mailbox again. It was a roadside box, larger than most, painted white with a red flag and a slot in front for the carrier to push the mail through. Anyone could have come along here and pushed the blackmail letters through the slot, anytime. When she was home she would've heard the car, but there had been at least an hour, this morning, when someone could've come here and not been seen. The driveway, and her rental car, were visible from the road, so they would see whether she was home or not.

Who was doing this? Karen, Joe, Alan, Rose, and Angie had each been here, one visitor after the other, since she'd come back from town; but during the time Tess had been in town this morning, anyone could've driven up and placed this in the box. Surely that was when it had happened. The blackmailer wouldn't risk dropping this off when she was home, with all the visitors she'd had today who might see.

Suddenly Tess wondered what would happen if her car wasn't visible, if it appeared no one was home. Would the blackmailer reveal him or herself--as they nearly had the other night when she'd heard the noise at her front door?

Tess started up the rental car, and moved it around to the back of the house. She took a quick, surreptitious look around the yard, and then the house as she moved around inside, locking up and closing windows for the evening. What if she didn't turn on any lights, or used only small, dim lamps in the places where she needed them, with all the drapes closed? Would the blackmailer think she wasn't home?

"I'm going nuts," she murmured with a shake of her head as she finished locking up. "They're driving me nuts."

###

Early that evening Tess took a long hot bath by candlelight, trying to settle her thoughts. She realized afterward that all she'd eaten today was breakfast and a cookie, and she'd drunk way too much tea and coffee. She sat at the kitchen table in her robe, the room illuminated only by the light of the fire, and ate some of yesterday's buffet leftovers.

Later she returned upstairs, closed the heavy bedroom drapes, and found the journal she'd been reading last night. She plugged in the book light she'd brought with her, turned it on and got into bed.

Tess had started out intending to read all her mother's journals in chronological order, but as she reached over to turn off the bedside lamp she knocked the stack of journals off the nightstand. She groaned and got out of bed to pick them up. One had fallen open, and the date at the top of the page caught her eye. It had been written the first December she'd lived with Aunt Christine in Seattle, during her senior year of high school. She took that journal, got back into bed, turned off the bedside lamp, and started reading with the book light.

"I felt awful telling Tess such a bald-faced lie. I wanted to see her at Christmas, we all did. I pray one day she'll understand. She sounded so disappointed, I can't believe she felt otherwise, and I can't understand why anyone would think so. Jim feels strongly about her staying at Christine's, and going off to college next year. Spence cried when he learned his sister wasn't coming. I couldn't help it, I cried too."

Tess gazed at the page for a long time. It wasn't full of information, and it didn't explain why her parents hadn't wanted her to visit, but it somehow made her feel better to know her mother had cared enough to write what she had on this page. She should stop trying to read all these journals in chronological order, and skip ahead to the events that preoccupied her most.

A noise outside distracted her. It was the sound of an engine, but not a car or truck. It was something like a lawn mower, maybe a motorcycle. She switched off the book light, then got up and moved the drapes aside, peering out the front bedroom window. A snowmobile, the white glow of its single light flooding over the snow in front of it, circled around on the yard below, as it chopped the snow with its track, obliterating the snow angels Tess had made there today.

Tess stood absolutely still and watched the bizarre scene, wondering why and who would do such a pointless thing. The rider wore a helmet, and what appeared to be dark clothing.

The snowmobile stopped and the rider raised his head and looked directly at her window. Tess froze, her heart pounding as she imagined he saw her. Tess closed the drapes quickly, and then chided herself for that movement, which the rider may have seen even if he hadn't seen her before.

In something of a panic, now, and feeling too alone and suddenly blind and vulnerable in the cloying darkness, Tess went to the bedroom door and turned on the overhead light.

She heard the snowmobile start up and speed away into the night. Then Tess remembered the sheriff's mention of a snowmobile seen in the area at the time of her family's crash. She went downstairs, turning on lights as she went, checking all the doors again to ensure they were locked.

She called the sheriff's office in Wilder.

Chapter 9

"We'll look into it as far as we can," the deputy who came out told Tess. He'd introduced himself as Duane Prescott then sat in the kitchen with her to listen and take notes about what she'd seen and heard. Now he gave Tess a long look. "You don't remember me, do you?"

She nodded. "From Dr. Lloyd's office the other day."

He shook his head. "I don't mean then. I was the officer who took your statement after your accident, years ago. Sheriff Kendall's concerned about you . . . with the questions we have about your family's accident and all."

The way he emphasized "family's" made her take pause. "Should I be frightened? I mean, I am, obviously. That's why you're here. Do you mean I'm not being paranoid? Do you think there's a good reason for me to be afraid?"

He looked apologetic. "Let's say we have questions. I don't mean to frighten you, but make sure you keep things locked up while you're here. Are you going to stay long?"

She nodded. "Through the end of the year."

"Then you might want to get Joe to install new locks on the doors. Have him check the window latches, things like that."

"Joe?"

"Joe Latimer."

"Why would I ask him to change the locks?"

"He owns the house." Duane Prescott cocked his head, watching her. Tess's open mouth must have clued him in. "Your parents sold it to Joe, a while back. They didn't tell you?" He went still, watching her for a few seconds longer. "Have you spoken to their attorney yet?"

"No, he's out of town, and my parents didn't tell me anything." She bit her lip against her anger. "Neither did Joe." Now she thought she understood Rose's reaction today when Tess had mentioned the possibility of selling the house.

"Maybe he assumed you knew already."

She looked at him. "Do you know Joe?"

"Sure, I've known Joe for years. He used to volunteer on our search and rescue team. We were rivals when we played high school football."

"If someone caused my family's crash, that would be murder, correct? Could someone also have caused my accident, eleven years ago, and made it appear I was driving?"

He watched her with a grave expression.

"I've never been able to remember my accident." Tess got up and paced to the window and back. She turned to face him. Tess felt idiotic that it had never crossed her mind, until she'd overheard the gossip after the funeral yesterday, but she asked the question now. "Why weren't any charges ever brought against me? I had drugs and alcohol in my system, and I was found in the driver's seat."

He didn't answer. "As for whether both accidents could've been caused by the same person, it's a possibility we haven't considered. I'd wonder about the motives. Your family's accident happened so many years later, if it's the same person I'd have to wonder why they waited so long."

###

Tess was in her bedroom, with the bedside lamp on, searching through the journal she'd been reading, when the doorbell rang again. She pulled on a robe and slippers and went downstairs, but hesitated to open the door, even with the chain lock. She called out, "Who is it?"

"Tess, it's Joe. Are you all right?"

She opened the door and let him in without a word. He wore the same stormy look he had earlier today. "Duane Prescott told me he was up here tonight. Is everything all right?"

"You never told me you owned this house." She was still miffed about that.

Joe opened his mouth, but then looked to one side, his lips making a sideways half-grimace. "I would've told you eventually. You'd lost your family. It wasn't the time to play landlord."

Yet he hadn't considered it out of line to berate her for not visiting her family?

Tess realized all at once that Joe hadn't been living in Cedar Creek at the time of her accident, so he couldn't have caused it, and he wouldn't have tried to break into her house, since he had a key. He may be one of the few people here she could trust. The idea surprised her by its suddenness.

She didn't realize she'd been studying him with an open expression, trying to memorize his face and realizing how much she liked it, until Joe smiled. When he did, she blinked, and his smile grew.

"Penny for them."

She blinked again. "I was thinking that I can trust you."

Joe looked wary. "Trust me with what?"

"Nothing in particular." Tess turned away from Joe and walked into the dark living room. Why was she obsessing over his face all of a sudden, as if she'd only now seen it for the first time, as if she couldn't get enough of it?

"Duane said you might want new locks on the doors. I'll take care of that for you."

She turned around. "You married. When I was about fourteen. Your mother told my mother."

Joe shrugged. "I was nineteen, and she was eighteen. We were married two years, and we had to strain to make it last that long."

Tess moved on, into the kitchen. She sat in the rocking chair and curled her legs under her. Joe sat in the big overstuffed chair. He glanced at her and said wistfully, "I always think this kitchen needs a cat."

Tess couldn't help a smile. "I used to want a cat. Mom would never let me get one."

"I remember. I nearly gave you a kitten once, for Christmas."

"You did?" She leaned forward to look at him, curious. "When?"

"Let's see. I was twelve, so you must have been, what, seven? Your mom got wind of it, through my sister, and she told my mom. That put an end to that."

Tess laughed. "I've been planning to get a cat recently, now that I have a house." She found him studying her. She could've melted into his gaze then. "Where are your parents now?"

"They moved to Arizona after Dad retired. They wanted Rose to go with them. She wouldn't budge. She loves it here. She rented the house from them, until I came back and bought it. Now she and I both live there. Look, Tess, the reason your dad sold me this house--"

"You don't need to explain. It's none of my business."

He looked at her with an odd expression. "Of course it's your business. Your parents were so far in debt, your father was afraid if he died your mother would lose the house. He sold it to me for next to nothing, and I let them live here, also for next to nothing. Just enough rent to pay the property taxes and insurance. It was an arrangement strictly between your dad and me, intended to protect your mother and Spence. It gave your dad some peace of mind. He trusted me. I like to think he was wise to do that. I'd like to think you believe that, too."

"What does it matter what I believe?"

"It matters to me. I'll sell it back to you. Hell, I'll give it to you. It's only been a few months."

She met his gaze, and fell into it. He was close, their chairs nearly touching. He leaned toward her, placed his hand on her arm. "We used to be friends. I'd like to think we can be again."

She said nothing.

"Why did you stay away all those years? I thought you loved it here, loved your family. I don't get it."

"You never asked them? My parents?"

He shook his head. "They avoided talking about you. I didn't know where you lived."

"They never told you about my accident?"

"Your accident?"

"Joe, Rose knows about it."

"I don't talk to Rose about you. She doesn't know how I feel. What accident?"

"How you feel? You've wavered, these past few days, between acting as if you hated me, and being unexplainably kind."

"I've never hated you. I was angry. I still don't understand why you stayed away. Why don't you explain it to me? And what accident?"

She looked down. "I can't."

He stood up, looking angry again. What was wrong with the man? Why did he have to know this? "I'll come by tomorrow and change out the locks. I'd better get going."

She stood up too. "I'm sorry I can't explain, Joe. I loved my family. I wanted to see them. I missed them so much, I can't begin--" Tess stopped, close to tears. "Don't ask me to explain."

"Then can you tell me why you decided to come this year? Why you needed to surprise them? They would've loved to know you were coming. Why did it have to be a surprise?"

To tell him that, she'd have to tell him they didn't want her here to begin with, for all those years. He clearly loved them, and the information would either hurt him deeply or he wouldn't believe it at all. There was no right answer.

"Believe that I loved them, that I missed them." She didn't know why it was so important to her for him to believe her, but it was. "Please."

He turned away and didn't move for several seconds. Finally he took a deep breath and turned back to face her. "Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night, at the Gold Room?"

"The Gold Room?"

"Up at Stoneway."

She nodded. "I know it." The Gold Room was the more upscale of the two restaurants there, and expensive.

"A quiet, candlelit dinner for two." He watched her, his voice low. He stood close, and he put a hand on her arm, drawing her closer. It only then sank in that he was asking her for a date.

She drew in her breath, then nodded, watching his eyes. "That would be nice, Joe."

"I want to try this again." He kissed her, and they both lingered in that kiss. Tess responded with a feeling of urgency, of longing, that she'd never experienced kissing any other man in her life. She wanted more. She put a hand up to his thick black hair and let herself free-fall into his kiss until she was breathless.

He backed away with a look of surprise. Then he smiled, his hands still lightly caressing her arms. "Tomorrow night. I'll pick you up at six."

She leaned against the front door for a minute after he left, hugging herself. "Oh my God." She breathed the words in amazement. "Oh my God, oh my God."

###

Tess returned upstairs and found the journal she'd been reading on the floor where she'd left it. She got into bed and picked it up. She stared at the page for several minutes before she could concentrate on the words again.

The next several pages made no mention of Tess. They dealt with everyday matters, preparations for the holidays, people her mother had visited or spoken to, and Spence's activities. These things were important to Tess, but they weren't what she needed to read now. She skimmed through the pages, unable to focus, distracted by a jumble of other thoughts, until she thought of going back to the pages written a week or two before she'd gone away to stay with her great aunt.

She doubted her parents had decided on the spur of the moment to discourage her from visiting home. In fact, it appeared to have been her father's decision. That decision must have been made long before Tess called to ask if she could come. The entries her mother made shortly after her accident might clarify her parents' motives. Tess turned back the pages.

She came to one written two days after her accident that August, eleven years ago, a matter of days before her parents had sent her away to live with Aunt Christine. She read her mother's words:

"I'm sitting in Tess's hospital room, praying she'll wake up, wondering what happened to the sweet little girl who used to help me bake on the weekends.

"Where did my little girl go? Who is this stranger? Does she know what she's doing to herself, to us? She abandoned Spence to go party with those kids, and has now wound up here, injured and unconscious. She nearly killed herself, driving drunk. My God! Was she already drunk when she left Spence alone at the house? I almost hope so, because I can't imagine--don't want to imagine--her leaving her baby brother all alone when she was thinking clearly.

"They tell me a head injury can change people. I hope I get my little girl back, the way she used to be."

The page blurred as tears formed and shook Tess, becoming deep, inconsolable sobs. The confusion and dismay of those days after her accident returned, and made more sense to her now, a kind of sense she hadn't wanted, a sense that made her feel lost and utterly beyond comfort. She couldn't read any further. Her mother had believed all those horrible things about her. Things Tess couldn't remember. No wonder her parents hadn't wanted Tess to be around Spence after that. Tess couldn't read any further. She stuffed the journal under her pillow, and tried to sleep.

Chapter 10

The ringing of the phone downstairs wakened Tess late Saturday morning. It took a moment for her to realize what the sound was. She tumbled out of bed and headed sleepily down the stairs in her nightgown, hugging herself for warmth as she went. The house was frigid. The chill of the kitchen tiles under her bare feet served to clear her head as she reached for the phone. She would've preferred coffee.

It was Paige. "What took you so long to answer?"

"I was asleep." Tess's voice cracked and she cleared her throat. "This phone is miles from the bedroom."

"It's ten o'clock. You are taking a vacation. We're finishing up some things here so we can take a few days off to come up there. What's the name again of the resort you were going to stay at? Stonehenge?"

"Stoneway. When are you coming?"

"Tomorrow afternoon. I convinced Harry that you need some moral support and help looking into this blackmail business. Is there a turkey in your mother's freezer, by any chance? I promised him food."

"If there isn't I'll buy one. I can't wait to see you."

"Do you have a phone number handy for Stoneway?"

"They're likely booked up by now. You can stay with me."

"No, we want you to continue your retreat. I'm calling it a retreat now. We'll only be there a few days. You need your privacy, and we want to go skiing, but we do insist on a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, prepared by our favorite cook--you. What's the number for Stoneway?"

Tess gave her the number. "Would you bring my cordless phone with you? And call me back if you can't get a room."

"Sure. I'll call you back either way, tonight when I get home."

"I won't be here tonight."

"Oh?"

"I have a date, with Joe Latimer."

"Oh. Good. Have fun. We'll see you late tomorrow."

Tess was shivering by the time their call ended, and she went to work warming up the house.

Later she surveyed the snow out front where her snow angels had been obliterated by the snowmobile. She used a rake to smooth it, and then she made new snow angels. Yesterday she'd made them to relax. Today it was an act of defiance.

After noon, Tess drove into town and parked in front of Joe's old house. She sat in her car and looked up at the white Victorian for a few minutes. It was a venerable house, built when the town was young and smaller than it was today. She'd rarely taken notice of the house, as a girl, even to draw or paint it, picturesque as it was. So why did it attract her now? Did that have everything to do with Joe Latimer? Or was it also the idea of a bakery, and of hanging her paintings in Alan's gallery? In spite of the loss of her family, possibilities had been opening up since she arrived back in Cedar Creek. She wanted to get past her suspicions of blackmail and murder, and past her grief as well. She wanted to get on to whatever it was she would do with the rest of her life. She needed to start something new.

Tess got out of her car at the same moment Laura Greene came striding along the sidewalk. Laura called out to Tess, and when she was close enough she hugged her exuberantly.

Laura wore a smart burgundy suit with a teal and burgundy silk scarf. She hurried along the sidewalk beside Tess, with no coat, her arms crossed and head bowed against the cold. She wore boots, but carried a pair of dainty burgundy pumps with three-inch heels in one hand, and a leather briefcase in the other. She wore her hair longer than she had as a girl, pulled back from her face by a single barrette. It curled in natural waves, gold-burnished tendrils plotting escape in every direction. Princess hair, Tess had called it when they were girls. Laura's hazel eyes were perpetually filled with lighthearted humor. Her voice effervesced, her laughter bubbled to the surface at the least provocation, and she loved to talk, as she did right now.

"I've been wanting to get together with you again ever since I saw you the other day. There wasn't enough time to catch up. Come in and take a look at my office. I'm hoping Joe finds enough tenants to fill the place up, because otherwise he's sinking a lot into this without making a profit, and if he's forced to close the place down we all lose. Ed would move in too, but this isn't suitable for his type of business. He sells sporting goods and outdoor gear, as well as snowmobiles, so he needs a lot more space for that, indoors and out. Alan told me you're considering opening a bakery. Wouldn't that be great? The whole gang would be back together again. Alan's ecstatic about you being here, did you know that?" Laura opened the jingling front door of the Victorian and held it for Tess, who followed her into the big front room.

It was warm inside. A hammering noise came from somewhere, possibly the kitchen, and Tess turned in that direction. Laura followed. "So do you think there's a chance you and Alan will get together again?"

Tess looked into the kitchen, with its spacious layout and big windows. The room appeared to be empty. Maybe the noise had been outside. Sunlight beamed in through the south facing windows of the dining room, warming the room and lending the woodwork a golden glow. Tess pictured the island countertop between the two rooms piled high with pastries and breads.

"Well? What do you think?" Laura said.

"You know, I'd love to jump right in and say yes, but I'm still mulling it over. I don't want to commit until I've given myself more time."

"He asked you out already?"

Tess turned and looked at Laura. Surely she couldn't know about Joe asking Tess out. He'd only done that last night. "Who?"

"Alan. We're talking about Alan, aren't we?"

"No. I wasn't. I'm sorry, I got distracted. I love this kitchen. What were you saying about Alan?"

"He hinted yesterday that he's planning to ask you out. He seemed hesitant though. I think he's worried you'll break his heart again. You did, you know."

"My parents made me stop seeing him. They thought he was a bad influence. They thought you all were. I don't know where they got the idea, but they acted on it. That was when they set me up with Trent."

"I never heard what happened to you after your accident. I mean, except rumors. We weren't allowed to visit you in the hospital. Then my mom heard all the gossip about it and decided you were a bad influence on me. But you disappeared, Tess. Where did you go?"

"My parents sent me to live in Seattle with my great aunt. Maybe they thought I'd lead Spence astray, or get him hurt somehow. They thought I ran off and left him alone that night. They didn't want me around after that."

Laura made a sound of disbelief. "How could they think that? Didn't they know you at all?"

"I don't know. They never spoke to me about it after those first days in the hospital. They just sent me away."

"That's awful, Tess."

Tess felt desperate to change the subject. She realized this was Saturday, and she turned to Laura. "Are you working today?"

"Yeah, I'm trying to get caught up so I can take some time over the holiday." Laura looked at her watch. "I have an appointment at one. Want to see my office?"

Laura led the way upstairs, and they met Jessica Laine on the landing. She slid a cold glance in Tess's direction. Then she asked Laura if she'd seen Joe.

"No, but we just got here."

"He said he'd be working right downstairs." Jessica's voice bordered on petulance. "He promised he'd come up and help me with these shelves as soon as he's done with the plumbing."

"Which plumbing?" Laura glanced at Tess and shrugged. "I didn't see him. We just came from the kitchen."

At a noise below, Tess glanced down the stairs, and saw Joe come out of the kitchen. He paused in the doorway with a pipe wrench in his hand and looked up in her direction.

"I'll be another few minutes, Jessica." He nodded at Tess and Laura with a half smile.

Jessica flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder as she turned and headed back up the stairs, heels clomping on the wooden stairs.

"That woman drives me up a wall," Laura said in an undertone, shaking her head as she led Tess into her bookkeeping office.

Tess tried to recall what she and Laura had said in the kitchen, because she was certain Joe had been there and overheard. He must've been working under the sink. The counter would have blocked him from their view. "Don't people have pets around here? What's Joe doing working on plumbing and shelves?" she said irritably.

Laura laughed. "He actually has a pretty good business going at his clinic, and he has a second veterinarian working there now. He's been limiting his office hours so he can work on this project. It's a good thing for us, or we'd never get the place ready for business. Right now it looks more like a construction project than a business center. It puts people off. We're looking forward to the more finished look, and the publicity from the grand opening."

Laura gave Tess a tour of her office. It was small, but pleasantly arranged and inviting, with big windows and plenty of light. When Laura's client arrived Tess returned downstairs, pausing to enter the restaurant space again, wondering if Joe was still there.

Tess peered into the kitchen. "Hello?"

"Hello." It was Joe's voice, the sound muffled.

Tess heard other noises, a clink of a tool against metal. She continued in and rounded the island. Joe lay on his back under the sink, with only his long legs and torso visible.

"You didn't warn me the plumbing needed work."

"It'll be finished today. It's not a commercial kitchen you know, it's an old house."

"I'm sick of commercial kitchens."

He eased out from under the sink, stood up and grinned at her. "A plain old country kitchen is good enough? That's a relief." He looked down at the plumbing part in his hand, and a washer he was testing for fit.

Jessica came to the door and reminded him again that he'd promised to help her. As she clomped away, he shook his head, looking beleaguered.

"I'd better let you get back to work." Tess turned to leave.

"Why didn't you tell me your parents sent you away?"

Tess turned back. He studied the part in his hand.

"Because you didn't want to hear that, Joe."

He looked at her and shrugged. "So you tell people what they want to hear?"

Was he deliberately twisting her words? "I didn't tell you anything. I never answered the question." She moved toward the door.

He called after her, "See you at six."

###

Tess decided to wear an ivory silk dress that she'd been saving for the holidays, for her date with Joe. Paige had brought it along with some other clothes when she came up for the funeral. Its plunging back showed a lot of skin, and the wrap that went with it was lightweight, so Tess worried she'd freeze on her way to the restaurant with Joe.

Angie called while Tess was dressing, and Tess wore the wrap downstairs to answer.

"Your partner Paige made reservations for her and Harry to stay here through the weekend," Angie said on the phone. "She mentioned you're going out with Joe tonight."

"Yes."

"What's going on, Tess?"

"I'm not sure, actually." Tess hesitated to admit to anyone that she was falling for Joe.

"Well my brother Kevin's birthday party is Monday night. I know he'd love to see you, and Alan Stewart asked me if you'll be there. He and Kevin are as free as birds."

"Free?"

"I don't relish the thought of Jessica Laine sinking her claws into you. She considers Joe Latimer her territory. Some people have placed bets on how long it will be before he marries her."

Tess returned upstairs in a changed mood. She wanted to dismiss Angie's warning as gossip, to believe that Joe wouldn't have asked her out if things were that serious between him and Jessica.

Minutes later Tess ran down to the door to greet Joe. He took in the ivory dress with smoldering eyes. "You look like a snow angel tonight." He took her hand and led her out to Rose's sedan, which he'd borrowed for the evening.

"How did you fare with the plumbing, and Jessica's shelves?" she asked, nagged by the notion that he was cheating on Jessica to go out with her.

"No shop talk tonight. I intend to show you a good time, not bore you with house repairs." He stopped at the car and slapped his forehead. "Your new locks."

She laughed. "Are you sure you have time to be a veterinarian?"

He wore a wide grin as he opened the car door. "Tomorrow morning, I promise."

At the Gold Room, they ordered prime rib and shared a split of champagne. "I only come here on special occasions," Joe told her as he filled her glass.

"What's the occasion tonight?"

He filled his own and then met her gaze. "I'm celebrating the return of my first love, who grew up to be far lovelier than I could've imagined."

Tess was taken aback and suddenly she didn't know what to say.

"To first love." Joe held out his glass.

Tess clinked glasses with his and drank to that thought. "When did you return to Cedar Creek?"

He chuckled, shaking his head. "That's not the question I expected."

"You expected me to be surprised that I was your first love? Are you forgetting the flowers? You brought me flowers when I was seven. You couldn't have been more than twelve."

"You remember that?" His smile was warm and gratifying.

Later they danced to the strains of a string quartet. Joe's hand in the small of her back drew Tess close, and he nuzzled her hair. Tess tilted her head back to look at him. He smiled, with a welcome deep in his eyes. "I don't want to let you go. I want to savor this as long as possible."

I'm falling in love with you, Joe Latimer. She didn't dare to say it out loud. It was too soon, surely, to know her feelings so clearly. Was she being a fool?

Joe drove Tess home and walked her up to her door. A light snow was falling, a gentle snow that didn't carry any storm threat. The shapes of her snow angels were blurring but not yet obscured under the fresh layer. As he took her keys from her and unlocked the door, she saw that snow had fallen on Joe's black hair. He bent his head to kiss her, but she stopped him.

She hadn't been able to drive Angie's words from her mind. She had to know. "Joe, are you seeing anyone else right now?"

His green eyes glinted under the porch light as he smiled at her. He shook his head and touched her cheek with his fingers. "Only the sweetest woman I know, who apparently doesn't want me to kiss her goodnight."

"Kiss me!" Tess said hungrily. He chuckled, and held her in an endless kiss that warmed them both. He kissed her once more, and said goodnight.

"I'll be here early with those locks."

###

Tess tossed and turned, and finally got no more than a few hours of sleep. Toward morning she had a nightmare. Trent Cambridge pursued her through the woods. She ran, staying a few steps ahead of him, while Trent called to her, telling her she'd pay.

She lay awake after that. She rose long before dawn and went down to the kitchen-family room, where she built up a fire and brewed coffee. She sat in the dark by the fire, thinking about Trent, her accident, and the more recent one that had killed her family.

Finally she went upstairs to her studio and turned on all the lights. There she worked out some ideas for paintings. She was on her fifth or sixth watercolor sketch when she jumped at the sound of the doorbell, and realized she was still in her nightgown, fuzzy blue robe, and slippers.

It was Joe at the door. "I saw your lights and presumed it wasn't too early to start work. I decided to add deadbolts to replace those old chain locks. I had two on hand."

"Have you had breakfast?"

He shook his head. There was a new light in his eyes, something that made her feel incredibly at home with him this morning.

"Let me fix you something." She led him to the kitchen, where she prepared to crack eggs into a skillet.

She didn't get far before Joe came around the counter and took her into his arms. "It feels so amazing to hold you like this. I feel as if I've come home. Would you--" He didn't finish his sentence, but kissed her instead. A moment later Tess was breathless. She drew her lips away. "The food."

"I don't want breakfast, Tess. I want you."

She pulled out of his embrace just long enough to turn off the stove. Then she moved into his arms again, and this time she didn't let go. Before long they moved upstairs, to her bedroom.

###

Much later, Tess made them both breakfast while Joe went to work installing deadbolts on her doors. He hummed as he worked, and she felt like singing, herself. She hadn't known this feeling of shared bliss before, and it made even the mundane task of preparing breakfast a rare treat.

Ed Greene called, and Tess carried the phone over to the stove, away from the noise Joe was making. Ed wanted Tess to help him shop for a gift for his wife Laura, for her birthday next month. "I have a few dresses picked out, but I can't decide, and Laura thinks you have excellent taste."

Tess agreed to help, and arranged to bring Paige and Harry along to shop with Ed for the gift in Sacramento tomorrow.

"The glass in the back door still bothers me," Joe told her later, once he'd finished installing the locks. "I should replace it with a solid door, since you're not feeling safe. Is that why Duane was out here the other night? You weren't feeling safe?"

She took a deep breath and sighed.

"Tess?"

"There was someone here that night, Joe. On a snowmobile. They tore up my snow angels." It sounded so idiotic now that she cringed at her own words, but Joe looked worried. He went through the house with her and checked all the window locks.

When they came to her studio, Joe paused to look at the sketches she'd done that morning.

"These are incredible." He picked up first one and then another. They were mostly of the scenes she could see from these windows, the trees thick on the mountains, the snow frosting everything.

"They're practice."

"You captured Cedar Creek, your house, the trees, the subtlest colors. These make me think you love it here more than you ever say." His gaze lingered on her sketches.

"I suppose I do. This is home."

He finally gathered his tools together. He had more work to do at the Victorian today.

"What are you going to name that old house?" Tess asked him at the door.

"I used to call it by its street number." He turned to her with a challenge in his eyes. "You name it for me. Give it some thought, and come up with a name. I'll have a sign made. By the way, what will you call your bakery, if you open it?"

She surprised herself by answering at once, with a smile, "Cathy's."

"After your mom. I like that." He kissed her again before he left. Tess stood by the door and watched him drive away.

Tess knew she should start sorting through her family's things. Instead she went to the kitchen and baked. She stirred up a light, fluffy sugar cookie dough and formed it into snow angel shapes. She baked them to delicate, crisp perfection and let them cool.

Shortly after noon, an insistent pounding on the front door roused Tess from the batch of cooled snow angel cookies she'd begun to dust with powdered sugar. Irritated by the interruption and more by the unnecessary racket, she paused to glance out the living room window. The yellow sports car parked crookedly in the driveway was Jessica Laine's. Tess groaned, and took her time wiping her hands on a kitchen towel as she headed for the door.

"I do have a doorbell, Jessica," Tess said as she opened it. "The button is right there, and it's lit up all the time." If she was going to have to tangle with Jessica, Tess was going to do it on her own terms. She moved to block the doorway as Jessica tried to sweep in past her. "I don't believe I asked you in."

"It's cold out here. It's snowing."

"You're not going to freeze, in that fur, in the short time you'll be here."

Jessica said, bristling noticeably. "I need to talk to you."

Tess waited silently, her arms folded. She hoped this wouldn't take too long, as she hated to let much cold air into the house.

"May I please come in?"

"That wasn't too difficult was it?" Tess stepped to one side.

"I'll say what I came to say quickly. I want you to stay away from Joe. You don't live here, you have nothing to gain from chasing after him. He doesn't have any money. He's sunk every cent he has into these rental projects of his. Leave him alone."

"Shouldn't he be the one to decide that?"

"My cousin told me she saw you and Joe together in the Gold Room last night."

"Yes."

"She said you were holding hands."

"Yes." Tess met Jessica's gaze calmly. "I don't see what that has to do with you."

"Joe and I are engaged!" Jessica raised her left hand and flashed a diamond ring in front of Tess's face. A huge diamond.

Tess's heart caught in her throat at the sight of that ring. She'd assumed Angie had been exaggerating, gossiping, making assumptions. She'd never mentioned a ring.

Jessica went on, and the name she spoke next caught and held Tess's attention. "Trent told me about you, what kind of trouble you can be."

"Trent is a rapist, Jessica. I'd be careful taking his word for anything. Shouldn't you talk to your fiancé about this, rather than to me? It was Joe who asked me to dinner. He failed to mention any engagement."

Tess spoke with a dignity she didn't feel. She'd been foolish for not heeding Angie's warning. Tess had always been amazed that any woman would want to involve herself with a man who was already attached. Now she'd gone and done it herself. She couldn't believe her own naivete. As for Joe, he'd looked her right in the eye and lied to her! How could she have been such an idiot?

"Don't you stand there looking wide-eyed and innocent," Jessica blurted out. "You knew Joe and I were involved with each other. You've seen us together, and I'm sure others have told you. Yet you deliberately chased after him. Stay away from him, do you hear?" Jessica swung around and stalked out the door, leaving it wide open.

Tess closed the door and leaned against it, facing the silent, empty house.

Chapter 11

"You're in love, aren't you?" Paige looked accusingly at Tess across the table. They were in the main dining room at Stoneway, a huge rustic room with a walk-in fireplace and warm, polished wood gleaming everywhere. Harry had gone to get drinks for the three of them, and as soon as he'd gone Paige shot the words at Tess.

"I don't suppose there's any use denying it. You know me too well. Is this what it's like to have a sister?"

"Don't tease me, Tess. It's written all over you. I could tell when you met us here today. Your parents would've liked you to marry him, I suppose."

"Marry. Paige, I'm not going to marry him."

"Well of course you haven't talked about it yet, but in time. You don't think I missed the way he kept looking at you when we were here the last time?"

Tess was shaking her head at her friend. "I never knew you were a romantic."

"I'm not. I think it's disgusting. You're just making a name for yourself, entering the height of your career, then in walks this country Joe and sweeps you off your feet, like in some hokey romance. It's horrible. I always thought you were so sensible."

"I hope you're right, because I'm going to do what I feel is the most sensible thing."

"What's that?" Paige leaned toward Tess, her eyes intent.

"I'm going to forget all about Joe Latimer, and concentrate on making some decisions about my life," Tess said in a dull tone of voice.

"Oh," Paige said with a hint of disbelief. "You don't appear overly enthusiastic about that plan--if one can call it a plan."

Harry returned with their drinks. He looked from one silent woman to the other as he set their drinks down. "What's this? Have I interrupted the girl talk? Do you want me to exit and come back later?" He sat down. "Or join in. What's up?"

"Nothing."

"Tess is in love. Isn't it awful?"

"Paige!"

"It's Harry. I wouldn't tell anyone else. Harry's family."

"Why thank you. But what's this about? Tess? Don't tell me you've fallen for that Latimer fellow."

Tess grimaced at Paige, who grinned back devilishly and raised her eyebrows. Then Paige sobered. "What do you think, Harry?"

"It's what Tess thinks that matters."

"And I don't want to discuss it, Paige. He's not available. Nothing can ever come of it, so what's the point? Let's enjoy our dinner." Tess took a long swallow of the icy drink Harry had placed in front of her. Harry and Paige exchanged meaningful looks across the table. "Please."

"Very well, Tess. But remember, should you ever want to discuss it."

"You're the first two people I would think of." Tess sent Harry a grateful smile.

"Good." He picked up his menu and they discussed other matters. The magazine, Stoneway, the chances of more snow falling before morning. Paige glared into space for a few minutes, but soon she joined the conversation as well. Tess felt Paige's curious glance on her several times before the meal was served, but Harry continued to delicately steer the conversation away from the subject of Joe Latimer.

"I brought your cordless phone," Paige said eventually, "and Deborah says you need to check your voice mail at home. She's been taking care of the business calls, but she says there's one personal message you need to hear."

Tess nodded, not wanting to think about L.A.

They sat in Stoneway's main dining room, with its high open rafters, wide expanses of small, leaded window panes, and gleaming woodwork. Amid the rustic, casual atmosphere the warm hum of unstilted conversation filled the room. A fire crackled in the gigantic stone hearth and a trio of musicians played down-to-earth tunes to which diners sporadically sang along or clapped their hands.

Most of the other diners were skiers, who tended to congregate in small groups in the big dining room, wearing colorful sweaters. They were young people--or young at heart--with bright eyes, glowing skin, glistening hair, and lively voices. Laughter continuously drifted from one corner or another of the dining hall. The effect was exhilarating.

Halfway through the meal, Tess realized she'd been staring unseeing at an oil painting on the nearest wall. She focused on it. It was unusual for a dining room, a portrayal of a hunter shooting at an elk. The elk performed an agonized contortion, seemingly mid-air, as it was struck while attempting to flee.

Tess realized an awkward silence had dropped over the table. She looked at Paige and Harry. The expression in Paige's eyes startled Tess. Paige glared furiously at something, or someone, behind Tess, in the direction of the entrance to the dining hall. Tess started to turn around, to see what Paige was looking at, when Harry grasped her arm, wearing a sudden eager smile on his face.

"Tess, you haven't told me much about this inn, and I'm fascinated by it. It's a grand place, not at all what I expected to find out here in--"

"The back of beyond?" Paige put in. She still frowned, but her focus had shifted back to Tess and Harry. "It is a nice place. I'm glad we came here."

"Angie's grandfather built it. Angie's done a lot of renovations since she took over. I think she's done an amazing job. You should ask her to tell you more about it, Harry."

"I'll do that. It would make a terrific setting for a photo shoot. We could do a whole story here. Another drink, Tess? Have you had any new thoughts about the name change?"

"No more for me, thanks. I need more time to think about the name."

"Yes. Of course, give it more time. Would the added publicity make you uncomfortable?"

"You're the extroverts in this business." Tess stopped, because she wanted to say she didn't feel half the same commitment to the magazine that she knew they each did. She'd been too caught up in her feelings about her family, the past, and Joe to notice what was going on in her feelings about her work, now that she was away from the office.

Tess knew the reason the tea party book didn't yet have a title was that she'd been waiting for something about it to light a fire inside her, the way her other books had. This one was work, that was all. Pleasant work, but still just work. She hadn't felt passionate about that work in a long time.

"I'm still thinking things through."

"Let's order dessert and coffee," Paige said decisively.

"You two go ahead." Tess pushed her half-eaten food away. "We have a full day planned tomorrow. I think I'll run home now, if you don't mind. I didn't get much sleep last night." She stood and picked up her purse.

"But you can't go yet." Paige looked alarmed.

"I'm sorry. I know it's early and you just got here, but I'm bushed." Tess started to turn away, but something in Paige's eyes stopped her. She looked closely at her friend. Paige lowered her gaze, but not soon enough for Tess to miss the anger that still smoldered in their depths. "Paige, what is it?"

Paige said nothing, but Tess had already witnessed her angry glance toward the entrance. Tess felt a cold prickle at the nape of her neck. Paige had focused in that direction, with the same anger in her eyes, minutes earlier. Tess turned around, scanning the crowd.

It didn't take long to pick out the object of Paige's animosity. Seated at a table near the doorway, sharing a meal and a bottle of wine with two other people, was Joe Latimer. One of the people with him was a well-dressed older man, with the athletic build and tan of someone who spent a lot of time on tennis courts and ski trails. It took Tess a few seconds to recognize him as Ned Cambridge. The other person was Jessica Laine, looking svelte in a low-cut gold satin dress. Her blonde hair hung sleek and golden in the lamplight. Jessica sat near enough to brush thighs with Joe, and she appeared to hang on his every word while he spoke animatedly to Ned.

Tess's heart went cold inside her as she studied Joe seated there beside his fiancée. Tess couldn't help but let her gaze linger, taking in the fine, strong lines of Joe's cheekbones, his wavy black hair and moustache, that spark of intelligence in his eyes. It was unmistakable, even glimpsed across a crowded room. The sight of him brought a stab of pain.

Tess turned back to her friends. Both were watchful, concerned.

Paige shook her head. "The nerve of him."

"You're better off, Tess," Harry offered.

Suddenly Tess was unaccountably angry with her two friends. "Stop it. Stop it, both of you!" She hissed at them. She blinked back tears and took a deep breath. "I'll see you both in the morning."

Tess walked across the dining hall with all the dignity she could marshal. She had to pass by Joe's table, and as she neared it she felt his gaze settle on her. She thought she heard him call her name out low. She walked past the table with her back straight, her chin level, and her eyes on the wide, open doorway to the lobby, where a large black bear, a taxidermist's nightmare from half a century ago, reigned over the front desk, looking about to swipe at an innocent guest. Tess remembered it from when she'd worked here as a teenager. She'd always hated the bear. It gave the lobby a disquieting atmosphere, not at all conducive, in her mind, to fun and relaxation. Tess was surprised Angie kept it around, and she recoiled a little as she walked past it. Its size alone was intimidating.

As she passed the bear, she nearly collided with Trent Cambridge.

Tess knew him instantly. She stopped and stared at him. Trent appeared just as shocked to see her. Then his handsome, clean-cut face took on a familiar expression that made Tess feel ill, as she froze there, paralyzed with fear.

"Pardon me." He nodded, with a smug look, and headed the other way, out the lobby door.

Tess stood there, unmoving. She felt seventeen again, and scared out of her wits. Would Trent be waiting out there for her, when she went to her car? She cast around the empty lobby, not sure what to do. She had nowhere else to go but out to that parking lot, so she could get home. She couldn't go back and face Joe, or Paige and Harry. She wanted to get home. She used to work here at Stoneway, but at the moment she felt entirely lost.

"Tess?" Alan's voice, close behind her, startled her. She turned back into the hallway to face him, not four feet from the dining room entrance and the table at which Joe and his companions sat. Alan's eyes and light brown hair gleamed in the light of the big fireplace nearby. "Hey, you were a million miles away."

"I suppose I was."

Alan smiled, and Tess forced herself to smile too, though without much genuine force behind it.

"I tried to phone you at home earlier. Then Angie told me your friends had arrived from L.A. I hoped to buy you dinner. You're alone? Have you been abandoned?" He glanced around.

"No. I left them. I'm not good company tonight. I--didn't get much sleep."

"Well, you look sensational. There's dancing in the lounge, and danceable music." He nodded in that direction. Tess could hear the beat of the band playing there. "How about one drink and one dance?"

Tess hesitated.

"You'd make my night for me. My motives are purely selfish. I want to be seen with the most beautiful woman in the place tonight. Won't you boost a poor fellow's ego?"

Tess nodded, with a sudden desire to avoid going anywhere near Trent Cambridge, and, secondary to that, a wish to simply abandon herself to some fun in the hope it would numb her to everything else. "How could I refuse in the face of blatant flattery? All right. One drink and one dance."

"It's still early," Alan said with a wide grin as he wrapped her arm in his and steered her toward the lounge. "Maybe I can coax more out of you."

As they moved away, Tess heard a loud "Humph!" She thought it came from Ned Cambridge.

"Here she is," Alan said to Angie and her brother Kevin, in the lounge.

"What'll you have, Tess?" Kevin asked from behind the bar. "May I make a recommendation?"

"Recommend away."

Kevin drew a Canadian ale into a frosty mug for her. Tess took a seat at the bar, while Alan wandered away toward the band, which had paused for a break.

"I guess you saw Joe," Angie said behind Tess.

Tess nodded. "They're engaged."

"Might as well be, and the uncle's all for it. I tried to warn you about them."

"It was too late by then." Tess turned toward Angie with a grim smile.

"So that's how it is? This is your month, isn't it?"

Tess shrugged. Angie straightened and moved closer to her. "Have you learned anything from your mother's journals?"

Tess shook her head. She put her beer down, untouched. Her stomach felt leaden. Her mother's words came back to her. They tell me a head injury can change people. I hope I get my little girl back, the way she used to be.

How could her mother have believed Tess to be anything other than who she was? A young girl, eager for life, broadening her horizons. Tess had never been in any trouble, before her accident. Why had her mother been so convinced she was up to something she wasn't? Because she'd stayed out late a few nights? Because she'd dropped her old shyness and made some new and unusual friends? Because Tess and her new friends had wanted to be different?

Was it simply because Tess had made new friends, and questioned the religion she'd grown up with, that her parents began to distrust her? So much so that they believed her capable of truly criminal behavior? That didn't make any more sense now than it had back then, when Tess had become so hyperaware of her parents' disapproval that she'd second-guessed every move, afraid they'd get the wrong impression about what she was up to. She'd done her best to comply with their rules, their desires. How could they have been so wrong about her? They lived with her!

"Tess?" Angie prompted.

"Nothing. Nothing but more grief," Tess finally said, with another shake of her head.

"What does that mean?" Angie sat down on the bar stool beside her, ready to listen.

"It means I should've come home years ago, whether they wanted me to or not. At least I would've seen Spence again." She turned to meet Angie's gaze. Angie looked down then.

Tess needed to change the subject. "The place looks great, Angie. I can't believe what you've done with it." Tess recalled the place had seemed run down to her when she worked here, years ago. Angie had made a lot of changes. "How did you manage to do so much?"

Angie gave a half-shrug in reply.

"Tess?" Alan was beside her. He grasped her hand and urged her toward the dance floor. The band had started a slow, romantic song. Tess looked curiously at Alan.

"You did promise." His smile was contagious. "I requested a slow one."

She relented, and moved onto the dance floor with him. He held her close. "You'll feel much better soon. I promise."

"When did you become friends with Angie?" Tess asked him, recalling how he and Angie had bantered about their hunting exploits, like old pals, after the funeral a few days ago.

"After you went away, we consoled each other and tried to figure out where you'd gone. Your parents wouldn't tell us."

"I never knew that."

"I guess we commiserated long enough that we eventually realized we had a few other interests in common, besides you."

"I'm glad the commiserating wasn't a total waste of time."

"We hunt together, that's about it, but she's encouraging me to see more of you while you're here. Would you mind that?"

Tess didn't know what to say. If Angie was fixing her up with Alan, Tess hadn't asked to be fixed up. She'd forgotten about Alan years ago, and didn't feel the same attraction to him that she once had. Nothing even close.

"Your silence isn't reassuring."

"I'm sorry. There are a lot of other things on my mind right now besides dating, that's all."

"Well. That's understandable." Alan held her close, and said no more. After their dance, Tess asked Alan to walk her out to her car.

She drove home, attempting to push Joe out of her mind, while she puzzled over the blackmail letter, which she and her partners had avoided discussing in the public setting of the main dining room. They couldn't discuss it tomorrow either, during the shopping trip to Sacramento with Ed. Kevin's party was tomorrow night. It would be Tuesday before they could talk about it. Tess hated waiting that long to go to the sheriff.

When she arrived home, Tess parked in front of the house with an uneasy feeling. She glimpsed her snow angels as she hurried up the walkway, noting they were untouched. She unlocked the door, and bent to pick up a piece of paper that was stuck partway under the front door. It was a handwritten note:

"Heard you were back in town. Funny we should bump into each other. I waited for you in the parking lot. Catch you next time. T."

Certain the "T" of the note was Trent Cambridge, Tess was afraid to enter the house--and afraid to stay outside. She went in, locked the door right behind her, and turned on every light as she headed to the kitchen and the phone.

She hadn't given Paige a chance to get her cordless phone from her room for her, so the kitchen was still the only place Tess could make a call. She thought about calling the sheriff. What would she say, that Trent Cambridge had left a note on her door? Only it didn't say Trent, he hadn't signed it. It wouldn't appear threatening to anyone but Tess. It could be from anyone, signed with nothing more than an initial. She rummaged in her purse for the card the deputy had given her. Finally she called the number, and asked for Deputy Prescott. He'd seemed to take her fears seriously. He'd been the one to suggest she get the locks changed, and he'd mentioned Trent.

"He's off duty," the woman who answered the phone told her. "Do you want to leave a message, or speak to another officer?"

"Neither. Thank you." Tess hung up.

When she went to bed, Tess noticed all the journals stacked on the nightstand. In a fit of melancholy, she got up and retrieved an empty box from the garage. She packed all her mother's journals into the box, and put it in her studio cabinet, where she'd stored all her family's other possessions. "I can't face you right now, either, Mom."

Tess wasn't able to sleep until late. The house was empty and cold, and her mind was full of loose threads of thought. She thought about Trent, and every creak of the settling woodwork frightened her. She woke up in the middle of the night and felt lost in the emptiness of the big bed. She longed to have Joe here. She finally slept, dozing fitfully until morning.

Chapter 12

Monday dawned brilliant, warm and sparkling. The weather didn't do anything to improve Tess's mood, even when she remembered the shopping trip scheduled for today, which she'd hoped would provide a diversion from her problems. She showered and dried her hair, taking much longer than usual to do so, because she kept dawdling, caught up in one memory after another of the hours--there were surprisingly few of them--that she'd spent with Joe Latimer since her return.

Paige and Harry arrived and scolded her affectionately for not being ready to leave. While she finished dressing Harry made a quick breakfast for them. They grabbed their coats when they heard Ed Greene's mini-van in the driveway.

Ed greeted them with his broad, salesman's grin. "Look who's coming with us today." Joe Latimer stepped out of the car behind him. "Joe has some business in Sacramento, so I suggested he ride along with us."

Joe nodded a silent greeting to them, catching Tess's eye. He held her gaze for long seconds, as if looking for an answer to a question in her eyes. Tess drew in her breath and stiffened, remembering too clearly how she'd seen him last night, seated beside Jessica. Yet a part of her felt a thrill at the sight of him standing under the blue sky, his marvelous eyes focused on her. You're pitiful, she told herself in disgust.

They piled into the mini-van, and somehow Joe maneuvered into a place beside Tess, in the back. Tess couldn't help but be conscious of him, so near their shoulders touched. Tess remained aware, all during the drive into the valley, of the wonderful male scent of him, the nearness of the shining black hair she'd run her fingers through yesterday morning. His voice was like a touch each time he spoke, entering easily into conversation with the others.

Paige and Harry were both quiet and constrained at first, but Joe drew them out, and soon they conversed with him casually. Paige caught Tess's glance and shrugged, as if to ask what else she could do? She was being civil. Tess remained quiet through most of the drive.

In Sacramento, Ed parked in front of a large outdoor mall. The sun was much warmer here, and Tess and Paige both shed their coats to leave them in the car. Tess folded her coat neatly and placed it on the car seat. When she turned, Ed and Joe were both staring at her, each wearing a different expression.

Ed's was a look of open admiration mingled with curiosity. "That dress looks familiar. I'm sure I've seen it before, on someone else."

Tess wore her brown wool dress, identical to the one Jessica Laine had worn on the first night Tess had met her.

"If you've been shopping for your wife, you may have seen it on a store dummy," Paige said. "I was with Tess when she bought it, in a store much like the ones here."

"That must be it." Ed led them away from the car.

Tess surmised that Ed had seen the dress on Jessica, who'd passed it off as something unique and pricey. She turned to follow him and found Joe still watching her, his gaze on her dress.

Ed showed them the five or six dresses he'd narrowed his choice to, and Paige and Harry were both instantly in their element. Harry had worked for a fashion magazine, and Paige was an inveterate shopper. Ed got into a lengthy discussion with Harry about Laura's coloring and color preferences, what he thought she looked best in, and so on.

Tess found it hard to concentrate on the business at hand, and she hung back, silent and full of her own thoughts. She kept catching herself daydreaming, and soon the others drifted away to other racks of clothing, leaving her behind.

"Tess?" Joe was beside her, his hand on her arm. "Are you all right?"

She looked up into his eyes. "I'm fine." Tess turned toward the others, only to find with a shock that they were nowhere in sight. She suddenly felt as she had when she was a little girl and would get lost while shopping with her mom. She experienced the same instant of panic now. She let out a cry under her breath.

"You don't look as if you slept at all last night. Alan should've known better than to tire you out dancing." Joe's voice was edgy.

Tess turned to look at him, amazed that he had the gall to be jealous of her and Alan.

"He did nothing of the kind. Alan was kind to me. I find his company . . . relaxing." She wanted to ask if he'd enjoyed his dinner with Jessica last night, but held her tongue.

"Tess, come look at this," Paige called nearby. Tess tugged her arm out of Joe's grasp and hurried away in the direction of Paige's voice.

The simple dress was made of elegant French blue silk, with a modestly scooping neckline. It could be dressed up with a jacket, scarf or wrap, and was a suitable length for any occasion. Ed decided within a few minutes on the purchase. He couldn't wait to see it on Laura. Soon he had it gift-wrapped and paid for, and the small group decided to split up and do the rest of their shopping separately. It was nearly holiday season, and they'd get a head start on next weekend's crowds. They agreed to meet at one o'clock for lunch in a nearby coffee shop.

Tess was leaving a book store, later, when she saw Joe walk into the jeweler's across the way. She'd planned to go there next to look for a gift for Paige, but after seeing him go in, Tess changed her course and headed for another shop.

When the time neared to meet at the coffee shop for lunch, Tess set out briskly in that direction. She passed the jewelry store again and the display in the window caught her eye. She paused to look, though she'd already found a gift for Paige. When she was about to walk on she heard a salesman's voice inside the shop, near the open door.

"Thank you, Mr. Latimer. I'm sure your lovely fiancée will be delighted with your choice. Come again soon, won't you?"

Tess froze, as the words rang home. Joe had purchased jewelry for Jessica. He must have spent considerable time choosing the gift. He'd been in that shop for well over an hour.

It's none of my business, Tess told herself. She watched Joe come out of the shop and turn away in the other direction. She shivered, in spite of the warmth of the sunlight. Bemused and depressed, she felt more alone than ever. She hung back and waited for a few minutes before she followed Joe to the coffee shop.

He was waiting at the door, the first one there, and he shot her a brilliant smile when he saw her.

"I see your shopping was fruitful. Let me take some of those for you." He took most of her packages off her hands. She thanked him coolly, at a loss for words after what she'd heard outside the jeweler's. Did he have to be so nice to her right now? She would've been relieved to be able to dislike him. It would be so much less painful than loving him without any hope of her love being returned.

Joe stood close to her. "Tess, I'd like to ask you something."

She looked up, praying silently that he wouldn't want her opinion of whatever he'd purchased for Jessica. She couldn't bear that.

"Kevin Norwood's birthday party is tonight, at Stoneway. I'd like you to accompany me."

She stared at him for a few seconds. Why did he do this to her? Did he enjoy torturing her, tearing her apart emotionally? "Why don't you ask Jessica to go with you?" Her words were sharp.

He stared at her, and a frown slowly creased his forehead. "You don't understand, Tess."

"No, I don't understand you!" She hurried to the restroom at the back of the coffee shop.

Paige found Tess there, minutes later, splashing cool water on her face and tear-reddened eyes. "Joe said you ran in here." She handed Tess a paper towel. "He thought maybe you weren't feeling well."

Tess didn't speak, for fear her tears would start again. She hadn't intended to cry when she ran in here. She'd only wanted to get away from Joe until the others arrived.

"Love sucks, Tessie, and man have you got a bad case." Paige shook her head. "Here." She took Tess's purse from her and opened it to find her makeup pouch. "Cosmetics are a woman's arsenal. Sometimes they're all the armor you have against a cruel world."

Paige talked about things totally unrelated to her troubles while Tess freshened her makeup. Finally she thought she looked close to herself again and ventured a weak smile at her reflection.

"That's more like it. Let's go eat. I'm starved."

Tess felt awkward arriving at their table under the concerned scrutiny of the others. The men stood, and Joe was quick to pull out a chair for her. She thanked him, and was relieved when Harry took up the conversation right where the men had left off. Tess sat quietly composing herself, listening to the others talk. She was hungry, and when the food arrived she focused her attention on that.

When Ed dropped them off at her house, Tess told Paige and Harry she needed some time alone. They drove away at once, leaving Tess to her privacy.

She checked to make sure all the downstairs windows and doors were locked, then she warmed up the house and took a relaxing bath. She didn't want to go to Kevin's party at all now, but she'd promised both Angie and Kevin that she would, and Paige and Harry were expecting her. She started to get ready early, so she could take her time.

###

Rose Latimer came to Kevin's party at Stoneway, but Joe didn't, to Tess's relief. She didn't think she could face him again today. Jessica's word alone may not have convinced Tess fully of their engagement, but the jewelry salesman could only have known of it from Joe himself. Joe was entirely out of Tess's reach, for any appropriate relationship. If the blackmail letters hadn't been enough to drive her away from Cedar Creek for good, her need to avoid Joe Latimer very well might.

Kevin introduced Harry and Paige around to all of his friends, and Harry and Rose Latimer danced together in the lounge while Paige and Tess witnessed Harry's unmistakable attraction to Joe's unpretentious sister. "I believe our favorite Englishman may have picked himself a blushing Rose," Paige murmured in Tess's ear as they watched the pair dance. "Oh gods, now I'm punning!"

Tess smiled. "You're a romantic, Paige."

"I think it's the altitude. I'm much more of a cynic at home."

Tess chatted with old friends from school, and danced with Kevin, remarking to him how impressed she was with all he and Angie had done at Stoneway.

"It's all Angie's doing. I just work here. The place was close to bankruptcy when Granddad died, so I'm as impressed as anyone. She sure stresses over marketing, though. Makes me relieved to be only an employee. I hope you'll encourage her to take some time off with you while you're here."

Tess danced with Alan again, twice. Then Angie beckoned her away, to her office. Tess followed her through the dimly lit lobby, past the stuffed black bear. They went through the opening behind the front desk into the office beyond. It was a small space, crowded with file cabinets, three chairs, the desk and a credenza. A computer and laser printer took up much of the space on the desktop and the credenza.

Angie sat at the big desk and unlocked a bottom drawer. "Kevin rarely comes in here, so this is where I hid his gift." She brought out a wooden case and opened it up. A large knife gleamed inside the case, its dark wood handle inlaid with silver.

"Is that a hunting knife?"

"Uh-huh."

"Beautifully worked handle."

Angie looked up at her. "I don't know why I'm showing you. I know you're not interested in hunting. At least you never used to be."

"I'm sure Kevin will love it, if he's a hunter."

"He's new to it, he first went with us this fall. We're planning an outing in a couple of days. Would you like to go? I'll convince Alan to come if you do."

"Alan?" Suddenly Tess understood. "Angie, are you trying to fix me up With Alan?"

"I'm apparently better at it than I thought. It took you forever to catch on. I can loan you anything you need." Angie nodded toward one wall of the office.

Tess only then noticed the gun rack on that wall, full of hunting rifles. A compound bow and other hunting implements hung on the same wall.

Angie closed the box containing Kevin's gift and placed it in a gift bag. She signed a card while Tess continued to look around the office. "On second thought, if you don't have a tag, you're not going to get one at this late date. You'd have to come along as an observer."

"I'd forgotten you liked to hunt." Once when they were teens, Angie had talked Tess into going with her and her grandfather, when they hunted with some of their friends. Tess had packed along art supplies and been happy to do some nature sketching while she trailed as quietly as possible after the others. When one member of the party had killed a deer, Tess had been ready to go home, and thought she was finished with hunting for life.

Angie watched her now. "Still not your speed?"

"I'm afraid not. What are you going to hunt?"

"Black bear." Tess couldn't help a glance over her shoulder toward the lobby where the black bear stood. "Oh that thing's old as the hills."

"I'll stick to playing in the snow."

Angie grinned, shaking her head. "It's a wonder you're not a vegetarian. Oh, Alan doesn't ski. He thinks clearing slopes for skiing is an affront to the environment. He's only considering coming on this hunt because of you. He says the only reason he hunts deer is it helps balance the population, since we've killed off most of the predators. Personally, I think he's full of crap, making excuses because he loves to hunt and hates to ski. He probably has two left feet. How was he at dancing?" Angie went on without waiting for an answer. "In any case, I'm sure we'll find something you two still have in common."

"We have the same thing in common we always did, our artwork. But, Angie, I don't want to be fixed up, with Alan or anyone else. I haven't decided yet whether I'm staying, you know." She was thinking she might leave when Paige and Harry did, after Thanksgiving.

"Okay, but Alan will be disappointed, and I was hoping to get your mind off you-know-who for the rest of your visit." Angie smiled and picked up the gift bag. "Come on, I want to give this to Kevin."

Tess didn't think anyone or anything would get her mind off Joe Latimer anytime soon. She returned to the party, where she danced, visited with old friends, and watched Kevin open his gifts. When she was so tired she feared she would fall asleep standing up, and her yawns were out of control, she went home alone and lost herself in a deep, exhausted sleep.

###

On Tuesday Tess went to the old Victorian house at noon, and dropped in on Rose in her bookshop.

"I want to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner at my house," Tess told her, thinking Joe would no doubt spend Thanksgiving with his fiancée, so Rose might be at odds. "Harry will be there. So will Paige, Ed and Laura. Angie and Kevin have even promised to come, if they can get away. Bring a guest if you like."

Rose nodded. "Thank you. I think I'll come with Joe, if you don't mind."

"Of course," Tess said after only a second's hesitation. "Um, let him know about it, will you, when you see him? I haven't had a chance to invite him yet."

Rose showed her around Fabled Rose. Afterward they sat in the private portion of the room Rose had screened off as an office space. Her laptop computer was there, and a typing chair, along with a chair for a visitor. A small table held a laser printer. Rose moved books off another tiny table between the two chairs, and as she did so Tess glimpsed titles having to do with hunting. Archer's Bible and The Elk Hunter, among others.

"You're a hunter too?" Tess said in some surprise. So soon after her conversation with Angie last night, the sight of those books had her wondering if she was the only person from Cedar Creek who shunned the sport.

Rose followed her gaze to the books, and her face reddened. "Oh, those. They're . . . research. I borrowed them, and I put them here so I'd remember to return them. I've been doing some writing." She said this as though confessing a crime.

"What are you writing?"

Rose's smile was meek and radiant at once. "A novel."

"Rose, that's fantastic."

"I used to write essays. The Sacramento paper ran a couple of them. I've written some stories for children, for a magazine, and I've always kept a journal, like your mother did, but I've never tackled anything like this. It's a huge project. I stalled on the fourth chapter for a few weeks, but in the past few days I've taken off again. The characters have come to life for me, and I can't stop thinking about it. Just when I thought I was done with the research, I came up with something new that I needed to learn."

"Soon you'll be busy doing book signings."

Rose blushed. "Thank you, Tess. You're what I needed today, to encourage me to keep going. You know, you inspired me with your studio. I've set aside a workspace in the den now, for my writing. I've been taking the laptop back and forth between here and home." She paused. "I keep finding myself hoping you'll decide to move back here." Her smile saddened. "You'll stay in touch with me, won't you, whether things work out between you and Joe or not?"

Tess studied Rose's face, thinking Rose must not know yet about Joe's engagement, though she couldn't imagine why he would keep that from his sister. "Our friendship is a separate thing." Tess assured Rose that if she went back to L.A. she would keep in touch. She gave her the phone numbers in L.A. to seal her promise.

"Have you decided yet whether you're going to bake for our grand opening, and try out the place for your own business?"

Tess shook her head. "I'm afraid I'm leaning toward not doing it."

"Oh, that's too bad. I hope you'll reconsider. Joe keeps telling me you're a wonderful cook. Harry says the same thing. He mentioned you've been doing some baking." Rose looked so disappointed Tess felt a need to explain.

"I admit, there's something about this place that inspires me to cook. The fresh air gives me a huge appetite. If I stay much longer, I'll be so fat someone will have to roll me around, but I doubt I'll be here much longer, so I don't--" Tess stopped, because a strange expression had come over Rose's face. "I've upset you."

Rose shook her head. "Sorry. Old self-consciousness rearing its ugly head. I don't know if you remember, but I used to be terribly overweight. You'd think I'd be over it now, but sometimes the mere mention of the word fat brings it all back. The kids making fun, you know. Don't mind me." She took on a sad expression.

Tess remembered the pep talks her mother used to give her about her appearance whenever she felt particularly gawky as a girl. "You miss my mom right now, don't you?"

Rose stared at her, mouth open. "How did you--" Then she smiled and nodded. "You would know better than anyone how encouraging she could be. I lived away during my first two years of college, and I lost a lot of weight. Then I came back here to live. That summer, I dated someone I thought was special, but when I started gaining weight again, he--well, he actually turned on me. He was abusive. It was a painful time for me. That was shortly before you went away, and after you did--well, let's say I can honestly give Cathy--your mom--credit for pulling me through that and the work it took to get those pounds back off again, when I was still depressed over what happened with him."

Rose's expression had softened. She went on, "Maybe it was because she missed you that she took me under her wing the way she did. She made me feel less of an emptiness that needed to be filled with food. I don't know how she did it, but if you could bottle that magic of hers you could make a fortune."

Tess wondered where that magic had been when her mother had kept her away all those years.

"I think Cathy made me a foster daughter, to fill your place in her life," Rose said, watching Tess with a remote expression. "I used to wonder, if you came back, whether she and I could still be as close. I confess to a certain amount of envy toward you."

Envy? Tess's glance fell on the laser printer again, and she recalled the blackmail letters, which could've been printed on a laser printer. She'd seen laser printers in Angie's office and here, but this one surprised her, because Rose had said she was on a tight budget and had taken out a loan to purchase inventory for her shop.

"That's a nice printer," Tess said, hating her suspicions and her jealousy.

"I got it at a sale the school had. Every few years they replace old computer equipment. It needed work, but Alan helped me find a place that repairs them. He works at the print shop, you know, and all the business people wind up there sooner or later, so he knows them all. I paid so little for the printer to begin with, even with the cost of the repair it was a bargain."

Tess felt guilty for asking about it. She got up to leave. Then she couldn't help wondering about Alan and his job at the printer's. Could he have written the blackmail letters? But why would Angie, Rose or Alan do it? She'd begun to suspect everyone around her.

"Tess, may I bring dessert, on Thursday? Blackberry and pumpkin pies?" Rose blushed again, prettily.

Tess nodded. "That would be a great help. Thank you."

###

Tess arrived home that afternoon in a terrible mood. She wished she hadn't walked into the big old house today, because it made her realize she was giving up on her girlhood dream again without trying it out--because Joe Latimer had broken her heart, of all the childish reasons.

She remembered that Joe wanted her to name the house. She'd promised him she would come up with something.

She sat in her kitchen and thought about possible names. All she came up with for the first few minutes were the names that she, Paige and Harry had brainstormed as possible magazine names. There were dozens of them, and they made her wince at the idea of going back to L.A.

She visualized the Victorian, and the businesses it housed. Bookkeeping services, artwork, bath products, gifts, books, and the empty restaurant space. Some were useful, some were beautiful or luxurious, others nourishing.

"Nourishing?" Tess shook her head. Then she realized she'd been making a mistake whenever she visualized the bakery. People didn't live on cookies and cakes. Bakeries sold bread too. She took a blank sheet of paper and began writing. Soon she had a simple menu worked up, for tasty, nourishing meals, foods that people would want to eat every day.

"That's it," she told herself once she had the menu written out. It included sandwiches, breads, roast meats, salads, and a few savory soups that would keep well in a steam table. There would be a soup of the day, a salad of the day, and quiche or frittata as specials.

By the time she had the menu worked out she was wide awake, and excited. Tess was suddenly impassioned by the idea of the business. It would mean working within proximity of Joe Latimer, doing business with him. In spite of that, maybe it was worth a try, at least for the grand opening. Then she could leave if it didn't work out.

That was when the phone rang. It was Rose.

"Tess, I forgot to tell you earlier, Karen Jensen came by the school library to see me this morning. She asked if I'd be hiring anyone to help out in the book shop. I hated having to turn her down, but there's no way I'll have enough work to hire anyone for some time. I thought about you, though. I didn't say anything to her because I didn't want to get her hopes up. Are you likely to hire someone to wait tables, if you decide to make a go of the bakery?"

"I would have to. As a matter of fact, Rose, I have reconsidered. I've decided to cook for the grand opening, and see how it goes." She told Rose about the menu she'd devised.

Rose was delighted. "Joe will be so happy."

That was not what Tess needed to hear. "Well. I'll keep Karen in mind." She wondered why Karen had quit her job at Stoneway, if she still wanted one.

Tess sat down at the table again and looked over her menu. Cedar Creek's only restaurants were currently at Stoneway, which was outside of town by a couple of miles. There was no convenient place right in town for people to eat. The only restaurant in Wilder was the diner whose coffee Tess couldn't swallow a few mornings ago. Dr. Lloyd had said he didn't know how they stayed in business, and Tess knew the old lodge near Wilder had been closed for years. It was possible her ideas would work, that they'd even bring in substantial business.

Tess began free associating: art, house, gifts, books, bath, bookkeeping, and bakery. They were all cottage businesses. They were all creative or constructive in their own way. Creativity Cottage. Tess shook her head. Then she wrote a name in the center of a sheet of paper and looked at it for a few minutes: Cottage Arts.

She went to the phone and called Joe's office. When Joe came to the phone, Tess simply said, "Cottage Arts."

He was silent for a minute. Then he said, "I like it. By the way, we're getting a yarn shop. A woman came by and spoke to Rose about it this morning. I just called her. She's going to sign a lease this afternoon. I don't know anything about yarn, myself. I do know a thing or two about sheep. . ."

Tess grinned to herself. "It's perfect, it fits right in."

"I'm glad you think so. I'm arranging for us to all meet tomorrow morning, in the restaurant space, to work out our plan for the grand opening. Can you be there at nine to present your name idea to the group?"

"Yes."

"Great. I'll see you then."

Tess smiled to herself after their brief conversation. Then, when she realized how much she looked forward to the meeting tomorrow morning, partly because it meant seeing Joe, she was disgusted with herself all over again for letting him get to her.

The phone rang then. "This is Duane," the caller said. It took her a moment to realize Duane was Deputy Prescott. "I thought you'd want to know the latest on the investigation into your family's crash. The lab confirmed today that one of the front tires was cut, through the side wall, with a sharp object, something with a double-edged blade. Because of the way it was damaged, and the skid marks, the forensics people think the van was moving at the time it happened. It doesn't appear to have been any ordinary road hazard or debris."

It took Tess a moment to speak. She sat down on the kitchen stool. "Something with a double-edged blade? Are you saying someone threw a knife at their van while they were moving? That's too bizarre, isn't it?"

"Something like a knife struck the tire's side wall, but I'm not saying it was a knife. We don't know what it was. There was nothing found at the scene that could've caused that kind of damage."

"They were murdered then?" The idea still stunned her.

"Until we know what caused the damage, we won't know for certain, but it's looking more and more suspicious. I'm going to need to ask you, and others who knew them, further questions. We'd also like you to take a good look at their personal effects, see if there's anything there that raises questions for you. Are you available tomorrow? I can bring them out there."

She told him she'd be at Cottage Arts tomorrow morning, that she didn't know how long she'd be. He offered to meet her there, and she described where it was. "My father's cane is still missing. Did you find that?"

He consulted his report of items found in the wreckage and told her there was no cane listed.

Chapter 13

Tess was more anxious than ever, after her phone call from the deputy, unable to stop thinking her family may have been deliberately killed. She wondered if she would have the courage to stay here, if the grand opening proved to her that she could make her business idea work.

She decided to bring refreshments to the meeting, in the morning, to give everyone a sample of the fare she'd offer for the grand opening.

She made a pot of barley beef soup and baked a few varieties of sweet bread, along with more of the snow angel cookies.

Tess had invited Paige and Harry for dinner, and they sampled the soup as a first course. Both immediately voiced their approval. "You know we'll scarf up anything you cook," Paige told her.

Harry rolled his eyes. "The connoisseur speaks. It's delicious, Tess."

"Thank you. I'm hoping you'll be able to help me move some things from here over to Cottage Arts tomorrow afternoon. There's a lot to do there in the next week, and it will help clear space here for my Thanksgiving dinner preparations."

"Sure. What kinds of things?" Paige asked.

"Utensils, pots, pans, dishes. Staples. I need to get set up for the grand opening, start preparing some things ahead. The cupboards are bare in that kitchen. Rose offered to help too."

Though they'd agreed on the soup, the three of them couldn't come to any decision at all about the blackmail letters. Paige was morose during the meal, and Tess suspected it had something to do with her decision to help with the grand opening. Harry finally suggested they wait until after Tess's holiday gathering on Thursday to make a decision. "Let's spend Friday together. Then we'll decide once and for all, to go to the sheriff or not."

###

Early Wednesday morning Tess baked whole grain rolls, and tossed a salad of spinach, bacon, and chickpeas. She made honey-Dijon dressing to go with the salad, and packed these, along with her pot of soup, into her rental car to take to the meeting at the old Victorian house. "Cottage Arts," Tess said to herself as she got out of her car and smiled up at the house. She felt incredibly happy. This effort was the one bright patch in the clouds that had hung over her since her family's deaths, except for a few stolen hours with Joe.

Laura was already at work when Tess carried everything in and began setting up. She kept coming down to peek at the activity in the kitchen and dining space. By the time the others arrived Tess had three tables pushed together and a tablecloth over them. The island counter was set up buffet style, with a matching tablecloth, dishes, cutlery, and the food she'd prepared, along with coffee and tea. She'd made a centerpiece out of some colorful gourds and a small pumpkin from the local market.

Laura entered the dining room first. "There are luscious smells coming out of this kitchen. Tess, you're amazing!"

Soon five business people gathered at the table in the dining room, and Rose introduced Megan Thomas, who'd leased space for her yarn shop. Neither Joe nor Jessica Laine had arrived yet. When Joe failed to turn up by nine, Rose apologized and said she'd run across the street and find out what was delaying him.

Tess offered to go instead. "You all represent the committed businesses here. I'm still wavering. Start your meeting, and I'll run over and remind Joe of the time." She'd already told them about her proposed name, Cottage Arts, and they were discussing it as she left, getting acquainted with the sound of it. Tess hurried across the street.

The door to the veterinary office was unlocked, and the open sign was out. Tess went into the front room and glanced around. There were chairs and a bench in the front room, and a counter as a reception desk. A woman sat behind it, at a narrow desk with a computer, a laser printer, a hi-speed printer with billing forms feeding through it, and two telephones. The space behind the desk was filled with file cabinets and storage cabinets, as well as a small refrigerator.

One woman sat in the small waiting area. So far Joe appeared to have more business than Dr. Lloyd. Tess was about to ask the woman at the reception desk if Dr. Latimer was in, when the door to an inner room opened and Joe came out with a teenage boy and a golden retriever puppy on a lead.

Joe wore a white lab coat, and he grinned as he spoke to the boy, and then his mother who'd been waiting out here. Joe took some forms over to the reception desk and got the billing process started. Finally he smiled at Tess and glanced at his watch. "I'm late, aren't I? Let me wash up, and I'll be right over."

He returned to the back room, leaving the door open. Tess glimpsed a row of cages and kennels where sick or postoperative pets must spend the night sometimes. Tess caught sight of two kittens housed together in a cage. One kitten was pure white and the other pure black. Both were fluffy little fur balls, as sweet as any creature she'd ever laid eyes on. She had to get a closer look at them. She followed Joe in.

He'd removed the lab coat and was scrubbing his hands at the sink at the far end of the room, his back to her. When he finished and turned around to find her enraptured by the kittens, he laughed. "Uh-oh, that looks like love."

"They're so precious!" Tess only glanced his way, mesmerized by the kittens, who played together, leaping around and tumbling over each other in the cage, a couple of furry little clowns. The black one looked up, saw Tess watching, and came over to gaze at her and greet her with a soft mew.

"Ohh. . ." Tess had just raised her hand to touch the tiny paw the kitten pressed to the side of the cage, when Joe drew her away, taking her hand in his.

"Come on, we have a meeting." He spoke in an indulgent tone, and he continued to hold her hand as they crossed the street.

"Joe, do they have a home?"

He stopped inside the front door of the old house and turned to her, then looked down at her hand in his. Tess pulled her hand from his, but kept her eyes on him, waiting for an answer.

"They're spoken for, yes." He watched her face. "What if they weren't?"

"I'd--" She stopped herself short of saying she would adopt them, or buy them, or whatever she had to do to make them a part of her life. "Well, if they're spoken for, there's no sense in--"

"That's not what I asked." He was teasing now.

"I'd want to take them home with me, today." She smiled. "Right this minute."

"Both of them?"

"Yes. You're right, I fell in love."

His smile broadened at her confession, and he steered her into the bakery. "Happens to me on a regular basis."

Joe walked into the dining room and sat down beside Jessica, who'd arrived while Tess was across the street. Jessica clasped one of Joe's hands between her own. He removed his hand from her grasp a short time later, but it was too late for Tess to get any kind of comfort from his action, and she reminded herself again that the two were engaged. She promised to keep reminding herself of that fact, every ten minutes or so, if necessary.

"Here's a seat for you, Tess," Alan said helpfully. She sat beside him, and tried to keep her mind, and her gaze, off Joe and Jessica during the meeting.

Alan was having his flyers printed up and distributed in Cedar Creek and Wilder, to announce the grand opening. The group had placed an ad in the Wilder newspaper for the next few weeks, and Alan had a copy of the latest issue with him. He opened it to the full-page ad and placed it in the center of the table, along with a copy of the flyer.

"Next Friday morning we open at nine o'clock sharp."

"Nine?" Jessica said.

"Can you be here that early, Jessica?" Laura asked.

Jessica bristled at the question. "I can open my business any time I want. Tell them, Joe."

Joe leaned back, raising his hands. "Don't look at me. I'm the landlord. I'll be across the street in my own office."

Jessica turned to Laura. "I'll be here. Make sure you're ready, Laura."

Alan spoke up. "Jess, Laura has an established client base, and in fact many of my first walk-ins have been her clients. You may find the same thing, once your shop opens, that her clients become some of your first customers. We need to work together to pull this off."

Jessica toned down the petulant little-girl act, while Joe sat beside her appearing to ignore the episode.

The food Tess had prepared went quickly, and most of the others supported her ideas about what to serve for the opening.

When the meeting broke up, Alan offered to help Tess clear dishes from the table and wash up.

"No need." She did want to get outside soon, though. The sky was clouding up, and she had a date with a bridge she wanted to sketch before it got too stormy, she told him. He laughed and stayed to help.

"Alan, are you still a Pagan?" she asked him while they were drying dishes.

He hesitated before answering. "Yes, why?"

"You used to have a ceremonial knife. I remember you kept it on an altar in your room. It had a double-edged blade. What was it called?"

"An athame," he said with a nod, pronouncing it ath-a-may. "What about it?"

Tess shrugged. She'd been thinking about the cause of the tire damage on her family's van. She wasn't sure how to tell him this without offending him.

Alan hung the towel he'd been using on the rack, took out his wallet, and opened it to show her a picture of his son, Tyler. "When we divorced, his mother started making trouble about my beliefs. She tried to make out that I was an unfit father, and she didn't want Tyler exposed to what she referred to as my alternate lifestyle. Maybe I should've fought it. It was based on pure bigotry, but she gave me a scare, you know? I didn't want to take any chance of losing custody or visiting rights with Tyler, so I decided I could practice my beliefs without using the physical trappings. I gave my athame away, along with a lot of other things. I don't keep anything more involved than a pinecone and a vase of flowers on my altar anymore, things people don't relate exclusively to Paganism."

He put his wallet away, and watched Tess for a minute. "What's up, Tess? You had to have a reason for asking about that."

She still hesitated to answer.

"Look, Tess. I know Angie's been trying to throw us together, whatever her reasons are, and I've figured out you're not interested in me romantically. I don't have to be beaten over the head to understand that. We started out as friends, though. I like to think we still are. What's going on?"

"The sheriff thinks my parents and brother were murdered." Tess described the damage to their front tire.

Alan looked thoughtful for a moment. "So you wondered if I threw a knife at their tire? Why would I want to hurt them?"

"I'm exploring all the possibilities, Alan. I can't figure out how that kind of damage could have been done to their tire. What the deputy described is an unusual type of blade. Your athame is the only thing like it I've ever seen, except in television or movies."

He nodded. "Fair enough. Most athames have dull blades. They're not intended for cutting. I sharpened mine, I was unusual in that regard, but I don't own it anymore."

She nodded, meeting his gaze.

"If there's any way I can help you, Tess, will you let me know?"

She thanked him, and invited him to her Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. They were finished with the dishes. "I'm going to take off and sketch that bridge. Later I have some things at home to transfer over here for the grand opening. Supplies, utensils, dishes. Things I need out of the way for my holiday dinner. Rose, Paige and Harry promised to help me move them this afternoon."

Alan grinned. "Few men can say they've been dismissed in favor of a bridge. It's a nice bridge. Don't be too long there, though. We've a storm on the way. Maybe I'll drop by your place later, to see if you need another hand moving things. As a friend. Would you mind?"

"Not at all. Thank you, Alan."

"Any time." He added more soberly, "Be careful, okay? I mean, if someone killed them. . ."

They were both on their way to the door when Deputy Prescott entered the dining room, carrying a cardboard box. He greeted Tess, and placed the box on a table. Then he looked around the kitchen and dining area with a sober expression while he waited for Alan to leave.

"These are your folks' things," Duane Prescott told Tess after Alan went upstairs. He nodded toward the box. "I need to have you sign for them. Then we'd like you to go through them as soon as you get a chance. We've pretty much exhausted what we can get from them, but you may find something meaningful." Before he left he asked, "Do you know of anyone who might've wanted to hurt them--or you?"

She hesitated, thinking about the blackmail letter, but she didn't know who'd written it, and she and her partners still hadn't agreed on giving it to the sheriff. "I don't know who would do any of this, but I'll go through these things, right after the holiday."

Deputy Prescott gave her a long look, as if sensing she was holding back. She explained to him she was on her way out. He nodded, and offered to carry the box out to her car.

Alan was right about the weather. It had turned gray, cold and blustery. This disappointed Tess, but she decided to stick with her plans. At her car, the deputy reminded her again to go through the box of her family's things, and to call him if anything came up. She nodded, thanked him and drove home.

Chapter 14

Tess carried the box from the sheriff into the house and took it upstairs to her studio. She tucked it into the cabinets where she'd stored away all her family's other personal belongings. Stacked there, with the boxes and boxes of their things, it would be safe until she was ready to take a look at it sometime in the next couple of days. It would have to wait until after Thanksgiving.

She closed the cabinets and stood looking around the room, disturbed that she still couldn't face her family's belongings. Those boxes haunted her, even concealed from view behind the cabinet doors. She would take either Rose or Angie up on their offers to help go through them, after Thanksgiving. Tess couldn't face them today, especially alone. On an impulse, she placed the cheval mirror in front of one cabinet door, and then moved the chintz-covered slipper chair over beside it. She went to her room and found the large, lightweight, fringed silk shawl she'd had Paige bring along with her holiday dresses. It was a deep, rich, Russian rose print with black fringe, and it was large enough to conceal the remaining cabinet doors. Tess hung it over them, then stood back and looked at the facade she'd created. The shawl added warmth and color to the large room, in contrast with its bright windows and pale decor.

Hiding from reality again, Tess? She seemed to be doing that a lot lately, trying to forget she was here to say goodbye to her family, to dispose of their things, and to make decisions about her life.

Tess had planned to pick up her sketching supplies and then go straight to the stone bridge, but now she remembered Paige's message from Debbie about her voice mail. She dropped some art supplies into a tote bag. Then she went to the kitchen, picked up the cordless phone, and dialed the number and code for her personal voice mail. There was one old message, dated the morning of her family's deaths.

Her father's voice. She hadn't heard it in a year or more. He sounded hesitant, unsure, which she'd never known her father to be. "Tess, sweetheart, it's Dad. I need to talk to you. About a lot of things, but especially . . . well, something you might be able to help with. We're going to see the sheriff this morning. We'll be back by the time you get home and hear this message. Please call me, honey. Call home."

From the date and time of the message Tess knew her father must've recorded it minutes before they'd left on their fatal drive. Tess thought about Dr. Lloyd's question, of whether her father had contacted her shortly before his death. Dr. Lloyd had thought his call would have something to do with Trent, but what had her father known about Trent? Only what she'd told him, and he hadn't believed her. So why would he see the sheriff about that? Was that the reason her family had died? Did Trent have something to do with their deaths?

She took her art supplies out to the car, but came back in to check the weather report, because the wind was blowing harder now, and the sky had turned a dark, metallic gray. The report predicted a snowstorm tomorrow, but it felt to Tess as if it might come tonight. The day was taking a definite stormy turn. She layered on warm clothes, insulated boots, a knitted hat, mittens, and a parka. Finally she ventured out into the blustery gray and got into her car.

Minutes later Tess parked near the old stone footbridge that crossed Cedar Creek a half-mile or so north of town. She carried her tote bag filled with drawing supplies and crossed on foot to the middle of the bridge, where she stood and gazed upstream at the rush of water. Snow-shrouded trees and dead bracken crowded the banks of the stream, a few bare branches twisting frozen into the metallic sky. The small flood leaped over rock and boulders, and around the curving banks, roiling with a wild life of its own, as yet undaunted by winter's freeze.

This was a sight once familiar to Tess. This was where she'd conceived many of her childhood dreams. Here, standing on this bridge, watching this creek's unending flow, she had grown into a young woman. This creek was home, and Tess wanted to carry the spirit of it with her if she left again. She had come here intending to sketch the bridge itself, from the bank of the creek, but instead she took out her sketchbook and pencils and set to work attempting to capture the essence of Cedar Creek as she saw it from the bridge.

Tess poured all her concentration into the task. Now and then her fingers grew so cold she couldn't grasp a pencil properly. She would stop, put on her mittens and hold her hands under her arms until her fingers warmed enough to continue. She kept up this cycle until she had the beginnings of a decent drawing in front of her. Her passion intensified with this visible product of her efforts, and she worked faster in the growing cold. The water moved on the page, and Tess smiled to herself, releasing a sigh of indescribable pleasure, which ended in a shiver. She took out her watercolors, recorded the colors and made notes for a painting she would complete later in the warmth of her studio.

"That looks like cold work," Joe's deep voice said nearby. Tess dragged her attention from her work and turned to meet his gaze. He stood at one end of the bridge, watching her with a placid, weary, expression. He moved closer. "Wouldn't it be simpler to take a photograph? It would save freezing your fingers at least." His own fingers, gloved warmly, were thrust into his jacket pockets. His black hair blew in the wind and his eyes were a limitless gray-green under the leaden sky. Tess longed to draw him as he stood there, but the idea was to forget him, not have a portrait of him haunting her forever.

He moved to her side and looked over her shoulder at the drawing.

"How long have you been here?" Tess asked him.

"Long enough to realize there must be something special about this place, to make you want so desperately to capture it."

"I used to come here to think when I was a girl. I would spend hours watching water run under this bridge."

"I know."

Tess looked up at him.

"You weren't the only one who took to following another youngster around."

"You followed me? Here?"

"Many times." He looked at the water as he spoke, and he reminded Tess suddenly of that young, dark-haired boy. He took the sketchpad from her, picked up her mittens and handed them to her. "Why are you doing this, Tess?"

Tess pulled the mittens on and tucked her hands under her arms, hugging herself against another shiver. "I want to record a bit of home to take back with me, in case I go away and never return. Something to help me remember all the good things that came out of growing up here."

He frowned. "You intend to leave? And never come back?"

Tess stared at the water foaming noisily over a boulder, as she answered him, thinking she could almost see the water slow, turning to ice. "I don't have definite plans yet. I've told you that." Her voice shook, and she shivered. "I want to stay, but I need a good reason. Dreams aren't enough to keep me here. I have a business in L.A. Responsibilities. My family's gone." She shivered again.

"You've been out here too long," Joe said gruffly. "Go home and get warmed up before you make yourself sick. You'll have other days to finish this thing, if it's so important, won't you? You're not leaving this week."

Tess stood silent, watching him as he packed her things away for her. He took the pencil out of her hand, and dropped it into the bag as he handed it to her. "Do you mind if I come with Rose, to your Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow?"

"Please do, Joe. I want all my friends there."

He watched her for another few seconds. Then he gave her a gentle shove toward her car as if she were a child. "Go home and warm up."

Tess obeyed, because she was too chilled to argue. When she'd reached the relative shelter of her car, out of the bitter wind, she looked back to see Joe still there. He leaned against the railing, watching the swift-running water of Cedar Creek.

As she drove away, Tess glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw a red snowmobile take off from the nearby woods and head in the same direction she was going, the sound of its engine muffled by the gusting wind. It alarmed her at first, but the snowmobile veered off into the woods again.

###

Tess was in the kitchen at her house, still feeling the effects of the cold, when Rose arrived to help her transfer food and utensils to Cottage Arts. Rose smiled as she repeated the name. "I love it, Tess. As soon as Joe told me the name you came up with, I thought how wonderfully it fits what we're doing there. We never would've come up with Cottage Arts, without you. But I will be so relieved when the stress of this grand opening is over with." She turned to look through the items they needed to move. "Who was on the snowmobile?"

"What snowmobile?" Tess's mind went instantly to the one she'd seen at the bridge.

"The one leaving your driveway when I arrived. I couldn't tell who it was. They were all bundled up and wearing a ski mask under their helmet. They sped off as I drove up." Rose shrugged. "Maybe they took a wrong turn or something."

"Was it bright red?"

"No, it was dark blue, I think, with a white stripe."

"They must be out in droves today. You wouldn't think it would be that much fun in this weather." But then Tess had stood on a cold bridge and bared her fingers to sketch, so who was she to judge? Still, the thought of the snowmobiles disturbed her after the strange destruction of her snow angels the other night.

"They're always out in droves, here, once the snow gets this deep. That just doesn't usually happen until after Christmas."

Before they set to work, Tess offered Rose a cup of hot tea. "I need it myself, before I go out there again. I'm about frozen."

Rose thanked her and accepted the tea. "Harry called, and told me he and Paige will be here to help. Jessica showed up again, right before I left, looking for Joe. She was positively rude to me when I told her I didn't know where he was. He's not at his office, or Cottage Arts, and his pager's sitting on our kitchen table at home. That's the third time in three days he's vanished like that."

"I just saw him down by the stone footbridge." Tess poured her own tea.

"I wouldn't have told Jessica that, if I'd known. I've had it with her possessiveness. These are ready to load into my car." Rose had finished packing things from Tess's freezer into a box. Tess carried her tea over to join Rose at the table. Rose peered into a tin of cookies there. "Oh!" Rose cried out. She beamed at Tess. "They're snow angels!"

Paige and Harry arrived in time to help load Rose's car. Rose insisted on showing them the snow angel cookies before she drove away with the first load for Tess's bakery. Then Harry and Paige loaded Paige's rental car, with Tess's help, and followed Rose. Tess moved her car around to the back, planning to follow the others to Cottage Arts as soon as she loaded the last box of dishes into her car.

On her way into the kitchen through the back door, Tess heard what she thought must be the snowmobile Rose had seen earlier. It was barely audible over the rising wind. She returned to the kitchen and rushed to finish her task, packing baking tins into a cardboard carton. She'd just finished when the back door opened behind her, blowing in cold air. Tess turned around, not expecting anyone back.

She froze. The person who stood in the doorway wore a ski mask. A black parka, gloves, black snow pants, and sneakers sheathed what she was sure was a male form. She could only see his eyes. "You really should lock your doors." He closed and locked the door, turned the deadbolt. "You made this way too easy."

Chapter 15

Tess was certain she recognized the voice behind the mask as Trent Cambridge, but it had been so long since she'd heard him speak, except for two words at Stoneway the other night, she couldn't be sure. He was the right height, though. He moved toward her. Tess stood motionless, unable to think, unable to breathe.

The phone on the counter rang. Tess and the man in the ski mask both stared at it. When Tess reached for it, he moved faster, and grasped her arm tightly before she could reach the phone.

"If I don't answer--"

"They'll think you've already left. You were about to leave, weren't you?"

She tried to shake off his grip, and it tightened. "What do you want?" Her voice was ragged with fear.

The phone kept ringing, until the answering machine clicked on. The volume was turned down, so Tess couldn't hear whether the caller left a message. Afterward the silence in the kitchen was profound, with the sound of their breath prominent. The man continued to hold Tess's arm in an iron grip. Tess didn't know what to say that would persuade him to leave her alone, so she said nothing. She tried to think of a way out. She thought of the knives in the kitchen drawer at the end of the counter. Could she get to one? If she did, could she use it against him, could she fight him off, and then grab the phone on her way out? It was the cordless phone Paige had brought for her from L.A.

The man in the ski mask had other ideas. He grasped both her hands firmly with his leather gloves, and he led her quickly out through the dining room, away from the phone and the knives, while Tess struggled in vain to get out of his grasp. He paused to pull a length of rope out of his jacket pocket, and she struggled harder while he held her with only one gloved hand. She'd nearly slipped one wrist out of his grasp, when he hit her with his open hand, slapping her face. She kept fighting. When she managed to free one hand he cursed, then he knocked the wind out of her with a single, controlled punch to her solar plexus. Tess doubled over, gasping for breath, while he tied her wrists with the rope, so tightly the knots pinched her skin and cut off her circulation.

He used the remaining length of the rope to lead her into the living room and over to the stairs, while she tried to kick him. He paused and laughed when he looked up at the stairs. "Oh, this is perfect."

Tess kicked him hard, then.

He cursed and moved away. "You're going to force me to stop you from doing that."

He continued to fight off her kicks as he led her to the stair railing. She saw what he intended to do now, to tie her to the stair banister. Tess struggled with her bonds and her captor, while her heart sank at the realization that she'd nearly lost her chance of escape. If he managed to secure her to the sturdy hardwood railing, all the kicking she could manage wouldn't free her. The front door was so close now, she decided to try for escape by that route.

When he moved up the stairs, trying to guide her in the same direction along the lower floor so he could get the end of the rope around the railing, with her legs out of reach to kick him, she tried to yank him off balance, back down the stairs. Failing that, she managed to creep around the newel post and up the stairs behind him, then attempted to kick his feet out from under him on the stairs. She succeed in pulling one foot from under him, and he cursed again, then sat on the step to keep from falling, and stared at her. She could see only his eyes, behind the ski mask, but she was certain he was Trent.

"You little bitch!"

A sound outside drew their attention. Another snowmobile approached the front of the house. He glanced that way, then got up and struck Tess in the face with his fist, knocking her aside. "I don't have time for this!"

He yanked her back to the bottom of the stairs. He was breathing hard now, they both were, and Tess could sense his anger. It lay like a low snarl beneath each breath he exhaled. It frightened her, as she continued to fight him. As he pulled her to the bottom of the stairs, she kicked at him again, but this time he used her own trick against her, grasping her leg and pulling it hard out from under her, at the same instant as he let go of the rope. She went down backwards, too hard, and landed with a smack of her skull against the bottom step.

"No," she moaned. It was as though Tess kept falling, into a sickening blackness.

Tess's next awareness was at first only of the pain in her head, and she groaned, which made it hurt more. Any attempt at movement hurt. She lay on her back, her arms extended above her head, ending in numbness, which she realized gradually was her hands, their sensation cut off by the rope that bound them. The pain in her head was enough to nearly shut out sound. It muffled everything. Every sound, every sensation was subject to the pain. She remained still, until someone touched her. She couldn't see. Her captor was tying a blindfold roughly over her eyes.

"You should've left town while you had the chance."

She let him think she was still unconscious. The snowmobile continued to circle outside, its sound assaulting her senses in sickening waves.

Her captor moved away from her and opened the front door. The wind blew into the house, freezing the air around Tess, rousing her a little. The snowmobile tore around out front, and her captor shouted, cursing. At her? No, he'd gone outside. He continued yelling, while the door remained open, letting in freezing gusts of wind.

The yelling hurt her head so much Tess couldn't take in what he said. Something about "around back" and "what we came here for." She shivered in the cold from the door, and prayed silently for help. She had a feeling the new arrival had stopped her captor from finishing what he'd started, and now he was distracted by the newcomer. Tess said a silent thank you, while the sound of the snowmobile moved to the back of the house.

A moment later her captor's voice came from the kitchen. Tess heard someone going through drawers in there, and then smashing things.

The man's voice said, "Do what we came here to do!" in a hissing rush. "There may not be much time." The sound of the snowmobile's engine had ceased. When had it stopped? Tess's head swam, and confusion swept through her like a wave of nausea. She felt ill, and wondered if she'd lost consciousness again for a moment. The cold wind still gusted through the front door, and she wondered if she would freeze lying here. She no longer heard her captor or the newcomer.

A moment later, Tess heard soft footsteps go past her, up the stairs.

The next sound Tess heard was the phone ringing. It stopped abruptly with the sound of something being smashed, in the kitchen. She could only imagine what was going on in there, as the banging and crashing noises continued.

Someone returned, and stood beside her. Tess grew panicky once more. Then she heard them move away. Tess couldn't feel her hands anymore. They were completely numb. Her arms ached, stiff from lack of movement. The front door was still open, the cold wind blew more steadily now. She might as well be in front of a freezer. She shivered, and somehow the shivering hurt her head.

Long minutes passed, and Tess heard the sounds of someone moving through the rooms above her. Spence's room. Other sounds continued downstairs. Someone walked past her, and her panic escalated again, but they moved about nearly silently, never touching her, never saying a word as they opened and closed drawers in the living room. The hall closet opened, and things were thrown out. Then noises came from the study. Drawers opened, things were tossed around. Minutes later someone passed her again, and seconds after that Tess heard more destruction in the kitchen.

Suddenly a shout came, from above, a single word, "Car!" It was the man in the ski mask's voice.

The noises in the kitchen stopped. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. Someone ran past Tess and slammed the front door shut, then tore off her blindfold. Tess blinked at the light and saw the man in the ski mask, with a knife. He was directly above her, his gaze cold. With one finger to his lips, he brandished the knife threateningly. Then he used it to cut the rope that bound her hands to the newel post. He cut the remaining rope from her wrists, and stuffed it into his pocket. All Tess could manage was to continue to lie on the floor, sobbing faintly while he did this. She couldn't feel her hands, and her arms were too stiff to move. He pointed the knife at her again as he spoke. "Now you'll leave, and you'll pay." His words carried a distinct threat that struck her cold, and made her want to shrink from his gaze. He dropped an envelope on the floor beside her and ran out in the direction of the kitchen.

A snowmobile started up, and the sound moved off through the woods behind the house. Tess moved, slowly and with great effort, bending her stiff arms, and rubbing her wrists against her legs to start the blood back into her numb hands. The renewed sensation, as it started, was too much for her. She cried out. Then she sat up unsteadily, shivering, uncertain what to do. That was when the doorbell rang.

Tess shivered, teeth chattering, limbs uncooperative. The doorbell rang again. She stood up unsteadily, and her legs wobbled as she moved.

"Tess?" someone called, outside the front door. She hadn't heard his car, but it was Alan's voice. Tess cried, sobbing suddenly in relief. Now she heard an engine out front, and recognized the sound of Joe's truck coming up the driveway. Shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, she barely managed the few steps from the stairs to open the door. It must not have been locked, though, because Alan opened it as she reached it. He opened it slowly, then stood for a few seconds and stared at her.

"Tess, what's wrong? Are you hurt?" Alan looked as confused and shocked by her appearance as she felt.

She shook, sobbing and barely able to hold herself upright, while Alan stood in the doorway, the cold wind blowing in around him. He finally moved, closed the door and put his arms around her, his jacket so cold it prickled her bare skin on her face and neck and almost made her scream. Alan guided her into the living room, where he urged her onto the sofa. "It's okay. It's okay. What happened to you?"

The front door opened, and Joe came in. "Tess?" Then he saw her, and he rushed over. He took her face gently in his hands and looked into her eyes. "Are you hurt? What's happened?"

She shook with convulsive sobs and couldn't answer. He turned to Alan and said, "What the hell did you do to her?"

"No!" Tess cried, afraid he was about to do Alan a grave injury. "He c-came t-to help," Tess said. "It--it--was someone else. Ski mask." Why couldn't she speak properly? She wasn't making sense. Her teeth chattered.

Joe glanced around the living room, and told Alan to call the sheriff. Alan removed his cell phone clipped to his belt. As he pressed the number on the keypad he moved away, into the dining room, where Tess couldn't hear him. Joe sat beside Tess and held her.

"I need t-to--"

"Shh, sit still. Tell me where it hurts." Joe examined the lump on the back of her head. Then he made her lie down and covered her with the afghan, and he sat beside her, holding her hand. When Alan returned, Joe had him get her an ice pack.

Minutes later the front doorbell rang. Alan let Paige and Harry in, trying to explain how he'd found Tess, while they stared at her, and at Joe holding the ice pack to her head. He seemed to understand how much she hurt. He held her, and helped her hold the ice there, while everyone else seemed to demand answers she couldn't provide.

"I don't know what's happened here," Alan murmured in the foyer. "The house is ransacked, but she hasn't said what happened." They entered the living room. "I called the sheriff. Is she all right, Joe?"

Paige replaced Joe, and put her arms around Tess. Tess still couldn't stop shaking. She sat up carefully. "It was Trent," she finally said. "I'm sure it was Trent Cambridge, but he had a ski mask on."

The sound of sirens outside silenced her. The sirens grew nearer, and Tess said no more. She would wait until the sheriff was listening, because she didn't want to tell the story more than once.

Joe looked around at the others. "Where's Rose?" he asked, suddenly alarmed again. "Tess, wasn't Rose here with you?"

"Rose went to C-cottage Arts," Tess told him.

"She never showed up," Paige said beside her. Tess turned and stared at Paige. She didn't understand.

Deputy Prescott arrived first. Sheriff Kendall followed minutes later. They both knew Joe, and they greeted one another by first names.

Rose arrived seconds after the sheriff did, looking bewildered as she came in the door. Harry went over to her. "Where have you been, Rose?"

"I--" Rose looked at Tess. "I heard sirens. What's going on? Tess? Why are the police here?"

"Okay," Sheriff Kendall said, taking charge. "This is way too many people. Duane, take names and clear them all out while I talk to Ms. Hunter."

Chapter 16

"The sheriff suggested I pack a few of your things, and he'll drive you to the hospital. After you get checked out there, you can stay with me at Stoneway," Paige told Tess. "There are two beds in my room."

Tess had described what happened to the sheriff and deputy, who were going through the house while Paige sat with Tess in the living room. Joe had insisted Paige be allowed to stay with her, and that she get medical attention.

"I don't need to go to the hospital." Tess suppressed a shudder, wondering how she would ever get the house ready for guests by tomorrow. According to Paige the kitchen wasn't fit to cook in. "I'm not going to cancel Thanksgiving. I won't let them do that to me."

"The sheriff's worried you may have been raped while you were unconscious, if it was Trent Cambridge. Apparently it's a pattern of his."

Tess shook her head. "He wasn't here to rape me. He wanted something he thought he'd find in this house."

"In any case, Joe says you should get your head checked out. You have a huge goose egg, and--I don't want to hurt your feelings, but--you haven't been making a whole lot of sense since we all got here. Listen to the professionals. Joe's obviously concerned, and he knows about these things."

"Joe's a veterinarian. This is a human goose egg." Her voice seemed to have developed a permanent quiver.

"You need to give them the blackmail letters."

Tess nodded agreement. She'd been telling herself she needed to do that before Trent had come here today.

Paige was silent for a minute. Then she sighed. "All right, Harry and I will stay here with you tonight. We'll clean up the house, and we'll help you with your dinner tomorrow. Provided you get checked out by a doctor right now."

The sheriff and Paige helped Tess out to a car, and a female deputy drove her to the hospital. Paige followed in her rental car.

###

It was another four hours before Tess returned to the house with Paige, and it was nearly dark by now. Tess felt done in, but didn't dare tell anyone, since they were treating her like she'd shatter any minute as it was. She had too much to do.

The sheriff asked Tess to walk through the house with him. "If you're feeling up to it." He frowned at her right eye, which was swollen and red, and seemed to grab and hold everyone's attention. "That's going to be a black eye by tomorrow," Sheriff Kendall remarked.

Her head throbbed the entire time, and what Tess saw as she surveyed the house made her feel worse. The sheriff and Deputy Prescott questioned her again as they went through each room, starting upstairs. Her bedroom was a mess, all her belongings strewn across the floor, drawers open or thrown on the floor, clothing in a jumble. Every book had been removed from the bookshelves and tossed on the floor, the nightstands emptied. Bathroom toiletries had been knocked over or onto the floor. Tess couldn't tell from the mess whether anything was missing or not, but she was certain the two people had been searching for something.

"They went to Spence's room first, when they came up here." Tess recalled the sounds and movements of the two people through the house.

She referred to her attacker as the man in the ski mask, because each time she called him Trent the sheriff and deputy would stop to ask how she knew he was Trent. She couldn't explain how, but she knew.

In Spence's room the bedspread was tossed off the bed and the rug beside it had been swept aside. It appeared someone had searched under the bed as well as the mattress, leaving each cocked to one side in a way that made Tess feel dizzy to look at it. The empty drawers and closet were thrown open.

"What's missing?" Sheriff Kendall asked.

"Nothing. I cleared out all his things days ago."

Tess's studio had been tossed as well. Her work, drawings and paintings lay jumbled on the table and floor, but the furniture she'd placed in front of the cabinets hadn't been moved. The big shawl still hung across the cabinet doors, concealing them, while the unconcealed closet and drawers had been opened and their contents thrown onto the floor. The few boxes of her family's things Tess had stored in the closet were emptied and dumped out of the boxes onto the floor.

Downstairs, the desk drawers and files in the study had been pulled out and rifled through, the books there given the same treatment as those upstairs. The piano bench and some small table drawers in the living room had been emptied, their contents scattered. The sideboard in the dining room had been dumped of papers, candles, place mats, tablecloths and napkins.

The kitchen was the worst of it. Tess surveyed the mess in the kitchen, where someone had taken out their temper on everything in sight, including a set of antique stoneware crocks that Tess's mother had used as countertop canisters ever since Tess could remember. Flour, sugar, and various other foodstuffs coated the countertops, floor and cabinet surfaces. A carton of eggs had been dumped and smashed into a gooey mess in the middle of the floor, along with other food items from the refrigerator. The smell of vinegar permeated the room, from a broken jar of pickles. Broken glass and crockery littered everything, cutlery lay scattered about, and dishes had been broken. It would take hours to clean it all up, and Tess expected guests here for dinner tomorrow.

Tess stood in the kitchen, feeling queasy. Then she rushed back to the dining room, where she breathed relief that her mother's heirloom china and silver were still inside the top of the china cabinet, untouched, although the contents of the cabinet's drawers had been tossed about.

"They wasted a lot of time in that kitchen," Sheriff Kendall said. "If it was valuables they wanted, I doubt that would still be here." He indicated her mother's sterling teapot. "They may have been interrupted before they finished. Ms. Hunter, will you go through your family's things, as soon as possible, and let us know if you find anything missing, or anything unusual they may have been looking for?"

"But the kitchen."

The sheriff nodded toward the kitchen. "That was rage." He looked at Tess inquisitively.

"I don't think that was Trent, if it was Trent in the ski mask," Tess told him. "I'm sure he was the one upstairs who yelled 'car' when Alan drove up. Meanwhile the other person was doing that to the kitchen."

"Anything else?"

Tess nodded, and told them about the blackmail letters she'd received. Then she described the envelope the man in the ski mask had dropped beside her before he left. "It's the same type of envelope those three blackmail letters came in."

The deputy's pale blue eyes widened suddenly beneath his heavy lids. "Blackmail letters? I wondered about that envelope. It's not addressed, but the envelope is sealed." He went to collect it.

Tess retrieved the other blackmail letters for them. Then she told them about her father's voice mail. The deputy wrote down the codes so he could retrieve and record the message when he returned to his office. Tess finally left through the dining room, and the deputy walked beside her.

She turned back to him. "Sheriff Kendall mentioned that a snowmobile was seen in the area when my family's accident happened. Today, both these people were on snowmobiles. A red snowmobile followed me away from the footbridge this morning. A short time later Rose told me she saw a dark blue one with a white stripe, near the house."

Deputy Prescott nodded, and made a note of it.

Harry returned, looking anxious and bringing his luggage along with Paige's. He sat with Paige in the living room until the sheriff's people left. Harry insisted he would help take care of the mess.

"You haven't seen the kitchen yet," Paige said.

Tess feared the cleanup would take days.

On his way out, Duane Prescott paused in the foyer and studied Tess. He looked concerned, and his thick moustache twitched, his heavy-lidded blue eyes open wider than usual. "You may remember more details as the shock wears off. If so, give me a call. I've written my home number there." He handed her a new card. "We'll pick up Cambridge and question him as soon as we can. The call's already out, but that doesn't guarantee we can hold him. You said the guy in the ski mask was wearing gloves, so that means any useful prints we found will belong to his accomplice. Unless they also wore gloves, which is likely."

"Bloody hell!" This came from Harry, who'd entered the kitchen. He popped back into the living room, looking furious. "I'll take care of the kitchen, Tess. Stay out of there for now."

Harry and Paige made tea, and then Harry wouldn't let either woman back into the kitchen until he'd cleaned up the mess.

Long, silent minutes later, Tess was lying down on her bed upstairs, while Paige moved around the bedroom, straightening and putting away Tess's clothing.

Tess sat up.

"Would you like more tea?" Paige said.

Tess shook her head. "They searched through my family's things, and I want to know why. Will you help me?"

Page looked at her critically, and Tess was afraid she was about to tell her to lie back down and rest. Instead she said, "Oh hell, I can't stand this either. But you have to let me do the work. You can sit still and supervise."

They went to the studio and Tess sat on the chintz-covered slipper chair, while Paige picked up the boxes from the closet that had been strewn on the floor. They went through one box at a time, looking at each item before Paige repacked it. Paige stacked each box in the closet again.

Paige picked up the artwork and supplies that had been scattered on the floor. Then Tess had her take the big colorful silk shawl down from in front of the storage cabinets and move the cheval mirror and chair aside so she could get to the boxes stored there. Paige draped the shawl over the mirror and turned to stare at the cabinets with a wondering look.

"I never would've known those were there. I bet your uninvited guests today didn't either."

Tess didn't answer, embarrassed about hiding them from herself in her unwillingness to face her family's things.

Paige removed the top, unmarked boxes containing Tess's mother's journals and her family's personal effects that had been returned by the sheriff, and set those aside. Then they located the boxes Tess had packed with Spence's things. She suspected the intruder today had headed toward Spence's room first for a reason.

While Paige worked, Tess attempted to hear again, in her memory, all the intruders' movements, in chronological order. Instead she remembered something else, something like a dream, it was so fuzzy.

She saw Spence, six years old, in his pajamas, leaning over the stair rail, asking Tess if she was okay. "Tess? Why are you crying?"

In the memory, Tess looked up at him. "Go back to bed, Spence."

"Tess?" Paige roused Tess from the memory.

Tess shivered, shook her head, and came over to watch Paige open the first box from Spence's room.

Paige peered at Tess critically. "Why don't you take a break? Let me continue this for a while."

Tess shook her head. She was on a mission. She and Paige went through the first six boxes of Spence's things before Tess paused, stood up, and stretched. "Maybe I do need more tea."

"Go ahead. This is going to take some time."

Harry had made impressive progress on the kitchen. All the broken glass and crockery were swept up, the food debris as well. He'd scrubbed the floor, and was wiping down the cabinet doors when Tess entered.

"Good, old, solid hardwood. They're barely scratched, in spite of their punishment with God knows what implement. Whoever did their number on this room was disturbingly vicious." Harry paused and studied her face. "Let me get you something. Not tea this time, I think. Ah, I know the thing. Wait here."

He went to the pantry and brought out a bottle of old, single malt scotch. "Your father must have kept this for special guests. Shall I?"

She nodded, and Harry poured them each a shot of the scotch. He raised his glass. "To friends, old and new, tried and true."

"To friends." They clinked glasses and downed the scotch.

A few minutes later, Paige called Tess from the head of the stairs. "You'd better come look at this."

Tess and Harry hurried up the stairs.

"What do you make of this?" Paige held up a woman's blouse. It was a color somewhere between butter and straw, with thin, delicate mother-of-pearl buttons. The fabric was lightweight--and badly torn.

Tess took one look at it and froze.

"Tess?"

"Where did you find that?" Tess croaked.

"In your brother's backpack, with his homework, of all places."

Tess frowned and held her aching head. "Are you sure?"

"The backpack has his name on it, and it was in a box you marked with his name. There are some--"

"What is it?" Harry said.

"It's a woman's blouse that's been ripped nearly apart," Paige said.

"It's . . . it must be . . . what they were looking for," Tess said, her mouth dry.

Paige looked intently at her. "Maybe you'd better sit down," she suggested, and Tess did, on the edge of the bed. "Why do you suppose your brother would have this? Do you know whose it is?"

"It's mine," Tess said.

"Yours?"

Tess nodded. How had Spence gotten this? Why did he have it? "I thought--" Tess tried to recall what she'd done with it. Maybe that fact was lost in the memories her accident all those years ago had wiped from her mind. But no, this had happened two days earlier than her accident, and she remembered things after it. She remembered baking cookies for Spence. She felt as if her mind were slipping into a fog, and surely this wasn't the result of her bump on the head, or of drinking one shot of scotch, no matter how good or how old. She sat and said nothing, as she attempted to absorb this latest discovery. Her torn blouse, in Spence's backpack. Why?

"Yours? I don't recognize it. How did it get torn like this?" Paige's words seemed to come from a long way away. "Tess? You're scaring me." Paige stood in front of Tess, demanding an answer.

"Wait," Harry said quietly, firmly, putting his hand on Paige's arm and drawing her away. "I think we should call the sheriff back. Here. Let's not handle this anymore." He gestured toward the work table, and Paige lay the blouse on it.

"There are some other things in the backpack. I'll put it here, too." Paige retrieved the backpack from where she'd been working.

"Let's all go downstairs and I'll call the sheriff, shall I, Tess?" Harry said.

Chapter 17

When Duane Prescott arrived Tess was seated on the floor in the study, going through the papers that had been left in chaos there. Harry was making dinner for the three of them, while Paige straightened the living room. Tess answered the door, and led the deputy up the stairs.

"Did you see the snow, out front? They obliterated my snow angels again. That wasn't Trent--I mean it wasn't the first person, in the ski mask. It was his accomplice, on the second snowmobile."

Upstairs, she pointed out the torn garment on the table in the studio. "I was wearing this blouse the night Trent Cambridge tried to rape me, eleven years ago. Trent ripped it when I fought him."

Duane glanced at the blouse on the table, but didn't touch it yet. He got out his notebook. "What did you do with it, after the assault back then?"

Tess sat on the edge of the bed. "I'm not sure."

He looked up. "You don't remember?"

She shook her head and sighed. "I was angry. I wanted to tell my parents what he'd done, to show them that the boy they'd set me up with was a total loser. I was scared of Trent, and of the humiliation." She glanced at the deputy and sighed again. "I didn't make a lot of sense, at the time, even to myself. By the next morning I'd decided not to report it, not to tell my parents. I knew the blouse was ruined, I'd noticed that when I was running away from him. I don't remember what I did with it. I thought I threw it away."

Duane sat in the chintz-covered slipper chair. "Okay, let's go through this step by step, from the beginning. Trent's assault on you. Where and when did it happen?"

"Wait. There's something else. Earlier this afternoon, while Paige and I were going through the boxes, I tried to recall what I'd heard of the intruders' movements up here today, in Spence's room. I was thinking how sound carries in this house. I had this sudden flash. I remembered something from the night of my accident. Spence got out of bed. I remember him standing at the head of the stairs. He asked me why I was crying. I looked up at him, and I told him to go back to bed. That's all I remember, but I wonder if he saw something, if someone else was here."

Duane watched her intently, a frown creasing his brow.

"I'm sorry. I'm not helping, am I?" Tess started in on her account of Trent's attempted date rape, eleven years ago. It appeared to take the deputy a moment to realize she'd switched gears and to begin taking notes again. Tess was calmer now than she'd been earlier, and she didn't hesitate, but told the entire story quickly, in as much detail as she'd ever recalled. She'd tricked Trent, that night, and run away from his house into the woods.

"I stayed with a friend that night. The next morning, I borrowed clothes to wear home, and I stuffed the blouse into my purse, to throw away later."

When she finished, he continued writing for a moment.

"Back to your accident. Do you remember any more about it now than you did in those first few days?"

"No."

"Just that bit about your brother?"

"Yes."

"You claimed back then that you wouldn't have left your brother. Remember?"

"It's true. I wouldn't have." She was no less sure of that today than she'd been at seventeen. "I loved Spence. I was responsible for him that night. I took that seriously."

"What if staying here in the house with him would've endangered him?"

Tess looked at the deputy in amazement.

"After hearing your account of Trent's attack, and your memory of your brother that night, it crossed my mind there might be another explanation for you leaving him alone, besides you going off to party."

"Yes, I might have left him in order to protect him. That's the only reason anyone's offered that makes sense, but it doesn't explain why there were drugs and alcohol in my blood, or why Spence would have my blouse all these years later. I want to know why he did, and whether that has anything to do with why my family died."

He nodded. "If this blouse is what the intruders were looking for today, then it's a good reason to suspect Trent was one of them. But who was his accomplice? Any ideas?"

Tess shook her head. Duane donned gloves and placed the blouse in a bag. Then he picked up the backpack, opened it, and emptied out the rest of its contents: School books, a three-ring binder containing Spence's homework and class notes, and an English paper he'd written. The smaller zip pocket of the backpack contained two sets of keys, as well as a separate, single key.

The deputy glanced inside the bag containing the blouse, and surveyed the other items on the table. "Which pocket was the blouse in?"

Tess called Paige, who came up and told Duane that she'd found the blouse in the smaller pocket, with the keys. He thanked her in a dismissive way that spoke of the authority he didn't often make a show of, and Paige returned downstairs.

"Do you recognize any of these keys, Tess?"

One of the key rings held a key that looked identical to the house key Joe had given her on her first night home, and a metal tag with Spence's name on it. "I've never seen it before, but that has to be Spence's set. I don't know about the other key ring. There's something . . . familiar, but I can't place it." She reached out to touch the single remaining key, and he stopped her. He picked it up and held it closer, turning it over. "It isn't to anything in this house that I know of," Tess said.

The deputy checked carefully through the rest of the backpack, and bagged all the items. Finally he got up and put all the paper bags in a box to take with him. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and handed her a sheet of paper. "That's a copy of the latest blackmail letter the intruder left here today."

Tess unfolded the copy and read it. It contained instructions for delivering the $50,000 to a locker in a gym near the Sacramento airport. It further instructed her to tape the key to the locker under the counter in a women's lavatory at the airport, and which flight to take back to L.A. It reminded her to be on that flight and to pay the $50,000, or the blackmailer would send a letter to every major newspaper and TV station in the state on December first, relating the details of her accident eleven years ago.

"I checked out the gym," he said. "It's one that allows day use for a minimal fee. Did you consider paying?" He watched Tess with a bland expression, but she sensed his curiosity. "Is that why you didn't report it earlier?"

"I talked it over with my partners, and we all agreed the blackmailer might keep wanting more money. We don't have the resources to keep paying. We'd wind up bankrupting ourselves, and that would end our business more effectively than bad publicity. So why pay at all? My partners and I planned to discuss turning the letters over to you, after the holiday. I didn't think you could do anything about it either, but the repetitive letters worried me."

He nodded. "It's like they thought you weren't taking them seriously, or they hadn't been noticed. Tends to make you worry what they'll do to get noticed." He stood up, taking the box. "We're still looking for Trent Cambridge. We'll notify you as soon as we have him in custody."

Tess returned downstairs, where Harry and Paige were preparing dinner. They wouldn't let Tess help, and kept telling her to sit down. When the phone rang she answered, hoping for a distraction from the inactivity everyone insisted she needed.

It was Joe, his voice strung tight with anxiety. "Tess, are you all right? Have you been to the hospital and back already?"

"Yes. I have a concussion. I'm supposed to see Dr. Lloyd for a follow-up on Friday. Paige and Harry are doing the cleaning, here. They won't let me do anything."

"Good. Take it easy. The sheriff questioned Rose for a long time, and she's clearly upset, but she won't talk about it. She still hasn't explained where she disappeared to after she left your house. Did she give you any indication?"

"Only that she was headed for Cottage Arts."

"I'm worried about her."

This worried Tess too, as did his tone of voice. "Maybe Rose tried to call me. The phone rang twice, while they were here. I haven't checked--" She stopped, realizing the answering machine had been ruined.

"That was me who called, both times. I let Paige and Harry into the restaurant. They told me Rose should've arrived before them, and they mentioned Rose had seen a snowmobile hanging around your place. I'd seen a red one follow you away from the bridge earlier, and I remembered Rose saw a snowmobile the morning of your family's accident." He paused. "That's why I drove to your house when I did. Well, I'm relieved you weren't hurt worse."

His words, his low voice, and the concern he expressed brought all her feelings for him back to the surface. She didn't want that.

"Tess, I--"

"I--have to go. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon. Tell Rose, dinner's still on. Goodnight, Joe." She hung up.

###

By morning the weather was worse. The wind was colder, the sky darker. The news reported a winter storm watch in effect for this part of the Sierras. It was expected to produce heavy snow sometime in the next twenty-four hours.

"Are you sure you still want to do this?" Paige asked Tess at breakfast. "We could delay the dinner until after the storm. That would give you a couple of days to--" Paige broke off.

"A couple of days for what? Today is Thanksgiving. I've already invited everyone. The food is ready to go, all I have to do is put the turkey in the oven. The house is clean again, thanks to you two. There's no point in delaying."

"You make it sound more like an ordeal you need to get over with than something you'll enjoy."

Tess thought about that. What was an ordeal, what she had trouble enduring, was the wait. The wait for dinner with her friends tonight, yes, but also the wait to know who was blackmailing her, who had killed her family, who had intruded on her life yesterday. The wait for justice, the wait for the chance to feel at peace again. Tess had taken a sleeping pill last night for the first time in her life. Today she kept reliving those minutes of panic, when the man in the ski mask had overpowered her. Where would this end?

"Maybe we should pay them and leave," Paige said later. Tess looked up and saw Harry shake his head at Paige, signaling her not to talk about it.

Tess got up and left the table. She went upstairs to her studio and sat on the bed. The open storage cabinets gaped at her, with all the boxes of her family's belongings, their whole lives, inside. She went over and closed the cabinet doors, moved the furniture in front of them, hung the Russian print shawl over them. Then she went downstairs and said she was going for a drive.

"Alone?" Paige said.

Tess didn't answer. She took her parents' address book from the kitchen drawer, put on her warmest jacket and went out to the car. She drove to the address her mother had written down for Karen Jensen. Tess hoped Spence had told Karen something about the blouse and why he had it.

###

Tess parked in front of the Jensens' house, thinking how like her parents' house theirs appeared. It was approximately the same size and of the same type of construction. It was even close to the same age, but it was in town, with houses close to it on both sides, and a small yard in front with a sidewalk edging the tree-lined street.

Karen's father Hank Jensen opened the front door. Tess had met him briefly at the gathering after the funeral. He was in his late forties, thickset and about Tess's height. He didn't appear to recognize her at first, so she introduced herself. "I'm sorry to disturb you on a holiday, but I need to speak to Karen if she's available. It's about Spence."

Hank Jensen invited her inside, introduced her again to his wife Margaret, and called Karen downstairs. The Jensens' house was fragrant with holiday meal preparations. The television in the living room was on, tuned to pre-game football highlights. Margaret Jensen switched it off.

Karen hesitated on the stairs when she saw Tess seated in the living room. She came the rest of the way down more slowly, and took a seat beside her mother on the sofa. Hank Jensen sat in a recliner, but didn't tilt it back. Tess sat in a glider chair, which she hadn't realized was a glider before she sat down. She did her best to keep it still. She felt a need for stillness.

As soon as Karen was seated Tess began to question her. "You mentioned the other day, when you visited, that you needed a key back that you thought Spence had."

Karen nodded. "Spence offered to return it to Stoneway for me."

"What was the key to?"

"It was a passkey to the offices on the first floor. I used to clean them, until I quit a few days ago."

"Would it have been a single metal key that Spence didn't keep on his key ring?"

Karen nodded. "He only had it for a couple of days. He must have still had it when the accident happened, because Angie Norwood told me this week that he never returned it. They're holding my final paycheck until they get it back."

"They're what?" Hank Jensen said.

"If it's the key I think it is, we found it yesterday," Tess told them. She didn't mention turning it over to the sheriff.

"Karen, why didn't you tell us they still haven't paid you?" Margaret Jensen said.

"I was afraid you wouldn't let me get another job."

Margaret looked at Tess. "I didn't want her to work there. At first she was happy, but apparently Angie got temperamental with her. Karen's only sixteen. I want her to enjoy being sixteen."

"Mom, that's not why I quit. I needed to spend more time studying."

Her mother looked at her with an odd expression, but didn't say anything.

Tess leaned forward, again fighting her chair's inclination to move. "Karen, do you know anything about a torn blouse that Spence had?"

"A what?" Margaret said. "What is this about?" She looked accusingly at Tess now, and appeared about to break off the conversation and send Tess out the door.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Jensen, but I need to ask these things. Someone came into my house yesterday. They searched it and vandalized it. I think they were looking for those things Spence had in his backpack. One item was that key. Another was a torn blouse. It was the blouse I was wearing eleven years ago when Trent Cambridge tried to rape me. I need to know how it came into Spence's possession."

"What makes you think Karen would know?"

"Honey," Hank Jensen said, "he was Karen's boyfriend. Karen, answer the lady."

Karen shook her head. "I don't know!" She got up and left the room, crying. "I don't know!"

"I think you'd better leave," Margaret told Tess.

Tess got up and went to the door. Hank Jensen followed her. "I'll talk to them."

Tess turned to look at him. "Do you think Karen knows more than she's saying?"

"Well, I know she didn't quit her job because of her schoolwork, or because her boss was temperamental. Something happened there, and she won't talk about it. She quit the day after Gail, a friend of hers, was raped in the Stoneway parking lot. Gail says it was Trent Cambridge who raped her." He paused and then asked, "Did, uh--did the people who vandalized your house give you the black eye?"

She nodded. "I think that was Trent Cambridge. He had someone else with him."

Hank Jensen shook his head. "The man is a menace. I'll talk to Karen and her mother."

Chapter 18

Tess drove to Stoneway, entered through the lobby, and asked the desk clerk for Angie.

"Tess. I didn't expect--" Angie stopped in her office doorway. Her smile turned to a frown as she peered at Tess's black eye. "What happened to you?"

"Did you know Trent Cambridge raped a teenage girl right here in your parking lot?"

Angie glanced around the lobby. Only the desk clerk was there now, but Angie beckoned Tess into her office and closed the door. Once they were seated she said, "I know the girl says she was raped in my parking lot and she claims it was Trent. Why?"

"Does Trent spend a lot of time here, Angie? I saw him here myself a couple of nights ago." Trent had said in the note he left on Tess's door that he'd waited for her in the parking lot, the same place he'd raped Karen's friend. Tess shuddered.

Angie narrowed her eyes. "You never mentioned that to me. Are you sure you're all right? What's going on, Tess? You look like you've been in a wreck."

Tess shook her head. "I'm angry. I'm scared. I'm upset. I want to know why he was here, Angie. Does he spend a lot of time here?"

Angie shrugged. "A lot of people come here for the food, the entertainment."

Tess wanted to shake her, but she realized she wasn't being reasonable. "Someone came into my house yesterday, tied me up, and tore the house apart. I think it was Trent. He had someone else with him. He scared the hell out of me. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. I heard today that the girl he raped most recently was assaulted right here in your parking lot."

There was a knock on the office door, and Angie's brother Kevin poked his head in. "Karen Jensen's dad just called--Oh, hi Tess. Sorry, I didn't-- What happened to your eye?

"It's a long story." Tess stood up.

"You okay? I've been looking forward to that turkey tonight, but if you're not up to it we could move the party here."

"I'm fine. I'd better go put that turkey in the oven." She'd better put makeup on her eye before her dinner party, or she'd frighten all her guests. "I'm sorry, Angie. I was so upset, when I heard that happened here, I--"

"Dinner's still on, then?" Angie said with an encouraging grin. She got up and gave Tess a brief hug. "What a trouper. I'm glad you're okay. We'll see you tonight."

###

Tess drove back to the house and went up to her studio without a word. Paige followed her and watched as Tess stood looking at the furniture and shawl concealing the cabinets.

"Oh, Paige, I'm so frustrated. There's an answer here somewhere, I know there is. I can't let it rest. I can't rest until I find it."

Paige appeared, for the first time since Tess had known her, not to know what to say.

Tess didn't think she could sit around until evening and wait for her turkey to roast. She gestured at the cabinets. "Will you help me open these up again?"

This time they focused on the boxes Tess had set aside yesterday, one containing the personal effects the sheriff had returned to her, and the other her mother's journals.

Tess opened the box of journals first, to look for those covering the most pertinent dates, after her accident, and the following few years when her parents had kept her from visiting home. When she searched for the one written the year of her accident, she didn't find it with the others. Paige helped her search for it, but it wasn't in the box. Tess sat still and thought for a minute. Finally she remembered that after Joe's visit last Friday night she'd read the page her mother had written while waiting for Tess to regain consciousness. Her mother's words had upset Tess so much she hadn't wanted to read any further. She'd stuffed the journal under her pillow.

Tess went to her bedroom and checked under the pillows. The journal wasn't there. She opened the nightstand drawers and searched through them, throwing things out onto the floor.

"Hey, I just organized that," Paige complained.

"It's not here. They must have taken it. Trent and his accomplice must have it." Tess returned to the studio and opened the box of personal effects she'd received from the deputy. She doubted she would find anything incriminating in there that the sheriff would have missed, but she had to do something. These were the things her family had taken with them to see the sheriff that morning.

"I wonder why Spence didn't take the blouse with him that morning," Paige said.

Tess looked at her, wondering the same thing. "Maybe he wasn't going with them. It was a school day. It's possible they were going to drop him off at school first. I'd ask Karen, but she seems reluctant to talk about any of this."

"Why is she reluctant?"

"Her father thinks she's scared. Trent's most recent rape victim is a friend of hers, and that rape happened in the parking lot at Stoneway. Karen quit her job there right after it happened. Remember that single key that you found in his backpack? I think it was the passkey that Karen used when she cleaned the offices at Stoneway. Spence offered to return it for her, after she quit."

"Then why did he still have it? And if he was going to school that morning, why didn't he have his backpack with him?"

Tess shook her head. "No matter what I decide about my career, I know I don't want to be a detective. It's too frustrating!"

"You're too close to this, and you're scared yourself."

"I am," Tess agreed. "I'm afraid that it's someone I care about, someone I'd never suspect of wanting to harm my family or me."

"Like who?"

Tess looked at Paige. She shrugged. "Last night Joe told me Rose still hasn't accounted for where she was when Trent and his accomplice were here yesterday."

Paige groaned. "Don't tell Harry you suspect Rose. Well, look, at least you know it's not Joe. He was with us at Cottage Arts, wondering where the hell Rose was, when whoever-they-are were here searching your house. That reminds me, what was Alan doing here when Joe arrived? Joe asked the same thing yesterday, before the sheriff threw everyone out."

"Alan had offered to help--after I practically accused him of killing my family."

Paige waited for an explanation of that. Harry came in then and asked if they needed help.

Tess told Paige and Harry about the damage to the van's tire, and described Alan's athame. "My parents made me quit seeing Alan, around the same time they fixed me up with Trent. Laura says he was heartbroken after I left to live with my aunt. So I guess I was suspicious of him." She told them Alan's story about why he no longer owned the athame. "I believed him."

"It would be next to impossible to damage a tire that way, with a knife, while the vehicle was moving," Harry said.

Paige ignored him. "Tess, Alan had good reason to feel resentful if you'd broken up with him, and surely he could use the money the blackmailer's demanding, for his new business. For that matter, so could Rose." Paige cast a quick glance at Harry, then, and bit her lip.

"Rose?" Harry looked from Paige to Tess. "You suspect Rose? What possible motive could she have?"

Tess shook her head. "None that I know of. I didn't know Rose very well back then." She nodded toward the box from the sheriff. "These are the things my family had with them that morning."

"I uh, have to leave for a bit." Harry told them he had to go back to Stoneway for some things he'd left there. He looked worried, and said he might stop by and see Rose.

Paige shook her head after he left and said, "He's smitten with Rose, you know. I've never seen him like this."

Tess focused on the box. It contained Jim Hunter's and Spence Hunter's wallets, Cathy Hunter's purse, a paperback romance novel, sunglasses, a California road map book, some loose change, keys, a couple of Jim Hunter's prescription bottles, an empty pocket-like bag of the sort he might have kept on his wheelchair, and various mundane items of the sort one would keep in the glove box of a car, as well as emergency items: tissues, napkins, pencil, paper, emergency blankets, a flashlight, flares, a portable radio, and a compass.

Paige read the label on one of the emergency blankets. "They were prepared for anything. Have you gone through the wallets and purse yet?"

Tess glanced at the open cabinets, which were again in disarray. "Let's put the rest away. I want to keep the house ready for a dinner party, at least until after tonight."

"Oh sure, now you turn back into a neat freak, after you tossed the nightstand I straightened for you." Paige put the wallets and purse back into the box and picked it up, while Tess closed up and concealed the studio cabinets. "Something's starting to smell good down there."

Tess had just agreed that it was time to go down and check on the food, when the phone rang in the kitchen.

Paige nodded at the box she held. "I'll put this in your closet."

Tess went down to get the phone. The caller was Laura Greene. "Are you okay? Alan told me about your trouble there yesterday. You should postpone this gathering tonight until you're better."

"I'm fine. Dinner is still on. Are you at Cottage Arts today, on a holiday?"

Laura laughed. "It's a disease of the self-employed. I had some work to catch up on. I want to be as free as a bird next Friday, for the opening. Alan and Rose were both here this morning, too. I'm leaving my office now. Are you sure you're okay? Do you need help with dinner? I can arrive at your place early if you need me to."

"I have plenty of help, but come early if you like. It will give us more time to visit."

When Laura arrived, an hour later, she was with Harry, who'd given her a ride so she could ride home with her husband later.

While Laura exclaimed over Tess's black eye, Tess noticed that Harry wore a grave expression. He drew Tess aside.

"I need to speak to you for a few minutes in private." The look in his eyes told Tess this was serious.

She nodded. "Let's go into the study."

Tess sat behind her father's desk, while Harry closed the door. Tess noticed he had several sheets of paper in his hand.

He cleared his throat. "When I visited Rose the other day, I noticed the research she's been doing. I remembered it again today, when you mentioned the tire damage the sheriff described. So I went to see Rose again for a second look." He showed Tess his set of printouts, from web sites having to do with hunting.

"These are called broadheads. They're the types of arrow tips you use for bow hunting."

Tess examined the pages. The broadheads in the pictures were nasty looking weapons, sharp metal tips that expanded on impact, increasing the odds that the game a hunter shot with them would be killed and not merely wounded. Tess recalled the books she'd seen in Rose's office the other day. This must be the research Rose had said she was doing for her novel. Rose had acted distraught when Tess saw the hunting books.

Harry went on. "I found types that come with two, three and four blades." He pointed out each type on the printouts as he spoke. "They're used on arrows for long bows and compound bows, and the same types of heads fit on the shorter arrows called bolts that are used with crossbows. It's possible that whatever hit the tire on your parents' van was a double-bladed broadhead. See that one?"

Tess looked up at him. "Someone could've shot the van's tire with a bow and arrow?"

"A crossbow is more likely if they were on a snowmobile at the time. It would be a difficult shot, I should think, but it makes a lot more sense than a knife. I'm taking these pictures to the sheriff. If I leave now I can be back in time for dinner."

"Did Rose show you where to find this information?"

Harry met her gaze. "Actually, Rose took me to see Alan, to ask him to show me, on his computer. He's apparently quite an expert bow hunter. But he'd already left, so I did some searches myself, on Rose's laptop."

Tess saw Harry to the door, with a caution to drive carefully. The wind outside was beginning to be alarming in intensity. She wondered whether some of her guests would cancel, after all, due to the weather, as she closed the door against a freezing gust.

"Where's he going now?" Paige said in exasperation, when Tess told her Harry had left again.

"He has a theory." Tess glanced at Laura, unsure how much she should say. "About the tire damage that caused the accident. He's going to see the sheriff."

"Is that what he was so worked up about?" Laura turned to face Tess. "Is there some mystery about your family's accident? Is that why those people ransacked your house yesterday?"

"The sheriff thinks my family may have been murdered." Tess explained Harry's theory to Paige and Laura.

"Well at least that theory leaves out Rose, I should think," Paige said.

"Don't be so sure," Laura said with a grim look. "Rose was the best shot in archery class, in high school. It was the one gym class she ever aced."

Both Paige and Tess turned toward Laura and Paige demanded that she explain what she'd said.

"Well, you know," Laura said, looking at Tess. "She was so overweight, she was terrible at most sports, always the last one picked for a team, things like that. We had the same gym class one year." Laura looked at Tess with her eyes narrowed. "A whole quarter was devoted entirely to archery, and Rose turned out to be the best shot in the class. She amazed the teacher."

"Oh crap," Paige said, taking in her meaning. She turned to look at Tess.

"It doesn't mean it's Rose," Tess said, too defensively for her own comfort. "A lot of people here hunt, and a lot of them hunt with bows. I know Angie does. I saw a compound bow in her office."

Laura nodded. "Alan does too, with a bow. I don't think Rose actually hunts, though, and I know Joe doesn't. He told Ed that he has to put down enough animals in his work; doing it for sport doesn't appeal to him. Ed doesn't either, though he sells all the equipment. So, it's not necessarily Rose or Joe." Laura said with a nervous laugh. "What am I saying? It's not any of them. Besides, you said Harry thought it had to be a crossbow. I don't know anyone who hunts with a crossbow. According to Ed, they're frowned upon by bow hunters, unless you're disabled and can't shoot a regular bow."

Tess was thinking, and she knew that Paige was as well. They now knew of at least three of Tess's friends who were possible suspects, if Harry's theory was correct. Three people who had lived here at the time of Tess's accident, as well as her family's, and knew how to shoot a bow. Paige listed them out loud. "Rose, Angie and Alan. Which one has a motive?"

"Alan did, at one time," Laura said. "He was resentful about your break up, Tess. Angry with your parents for making you break up, and with you for giving in to them and then not telling him where you'd gone when you moved away. You may not have meant to, but you broke that boy's heart, big time."

"Do you know if Trent Cambridge hunts with a bow?" Paige asked her.

Laura shrugged. "He's out of my circle, and I don't hunt. Alan might know. Ask him or Ed, or Angie, when they get here."

Paige was intent on Laura. "Can you think of any motive Rose might have to harm Tess or her family?"

Tess sent her a look, which Paige ignored.

Laura thought for a minute. Finally she shook her head. "No, but you mentioned Trent Cambridge?"

"Yes."

"I think he's one of the people who ransacked the house yesterday," Tess put in.

"Well, there was a rumor that Rose dated Trent Cambridge for that whole summer. Your last summer here, Tess. I remember I heard about it and realized that she must have stopped seeing him right before you went out with him."

Chapter 19

Tess was upstairs changing clothes when her next few guests arrived. She opened her bedroom door an inch or so, and heard Paige greet Angie and Kevin Norwood. They chatted happily, laughing and commenting on the good smells coming out of the kitchen. Tess closed the door and turned back to the mirror to put on her garnet earrings. At a light knock on the bedroom door she called, "Come in."

Angie paused in the doorway. "That's lovely, Tess. You always did have the best taste in clothes."

Tess wore a black velvet skirt and the deep red sequined top she'd purchased to match the garnet earrings. She'd applied makeup to conceal her black eye as well as possible, and she'd put her hair up. "Thank you. I thought I'd let the train wreck look go for tonight. Oh, I nearly forgot the shawl." She crossed the hall into her studio, where she took the Russian print shawl down from its place on the wall. She brought it back to her bedroom and wrapped it around her shoulders, standing in front of the mirror to adjust it.

"Oh!" Angie breathed behind her. "That's so beautiful!"

Tess shook her head as she scrutinized the shawl. "No, it will get in my way while I'm serving food, and it catches on the sequins." She sighed. "This always happens. In the store I have the whole outfit put together, but when it comes to wearing it in real life, something isn't right." Tess folded the shawl carefully so it wouldn't droop clear to the floor, and tied it around her waist, peasant style. "There." She turned to find Angie staring into space with her mouth open. "What do you think?"

"I--" Angie met Tess's gaze and smiled mildly. "You look like a Gypsy, exotic and mysterious."

"Let's go." Tess hurried out the door and approached the stairs, eager to see everyone. She turned to find Angie, still in the upstairs hallway, looking sober and deep in thought. "Coming?"

Angie nodded, looking distracted, tired.

"Do you ever get away from here for a vacation, Angie?" Tess said. "Let someone else do all the work, and order room service?"

Angie started down the stairs ahead of Tess and didn't answer.

Tess paused, halfway down, when Joe came in the front door. She forgot about everything else at the sight of him. He carried in a huge, gift-wrapped box and placed it on the floor of the entry hall. Then he turned to hang his coat, glanced up, and saw Tess watching him. He returned her look for several seconds with an expression that raised her internal temperature several degrees.

His brown-and-tan tweed jacket emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. It was open at the front, revealing a moss green cable-knit sweater. His eyes shone woodsy green in the lamplight. His lips partially opened, looking firm and supple in a decidedly masculine way. They curved toward a smile and then stilled halfway there, while he stood with one hand on the coat rack and gazed silently up at Tess.

Tess didn't know how long she stood there returning his look, before either moved. The doorbell broke the spell. Joe shifted his attention to let Ed Greene in. Only then did Tess become aware of the others gathered in the living room. She continued down the stairs and greeted her guests.

Paige came out of the kitchen and pounced on the big package Joe had brought. It was covered in wrapping paper with a design of pumpkins and autumn leaves. "What's this?" Paige bent to read the envelope on top. "It says Tess, that's all. Who brought it?" She raised her head.

"I did." Joe turned to Tess. "You'd better open it now."

"Now?" Rose said. "Joe, it's Thanksgiving, not--"

"There's no way this can wait." Joe picked up the package gingerly, holding the big box level as he carried it. "You'll understand when you see it. It won't keep until morning, or through dinner. You'd better open it now, Tess." He set it down in front of an armchair, then motioned Tess to be seated.

Tess went to work on the package, carefully sliding off the big ribbon and loosening the tape that held the top of the box securely in place. Then she lifted the lid slowly and stared at what it contained.

Two tiny, fluffy kittens, the same pair she'd seen in Joe's office, one black and one white, looked up at her and mewed, showing white kitten teeth and pink tongues. "Oh!" Tess breathed, lost in wonder as she scooped them up and held them in her arms. "Joe." She looked up to find him grinning at her with a soft warmth in his eyes. "I don't know what to say. They're--"

"The white one's a she, the black is a he."

"They're . . . perfect!" Tess kissed each kitten's forehead.

"I don't get it," Kevin Norwood said in a glum tone. "Why'd you get her cats, Joe?"

"Because she needs them."

"I mean, what's she going to do with them?"

"I'm going to love them, Kevin. I've always wanted a cat, and I fell in love with these two the instant I saw them in Joe's office." She held the kittens close, and now they both purred, curling into balls next to each other in her lap, their eyes half closed. "You precious things," Tess breathed. She looked up. "Thank you, Joe."

"That's not all there is." He squatted down to show her the remaining contents of the box. "Of course they're the important part." He'd also included a litter box, cat litter, food and water dishes, kitten food, toys, scratching post, and two books on cats and cat care."

"What's this?" Tess picked up a small package that lay inside. It was wrapped in gold and silver striped paper with a white bow bigger than the tiny box itself.

"A flea collar," Ed Greene quipped. Tess glanced at Ed, and wondered why he suddenly looked so pleased, as if he enjoyed a secret.

Joe took the package from Tess with a glance around the room. "That can wait until later." He carried it over and placed it on the piano. "Now, didn't you promise us food, Tess? I'm starved. I smell turkey."

"With cornbread dressing and homemade cranberry sauce," Ed said. "I peeked into the kitchen as soon as I arrived."

"Everything's nearly ready," Laura said. "All we have to do is carve the bird and take the rolls out of the oven." Laura had taken over the kitchen while Tess dressed. She glanced at her watch. "You just have time to settle those little ones."

Tess nodded. "Upstairs for now, I think."

"Those kittens are a tough act to follow," Ed said, getting to his feet. "But I brought a gift, too, for everyone. Champagne. It's chilling in the kitchen. We can have a toast, later, in honor of Cottage Arts and their upcoming grand opening--and anything else that deserves a toast." He looked at Joe as he said this, with an odd light in his eyes.

Alan arrived then, and Harry returned soon afterward, while Tess and Paige settled the kittens in Tess's room. Finally Tess and Laura prepared to put the meal on the table while Paige gathered everyone in the dining room and Joe helped carve the bird.

Harry and Alan both reported that the weather was worsening, and everyone grew concerned, hoping it didn't blow into a blizzard. They decided to hope for the best, determined to enjoy the holiday meal together.

Laura was taking the rolls out of the oven when Joe decided he'd better bring in firewood before it got too messy out. He opened the back door, and snow slanted into the kitchen in a heavy gust.

Tess poured the gravy into a boat. "Will you take this in, too?" She handed it to Laura, who took it and the rolls away. Tess went to the back door to watch for Joe when he returned. He came in on a gust of wind, and they fought the door closed.

"It's blowing in all directions out there." He was out of breath. When he appeared ready to battle the storm again, Tess said, "Don't go alone. It will take you forever in that."

All the men pitched in to help, and they spent the next few minutes carrying in as much firewood as would fit next to the kitchen fireplace.

Now everyone was concerned about the storm, and they soon reached a unanimous decision to spend the night rather than try to drive in this.

Tess got everyone together in the dining room again. She lit the candles on the table. "We can't do anything about the storm. So let's enjoy this meal together and be grateful we're not out in it." They passed the food around family style.

Meanwhile the wind had begun to howl in the trees and chimneys. Above that came the sound of someone banging on the front door.

Tess got up to answer, and Joe came with her. "Eat," she pleaded with the others, as Joe followed her out. "I can't believe this wind," she told Joe as they approached the door.

Jessica Laine huddled close to the door, her clothes pressed against her body, her hair flying wildly in the wind and snow. She was wailing when Joe opened it, and she nearly blew inside. Joe took her by the arm and drew her inside so he could haul the door closed.

Then he turned and glared at her. "Jessica, what the hell are you doing here?"

"I came to get you, Joe. Then this--this--snow started. You were expected at Uncle Ned's for Thanksgiving dinner. You knew that, didn't you?"

Joe glanced at Tess, then placed his hands on his hips as he faced Jessica again. "What are you talking about?"

"You didn't expect to spend Thanksgiving with me?" Jessica looked at Tess, and her face changed expression. She beckoned Joe to the door. "Come on, Joe. We're late."

"No one's driving anywhere in this."

"Well I'm not staying here. I only came to get you."

"You shouldn't have come at all."

"You won't be a gentleman and drive me back home?" Jessica looked angry now. She shot a glare at Tess and then faced Joe squarely. "What's going on here, Joe?"

"Dinner," Harry said brightly, coming out to the foyer. "And it's getting cold. Come on, you'll have to join us. Joe's right, no one's driving anywhere in this." He introduced himself in his most charming manner, took her fur coat, and beckoned Jessica into the dining room.

Harry, Joe and Tess between them managed to convince Jessica to not rush back out into the storm, and she reluctantly sat at the table with Tess's other nine guests.

The former gaiety of the gathering faded to nearly absolute silence--except for the wind howling outside.

Laura Greene suddenly laughed. Ed asked her what she thought was so humorous.

"I was remembering the year I offered to cook Thanksgiving dinner for both our families. Then I got the flu, and you wound up taking care of me as well as all the cooking. Until now, I've always thought that was the most disastrous holiday meal on record."

The next problem was to decide where everyone should sleep. There were four double beds, one sofa sleeper in the study, and a regular sofa in the living room.

Laura and Ed were the only married couple. Everyone agreed they should room together, and the others would double up by gender as space allowed. They agreed on this while still at the table, where the food served to keep everyone in a jovial mood regarding the situation, except for Jessica.

"How shall we decide on roommates?" Kevin said. "Draw straws?"

"I'll share a room with you, Joe," Jessica said with a sweet expression.

Silence fell over the table. Someone coughed, and Joe's face turned red. He shook his head and said quietly, "No, Jessica. You should room with one of the other women." He glanced at Tess.

"Let's let our hostess decide," Paige said quickly. Tess sent her a look.

Jessica stared at Joe for a several seconds and then said, "How could you embarrass me this way?" She rose and ran out of the room, in tears.

Tess waited for Joe to follow. It seemed inevitable to her that he would, but he didn't. Joe resumed eating. Tess wondered what was going on with him, that he could eat while his fiancée was crying her eyes out in the other room, but she said nothing.

They could all hear Jessica sobbing in the living room. People looked at each other, or at their plate, and no one said a word. Tess considered going out to talk to Jessica, but didn't want a repeat of the scene that had occurred when Jessica came here to tell Tess to stay away from Joe because they were engaged. Meanwhile Jessica's sobbing continued, growing louder and more dramatic.

"Well. This is awkward," Alan said. He exchanged looks with Kevin, who grinned.

"Oh, I can't take it any longer," Laura finally said in disgust. She started to get up.

"Wait," Rose said. "Let me talk to her." With a glance at Joe, his sister went out to console Jessica.

Paige had found a sheet of paper in the kitchen and now sat beside Tess again, writing furiously. She folded the paper and handed it to Tess, who unfolded it. It read, "Ten Little Indians!"

Very amusing, Tess thought, but not constructive. She turned the sheet over and sideways, took the pen from Paige, and made six columns, one for each of the rooms in question. Upstairs:

Tess's Room, Studio, Spence's Room. Downstairs: Study, Guestroom, Living Room.

Paige took the sheet back from Tess and started filling in names, looking up for Tess's nod as she entered each one. Upstairs: Tess's Room--Tess, Paige; Studio--Harry, Joe; Spence's room--Laura, Ed. Downstairs: Study--Alan, Kevin; Guestroom--Angie, Rose; Living Room--Jessica.

Tess gave a final nod. Then she read off to the group where everyone was to sleep. If anyone didn't like it she was prepared to put up a fight. She knew Paige and Harry would back her up. But no one argued. Paige went out to the living room to relay the decision to Jessica and Rose. There was no apparent disagreement there, either. If Jessica couldn't sleep with Joe, she was at least getting more privacy than anyone else, with the living room to herself.

"Thank goodness that's settled," Ed said when Paige returned. "Now we can continue the festivities." He picked up the glazed yams. "Anyone else want more of these?"

"I think we're ready for that champagne," Kevin said.

Ed looked at Joe. "Not yet."

"We may never be ready for that." Joe sent a wary glance in Ed's direction.

"Oh no." Ed shook his head, smiling. "No backing out now, Joe."

"What are you two talking about?" Laura looked from Joe to Ed. "Something's up."

The lights went out then. Out in the living room, Jessica screamed. The dining room would've been plunged into pitch darkness if not for the candles in the center of the table.

"Oh crap!" Paige said. Laura cracked up again.

###

They washed dishes and put away leftovers by flashlight and candlelight, limiting as much as possible the time the refrigerator remained open, and doing their best not to bump into each other in the dark.

Later Tess and Rose served pie in the living room, with coffee brewed in an old percolator on the gas stovetop. The guests sat on either the sofa, armchair, chairs carried in from the dining room, or pillows on the floor. While they ate dessert, the glow of firelight and candles created a warm and comfortable oasis, a haven of safety while the storm raged outside.

"One good thing," Ed said, "is that you decided to delay the grand opening of Cottage Arts until next Friday. So if we're stuck here through tomorrow, the worst anyone will suffer is a long weekend indoors. Anyone have a problem with that?"

"I have guests at Stoneway," Angie said, fidgeting.

"They're in good hands, Angie," Kevin told her. In spite of his repeated assurance that her employees were capable of handling things, Angie kept going to the guestroom to use her cell phone and check on her business.

During one of Angie's absences Jessica announced, to no one in particular, "My cousin Trent was arrested today. Uncle Ned is furious about it."

Ed gave her a long look. "Why was he arrested?"

"I don't know. We'd just heard about it before I came here to get Joe."

"Tess thinks he's the one who vandalized this house yesterday, and gave her that black eye, don't you Tess?" Laura said.

"I'm certain it was Trent."

"But you said they wore masks," Rose blurted out.

This made Tess take a hard look at Rose, but her face was cast in shadow. "I'm sure I recognized his voice."

"Why would he do that?" Ed said.

"I think they were searching for something." Tess wished this subject hadn't come up at all. She didn't know who to trust anymore, among all of these people who were supposed to be her friends.

"They?" Ed said. "There were more than one?"

Tess nodded. "There were two people."

"The police think Tess's family was murdered," Laura said.

"Murdered?" Angie stopped in the doorway, returning from the guestroom with her cell phone in hand. "Kevin, my battery's dead on this thing. Did you bring yours?"

"Of course not. I know how to take an evening off. Use Tess's phone."

Tess asked if anyone wanted more coffee or pie, and got up to serve seconds, hoping the subject of her intruders and her family's murder would die down while she made her escape. But it didn't. Harry explained his theory about bows and arrows while the rest of the group listened.

"Jessica, does Trent own a bow?" Tess heard Kevin ask while she was in the kitchen.

"Why would Trent kill Tess's family?" Ed said. "Tess," he called, "did they know Trent?"

"What are they talking about?" Angie said, hanging up the phone and heading back toward the living room.

Tess was pouring coffee by flashlight. She didn't answer.

"You okay?" Joe said beside her, having followed her from the other room with a stack of pie plates.

"I'm fine, but I didn't intend to discuss this now, with these guests."

"They can't help it. The power's out, and they've found something more interesting than television. They're like kids telling ghost stories."

"It's my family they're discussing."

"I know." Joe put his arm around her.

Tess thought he was about to kiss her, with his fiancée in the next room. She moved out of his reach and faced him.

"Joe, why didn't you want to share a room with Jessica? Why didn't you go to her when she was crying like that?"

Joe went still. He took a few seconds to speak. "Why would I do either of those things?"

"Because of who she is to you."

"Who she is?"

"Oh, never mind." Tess turned and picked up the tray of coffee cups she'd filled. "It's none of my business." She walked out of the kitchen.

"Tess, wait a minute," Joe called after her, and followed her, but he didn't pursue the subject after they returned to the room full of people. He went to stand near the piano, and Tess felt his gaze on her as she served coffee and sat down again to join in the conversation. To her relief the discussion of Trent Cambridge and her family had been dropped in her absence.

"Angie asked how many of us have been snowed in before," Laura told her. "Have you, Tess?"

They took some time to exhaust that topic, since most had lived here in the high Sierras for years. By then it was nearly ten o'clock, and no one seemed in any hurry to end the party and go to their assigned beds.

Rose sat on a cushion on the floor near the fire, beside Harry. Her eyes shone and her smile looked years younger in the candlelight. "Tess, do you mind if we bring the kittens down here to play for a while?"

Joe grinned at his sister. "I thought you were allergic." He stood by the piano again, where he'd spent most of the past hour, though there was a vacant place on the sofa beside Jessica.

Alan got up and crossed over to the piano. "Who plays?" He opened the bench to look for music, but then he spotted the small gift-wrapped package Joe had placed on top of the piano earlier, before Alan arrived. Tess saw a curious look come over Alan's face. He reached out to touch the package. "That looks like a--"

Joe snatched it up and walked over to Tess. "I need to speak to you for a few minutes. In private," Joe murmured. "We can round up your kittens while we're at it, and bring them down here for some play."

Tess agreed. "But you all have to help look out for them in the dark, so they don't get stepped on, and keep them away from the candles and the fire." She headed for the stairs with Joe right behind her.

"We'll be careful with your babies," Ed teased.

Jessica got up from the sofa as Joe passed her. "I'll go with you."

"Not now, Jessica." Joe spoke in a firm tone. He picked up a flashlight from the coffee table and lit the steps for Tess with it as he followed her up the stairs.

Chapter 20

They entered Tess's bedroom carefully, in case there were kittens underfoot in the dark, but the kittens were nowhere in sight.

"They've curled up to sleep somewhere." Joe closed the bedroom door. "They're in some tight crevice where it's warm, but they'll be together."

Tess took the flashlight from him and searched under the furniture.

"Tess, Jessica and I aren't lovers."

It was all she could do not to shine the light in his face when she turned back to look at him. Was he saying they hadn't made love yet? That they were waiting until they married?

"I'm not in love with her."

"Why are you telling me this? It's none of my business." Tess shone the light under the bed, resuming her search.

"Tess, stop. The kittens are fine. I'll help you find them. First, sit down here and listen to me for a minute." He motioned for her to sit on the foot of the bed, and he sat beside her, his thigh touching hers. She scooted away.

"Listen to me. I'm in love with you." He took her free hand in his. Then he pulled the gift box with the white ribbon out of his jacket pocket, and placed it in her hand. "This is for you. I wanted to have some time alone with you, after everyone left tonight, to ask you. It's damned awkward having all of these people here right now."

Ask her? "What is it?" She held onto the little package and looked into his eyes, as best she could in the dark without blinding him with the flashlight.

"Here." He took the flashlight from her and held its beam on the gift in her hand. "Any ordinary couple would do this by candlelight. You get a blizzard, with all its sound and bad light effects. Open it, Tess. Please."

She hesitated, trying to read his expression. She didn't understand why he would give her another gift, after he'd already brought the kittens here tonight.

"Open it."

Tess slid off the ribbon and carefully removed the wrapping, to reveal a velvet jeweler's box. "Joe?" She looked up at him, afraid to open it. "This is for me?"

"It's for you."

She opened the box. A ring shone up at her, sparkling in the illumination of the flashlight he held. It was white gold, with three stones, one large blue topaz set between two smaller diamonds. Tess stared at it, not sure what to make of it. "It's--beautiful, but why--"

"I wanted to get you a diamond that size, but the topaz is the color of your eyes. I thought of you as soon as I saw it."

"But--You thought of me?" Was this what he'd bought in Sacramento, for Jessica?

"Will you marry me, Tess?"

She gawked at him. Then at the ring again. Finally she said, "Do you realize what you're saying?"

"Do I realize? I've been able to think of little else for nearly a week. I can't sleep. I can't concentrate. I love you, Tess, and I think--at least I strongly suspect--that you feel the same for me."

Her heart gave a lurch as she took in his words. She only stared at him. "I thought you and Jessica--"

"I love you, Tess. I want you to be my wife."

"What about Jessica?"

"You're not going to go on holding that against me, are you? It was a lot of idiocy. I should never have let her get the idea there was anything between us. I'm not sure how it happened. Her uncle kept--"

Tess was angry again. She wanted to hit him, shake him. "Joe, you're engaged to her! I saw you kiss her!"

He looked taken aback for a few seconds. "Engaged? No, no, Tess. I've never even gone out with Jessica except when her uncle was present. He throws her at me on a regular basis, when she's not doing it herself, and I've been careful not to hurt either his or her feelings, because I've been hoping he'd loan me some money for Cottage Arts, for the renovations. I was a fool for letting Ned string me along the way he has. I don't think he ever intended to make me the loan. He probably wanted to marry off his niece."

"What about that ring she's wearing?"

It was his turn to gape at her.

"She came here the day you and I made love, and she told me to stay away from you because you and she are engaged."

Joe shook his head, wearing a look of disbelief. "The ring used to be her mother's. So were all the fur coats. She's--not my type at all." He held up his hands as if to ward off this whole line of thinking. "She told you we're engaged? Is that what happened? Tess, I swear to you, any romance Jessica thinks exists between her and me is a fantasy." He took the box from Tess and removed the ring. "Will you answer my question? Will you marry me?"

Tess was stunned, still taking in what he was doing, but she began finally to fear that if she didn't stop staring at him like an idiot and say something soon, he'd stop asking. She wanted to answer. She had an answer all ready.

"I've been back here less than two weeks. We hardly know each other. I love you, Joe, but I keep asking myself how this could be, so quickly."

He nodded. "I know. When I think back to how I felt about you years ago, I can't help but think that this is absolutely and undeniably meant to be. I want to be with you every minute. I know I can't, but when we're together it feels like the most natural thing in the world to want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don't understand it, Tess, and I can't help but believe in it, that the feeling is real, that it means something. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I'll understand, though, if you need more time to answer."

He loved her. Tess. Not Jessica. She broke into a smile, welcoming fully this new notion, of marrying Joe.

"I love you, Joe--"

"Let me put this where it belongs." He was ready to slip the ring onto her finger.

"Wait." She took a deep breath, and said the words she didn't want to say. "Jessica Laine. Whether she's lying or fantasizing, I can't say yes until that's cleared up, Joe."

He stood. "Then let's talk to Jessica."

They returned downstairs, with Joe in the lead this time. He looked about as determined as Tess had ever seen him. When he reached the foot of the stairs he said, "Jessica."

The blonde jumped up from the sofa as if on springs.

"Will you talk to us in private for a minute?" Joe headed for the study, with Tess right behind him. When Jessica followed them in, Joe closed the door.

"Tess has something she'd like to ask you," he said. "Have a seat."

Tess sat behind her father's desk. Joe and Jessica sat in the two leather visitor chairs, at right angles to each other.

It was dark, except for the flashlight in Joe's hand, which he shone toward the floor. All their faces were dimly lit, with deep shadows. It was difficult for Tess to read either Joe's or Jessica's expression.

"What do you want?" Jessica said to Tess in that familiar, haughty tone.

"I want to know why you told me that you and Joe were engaged."

Jessica sucked in her breath and looked at Joe. "I never told her that, Joe."

"Are you saying you and Joe aren't engaged?" Tess said.

"I--" Jessica looked at Joe again, as if seeking his support now.

He sighed and looked away. "Jessica, I've never given you any indication that I was in love with you."

Tess herself almost protested, remembering their kiss, which she'd seen occur right out in her own driveway. She reminded herself that it had been a glimpse of less than a second. Still, she wanted an explanation.

"You didn't have to say it, Joe. You helped me with my shop. You went to all those meetings and dinners with Uncle Ned and me. You--" Jessica broke off.

Joe's voice took on a more gentle tone. "Your uncle didn't tell you that I was trying to get a loan from him, for Cottage Arts? That was the reason he gave me, for all those meetings. He never gave any indication that he thought it was for any purpose but to discuss a loan. He invited you along, I didn't."

"You kissed me."

"No. You kissed me."

Jessica looked at Tess. "Why are you doing this? Why don't you leave us alone? Why did you have to come back here?" She stood up, ready to leave the room.

"Jess--" Joe took her arm, and she wrenched it out of his grasp.

"Leave me alone!" Jessica shrieked.

"Jessica," Tess said. "I'd like to hear you tell me the truth. Why did you tell me that you and Joe were engaged?"

"Because you were throwing yourself at him, you wouldn't leave him alone. You don't belong here. I love him!" She remained standing, halfway to the door.

Tess looked at Joe. "Tell her, Joe."

He looked confused.

"Joe, you've never told her that you don't love her, have you? She's made it clear how she feels. You haven't."

"I--" Joe stared at Tess for a few seconds. Finally he looked at Jessica, who waited.

A light knock on the door brought all their heads around. They didn't answer it.

"Jessica," Joe finally said, his voice still incredibly gentle, "I don't love you. I never have. I'm not in love with you. Do you understand?"

Jessica released a little gasp-cry combination and looked at him, then at Tess. Then she went out the door, slamming it behind her.

Tess got up and came around the desk.

Joe got up more slowly. "I'm an idiot," he said as Tess moved into his arms. "I was so worried about hurting her feelings, or Ned's feelings, I didn't even realize I was confusing the issue."

"Compassion is only an error when it leaves too much unsaid." Tess kissed him. "We need to find my kittens."

He followed her out of the study. Jessica had run into the powder room, and was sobbing noisily in there. Kevin stood near the study door when they came out. "What's up guys? Everything all right?"

"Everything's fine now," Joe said, taking Tess by the hand. He led her back up the stairs.

Once inside her bedroom with the door closed, Joe kissed Tess. She melted into his kiss, into his arms, and they lost themselves in each other for several wonderful seconds before a tiny mew brought them back to reality.

Tess drew away and picked up the two kittens, who'd come out from wherever they'd been hiding to rub against her ankles.

Joe chuckled. "I don't know what I was thinking, providing myself such effective competition for your attention."

"You were thinking you loved me."

"Now." Joe brought the ring box out of his pocket and opened it. He removed the ring. "Will you marry me, Tess?"

"It's just now sinking in. I'm so happy, Joe. I don't think I can contain myself." Tess glanced at the ring, which sparkled with a special light, for her, even without the flashlight aimed at it. She looked up at Joe. "Is this really happening?"

"It's real." He kissed her again. "But you had me going there. In fact, you still haven't said yes."

"Yes!" She kissed him again. He slipped the ring onto her left ring finger.

"There, finally where it belongs."

"I--we--I want to tell everyone. Do you--should we, with Jessica here?"

"I think the best thing is for her to hear it announced publicly, in a way that can't be questioned. She lied to you, and as a result confused and hurt us both. I'm not a vengeful person, and I may have left too much unsaid with her, but I'm not feeling particularly sympathetic toward her either. Are you?"

"I thought your love was only my imagination for a few days there, so I know how that feels."

Joe smiled. "I love you, Tess Hunter. God how I love you! I'm going to tell all your guests downstairs that I do, and that I'm going to marry you, in about thirty seconds." He drew her to the door.

"Okay, but we're talking about someone who wears fur. I'm holding onto my kittens until I've gauged her reaction."

Jessica was seated in her corner of the sofa again. Her reaction to their news was silence, but the others became noisy. Rowdy, even. Tess held the kittens, sometimes passing them off to Joe or Rose, for the next few minutes, while they received congratulations, hugs, best wishes, and kisses for Tess from most of those gathered in the house.

"Now it's time for champagne," Ed said. "I've been holding out for this news. Joe, I thought you'd never ask her."

"You knew about this?" Laura and Tess asked at the same time.

Ed looked only a little guilty, but he smiled. "Joe couldn't contain himself. He showed me the ring the day he bought it, when we were all in Sacramento. You had him worried that day, Tess, when you wouldn't even go to Kevin's party with him." Ed slapped his hand over his mouth, then, and Tess remembered Laura wasn't supposed to know they'd shopped there.

"I don't understand," Laura said to Joe. "You two just met. It's not usually possible for a romance to go on right under my nose without me realizing it. When did this happen?"

"We didn't just meet," Joe said, his arm around Tess. "We grew up together."

"You did? Oh. Well. I suppose you did. You were neighbors, weren't you? I'd forgotten that. Ed, let's open the champagne. While we're in the kitchen you can tell me when you went to Sacramento with Joe, in case you think I missed that. How much did you spend?" Laura the bookkeeper drew her husband away to the kitchen.

Tess hazarded a glance at Jessica, who sat in a corner of the sofa clutching an afghan and a pillow, her eyes red and puffy, staring into space. Tess felt sorry for her, but Jessica had invited herself here tonight, had lied to Tess about her relationship with Joe, and had driven a wedge between them that had almost stuck. A little humiliation wouldn't kill her. Tess just wished Jessica didn't look so young and vulnerable right now.

Jessica glanced up and saw Tess looking her way. Her lips tightened and she turned her head. Alan walked over to Jessica then, and offered her a glass of champagne. He sat beside her and spoke to her, coaxing her into conversation. Tess felt a world of gratitude to Alan, on the girl's behalf.

Ed toasted Tess and Joe, and their future. Then he toasted Cottage Arts and all its business owners. Finally he toasted Tess's house, calling it, "a wonderful, warm place to be holed up in a storm with friends."

###

Sometime during the night the storm subsided. Tess wondered, when she wakened in the dark, if a shift in the storm's intensity was what had wakened her. A moment later she heard someone creaking around the upstairs hallway, and she wondered if that was what had pierced her sleep. She glanced over at Paige, who was still deep in slumber.

A floor board creaked again, while Tess listened. It sounded like someone was right outside her door. She crept out of bed, into her robe, and checked to see that the kittens were snug in their big box where she'd decided earlier they'd be safest for the night. There was a chill in the room, in spite of the wall heaters having been on all night. The kittens were curled up together in a tight ball, in one corner of their padded basket, asleep.

Tess went to the bedroom door. She listened, but didn't hear anything for several seconds. She'd just worked up her nerve to open the door, when a soft knock on it made her jump.

"Tess?" The low voice on the other side of the door sounded like Joe. Tess opened it a crack, heart pounding. A dark figure stood there, his height and size unmistakable in the dark hall. "Are you all right?" Joe murmured.

She breathed again. "Yes. What are you doing up?"

"Something wakened me. I remember hearing the sound of a snowmobile in my sleep. Then I thought I saw a light outside as I woke up."

"Something woke me too, a few minutes ago," Tess said.

"I'm going downstairs to take a look." He brandished the flashlight he held, as yet unlit.

"Wait a minute, Joe. Wake up Ed and Harry and take them with you."

He paused, standing close to her in the darkness for a moment. She wanted to hold onto him, to cling the way she'd seen Jessica do.

"It may be nothing at all," Joe eventually said. "I'll be careful. I want to take a look. I was probably dreaming about snowmobiles. Who would come out on one in this weather?" He moved away.

Indeed, who would be out in this weather running around on a snowmobile in the dark? A murderer was the only answer Tess could come up with. Trent may be in jail, but his accomplice wasn't. She followed Joe to the head of the stairs.

Now that she thought about it, Trent hadn't behaved like a murderer, the day before yesterday. He could easily have killed her, but he'd shifted his attention from her as soon as his accomplice arrived, and that was when he'd blindfolded Tess, so she hadn't seen or heard the accomplice in any way that could give her a hint of who the person was. Was there a reason for that? Was the accomplice more dangerous than Trent? Did Trent know that? Had he actually been protecting Tess when he did that?

Joe turned and saw that she'd followed. "Wait here." He moved down the stairs. Tess wanted to stop him. Since she couldn't, she decided to follow.

Joe was two-thirds of the way down the stairs when the sound of breaking glass came from the kitchen. Tess swallowed a scream.

Other sounds followed. A rattle and scrape, mingled with the tinkle and crack of glass. Then, faintly, the sound of a man cursing. A door lock turned, operating with the mechanical smoothness of the new deadbolt on the back door, which had glass panes. Tess could only assume it was one of those panes that had broken.

She wanted to call Joe back, but he'd disappeared from view, down the stairs into the living room, heading in the direction of the kitchen. She held her breath, afraid to make a sound. Her heart thundered, filling her ears with its rapid rhythm so she didn't think she could hear properly what was going on down there. She held her mouth open and crept closer, further down the stairs, hugging the wall, her body so rigid with fear that each step she took felt sluggish, resistant. She needed to know Joe was safe, though.

Reflected light flashed on the far dining room wall, and a man cursed. "Turn off that damn light, or I'll shoot, and I may hit you."

The light went out.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Joe demanded.

A tiny shriek from the direction of the living room sofa signaled that Jessica had wakened.

"Joe?" the man in the kitchen said."

Who was that? Tess wondered. The voice was of an older man.

"Where is she?" the man said.

"Uncle Ned?" Jessica said in a wondering tone. Tess saw her sit up, on the sofa.

"Jessica's here?" the man said.

"Put the gun down, Ned," Joe said, "and tell me what you're doing breaking in here in the middle of the night."

"The hell I will. I'm going to get what I came for, if it's the last thing I do. I've paid for it enough times. Where is she?"

"Jessica?" Joe said.

"No, damn it. The woman who's been bleeding me dry for years."

"What are you talking about?"

"Tess Hunter. Where is she?"

Silence. Tess covered her mouth, terrified and clueless as to why Ned Cambridge was here with a gun, looking for her. And who was the woman who'd been bleeding him dry?

"She's in here, Uncle Ned," Jessica called, pointing at Tess as if Uncle Ned could see her.

Tess plastered her back to the wall, wondering how she could ever have felt sorry for the blonde and wishing she'd left her standing on the front porch to freeze last night.

"What do you want with Tess?" Joe finally said in a low, deadly tone, which would've gratified Tess if only he was the one with the gun.

"Move. Now. Don't make me shoot you, Joe," Uncle Ned said in the kitchen.

Jessica moved, releasing something like an enraged whimper as she scrambled in the direction of the foyer. She moved something around down there. What was she doing?

Joe backed into the living room slowly, from the kitchen, and the muzzle of Ned Cambridge's hand gun followed. Then Ned himself.

Other noises stirred in the house, the confused mutterings and movements of Tess's other guests, who'd been wakened by the noise and were now shrugging off sleep as they attempted to understand what was happening. This worried Tess, because the more people the more confusion, and the more confusion, the more likely Ned Cambridge was to use that gun.

"I'm up here," Tess said, as calmly as she could. "What do you want from me, Ned?"

Jessica moved out of the foyer then, sidling over toward Ned.

"Get out of the way, Jessica!" Ned waved her behind him. She moved as he indicated, in a sideways motion, keeping her face toward him and Joe, and her hands behind her back. She nodded in Tess's direction. "She's up there."

Ned moved to see around Joe and looked up the stairs.

"What do you want from me?" Tess said, her voice shaking.

"Give me the blouse and I'll leave. I've paid you for it enough times. You're not getting another dime out of me now that Trent's in jail."

Tess opened her mouth to speak, but then wondered what he would do if she told him the sheriff had the blouse. Shoot her? Shoot Joe?

"Get out of the way, Joe," Ned said. "I don't want to hurt you. I want the damned blouse."

"What blouse?" Joe said.

"I know which blouse he wants." Tess fought to keep her teeth from chattering as she spoke. Would Ned know what the blouse looked like? If she gave him a blouse, any blouse, would he go away and leave them all alone? Or did he know that specific blouse? Tess backed up onto the next higher step.

"Don't move another inch, Tess!" Ned warned. "Get out of the way, Joe!"

"I'm not moving until you tell me what blouse."

Tess saw Jessica raise an object that she'd held behind her. She lifted it high and crashed it down on Ned's head from behind. The gun in his hand went off. The object shattered into pieces. Ned crumpled to the floor.

Joe cursed and sat down hard on the bottom step, then leaned against the railing. Tess cried out, and nearly fell down the stairs to get to him.

She was almost beside him when she saw heard Jessica say, "Get away from him!"

Jessica was aiming the gun at Tess. "Joe, darling, I'm so sorry. Are you all right? Please say something."

Yes, please say something. Tess moved toward Joe again, and Jessica screamed at her, shaking the gun in Tess's direction. "Stay away from him! This is all your fault!" Then, in a sweet, dulcet tone, "Joe."

Joe cursed again and moved, holding his left arm. He stood and moved up a couple of steps, placing himself between Tess and the gun.

"Joe!" Jessica was in tears.

A figure moved out of the shadows, beyond Jessica, and the gun flew upward out of her hand as the figure knocked her sideways. The figure picked up the gun. The figure was Rose. Angie stood behind her.

Joe finally moved, in Rose's direction.

"You're all right," Jessica cried, trying to put her arms around Joe. "You're all right."

It took a few minutes for Tess, or any of them, for that matter, to take in what had happened. Jessica had hit Ned with the ceramic umbrella stand from the foyer. "I didn't want him to shoot Joe. I was so afraid he'd hurt you, Joe. Are you okay?"

Joe's left upper arm was bleeding, but he stood and nodded. "I'm okay."

They all looked at Ned, who lay still on the living room floor. Joe moved over to him and felt for a pulse at the man's neck.

"Is he dead?" Jessica asked.

Joe shook his head. Then he said to Tess, "Let's find something to restrain him, in case he comes to. I don't want to take any chances. Where's the gun?" He turned around, searching.

Rose moved forward, the gun in her hand at her side. "I have it. What did he want? Do you know, Jessica?"

"Something she has." Jessica pointed at Tess. "She's the reason for this."

Joe, Angie and Rose all looked up at Tess.

Tess nodded. "I think I know what he wanted, but I don't have it. Joe, your arm." She finally took another step toward him, and then was beside him, ecstatic that he was alive, that he was standing.

He looked down at his arm and nodded. "It hurts like hell, but I think it's only a nick. I'll take a look at it once Ned is restrained. Come with me, Tess." He brought the flashlight, and he and Tess went to the kitchen pantry, where he found a roll of duct tape. Joe took it out and secured Ned's hands and feet, moving him as little as possible to do so. "We may need to improve on this once he comes to, but I don't want to risk injuring him further by moving him, for now."

Next Joe took a paper bag and had Rose drop the gun into it. He closed the bag and taped it shut. "We'll hold onto this for the sheriff."

By now all the other guests had congregated in the living room. All but Tess, Paige and Harry were still in their street clothes from last night. Ed was in the kitchen already, calling the sheriff.

Everyone felt chilled, now the excitement was over. So they set about building up the fires in the hearths again, and thought about breakfast. There was nothing else they could do. After contacting the sheriff, Ed remained with Ned, to keep an eye on him. "It'll be hours before they can get here, with this storm and the snow it's dropped."

Joe finally let Tess look at his arm, in the upstairs studio, by the light of the flashlight. He told her where to find the first aid kit, in the upstairs linen closet, and he directed her actions as she cleaned and taped up his wound. She found a fresh shirt of her father's for him.

"What about the gun?" Tess finally said, eyeing the paper bag, which lay on the bed now. "I don't want it where Jessica can get to it. I know she says she was trying to save you, but I don't trust her."

"Here." Joe handed the bag with the gun in it to Tess. "Hide it somewhere in the house, and don't tell anyone where you're putting it until the sheriff arrives." Joe lay down on the bed. "Oh, man, what a morning."

"Harry, Laura and Rose are fixing us all some breakfast," Paige said, coming into the room. "Is it over now? Was Ned Trent's accomplice yesterday? Did they kill Tess's family?"

Joe sat up. "We don't know. Tess, do you have any idea what Ned was talking about? He wanted a blouse."

"The blouse is with the sheriff now," Paige said.

"What blouse?" Joe asked, exasperated.

Tess explained to him, about Trent's attempted rape eleven years ago, about the blouse Paige had found in Spence's backpack. She told him about her visit to Karen yesterday. She repeated Harry's theory of how the tire on her family's van was damaged. Finally, Tess told Joe about the blackmail letters she'd received. He took it all in, listening in silence.

Ed sent word up, via Paige, that Ned Cambridge was conscious but not talking. Breakfast was ready. Joe and Tess headed downstairs.

Angie fidgeted more now than she had last night. "I have half a mind to take that snowmobile out there and head back to Stoneway to make sure my guests are okay."

"Angie, will you stop? You're obsessed," Kevin said, beside her. "You can't control everything, you know."

Angie glared at him. Then she asked Joe, "What did you do with the gun?"

"It's in a safe place," Tess said, and that was all she said. She'd hidden it away in the upstairs linen closet, in the back corner of the topmost shelf, behind a pile of her mother's old lace.

"As much as I know you'd like to borrow that snowmobile," Joe told Angie, "No one's going to touch it until the sheriff gets here."

"Fair enough." Angie nodded. "I guess maybe I could use a day off. Good thing too," she said with a glance out the window. "Because it's snowing again."

They all groaned. Paige looked at Tess. "Have you had enough fun in the snow yet? Have you made enough snow angels? Can we go home now? Oh, I forgot, you're getting married. Joe, are you going to make her live in this? She has a perfectly good house overlooking a canyon, in L.A. There hasn't been a blizzard there since the last ice age."

"What was that blouse Ned was talking about?" Kevin asked. "Tess, do you know? He seemed awfully worked up about it. Maybe we should ask him, now that he's awake."

Tess shook her head. "I don't think--" She didn't want to talk about Trent's attack on her in front of so many people.

"I'd like to ask him why he was stupid enough to break in, with all those cars parked out front," Laura said. "I keep my money in his bank. You like to think bankers are smarter than that."

"Maybe he didn't notice them under all that snow," Rose said. "The lights were out."

"Maybe he rode in the back way," Kevin said.

Paige looked at Tess. "Is there a back way?"

"We should save any discussion or questioning for the sheriff," Joe said helpfully, his gaze on Tess.

"Right," Ed said. "Once the power is back on and the snow removal gets underway we can concentrate on digging ourselves out of here so Tess and Joe can have some privacy to plan a wedding." He winked at Tess. "In the meantime, let's try to relax. The crisis is over."

Chapter 21

Once the storm appeared to have ceased for good, and they knew the roads would soon be passable, the party pitched in with the few shovels and one blower they had, to dig out their cars. By the time they finished Tess finally knew how to operate the blower, the sun was out, and the cold wind had turned to a breeze.

They kept an eye on Ned Cambridge, but he remained subdued, and he refused to say another word. Jessica was back to her petulant, spoiled self, and didn't lift a hand to dig her own car out of the snow. She complained of the cold, of not being at home, of the food she was served because it wasn't what she usually ate. She complained, as the snowplow made its lumbering way up the road to free her to leave, that no one here liked her. As she said this, she sent a look Tess's way indicating she thought this was entirely Tess's fault.

The one person Jessica didn't allow to hear her complaints was her Uncle Ned, whom no one had yet informed that his own niece had bashed him over the head with the umbrella stand.

The sheriff himself came, with Deputy Prescott and a couple of others. Once Duane Prescott had taken Ned away, and all the other guests besides Harry and Paige had been questioned and allowed to go home, Sheriff Kendall sat down with Joe and Tess in the kitchen to talk to them over coffee.

"Hell of a Thanksgiving," he said to Tess with a wry grin. "Laura Greene mentioned the happy news. Best wishes on your engagement."

Tess glanced at Joe, who grinned, but looked exhausted as he leaned his head on his good arm, propped on the table.

"Ned Cambridge says he's been blackmailed for the past eleven years, with threats to reveal evidence of Trent's criminal behavior. Tess, he says you're the one who's been blackmailing him, with a blouse you were wearing the night Trent tried to rape you."

Tess was dumbfounded. "What makes him think it was me?"

"It was a woman, and he's always figured you'd be the only one who would want to, or would have evidence of Trent's assault on you eleven years ago. Ned says you financed your magazine and publishing business with money you extorted from him. Do you have anything you want to say about that?"

She stared at the sheriff. Joe cursed and started to speak, but the sheriff raised his hand to silence him, and waited for Tess to answer.

"I didn't blackmail Ned Cambridge. I wouldn't hold his son's actions against him. All the money I've borrowed or earned in the past eleven years can be accounted for. I'll provide you whatever information you need, to verify that."

Sheriff Kendall nodded, taking notes.

Tess was angry now. "My partner Paige Chandler's father, Alfred Chandler, financed our magazine startup. We've paid him back through our own hard work. Our accountant has records of every transaction."

The sheriff nodded again. "Your partners told me the same thing." He placed his hands flat on the table between them. "Now, we've examined the blackmail letters you've received, and found no fingerprints. The envelope the last letter came in was sealed, and we may be able to get a DNA sample from it. It's at the lab now. Your partner Harry brought us some interesting ideas about what may have been used to damage the tire on your parents' van. We're researching that as well, but we have no suspects yet."

"You don't think Trent and his father were the ones who invaded my house? Ned came here on a snowmobile this morning."

He shook his head. "Trent may have been here that day, but his father was at his bank. We'll check his story, but from what he says there are surveillance video tapes that will verify he was there, as well as numerous eye witnesses to his presence, both employees and bank patrons."

"So there's still at least one more person responsible for that," Joe said.

Sheriff Kendall looked at Tess. "Possibly for the blackmail and your family's deaths as well."

Tess faced him. "I'm in danger?"

"You may be."

"Do you have any suspects at all, Les?" Joe said.

The sheriff looked at Joe. "One person we know of, who may have a motive, can't account for her whereabouts during the invasion here the day before yesterday. She witnessed the Hunters' accident."

Tess knew he was thinking of Rose.

Joe's lips tightened. "What about Alan Stewart?"

"The timing of his arrival that day is questionable. But it was a woman who blackmailed Ned Cambridge. Ned told us that your sister Rose had been dating Trent shortly before Tess says he tried to rape her. I asked your sister about it, and she refused to answer."

Joe leaned back, his face darkening.

The sheriff turned to Tess. "Can you think of anything else you may have forgotten to mention about Trent, your accident, your family, or the invasion on Wednesday?"

"No. Wait--yes. One of my mother's journals is missing."

Sheriff Kendall's eyes glinted. "A journal? Like the diary your mother had in her purse at the time of her death?"

Tess stared at him for a second. "You found a journal in her purse? Is--was it still there when you returned it to me?"

"Yes. Is it missing now?" he was frowning. "It's one of the items we wanted you to look at."

"I haven't looked inside the purse you returned yet. This would have been an earlier journal, the one from the year of Trent's first attack on me, and my accident a couple of days later. I read part of it a few days ago, but now it's missing."

"Les," Joe said. "Tess tells me you never found her father's cane, and she hasn't found it anywhere in the house. Is it possible that, or anything else, was left at the scene of the crash?"

"The scene is buried under even more snow, now. If there's anything else there--a cane, you say? That hardly seems significant."

"Tess's father left a voice mail saying they were on their way to see you that morning."

"Yes. We checked the voice mail."

"There must be something you missed. Did you find anything in the glove box, in his pockets, or his wheelchair, anything he might've been bringing to you?"

The sheriff looked from Joe to Tess, and back to Joe again. "No."

There was something the sheriff wasn't saying, Tess thought. Both she and Joe watched his face, but he didn't say anymore. Finally the sheriff backed his chair away from the kitchen table. "I'm finished here for now."

"There's one more thing," Tess said. "I visited Karen Jensen yesterday and asked her about the things we found in Spence's backpack. She didn't say much. Her father thinks she's hiding something because she's scared. She did possibly identify the single key Spence had in his backpack, as a passkey he offered to return to Stoneway for her after she quit her job there. She quit the day after her friend Gail was raped in the parking lot."

Sheriff Kendall stood and continued toward the living room. "A passkey, you say? I'll make a note of it."

Tess turned from the door after he left, feeling frustrated.

Joe turned to her. "Why do I feel, except for the part where they hauled Ned off to jail, that was just a colossal waste of time." He put his arm around Tess, and the gesture gave her the best, most secure feeling she'd had all morning.

Paige came down the stairs, on her way to the utility room with an armload of sheets to wash. "I stripped all the upstairs beds and made them up with fresh linens."

Tess thanked her profusely. "I never intended for you to spend all your time doing housework while you're here."

"It felt good to keep moving," Paige told her. "Oh, I found the journal you were looking for. It was wedged between your box springs and headboard. It was still open to your page, though the page is a little wrinkled. I left it on your nightstand. The kittens are up, and they sound h-u-n-g-r-y." Paige glanced at her watch. "Don't forget you're supposed to see Dr. Lloyd today."

###

After the kittens were fed and they'd shared a meal with Paige and Harry, Joe and Tess went upstairs and spread the contents of Cathy Hunter's purse out on the bedspread. They found the most recent journal stuffed inside a zipper pocket in the center of the purse, and set it aside with the one Paige had found in the bed. They removed every card, receipt and scrap of paper from Cathy, Spence and Jim Hunter's wallets. They sorted and examined everything, saving the journals for last.

"Nothing," Joe finally said, after unfolding the final scrap of notepaper from Cathy's purse. "A shopping list."

"Did you get the feeling Sheriff Kendall was keeping something from us?" Tess said. "I've heard they hold back information from an investigation like this, something only the criminal would know."

"I hope he does know more than he's telling us, because if not he doesn't know much."

Joe picked up the open journal, from eleven years ago, and started reading it while Tess returned items to the purse and wallets. She didn't feel at all anxious to read that journal again. It had hurt her too much the last time. Tess still felt close to tears every time her mother's words came back to her. I hope I get my little girl back, the way she used to be.

She shivered, and Joe glanced at her. Then he turned the page and kept reading. Tess picked up the other journal, the one from this year, which had been in her mother's purse.

"Wait." Joe touched her arm. "You should read this first, Tess."

"I've read all of that one I can take."

"I know the last page you read hurt you, but you have to understand how frightened your mother was for you and Spence when she wrote that. She was an emotional wreck, herself, then. You'd nearly been killed. Read on. The next entry is dated three days later. Here." He pressed it into her hand.

She reluctantly took the journal from him and read it.

"I was so wrong. How could I have thought those words I wrote here last, let alone write them? I almost tore out the page and burned it, but I've decided to keep it as a lesson to myself.

"It's not Tess I should've doubted. Spence tried to tell me that first night, and I didn't understand, couldn't understand. But the sheriff questioned her other friends and most of them confirmed there was no party. They all thought she was home, babysitting. They said she loved to take care of Spence. Oh my poor Tess, what did we do to you, setting you up with that horrible person?

"Tess's father thinks it may have been Trent who was driving my car. The car keys are still missing, they weren't found at the scene. Jim says Tess's injuries aren't consistent with her being in the driver's seat. The emergency room doctor agrees. Her blood was found on the passenger's side. Jim thinks she was moved to the driver's side after the impact, and he's trying to get the sheriff to investigate Trent. Spence thinks someone forced Tess to leave the house that night. He says she was fun before that, just 'regular Tess,' playing with him, letting him have milk and cookies while she read him a story. After he went to bed Spence heard a noise downstairs. He called down to Tess and she told him to go back to bed. In Spence's words, 'She sounded quivery, like she was crying.'"

Tess looked up at Joe in amazement. "That's what I remembered on Wednesday, Spence asking me why I was crying, and me telling him to go back to bed." Then realization struck her. "She knew. They believed me. My mother knew I didn't--"

"Finish reading it," Joe said.

"Spence heard another voice, too, when he got up and peeked over the stair rail. Tess was being pulled forcibly out of the house through the entry hall. Spence couldn't see who, but he says they had a man's voice, and they said she'd pay.

"The sheriff says he can't arrest Trent without more evidence, and Tess was the one with alcohol and drugs in her system. We don't think they'll charge her now, though, because they can't prove she drove the car, and the keys are still missing.

"Tess told me Trent tried to rape her. I didn't believe her at first, but now I'm frightened for Tess. Her father and I feel so helpless to protect her, and Trent keeps coming here wanting to see her. We haven't told her, we don't want to frighten her. We're thinking of sending her to Aunt Christine's. She'll be safer there, until this blows over or they can arrest him. But they need proof."

Tess looked at Joe. There was more, but she'd read enough for now. She put the journal down, her gaze lingering on it. "They were afraid for me. Afraid of Trent hurting me again. I'm not so sure they were wrong, after the past few days. If I'd come home and learned Dad was ill, I would've wanted to stay, or at least visit often, and Trent clearly didn't intend to leave me alone. I wish they hadn't decided for me. I wish they'd talked it over with me."

"Tess, why did you allow me to think you didn't want to see them?"

She met Joe's look. "Because I didn't know why they kept me away. I thought they believed me guilty of leaving Spence alone to run off and party that night, that they were afraid I'd be a bad influence, or a danger to him. I could see how much you cared for them. What would you have thought if you knew what my parents had done and not why? I wasn't sure you'd even believe me." Tess spoke slowly, her grief resurfacing, but with a new depth. She no longer felt the shock, the resentment, the anger and confusion clouding her feelings for her family, but she missed them, and she would for a long time.

She brushed tears from her eyes. "I thought I'd lost their trust and love forever, through no fault of my own. I lost my little brother."

Joe took her in his arms. "It must've been hard for you, to feel alone all those years, to miss seeing Spence grow up. No wonder you buried yourself in your work."

"No. I--" she began, but paused as she met his gaze. She had done that for a long time. "Well, there are worse substitutes."

"Like last fall, when you celebrated Thanksgiving in a restaurant with another lonely friend and you got quietly drunk together?"

She winced at his words. "Harry had no right to tell you that."

"Harry cares a lot about you. A lot of people do."

They paused at a mew, and found two kittens sitting on the bed with them. Joe chuckled and said, "These two can't stand to be away from you for long, either."

The kittens took up their attention for a few minutes before they decided to continue on to the latest journal. Joe proposed that they work their way through it backward from the last entry, and he picked it up to read out loud.

"I spoke to Rose about Angie's call, and I begin to see things from a new perspective. I think she's jealous of Tess! It doesn't make sense, but I've been thinking a lot about Tess, and talking to Rose about her and her friends the past few days, ever since Peter Lloyd asked us about her. Rose must be sick to death of hearing me go on. I remember that boy Tess was dating, the one we thought was so terrible. Alan Stewart. I ran into him a few weeks ago. He was with his son, Tyler. I've never seen a more well-behaved or happier little boy. He reminded me of Spence at that age, or of Joseph. So, could Alan ever have been so bad? I mentioned him to Angie yesterday. She didn't say a word. In fact, she was a lot quieter than usual. It made me wonder why she called."

Joe paused and met Tess's gaze.

"That must have been after I called Angie to arrange my visit. She was keeping my call a secret. I wanted to surprise them, but I asked Angie to find out if they'd be in town for the holidays." Tess didn't voice the question in her mind. "I think she's jealous of Tess!" Had her mother written that about Rose or Angie? Tess glanced at Joe. He continued reading.

"Spence is upset about Trent, suddenly, insisting we talk to Tess about him. He's writing everything down that he remembers about that night. Karen is here helping him with it, though I don't see how she can. Spence seems to be on his own mission now. He's talking about evidence, he mentioned the car keys from that night. I don't know what to make of it. He worries me, he's so driven, and so angry. I'm sure there's something he's not telling us. Jim has agreed to call Tess. We do need to talk to her. We'll take our letters to the sheriff on Monday. Peter Lloyd is right, we can't let Trent continue to hurt people. I think Tess will agree, once she knows he's still at it.

"I'm so worked up worrying about this and about Spence that I'm not making sense, here where I usually sort things out. Jim is thinking of inviting Tess home for the holidays. That's the one joyful thing in all of this. I'm afraid to tell Spence. I don't want to get his hopes up."

Tess sat up, fighting tears again, but holding them in, wanting to get to the bottom of the questions.

"Joe, I think Karen knows more than she told me, about the blouse, and the keys. The other journal said the keys were missing from my mother's car after the accident. How could I have removed the keys? I was unconscious. Maybe those are the keys we found in Spence's backpack."

Joe nodded. "We need to talk to Karen again. We also need to tell the sheriff about the letters they wrote, and remind him of those keys." He glanced at his watch. "First you need to get to your appointment."

###

While Joe made a call to the sheriff, Tess helped Paige fold clean sheets. Paige told Tess she and Harry were leaving shortly to go back to Stoneway, get the last of their luggage, and check out.

"Harry needs to get back to L.A. The storm dumped a lot of rain in San Francisco, too. The printer there had a flood, so he has to get the files to our backup printer. I'll stay here with you for a couple more days, but Harry's heading back today. He's at Rose's house now, saying goodbye." Paige wore a pensive look. "We may need to move our whole operation up here."

"Don't worry, Paige. We'll work it out."

"I know, but you know how I hate change. Coming out here from the East Coast about ripped my guts out."

"Somehow I don't recall it being that gruesome," Tess teased.

"I kept it all inside."

"You came out here for me, because I said I wanted to live in California, didn't you."

Paige met her look and smiled benignly. "What else was I going to do? I pushed you into this business. The least I could do was let you live where you wanted." She was silent a few seconds and then said, "I called Daddy yesterday morning, while you were out driving around and I was worried about you. I told him you were burned out with the magazine and cookbooks. He said of course you were. He said it was time for you to start something new."

Tess met Paige's look. Paige smiled at her, and there was something in her eyes, a kind of acceptance and affection, that made Tess realize they would always be friends. "I love you, too," Tess said.

Paige's smile broadened. "You're not going to quit on us to become a stay-at-home mom, are you?"

Tess smiled. "I need time to step back and take stock of where I'm going. You and I will always be partners, you know, in one thing or another."

"In crime, no doubt." Paige continued to smile. "I told Daddy it looked like you might be starting something new already. He asked what. When I told him about the bakery, he said that's not what he meant. He said you need to start a new magazine. He suggested one having to do with art."

Tess paused, taking this in with renewed interest. She nodded. "It does make me want to think." She looked at Paige. "I always admired your dad."

"Me too." Paige was beaming now. "When are you getting married?"

"We haven't had a chance to talk about it, but I think soon. I don't want anything fancy, I just want to marry him quick. Whenever it happens, I want you and Harry to be there."

When Joe got off the phone he was in a hurry to leave. "Duane Prescott will meet us at Peter Lloyd's office and head to Karen Jensen's house with us," he told Tess on their way out.

Chapter 22

"What throws me is Ned Cambridge thinking I blackmailed him," Tess said on the drive back from Wilder to the Jensens' house. They were in her rental car. Joe was driving. The sky was fading to dusk already, with a new batch of clouds moving in, thankfully without the same threat they'd held two days ago. "Ned Cambridge is the last person I'd take money from." Tess caught herself and sent Joe a guilty look. "I'm sorry."

He grinned. "It's okay. I don't think he ever intended to fund my project. I was a fool to let him string me along the way he did."

"You didn't suspect me of blackmailing Ned, did you, when you first heard that?"

"Maybe for about half a second, and only because I was in shock at the time. I'm more concerned about Rose's possible involvement in what's been going on."

"Why? You know Rose better than you know me."

"Because she had more reason--"

"Trent tried to rape me!"

"--and maybe less resilience. You didn't let yourself be traumatized for long, did you." He didn't ask it, he stated it. "I know you're afraid of Trent, and what happened on Wednesday terrified you, for good reason, but it's not a morbid or unreasonable fear, is it? It's not the fear it would have been if he'd succeeded back then."

"No."

"Your accident had a more lasting effect, because it robbed you of your family." She nodded, but he didn't see it. He watched the road ahead. "Tell me about that night again. Every detail you can remember. See yourself there."

Tess sighed. She didn't want to go over it again, but she needed any answers she could find in those memories. "My parents went to dinner with friends."

"What friends?"

"I'm not sure. They left a note with the number on the refrigerator. They always did that. When they left, Spence and I were in the kitchen eating our dinner. When we finished, I cleaned up and then made cookie dough. I opened the back door and all the windows, to keep the oven from heating up the house too much. We played a board game. A couple of friends called, but I told them I was busy. I let Spence have warm cookies, with milk. I drank lemonade. We played his board game until it was time for his bath. He was only six, so he had an early bedtime, eight-thirty, I think. I stayed upstairs to read to him."

Tess paused, blinking. "After that I woke up, in the hospital. But what I remembered this Wednesday must've come after his bath. I was standing in the foyer, telling Spence to go back to bed. He asked me why I was crying."

"Were you frightened?"

Tess looked at Joe. "I don't know. The memory makes me feel numb, sad, and . . . fuzzy." She shook her head, shaking off that feeling. Then she looked at Joe. "I was drugged. It must have been after I was drugged. Now that I think back, it's close to the way I felt at Trent's, a couple of nights earlier, when he drugged me, only this was more pronounced."

"If you were under the influence of drugs then, but not earlier, you must have been drugged somehow after you gave Spence his bath. Think back. Did you lock up the house before you and Spence went upstairs for his bath?"

"No. It was a hot night. Besides, we rarely locked up the house until everyone went to bed."

"Think about this, Tess. Did you eat or drink anything after you put Spence to bed and returned downstairs?"

She tried to recall, but finally shook her head. "I don't know."

"You'd been drinking lemonade earlier, you said. Did you take it upstairs with you?"

"I don't think so. I don't know."

"Who knew you were at home alone with Spence that night? Which friends called you?"

"Alan, and a girl whose name I don't recall. I barely knew her."

"Alan?"

"We'd been dating, until a few days earlier, when my parents insisted I stop seeing him. He called me that night to ask if they'd changed their mind, or if I had."

"The girl whose name you don't recall. Would she have any reason to want to hurt you?"

"No. I didn't know her. She was someone from Mom's church. Mom was trying to get me to start attending again."

"Why were your parents so worried about your friends, and you going to church?"

"Good question. My parents decided my newer friends were somehow leading me astray. Honestly, Mom kept talking about Alan as if he were a criminal. You know Alan. I have no idea why she was so suspicious of him. She had no good reason."

Joe didn't comment on Alan. "Did anyone else know you'd be home that night? Who did you tell earlier?"

"I'd planned it a week or so in advance. A lot of my friends knew. The people at Stoneway knew. Angie knew. I worked part-time in the kitchen there that summer."

"Did you mention to Trent, during your date, that you'd be home with Spence that night?"

"No. That was a one-sided conversation, all about Trent's car and his skiing trips, hunting and things like that."

"Skiing and hunting? Did Trent know Angie back then? Could she have mentioned to him where you were going to be that night?"

Tess looked at Joe. "Angie knew who he was, but-- No, you see, Angie knew he'd tried to rape me. She was the only person who knew. I hadn't told anyone else."

Joe frowned at her. "When did you tell Angie?"

"The night Trent tried to rape me. I had a bad feeling about him driving me to his house after dinner, without asking me first. His parents and sister were out of town. When he went to his kitchen to get our drinks, I called Mom to tell her where I was. Then I called Angie. I gave her the phone number and asked her to come get me if I paged her from there. She had the beeper for the airport shuttle. She used to drive it on the regular driver's day off. I didn't call her back, but someone called while Trent was on top of me. He let it ring. Angie said later that was her. When there was no answer she started to worry. She drove up and found me on the road, running away from his house. She rescued me. She was the only one who knew about him trying to rape me, until after my accident, when I told my parents."

A sudden thought occurred to Tess. She picked up the two journals on the seat between them, turned on the dome light because dusk had fallen, and thumbed through the earlier one.

"What are you looking for?"

"When I told my parents what Trent had done, I told them to ask Angie about it, because I was afraid they didn't believe me. They assured me they would, but Angie says they never did. That doesn't fit, does it? They would've asked her."

Joe pulled up in front of the Jensen house, and nodded toward the marked sheriff's vehicle already there. "Here's Duane." He and opened his door.

Tess would have to look through the journal later. She opened her own door and got out, still thinking about Trent, and that evening at his guest house. He'd drugged her. She tried to recall how the drug had made her feel, comparing that feeling to her fuzzy memory of seeing Spence on the stairs a couple of nights later. She'd sat on Trent's couch, looking at a painting on his wall.

Tess suddenly made a connection. "The painting!" She paused on the front steps of the Jensen house, and saw in her mind's eye the painting in the dining room at Stoneway. The same painting Trent had on the wall of his guest house eleven years ago. A hunt scene. "But why?"

Joe turned to look at her. So did Duane Prescott, his finger already pressing the Jensens' doorbell.

Margaret Jensen came to the door. She didn't look happy to see the three of them, but she let them in and called her husband out to the front room.

"We'd like to speak to Karen, Mr. Jensen," Duane said in a formal tone.

Hank Jensen didn't argue or ask questions. He told his wife to get Karen and invited them into the family room.

"I called Kevin Norwood yesterday, after you left here," Hank Jensen told Tess. "I told him you found the passkey, that it was in safe hands. I insisted they pay Karen, or I'd take it up with my attorney. Angie Norwood delivered a check here for Karen, a few minutes ago. Do you still have that key?"

"No." Tess gestured toward Duane in his blue uniform. "The sheriff does."

Karen came into the room from the kitchen, and took a seat beside her mother. She didn't look happy, in spite of having gotten her paycheck. Tess saw something more than grief written in her face. Something besides losing Spence still troubled her.

Duane, already primed from his conversation with Joe earlier, started right in. "Karen, according to Cathy Hunter's journal, you helped Spence write a letter to the sheriff about Trent Cambridge."

Karen opened her mouth. Her mother turned to look at her.

"Can you tell us what was in that letter?"

Karen shook her head no, slowly.

"I understand you used to work at Stoneway until a few days ago," Duane went on, undeterred. "What kind of work did you do there?"

"Housekeeping."

"Did you clean the guests' rooms?"

"Sometimes, but I usually worked on the ground floor, cleaning the common rooms and the offices." Karen chewed her lower lip.

Duane nodded. "Sounds like a decent job. Why'd you quit?"

Karen took a deep breath and looked at her mother. "I needed to spend more time studying."

"Karen, there were some items in Spence's backpack that we're curious about. One was a blouse that had been torn."

Her eyes were wide now.

"Tess Hunter identified the blouse as hers, but says she lost it eleven years ago. She doesn't know how it got into Spence's possession. Do you?"

Karen's eyes had filled with tears. She nodded, sobbing. Her mother held her close and handed her a tissue. It was a moment before Karen appeared ready to speak.

"Karen," Duane said softly. "Did that blouse have anything to do with you quitting your job?"

"I couldn't go back there again, to Stoneway. I was too scared. I didn't think anyone would believe me, and I knew what they did to Spence's sister, years ago. They almost killed her. They ruined her reputation; people still gossip about her. Spence made me promise not to say anything or go back. He wanted me to be safe. So I called and told Kevin Norwood that I needed to quit to keep up with school. Angie called me back and tried to get me to stay on until after the holidays, but I said no, so she told me to come by as soon as I could to return my key, and she'd cut my last paycheck."

Karen looked from Joe to Duane, then drew a shuddering breath.

"That key," Duane said. "Was it one of those new plastic cardkeys? Can't they void those?"

"No. This was for the offices. It was a regular metal key. Spence offered to return it for me, so I gave it to him. That's why he's dead." Karen broke down in tears again.

Duane looked at Tess and Joe, and they all waited for Karen to stop crying long enough to continue talking. Hank Jensen got up and offered them coffee, looking disturbed, as if he needed to escape while his daughter wept. Karen's mother remained beside her on the sofa with one arm around her. Hank came back with hot drinks about the same time Karen's sobs subsided.

"Karen, I know this is upsetting for you," Duane said, "but why were you scared to go back to Stoneway? What scared you?"

Karen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I overheard an argument, a few days before Spence's accident."

"Will you tell me what you overheard?"

Karen nodded. "I was trying to get a chance to clean Angie's office."

Karen finally began talking freely now. She painted a thorough picture for them of the scene she'd witnessed. Tess felt something die inside her as she listened.

Karen had stood outside the office, in front of the reception desk, waiting. Angie never wanted Karen to clean while she was working in her office, and she'd been in there all day, so Karen hadn't had a chance to get to it. Now she feared Angie would be angry if it didn't get cleaned today. So Karen waited for Angie to come out, planning to ask her if she could clean it now. She'd stowed her cleaning cart out of the way in the next room, because Angie hated it to be left sitting in the lobby.

The office door was closed, and Angie was in there talking to someone in an angry tone.

"Ned wants the blouse," Angie said. "He says the statute of limitations has run out, or something like that. He sounds like a freaking lawyer. If we give him the blouse he'll pay this last time, but that's it. If we don't give it to your dad he says he's going to turn us in."

"Us?" a male voice said.

"Well, Tess." Angie chuckled.

"So give him the blouse."

Angie said something in a low tone that Karen couldn't hear.

The man said, "You want me to do one of your guests?"

"Yes, and bring back some evidence. We'll keep milking your dad. He won't want a scandal. He'll figure out he's not dealing with Tess, but he still won't know who we are."

"Are you nuts? This is getting out of hand, Angie."

"Oh, have you suddenly developed a conscience? Excuse me. Don't try to tell me you haven't raped anyone since you tried it with Tess. I won't believe it. I doubt she was the first."

"Let's give the blouse to him. It's making me nervous. He's always asking me where I get my money."

Angie laughed. "Where do you get all your money? You've never worked a day in your life."

"Just give him the damned blouse!"

Karen heard a slide and bang like the slamming of a drawer shut. "That's where the blouse is staying."

The office door had been closed, but now the doorknob turned, with a small noise. Karen moved. She scurried behind the big, stuffed black bear next to the reception desk, and she stayed there behind the bear as the man strode out into the lobby. She peered past the bear's outstretched foreleg and paw. The man was Trent Cambridge. She'd seen him visit Angie here before.

Trent stopped, turned around, and looked about to walk back into Angie's office. He stood in the lobby for a minute, breathing hard, looking furious. Karen feared he would come past her and see where she hid, and it was all she could do to keep still and quiet, but eventually Trent went out the front door.

As Karen described seeing Trent leave, she looked forlorn, and near tears again. "He must have done what Angie told him to do, because that's the night Gail was raped in that parking lot."

"What?" Hank Jensen said. He'd been pacing while his daughter told her story.

Karen glanced at him. "That's the night he raped Gail."

She turned back to Duane. "By the time I heard about it, I'd already called Kevin, to quit my job. After I heard what happened to Gail, I told Spence about the argument I'd heard, that I was afraid to go back there. Spence offered to return the passkey for me. I told Spence about the bottom desk drawer Angie always kept locked. I'd seen her stop to lock it, or check that it was locked, whenever she left her office to let me clean.

"Spence went there late one night and used my passkey to get into Angie's office. He broke into that drawer. He found the blouse there, and a set of keys. Spence found out later they were his mom's keys, the ones missing from Tess's accident. Spence wrote a letter to take to the sheriff, and he got me to write one about the argument I'd heard. The morning of their accident, they were planning to see the sheriff with those letters."

"But they didn't take the blouse with them that morning," Tess said. "It was in Spence's backpack, in his room."

"They wanted to make sure the sheriff would listen first, that it was enough to prove you didn't cause that accident. They were worried about that, because it made you look bad that it was never resolved. Spence had always been angry about that, about the gossip. They thought your accident was an attempted murder."

"Karen, have you told anyone else about this?" Duane asked her.

"No. The only one I told before tonight was Spence. He told his parents, but they were the ones who warned us not to talk about it. They told me I should tell my parents." She looked at her mom. "But I was afraid you'd never let me get another job."

"You're only sixteen," Margaret Jensen told her daughter. "You'll have plenty of time for jobs, once you're done with school."

"Can you do anything about this?" Hank Jensen asked Duane, visibly upset. He'd been on his feet for the past few minutes, pacing, while his daughter told her story. "Karen's not in danger, is she? Angie was just here."

Duane called for a deputy to watch the Jensens' house. He left to head over to Stoneway, to pick Angie up for questioning.

Tess and Joe went out to their car in silence, and drove back to Tess's house. Full darkness had fallen, and the porch light was off. Tess followed Joe up to the door, and then remembered the journals, still in the car. "I'll be right in." She went back for them while Joe unlocked the front door.

Tess had just opened the car door when she heard an odd noise inside the house, a thud and then a groan.

"Joe?" she called. The front door was still open. She ran up the steps to the house--and stopped outside the front door.

Angie stood in the doorway of the study with a shovel in her hands. She dropped it, then looked out and saw Tess. She pulled a handgun out of her jacket and aimed it at Tess. She came out and closed the front door behind her, as Tess caught a glimpse of Joe lying on the entry hall floor.

"Joe!" Tess called. "What did you do to him?"

Angie held the gun on Tess, and ordered her over to the car. There she told her to turn around, and she taped Tess's hands behind her with duct tape--possibly the same tape Joe had used earlier on Ned Cambridge. She worked quickly and then opened the passenger door. "Get in the car." Once Tess was in, Angie taped her ankles together as well. She did all this in a hurry, as if every second counted.

"Don't go anywhere," she said with a laugh. "I'll be right back." Angie closed the car and locked it, then ran back to the house, while Tess fought frantically with the tape on her wrists. She found, by feeling with her fingers, that in her haste Angie hadn't put many layers of the tape on, two at the most, and there was one spot where she'd left a narrow section of one layer without any overlap. Tess hoped to be able to tear it. She worried about what Angie was doing inside the house, to Joe, or to anything or anyone else. Paige had still been here when they left, waiting for Harry to get back from visiting Rose so she could take him to the airport. That was a good three hours ago. Had Paige returned?

Was Joe alive? Tess felt desperate to know, and this only served to make her more frantic to get out of her bonds. Angie was gone for several minutes, so she had enough time to get one end of the tape loose. If only she could reach it with her teeth. It was so sticky, even where she'd loosened it, that it was difficult to make progress.

Angie came back out and closed the front door behind her. She slid into the driver's seat of the rental car and put on her seatbelt. Then she placed the gun on her lap, pointed in Tess's direction. She inserted the ignition key, which had been in Joe's hand when he entered the house, and started the car.

Chapter 23

Angie drove like a maniac, sending Tess, without a seatbelt, lurching to one side or the other every time Angie swung around a curve. At one point, when Angie lost control of the car for an instant, Tess screamed.

"Shut up!" Angie snarled.

"Angie, why? I don't understand. When did you start hating me?"

"The night you ran away from Trent was the turning point. I rescued you, and later that night all you did was whine about your parents not letting you see Alan freaking Stewart anymore."

"I was upset, I'd been attacked."

"I saved your ass!" Angie turned toward her. "You dumped me for those moronic freaks, when I was busy trying to save Stoneway, and taking care of my grandfather who was dying! All you cared about anymore was painting with your new pals. You abandoned me like they did."

They? Tess realized all at once what Angie was talking about. "Like your parents?" They'd abandoned Angie and Kevin because of their drug habit.

Angie didn't answer. She wore a grim expression.

"I never meant to abandon you, Angie." Yes, she'd known Angie was busy working, and that her grandfather was sick. Tess had her studies, she was getting ready for college. Tess felt bad about that, but she'd been a kid herself. How could Angie think Tess's neglect of her excused blackmail and murder? So many deaths.

"You and your perfect life, your perfect parents who you didn't even appreciate. 'They don't understand me!' That's all you used to say about them. God, I was sick of hearing you whine about that. At least your parents didn't leave you with your grandfather so they could go off and be high for the rest of their lives. At least yours weren't spaced into oblivion, living on the Sacramento streets like sewage! Kevin and I would've been in foster homes if not for Granddad, and when he was dying my best friend was nowhere to be found. I tried to get you away from your new friends, by telling your parents that they were druggies, and that Alan was into weird religious rituals. It was working, too. They made you stop seeing Alan.

"But that night, I knew you didn't give a damn anymore about me. You were gone on Alan Stewart, whining how unfair your parents were. So I took your blouse out of your bag before you went home the next morning, and I called Trent Cambridge. I told him I'd go to the cops unless he paid me. I told him I had the torn blouse and could prove he'd tried to rape you. I told him I'd been looking in the windows. You'd told me the whole story, so I knew the details, right down to the painting in his living room."

Angie wore a crazed grin now. "He laughed! He said I'd called the wrong person, that he didn't have any money, but he would help me get the money I wanted from his father, if I cut him in. All I had to do was give him the blouse. I said fine, as long as we let his dad think it was you who was blackmailing him."

While she talked, Angie headed the car down the winding hill road. "Trent didn't get the blouse, but eventually your little brother did. I still don't know how he managed that, but I suspect it has something to do with Karen quitting her job. She started crying every time Kevin or I asked her for the passkey. Right after you called to make reservations, and I contacted your mom, Spence called me back and told me he had the blouse, that he was taking it to the sheriff along with a letter he'd written. I told Trent, and we waited outside the house for them that morning.

"Man, your dad looked scared when they came out and saw us on the snowmobiles, and he was stuck in that wheelchair. He tried to get up, but he fell. Spence had to help him back into his chair. They were so scared they drove off and left your dad's cane lying there in the snow beside the walkway.

"We followed them on the snowmobiles. I had my crossbow with me, and I wasn't about to lose Stoneway because of them, not after all the work I've done. I wanted to kill Spence, I was so angry, but I was shooting from the snowmobile and I hit one of the tires instead. The van skidded off the road and rolled down the slope into the trees. I retrieved the bolt from the road, and the sheriff didn't suspect a thing, until you got here."

Angie stopped the car. She turned off the engine and lights. Tess glanced out and saw that Angie had parked in the pullout at the curve where Tess's family had gone off the road. Tess knew in that instant that Angie intended to kill her. Tess desperately stalled for time.

She shifted around in her seat to face Angie. "They suspected something from the start. They know it was you, Angie. My family wrote letters to the sheriff."

Tess continued to work the tape off her hands. She nearly had it. A little longer, please!

Tess paused in her struggle while Angie looked at her for a few seconds before speaking. "Trent took the snowmobile a ways down the gully, where the slope isn't as steep, and he scrambled down there before help arrived. He pried open the glove box and found the letters they'd written. Then he swept his tracks with a tree branch. He didn't find the blouse though. It's still in your house somewhere, with your mother's keys. Doesn't matter. I'll find it."

"You can't hide this forever. You've gone too far."

Angie laughed. "This morning I overheard Paige ask Harry if Rose had told him where she was when Trent and I searched your house Wednesday. I could tell they were both concerned about Rose's missing time. She doesn't have an alibi, and she was the first one on the scene of your family's crash. So I planted some evidence in her car, and I sent the sheriff an anonymous note, outlining how Rose had been blackmailing Trent's father all these years, making him think it was you. The letter should get there tomorrow. That leaves me all night to find the blouse, the keys, and the original letters. Now that I have these." Angie nodded toward the two journals on the seat between her and Tess. All night? What about Joe? What had she done to Joe?

"Original letters?" Tess repeated.

"The ones Trent found in the glove box were copies. We burned them, but we never found the originals."

The tape had stretched, and Tess had worked it down over her hands, but it had stuck to them. It was working off.

"I told the sheriff today, I remember that night now," Tess said, lying to buy time, and hoping that her plan would work. She would have only one chance.

"I told him you were there at the house, the night of my accident. Spence and I were upstairs, and you drugged my lemonade. Then you and Trent dragged me out to my mom's car. I told Spence to go back to bed when he asked why I was crying. Remember that?"

Angie's eyes widened, and her face registered a new expression all at once. Shock, or worry?

"Were you the one driving my mom's car? No, that must have been Trent. He jumped out at the last minute and then moved me into the driver's seat after the accident. But you took the keys, didn't you, so you'd have evidence against him. So you could control him." Tess had her hands loose now.

Angie had turned her back, to get out of the car. She held a flashlight in one hand and the gun in the other. Now she rummaged in her pocket for something, with the flashlight in one hand. Where was the gun? Tess spotted it tucked into Angie's waistband.

Angie came around to Tess's door and opened it. Tess shifted so she faced Angie, to hide her hands, which were free now. Angie had a knife in one hand. Tess blinked her eyes as the flashlight came on, and she was temporarily blinded. Then Angie bent to cut the tape at her ankles. Angie couldn't be holding the flashlight and gun in the same hand. The gun must still be in her waistband. She stooped to cut the tape from Tess's ankles.

"What was the evidence you left in Rose's car?" Tess said as Angie freed her feet.

Angie paused, bent over with the knife still in her right hand.

Tess barreled out of the car into her, and heard the wind suck out of Angie's lungs as she hit the ground.

Tess felt around Angie's waist for the gun, while Angie flailed her arms, gasping for breath and striking at Tess with the knife. Tess felt the gun beneath her. She backed away enough to grab it and then rolled out of Angie's reach. Tess stood and backed away, trying to gauge, without looking behind her, how close she was to the drop off. She didn't dare take her eyes off Angie.

All of a sudden Angie laughed. "You won't shoot me. You can't shoot a deer! Look at you. You have no idea what you're doing with that thing."

Tess thought about that, and knew if Angie came a step nearer she would shoot. But she'd never used a gun before, so she wasn't certain she could operate the thing. Tess leveled the gun at her.

"I planted a crossbow and bolts with double-bladed broadheads in Rose's car, the same one I used to shoot the van's tire. Did you know when Rose and Trent were dating they used to practice archery together? Until she got fat again and he grew disgusted with her. I visited Alan's gallery last week, and I heard Rose mention she needed to learn something about hunting. I offered to loan her my books. She came to Stoneway to get them. She was fascinated with my crossbow and had never used one, so I let her fiddle around with it. Her fingerprints are all over it."

Angie moved closer to Tess. "Aren't you going to shoot me?" She kept coming closer.

Tess took aim and fired.

Then Tess was falling, sliding backwards, into the gully, falling and sliding in the snow down the steep slope. She flailed her arms, and then grasped at the branch of a bare shrub as her body slid over it. She grabbed and held on, the bark and smaller twigs scraping and biting into her hand as she shifted her grip to the thicker base of the branch, praying it wouldn't break. It held her weight, for now. She held onto the branch, which was all that kept her from tumbling the rest of the way down, through the snow and rocks, to the place where her family had died.

Tess held on, and peered up at the side of the road, wondering if Angie was dead, wondering if anyone would find her here before she lost her cold, bare-fingered grip and fell the rest of the way. Then she saw the beam from the flashlight. Angie's head appeared there above her. Angie towered above Tess, up there on the roadside, looking down from what seemed an immense height. The beam of the light hit Tess in the face, blinding her. She heard Angie laugh.

"You missed. Has a hell of a kick, doesn't it?"

The beam of the light moved. When Tess was able to focus, she saw that Angie held the gun now. She aimed it at Tess.

The bush Tess held onto had grown out beneath and to the left of a large overhanging rock. Tess shifted, and tried to squeeze herself against the face of the slope, under the rock where Angie couldn't see her. But Tess's fingers were numbing with the intense cold, her hands aching and shooting sharp pains up her forearms. She didn't know how long she could hold on, or how long the branch would. She strained to keep her grip while Angie simply moved further down the road, and took clear aim at Tess again. All Tess could do was hang there and pray.

Angie glanced over her shoulder at the sound of an engine, and Tess recognized the miraculous sound of Joe's truck, up on the road. It must be him, he must be alive. Then Tess heard another engine, and a flashing blue light reflected on Angie's face. The police?

"Stay away or I'll shoot her!" Angie yelled.

A male voice told her to put down the gun. It sounded like Duane Prescott. "Oh please!" Tess breathed, sobbing and fighting not to lose her grip on the branch. "Please don't let me fall now."

"Tess is down there, and I'll shoot her if you don't back off right now. Let me leave, and she lives. Tess, you'd better yell so they know you're there, because if they come any closer you're dead."

Another car drove up, and stopped.

"I'm here," Tess called in a desperately thin voice.

"Tess!" Joe called back. "Where are you?"

"Stay back!" Angie warned.

"Let me see her, Angie," Joe called. "Please."

"Over there, that's close enough. Move to the edge and you can see her," Angie motioned to him.

A few seconds later Joe spoke, some ways behind Tess. "Hold on, Tess. Honey, hold on. It'll be okay."

How could he say that? He sounded too calm. Tess nodded, wanting beyond all else to believe him.

Angie still held the gun on her, and Tess's hands and arms ached, her bare fingers growing numb and slick. Her grip threatened to give out any second. She looked at Angie again.

Then Tess heard a thwack and a surprised, gasping cry. Angie stumbled backward on her feet. Then Tess saw Angie's attention shift to something on the ground. She moved closer to the edge and bent to reach for it. The snow took her, giving way under her feet as it had under Tess. Angie toppled, screaming. She fell past Tess, and tumbled down the snowy slope, all the way to the bottom of the ravine.

Tess cried out, terrified of the same fate. But she held on, believing again that she might well survive. She listened to Joe's vibrant, deep voice, warmed to the sound of it, and followed his and Duane's instructions while Duane lowered Joe down on a rope to get to her. When at last Joe lifted her onto firm ground, he held her there for one long, wondrous, grateful minute.

"What happened to Angie?" Tess finally said, teeth chattering as she spoke, with reaction and cold. Distant sirens moved closer.

"Rose." Joe shifted his gaze from Tess, nodding toward the side of the road, where Rose stood holding a crossbow. Rose peered down into the darkness where Angie had fallen. As Duane approached with a flashlight, Rose turned and handed the crossbow to him.

"There was no way out for her," Rose told Duane as they moved closer to Tess. "She would've killed Tess once she realized that." Rose sounded calm. She looked serene. She reminded Tess of an angel.

Two more sheriff's cars arrived, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Duane directed them to where Angie had fallen. The other officers, and the search and rescue team who joined them minutes later, prepared to climb down there and get Angie out of the gully.

Rose came over to Tess and Joe. "Are you all right, Tess?" Now her voice quivered. She hugged them both, weeping.

"How did you get here?" Tess asked Rose and Joe, while Joe took tight hold of Tess's left arm and held her close to him in a protective, clinging embrace that Tess didn't understand. It reminded her of Jessica Laine.

"I was so worried about you, Joe! She hit you with the shovel." Tess tried to turn to face him, but he made her sit still. She wanted to hug him again, but he was more intent on gripping her arm.

"She only stunned me," he said with a grin. "I'll live. I don't need a doctor. You on the other hand--"

Tess turned to his sister. "Rose, how did you get here?"

"I was feeling glum after Harry and Paige left. I dawdled around the house and tried to write, but I couldn't concentrate. So I drove down to see you and Joe . . . and the kittens. I saw a light on, but no one answered the door. I could hear Joe groaning inside, so I went around and got in the back door, where Ned broke the glass. I found Joe tied up in the foyer. I cut him loose, and he ran out to his truck. He told me to stay and call for help. I could hear the sirens by then. Duane must've already been on his way. I ran out to my car and followed Joe. When I drove up, and saw the cars here, I opened the window and heard Angie threatening to shoot you. Then--it was the strangest thing. I looked down, and there was this crossbow beside me, on my front passenger's seat. It was like--a gift. Angie didn't notice I was here. She was focused on Duane and Joe." Rose looked into Tess's eyes. "I wasn't about to let her take you away from us."

Duane Prescott brought a blanket over. "I'll go to your house with you, Tess, to get statements from the three of you. That way you can all at least get warmed up."

"How did you get here when you did, Duane?" Tess asked him, still amazed at the miracle of them all coming to her aid when they had.

He shrugged. "I went to Stoneway looking for Angie. Kevin paged her, and I was right there beside Kevin in the office when Angie called and Kevin answered. He told her I was there, that I wanted to talk to her. She told him she was on her way. I could see the number she called from, on the phone's display. It was your number, Tess. She forgot about Caller ID."

He held the blanket out to Joe, who motioned for Rose to take it. She wrapped it around Tess, covering only one shoulder, while Joe still clung to Tess's left arm.

Duane's gaze shifted to Joe's hands, and he straightened. "We'd better get you to the hospital, Tess." He motioned them all toward his car.

"No. No, I want to go home. I'm fine."

"Tess, you're bleeding." Rose drew her attention to the gash on her left arm, where her jacket sleeve was soaked with blood, and she realized what Joe had been doing, putting pressure on it to control the bleeding.

"That's not all," Joe said. "You got cut up by the brush when you fell. Let's get you taken care of."

"I--" Tess stared at her arm. Angie must have cut her with the knife when Tess was grappling with her for the gun. She looked at Joe. "You can stitch it up, can't you, Joe? I don't want to go anywhere else tonight. Please." She wanted to collapse in his arms right now, and have a good cry. She started shaking, as reaction set in.

"Joe, if you think she can wait that long, I'll call Peter," Duane offered. "He can meet us at his office. Heck, if I sweet talk him, he might come out here to take care of you, Tess. Peter used to work in an ER." He grinned and gestured at Joe. "This guy's a vet, you know, whatever he's told you. Come on. I have a first aid kit."

Duane glanced down the ravine again as they moved toward his marked vehicle. The other officers were rigging ropes and a back board. "Do you think Angie's alive?" Rose asked.

Duane shook his head. "I doubt it, after that descent. There are some deadly rocks and tree branches down there. We can't see where she landed yet. But there's a chance. The snow may have broken her fall. They'll get to her, and if she's alive she'll get medical care. Shooting her in the hand," Duane said, looking at Rose, "you took an awfully big chance of missing altogether with that thing."

Rose shuddered visibly. "I did miss. I was aiming at her torso. I thought trying to shoot the gun out of her hand was too risky for Tess." Rose looked at Joe. "I've never used a crossbow before. I'm lucky I didn't shoot one of you."

Joe looked at her in disbelief for several seconds. He looked about to laugh at her exploits, but didn't.

"I should've told you when you first arrived that Angie had discouraged your parents from having you visit," Rose told Tess as they neared Duane's vehicle. "I made a promise to myself a long time ago, never to gossip. I--" She shook her head. "I didn't want to be like Angie. I thought she was only jealous of you, like your mother thought. I never dreamed Angie would resort to violence. She'd told your mother you kept in touch with her all these years--with Angie--and you didn't want to come home, because of your accident and the gossip. She told them you didn't tell them that because you didn't want to hurt them. I hoped you'd learn the truth from Cathy's journals, so I kept quiet."

"So tell us, Rose, what were you so busy doing when Trent and Angie ransacked Tess's house the other day?" Joe asked her.

"I'd like to hear that too," Duane said. He held the door for Tess, and Joe climbed into the back beside her.

Once they were all in and he'd started the engine, Duane looked over at Rose. "Well?"

"You were writing, weren't you, Rose?" Tess said, in a knowing tone.

Rose looked back at her and nodded, smiling mildly. "I ran into the house to jot down a single thought. I got so caught up in the story I completely lost track of time."

Joe frowned at her. "That's nuts, Rose."

"No." Tess knew the experience of losing herself in the flow of her creative work. "That's art."

Chapter 24

Angie didn't survive her fall.

Hours later, when they'd all made their statements, Duane took off to file his reports. Tess's arm was stitched and bandaged, and everyone was satisfied that neither Tess nor Joe had suffered any further great damage. Tess drowsed in her own warm bed under the effect of a mild sedative.

Paige and Rose were spending the remainder of the night in warm beds elsewhere in this house that Tess again called home. None of them wanted to be alone tonight. The kittens were sleeping with Rose.

"She's decided she's not allergic after all." Joe got into bed beside Tess, and held her close. Her muscles had gradually warmed and relaxed over the past few hours. She still felt the effect of her fear and her struggle to hold onto life. The sedative didn't completely smooth the edges of a night like tonight. She knew she would dream, and she didn't look forward to those dreams, but she sank deliciously into the warmth of Joe's arms, glad to be safe with him.

"What about the letters?" Tess said. "Do you think we'll ever find them?"

"Oh." Joe reached over the side of the bed, and picked up a brass headed wooden cane. "You were up here getting doctored when Duane and I found this. After what you told us Angie said, about your dad falling out front that morning and leaving the cane there, I got to thinking about all the snow that had fallen since their accident. It's a wonder Angie didn't find the cane when she messed up your snow angels with the snowmobile. It was there, under the snow. Duane was kind enough to take a photo and the letters, as evidence, and leave the cane."

Joe unscrewed the brass head of the cane, to reveal a slender, hollow compartment inside. "That's where the original letters were, rolled up, safe and dry. Sheriff has them now."

"You knew that was where Dad would've put the letters?"

"I suspected so. He loved this cane, and that feature was part of the reason he loved it. He used to joke that it made him feel like a secret agent."

Tess had to digest this for a minute. "So the sheriff knows the whole story now?"

"Including your family's portion of it. There are still bits and pieces they'll have to get from Trent and Ned, if they can get them to talk."

A few minutes later Tess said, "Poor Kevin." Kevin hadn't been part of his sister's scheming, but he would suffer plenty as a result of it, including the death of his only close family.

"Poor Kevin," Joe agreed.

"Did I do that to Angie? Was I such a terrible friend that I made her feel so abandoned she became . . . what she became? That she hated enough to betray me and kill my family?"

"There are two other friends of yours in this house tonight who would agree with me when I say absolutely not," Joe told her. His breath was warm, his voice a low, velvety sensation in her ear. "But I think we'll all wonder for a long time what we could've done for her."

"There won't be any trouble for Rose over this, will there?"

"We'll take care of Rose," he said, and kissed her cheek.

She snuggled in closer to him. "Yes, we'll take care of Rose. Will you help me with something tomorrow, Joe?"

"Name your kittens?"

"Well, that too, but--" She hesitated. "It's silly."

"What?"

"There's all this new snow. We need to make fresh snow angels. After all, that's where the answers were. Under the snow angels." Tess drifted off to sleep, to the sound of his low chuckle.

"Goodnight, Snow Angel." That was a woman's voice. Was it a dream? Her mother's smile, her warmth, her voice. A contentedness that washed everything in a new light. For the first time in many years, as Tess dreamed that night, she felt truly loved.

THE END

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Copyright © 2004 Barbara W. Klaser. All Rights Reserved.