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  “Yes, everyone, I’m all right,” she said weakly as Catherine and Eric gazed at her in concern.

  A young female deputy with dark brown hair, a thin, ascetic face, and dark blue eyes appeared in the doorway with a Styrofoam cup. “Coffee, Ms. Gray,” she said abruptly, setting it down on Eric’s desk in front of Marissa and smiling. “We only had enough left in the pot for one cup, and you seem to need it most. I’ll put on a fresh pot. Oh, we only have artificial cream and sweetener, too. I don’t know how you like your coffee, Ms. Gray, and this isn’t the best in the world.”

  “I want fresh coffee, too, Robbie.” Marissa recognized the loud, nasal voice of Deputy Buddy Pruitt. “On the double!”

  “Go make your own,” the deputy snapped back before giving Marissa a gentle smile. “I hope this makes you feel better.”

  Marissa smiled almost shyly, realizing how she must have sounded to everyone at headquarters. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Robbie,” Eric said as the deputy left the room. “That’s Robbie—Roberta—Landers, one of our newest deputies. Nice, intelligent, competent kid,” he added with the paternal air of a sixty-year-old man. “She can hold her own with male deputies who don’t always make things easy for her.”

  “Like Buddy Pruitt?” Marissa asked softly. “Her father is a reporter at the newspaper. He’s talked about Robbie.” Marissa sipped the bitter-edged coffee, forced herself not to grimace, and after a moment smiled shamefacedly at Catherine and Eric. “I’m sorry,” she said steadily. “I’ve been trumpeting like an elephant since the wreck. I’m being ridiculously belligerent because I know how unlikely my story seems. Unlikely? Crazy is more like it. Sometimes I wish I’d made up something about an animal running in front of me so I wouldn’t sound like a lunatic. I couldn’t do that, though, because it just isn’t true.”

  She leaned forward. “Eric, someone was out there and they didn’t freeze from fear in front of my car. They stood deliberately still. And even if I had any doubts, those doubts would have vanished when it, he, whatever, hadn’t followed my car over the riverbank and pecked on the windows, fiddled with the door handle, tried to pull the car the rest of the way over the bank and into the river, for God’s sake! When you came down the bank to check the situation, even you didn’t know what made the car suddenly begin to move—I hadn’t so much as twitched; you hadn’t touched the car; the wind had stopped for five seconds. You didn’t see anyone, but you have to admit in that chaos someone could have scooted under the car unnoticed. Besides, you weren’t even looking for anyone, because you couldn’t hear what I was telling you about someone being outside the car!”

  Eric held up his hand. “Take a breath, Marissa. You’re talking so fast you’re going to pass out.” He looked right into her eyes, but she could tell his mind was back at the car Saturday night.

  Marissa gathered her thoughts, drew a breath, and spoke calmly: “I’m a good driver, Eric. I’m skillful, calm, reliable”—she smiled and said loudly—“and just for the record, everyone, not at all prone to seeing monsters on the highway.”

  A few people in the outer room snickered and Eric finally grinned. It was a small grin but a grin nevertheless.

  Eric seemed to relax in his chair, his back curving a bit, his fingers beginning to tap silently on the desktop. “The only other witness we have to the wreck is the truck driver. He said you seemed to be dodging something before you went into that spin. He didn’t think you’d just dozed off and drifted into his lane or you wouldn’t have regained your skills so fast.” Eric paused. “I’ve been to the site twice. The snow, the brush, and the ground are all a mess. We can’t get decent prints, but—”

  “Mrs. Farrell!” Robbie exclaimed. Marissa turned around to see Jean Farrell, the sheriff’s wife, enter the outer room of headquarters. She looked back at Eric and waved.

  “But I’m not discounting that some people are almost as compelled to pull pranks at Christmas as they are at Halloween,” Eric continued. “Although I’ll have to say, this one had a hell of a lot of nerve. I’m going to be watching for him.”

  Marissa burst into a wide smile and almost jumped up. Eric looked alarmed, as if he feared she was going to fling herself across the desk at him. She saw the look and didn’t feel the least insulted. Chief Deputy Eric Montgomery was too detached for his own good, she thought. A little shock once a day wouldn’t hurt him a bit.

  “Thank you so much, Deputy,” she said sincerely and loudly, still smiling for all she was worth. “I feel so much better now that I know you’re making this a priority case!”

  Eric’s eyes widened. “A priority case? I didn’t say anything about a priority—”

  “How great to see you here! I haven’t seen you at all for weeks.” Robbie jumped up from her desk, rushing to Jean. “Here, let me help you with those packages. How’s Sheriff Farrell today?”

  “Robbie, thank you, dear. I was on the verge of dropping everything,” Jean Farrell said. “Hello, Buddy, Jeff, Arlene, Tom. Jeff, isn’t the baby about due?”

  “Another week, Mrs. Farrell. We’ll be starting off the new year with a new baby.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful! Well, I decided to bake a coffee cake last night and I just couldn’t stop baking! I brought sugar cookies, banana bread, spice muffins, and some butter for the muffins.”

  “How nice of you!” Robbie said. “Everything smells wonderful!”

  “Old habits die hard, I guess.” Jean smiled sadly. “I always enjoyed baking little whatnots for headquarters at Christmas. It wouldn’t have felt like the holiday season if I couldn’t have done some baking for you this year. As for your question about Mitch,” Jean went on, handing the foil-wrapped trays set in boxes to Robbie and another deputy offering his services, “he had a bad night, but he’s sleeping this morning. He’d love hearing you call him Sheriff, but he hasn’t been the sheriff for months now.”

  Eric rose from behind his desk and walked out to greet the woman with brown and gray hair cut unflatteringly short, a wool coat at least one size too big, and tired gray eyes. Marissa marveled at how the last few months had aged the sturdy, strong-boned woman. She knew Jean Farrell was in her late fifties, but she looked seventy. Last year that coat would probably have fit, but she’d insisted on taking care of her invalid husband herself and she’d lost weight.

  Jean’s face had always been remarkably smooth—the envy of women who frantically fought wrinkles—but now her cheeks had slightly shrunken and all of her facial skin looked like pale, crinkled crepe paper. She’d never worn much makeup, but today she’d made a slapdash attempt with a dull mauve lipstick, which made her look gray. Soon the burden would be too much for Jean alone, Marissa thought, although the woman didn’t seem to think anyone could care for her husband, Mitchell, as well as she could.

  “It’s good to see you, Jean,” Eric said, smiling his small smile and shaking her thin hand. “I was meaning to drop by and visit Mitch last week, but I’m never certain when a good time is and I don’t want to call and maybe wake him up.”

  “And I never know when he’ll be having a good day for visitors, so I’m no help.” Jean smiled ruefully, as if she should know when a man in the final stages of pancreatic cancer would be up to having guests. She also refused to get a cell phone so people could call the house without the chance of waking up Mitch.

  Marissa had known Jean all of her life and admired her for being warmhearted, patient, and a lover of children, although she had none of her own since the death of her three-year-old daughter, Betsy, over twenty-four years ago. Jean never had another child, but she wasn’t perpetually depressed or without a sense of humor. She kept herself busy, enjoyed doing things for other people, and seemed to love having Marissa stay with her when Annemarie took Catherine for her music lessons a couple of miles away from the Farrells’ house.

  Marissa remembered summers in her childhood when she’d faithfully “helped” Jean plant seeds and bulbs and listened to her explain all about the flowers, e
ven telling Marissa their Latin names. Jean had made Marissa feel grown-up and had taken her mind off the fact that Catherine had some musical talent while Marissa had absolutely none. All of the Grays had been fond of Jean, and Jean’s dying husband, Mitchell, was not only a cousin of Bernard Gray’s but also one of his closest friends. As boys, they’d been nearly inseparable.

  “I hear you’re doing a fine job since Mitch had to leave,” Jean said to Eric, whose family was also close to the Farrells. “I’m certain you’ll be elected sheriff, and that will please Mitch so much.”

  An uncomfortable moment of silence spun out. Everyone present knew Mitch would be gone before election time. Marissa could feel the tension lessen when Eric smiled and said, “All I’m thinking about for the present is keeping up Mitch’s standards.”

  Jean looked past Eric. “Hello, Catherine, Marissa.” Her long, plain face solemn, she walked to Marissa and hugged her, her wool coat smelling of lavender, her signature scent. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t come to see you yesterday, but the roads were still a mess and I couldn’t get anyone to help me with Mitch….”

  “You explained on the phone yesterday,” Marissa said, hugging the woman closer. Jean felt as close to a mother as Marissa had now. “I really just needed sleep and your good wishes.”

  Jean held Marissa away from her. “Well, you look only slightly the worse for wear, but it must have been horrifying. I didn’t tell Mitch. I just praised the Lord you managed to live through that ordeal.”

  “I wouldn’t have if not for Eric,” Marissa said with warm spontaneity, not caring that she caught a salacious grin on the face of Deputy Buddy Pruitt. How the rat-faced incompetent little man had held on to his job for nearly ten years she could never guess. “I was trapped by the seat belt and Eric pulled me out of the car just seconds before it slid into the river.”

  Jean looked appalled. “Good heavens, I didn’t know that! And I heard you say Eric is going to make this a priority case.” Jean smiled at Eric. “You deserve a medal, Eric.”

  “Just doing my duty,” Eric mumbled, looking half-annoyed at Marissa and half-embarrassed by Jean’s praise.

  Jean’s dulled eyes gazed at his red, lowered face and suddenly they twinkled. “I don’t know what’s happening to the Aurora Falls gossip mill, leaving out that we have a hero in our midst! Work will have to be done to get the grapevine back to par!”

  “Well, not work by you,” Tom said kindly. “You have too much on your plate already, Mrs. Farrell, taking care of Mitch and spending so much time trying to get the city to act on renovating that bad section of Falls Way. No offense to you, Miss Gray,” he said, gesturing at Marissa with a spice muffin in his hand, “but the positive side of your wreck is that it brought more attention to the problem. They can have all the city council meetings they like about the matter, which you get a gold star for attending, Mrs. Farrell, but that wreck was front-page news!”

  “The newspaper left out the most excitin’ part, though. They didn’t talk about the big old monster chasin’ her,” Buddy Pruitt drawled as he leaned over his desk and scraped dyed red sugar off his cookie onto white paper. From behind, his large ears looked almost perpendicular to his head. “Or I guess it was standin’ in front of you, Marissa, then it chased you down the riverbank and Superman saved you just before the thing pushed your car in the river. Wow! They got somethin’ in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, called Mothman. Guess now we’ve got Marissa’s Monster!”

  Every pair of eyes settled on Buddy, giggling and scraping at colored sugar on his cookie until he finally seemed to realize no one was laughing. He spun in his swivel chair, his prominent front teeth bared beneath a nearly non ex is tent upper lip, looking around in mild confusion. Then his little eyes turned hard. “Guess no one around here has a sense of humor.”

  “No one has a sense of humor about a wreck,” Jeff said, and turned away.

  Jean gave Buddy a long, freezing look. “Buddy Pruitt, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “You can be a real jerk, Buddy,” Robbie said quietly.

  Buddy glared at Robbie, and then looked at Eric. “You gonna let a woman talk to me like that?”

  Eric paused as if he were giving the matter serious thought. Finally, he gazed calmly at Buddy and said, “Yes, I believe I am. Deputy Pruitt, why don’t you find something more useful to do than scrape sugar off your cookie here at police headquarters? I think some people forgot to put money in their parking meters. The matter needs your attention, right away.”

  Buddy snorted, shot to his feet like a jack-in-the-box, grabbed his jacket, threw his audience a murderous glare, and headed for the front door. “Don’t worry, Buddy. Something thrilling might happen,” Jeff called. “I’ve heard Dillon Archer has come back to town.”

  Buddy hesitated for a breathless moment, then straightened his shoulders and slammed out of the building.

  2

  “I hate the car I just rented,” Marissa announced.

  “I thought you’d decided to stop acting like a whining child.”

  “I’m almost finished,” Marissa said. “I just need about five more minutes. Did I tell you I hate the car you talked me into renting?”

  Catherine smiled. “I know you do, but it’s safe. It will be sort of like riding around in a little bank vault.”

  Marissa groaned. “Oh, that sounds sporty, Cathy.” She knew Catherine hated the nickname Cathy. “It’s not as if my Mustang can be repaired. It’s a goner.”

  “Good. I’m glad,” Catherine snapped in honor of the “Cathy.”

  “So I’m going to buy a new Mustang convertible as soon as I get my car insurance money.” Marissa smiled. “Okay, I’m done. Bad, whiny, childish Marissa has slipped back into the tunnels underground.”

  She sipped her white wine and looked out the restaurant windows at the panoramic view of Aurora Falls. “It’s really nice of you to bring me out to lunch.” Marissa looked at the pine-paneled walls, the small chandeliers with their scrolling bronze arms and cream-colored etched-glass globes, the Christmas tree decorated with colorful toy-like ornaments, the pine-encircled candles at each table. “Especially because you picked the Larke Inn.”

  “Even if the big dining room isn’t open for lunch?”

  “I wouldn’t care if we had to eat in the kitchen. I love this place.”

  Catherine laughed. “I think you expect Sebastian Larke to come walking in and claim you as his one and only. Still have that mad crush on him?”

  “It’s dulled from an inferno to a simmer, but I fear he’ll always be the only man for me,” Marissa said dramatically.

  Catherine gave her a knowing look. “I seriously doubt that. Anyway, you’ve had a rough weekend. I also thought after your session at police headquarters and because you haven’t had a pain pill you might enjoy something to calm you down or lift your spirits, or whatever wine does for you.”

  “Both. I’m also very hungry.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Catherine said casually as she dug into her garden salad, “especially after making that end run around Eric Montgomery by thanking him for making your investigation a priority case so Jean would hear. You know how close the Montgomerys have always been to Jean and Mitch, and I think Mitch considers Eric the son he never had. Eric will do just about anything not to let Jean down. That was a brilliant move,” Catherine finished without approval.

  “I know I wasn’t fair to Eric. I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself.”

  “You don’t look like it. You look like you’re going to jump up on the table and do a tap dance.”

  Marissa laid down her salad fork, her smile fading. “Actually, I’m ambivalent. I am ashamed of taking advantage of Eric in an awkward situation, but I don’t want my car wreck written off as the result of an icy road or careless driving. Somebody deliberately caused the wreck, someone dangerous, Catherine. Maybe it was just a prank—as I said, I don’t know anyone who’d want to kill me. But this prankster had fun and he got away. I don’t th
ink the kind of person who did this to me will be satisfied with one success. Unless Eric catches him, he won’t stop, and maybe the next person won’t be as lucky as I was. Is it so terrible of me to use any means I can to stop another accident or maybe even a death?”

  The tightness in Catherine’s face slowly eased. She took a drink of her own wine, glanced out the window at the falls, then looked at Marissa. “Okay. I don’t approve of your method, but I understand why you ambushed Eric. Don’t push him too hard, though, Marissa. He’s got a lot on his mind with Mitch Farrell dying.”

  “I know. He always admired Mitch so much. When he majored in criminal justice and went to Philadelphia, he had visions of bringing some of Mitch’s ways to a police force in a city of over a million people.”

  Catherine nodded. Then she picked up her fork and looked down at her salad for a moment before asking almost reluctantly, “Marissa, how do you feel about seeing Eric again? You can tell me to mind my own business….”

  “But I won’t. You spent hours talking with me, trying to cheer me up, after Eric broke off our engagement. Naturally, you’re concerned.” Marissa paused, frowning. “Honestly, I don’t know how I feel. When he said he was coming to our house Saturday night to take my statement, at first I was too shaken by the wreck to feel much about him. After we got home, I felt awkward. I could hardly look at him.” Catherine glanced up and Marissa looked at her earnestly. “But he’s changed so much, he’s like a different person, Catherine. This morning I realized I didn’t feel the old hurt that stayed with me for so long. Is that weird?”