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A
They might be a reason to kill. A
Like many rangers, A
This was begi
Fear licked around A
7
ANNA closed the heavy binder. Her back and neck ached but she couldn't straighten up. Piedmont was draped around her neck fast asleep. Picking up his tail, she brushed its feathery-soft tip across her eyelids.
There's been nothing much of help in her Law Enforcement notes from FLETC. All the Scene of the Crime materials- evidence gathering-had presumed the officer knew there'd been a crime committed. Lots of detailed diagrams for roping off the area, controlling the flow of traffic, protecting the chain of evidence so it wouldn't get thrown out of court.
Nothing pertained to half-eaten rangers in saw grass swamps.
I should have gotten suspicious earlier, A
They still weren't.
As far as anyone else was concerned a crime had not been committed and the culprit had been caught and executed.
"Not dispatched, executed."
Piedmont opened one orange eye at the sound of her voice but he was not awake, his third eyelid remained half closed.
"Somebody done her in, Piedmont. Miss Scarlet did it in the library with the pinking shears. Colonel Mustard did it in the kitchen with a cougar."
The snapshots from Sheila Drury's clothes rod were facedown on the desk. Turning them over one by one, she looked through them slowly. They'd been taken not far from where she had found Drury's body. Less than a mile downstream where the creek flowed from one emerald pool to the next over a wide smooth floor of stone.
Did that mean anything? Had Christina killed her lover in passion? Or just to get back the photos? Was Sheila Drury blackmailing her? Some might think it a form of poetic justice to do in their blackmailer at the scene of their indiscretion. But a mile upstream through rough country? And what was the pack all about?
Could Drury have been blackmailing anyone else?
"Slow down, slow down," A
The few left I haven't drowned, she thought. Against her better judgment, she took another sip of Sauvignon Blanc. Clearheadedness, desirable as it might be, couldn't compete with habit.
On the back of an a
Christina Walters. She'd already been through that.
Craig Eastern. He hated Drury-if "hated" wasn't too strong a word-for her attempts to develop the camping area for R.V. sites. Harland Roberts thought Craig was crazy enough to hurt her, why not Sheila?
Mrs. Thomas Drury. She'd mentioned something about insurance money. There'd been problems between mother and daughter. That had been fairly obvious. Try as she might, A
Who else? She stared at the blank sheet of paper. Rogelio? Because Sheila was opposed to reintroducing prairie dogs?
"My mother-in-law," A
Piedmont was not amused. A
A knock startled her from her musings, startled Piedmont from her shoulders. Automatically she checked her radio, turned up the squelch. It was working. If there was an ambulance run or a problem in the campground they'd've radioed-for a ranger's 20,000 a year, she was on call twenty-four hours a day. Who would come to her door? It occurred to her that emergencies were more common than social calls anymore. The thought made her suddenly lonely.
"Come in," she hollered. The door rattled and she realized she'd locked it. Embarrassed at her newly suspicious nature, A
Christina Walters was on the top step. Just as A
Given her recent speculations and the color photos that were lying on her desk, A
"I came for that beer," Christina Walters said shyly and looked up at A
"Sure," A
Christina walked in, seemingly over her shyness of a moment before. She studied the few postcards A
A
A
Christina turned and smiled. A
Wanting to destroy the silence, A
Christina, Piedmont slithering down in her arms to be held like a baby, was working her way around the single room that comprised all of A
"A beer," A
"White wine would be nice," Christina replied, sounding genuinely delighted.
"You can sit." Like a traffic cop, A