Zeus barked once, staring up at Chase with a crazy flicker in his eyes. It was the goofy look that won Chase over at the shelter a year ago when they first met. He wanted a big, fluffy dog with personality. Zeus had enough quirkiness for three dogs.
“Got to head back to town,” Ryder called, striding toward his patrol car. “Going to Warren’s after the meeting?”
“Yeah. Game starts at seven,” Chase called back.
After Ryder drove off, Chase took dozens of photos of the scene. Though rain wasn’t in the forecast for the next ten days, a heavy gust of wind could alter the evidence. The photos would allow him to review the scene as it was, if needed. Maybe he’d even find something in them that he was overlooking now. “Evidence,” he muttered to himself. “Why can’t I just accept this for what it is?”
Zeus tilted his head from his spot in the grass nearby, his large ears standing on end, reminding Chase of Yoda.
“You’re always good for a laugh, Zeus.”
At the sound of his name, the dog popped back to his feet and trotted toward Chase. His leash lay piled on the grass, but as long as they didn’t see any critters or end up with curious onlookers, Chase didn’t have to worry about him running off.
As Zeus trotted around the perimeter again, Chase bagged the largest shreds of papers from the fireplace. He doubted they’d tell him anything useful, but better to have them than find them missing later.
“All right, boy. Let’s go.”
Zeus whined, scratching at a board.
“Leave it,” Chase ordered, wondering if the dog detected a faint trace of a rabbit’s scent. “It’s time to go.”
The dog didn’t move, just pawed at the ground with more vigor.
Chase’s pulse doubled at the prospect of finding something to support his theory of foul play. He moved the board with his boot, the glint of metal catching the sun and nearly blinding him. “A shotgun shell?”
He crouched down before Zeus could get his claws on it and scooped it into an evidence bag. He held it up to exam it better and his excitement dropped. “Nota shell casing. Just some lipstick tube.” The brass color he thought he’d seen was actually a silver strip. A double heart symbol was etched into the side. Most of the tube was some black leathery substance that hardly seemed marred from the fire. “Lipstick,” he muttered in disappointment.
Because he’d already picked it up, he left it bagged.
Chief Bauer would laugh himself to tears at the ‘evidence’ Chase found. At least they had a better idea that the squatter was a woman. Or maybe two or three squatters ago she was. “Well, this is a bust. Let’s go, buddy.”
On the drive back to town, he kept thinking about the tube of lipstick. Laurel was wearing a light pink shade this morning; she’d left the evidence on her coffee cup. If he remembered right, she had some of that same shade of lipstick in one of those boxes at his place. She used to leave it on his shirt collar, and the memory made him smile.
Laurel had fled so quickly after the miscarriage that she only took a couple of suitcases’ worth of belongings with her. The rest of her things, she’d left behind for him to deal with. He boxed most of them up, expecting her to send for them or even ask him to drop them off at her parents’ house. But she never did. A dozen boxes or more sat stacked in a spare bedroom’s closet.
Pulling into the station, Chase felt more than a glimmer of hope. He felt renewed determination. “Zeus, I have an idea how to win her back.” He scrubbed his hand over the dog’s neck, winning a hearty lick to the cheek. “Yes, you can help.”
Chapter Three
Laurel
“If anyone wakes Melly up, I’ll douse you in sugar water and feed you to the mosquitoes myself,” Haylee Evans threatened Laurel and their mom, her droopy-lidded eyes narrow and fierce. For the first time in over three hours, the house was completely silent, and no one was brave enough to turn on a muted TV.
“I’ll help you,” Laurel volunteered, fighting another yawn. What were days without massive tear-inducing yawns? She didn’t know anymore.
“If you’d just stop picking her up every time she cries—”
Haylee held up a hand like a stop sign. “Mom,don’tgo there right now.” Sweet Haylee, the youngest of the five Evans siblings, looked scarier than the black bear Laurel discovered digging through their trash a few weeks back. But no one in this house was particularly peachy without a semi-normal amount of sleep. Except Cody. He could survive on no sleep for weeks and still be as chipper as the morning sun. She supposed if she was able to winter in exotic places like New Zealand and Barbados, she’d be unstoppably happy all the time, too.
“Haylee, I’m just trying—”
“Mom, not now!”
“Who wants some chips and salsa?” Laurel offered, falling right back into her role of referee slash peacekeeper as she did every time Haylee and Mom were about to go at it. It was the reason Laurel moved back to Sunset Ridge.
She was the first one Haylee, nineteen and away at her first year in college at the time, told about being pregnant. Haylee was terrified how furious her parents would be, especially when they discovered the father was not going to be in the picture at all. Laurel still had nightmares about that phone call. Haylee sobbing hysterically into the phone, terrified of the future. Tears silently streaming down Laurel’s face on the other end as she took charge and reassured Haylee she was going to be there by her side the whole time. It had been shockingly easy to give up her successful luxury real estate career in the Florida Keys.
Haylee swiped a chip before Laurel was able to set the bowl on the island counter. “Did you get thegoodsalsa this time?”
