“I’m Karen, not Zoe,” the woman says. “You ran Zoe off last month. Why don’t we come inside? I made us some tomato soup.”
“They don’t let me have a grain of salt,” Lisa says to me. “Not a single one. Nothing tastes like anything.” Karen takes her arm, but Lisa shakes her off. “Wendy and I could have spent months campingat Old Orchard Beach without worrying about a thing. Instead, here I am. WithZoe.”
“Karen,” Karen says.
Reception on my phone doesn’t return until I’ve left Lisa Lawson’s house and nearly made it back to the highway. Julian picks up on the first ring. “How’d it go?”
“Dead end,” I say. “She didn’t want to talk. At least, not about the right things.”
“Did she sign a release?”
“I didn’t get a chance.”
“Head back in a few days. Keep working her and get her to sign. You never know where these things might lead. Meanwhile, upload the recording and I’ll see what’s there.”
I click off the call, transfer the recording to my phone, then post the file to the Cloud for Julian. Ahead, a sign marking the town line for Hero, New Hampshire, appears at the side of the forested road. I tap record and set the digital recorder on the dashboard. “Friday, May 22,” I say, practicing my narration. “Arriving in Hero, twenty-five years later, a tiny town nestled in the foothills of the White Mountains where nothing as spectacular as my father’s epic collapse has ever happened, before or since. Tonight, we’ll celebrate the start of summer—”
Behind me, blue lights flash as an SUV cruiser hugs my tail. I groan and pull to the side of the road as one of the local cops, Seton Haviland, takes her time exiting the cruiser and sauntering alongside the Volvo in her police uniform.
I should have expected this.
Chapter Three
Hero is too small of a town to arrive without being noticed, especially by a cop like Seton, who wears aviators and has dark hair cropped short. Her boxy uniform hangs off her as though she picked it up at a costume shop for a Halloween party and forgot to order the sexy version. She taps on the glass and waits for me to crank down the window before resting her tattooed—and jacked—forearms on the yellow door.
“Charlie Kilgore,” she says. “Don’t lose this beater. Otherwise, I won’t know when you get to town. Glad you survived the winter.”
“Good to see you, Seton,” I say.
“You were speeding. It’s Memorial Day weekend, and everyone’s coming back to the lake for the summer. You have to watch out for kids.”
We’re in the middle of nowhere, on a road lined with thick forest and outcroppings of granite, but I’ve known Seton since we learned to swim together on the lake as kids. We still go swimming, and one of these days, maybe I’ll work up the courage to confess I find her plenty sexy beneath that boxy uniform, in a tattooed, pierced, tough-as-nails kind of way. I suspect, though, that Seton wants to keep me safely friend-zoned.
“Does this car look like it can speed?” I ask. “I should report you for police harassment.”
Seton shifts the aviators to look at me over the frames. “Report away. I’m the chief of police now—or acting chief, at least till they fill the vacancy. My mom’s on the hiring committee. Think I’ll get the job?”
Seton will get the job, and it won’t be because her mother pulled strings. Seton’s nothing if not competent.
She leans her back against the car and shimmies down until her legs form a right angle. “Missed my wall sits this morning,” she says. “Gotta work the glutes. Did I tell you about the helicopter? The town bought one, and I’m getting my license. If you’re nice, I’ll take you for a ride.”
The last thing in the world I want is to get in a helicopter with a novice pilot. “We’ll see,” I say.
“Sure, we will,” Seton says. “How’s the journalism career?”
“Good as can be,” I say. “I like the radio station.”
“You could move here and take over theKingston Gazette. Ollie’s ready to retire. We could work cases together, me the cop, you the reporter.Haviland and Kilgore. It’d be like one of those cheesy old TV shows, except nothing happens here besides the usual drug dens and hunting violations. And speeding.”
“I wasn’t speeding,” I say.
“Speed limit’s forty. You were going forty-two, but I’ll let you off.” She stands and shakes out her legs. “Here are some stories you could cover: The Randalls’ rooster has been waking the whole neighborhood at the crack of dawn. And someone’s stealing firewood from the Millers’ house, but they refuse to put in a security camera. Autumn and Juna over on Sheridan Road are constantly getting out—they’re dogs, by the way.”
Before she can delve into minute details from the latest town meeting, I cut her off. “Do you ever run into Lisa Lawson?”
“That lady who used to be in local theater? Not really, but she lives in Enstone, not Hero. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I say.
