Not exactly a season of peace and joy.
The road was slick in spots, but her ten-year-old Subaru gripped the road and churned up the frozen, icy streets without any trouble. The Outback was another change in her life, though of course she knew that all the new cars and town houses wouldn't fill the hole inside her. The pets were a step in the right direction, she thought as she pulled into the parking lot of the station. She'd inherited the cat on a case last year, as its owner had been the victim of a vicious murder and she'd felt a connection to the animal, but the puppy had been an intentional, if irrational decision.
What had she been thinking?
Obviously
not
about pee on the carpet, chewed furniture or vet bills; nope, she'd seen something warm and cuddly, with bright eyes, a wet nose and a tail that wouldn't stop wagging when she'd visited the shelter.
“Stupid,” she told herself as she drove toward the station, but she couldn't help but smile. She'd thought Roscoe would be some kind of protection, keep burglars at bay.
Yeah? Then why did you feel as if someone had been in your house last week, huh? Remember that premonition that something you couldn't describe had been changed at the town house? Where was Roscoe the guard dog then?
Of course, it had probably been nothing, just her case of nerves after interviewing Neil Freeman, yet another sicko who had let his eyes run all over her while she questioned him about his dead mother. Turned out the mother died of natural causes ... but his demeanor, his salacious turning of every answer into something sexual and the way he touched the tip of his tongue to his lips as he stared at her had really gotten to her. Which was probably just his intention. Twisted creep!
She told herself again that Freeman had
not
been in her house and that Roscoe would have let her know it if he had.
And how would he do that? Face it, Alvarez, you're becoming one of
those
kinds of pet owners.
Inwardly, she cringed.
Damn it, she loved that dog and maybe, just maybe, Roscoe was just what she needed. She knew only that no matter what, she wasn't going to give him up.
Wheeling into the parking lot, she turned her thoughts to the weeks ahead. There was the Christmas party for the office, of course, and Joelle Fisher, the receptionist cum Christmas elf, had already decorated the department and started talking about the Secret Santa exchange that she always organized. Alvarez wasn't interested; she just knew that she'd pile on a lot of extra hours over the holidays.
That
was her Christmas tradition; let the people with families stay home.
It was just easier.
She locked the car, then half jogged through the falling snow to the back door of the building. Stomping the melting white fluff from her boots, she paused in the lunchroom, frowned when she saw the coffee hadn't been made and reluctantly started a pot. Then found her favorite cup, heated water in the microwave and located the last bag of orange pekoe.
A pink box lay open on the table, a few picked-over cookies visible, but she ignored them for now. At this time of year, with Joelle in charge, there were certain to be fresh goodies arriving on the hour.
Unwrapping her scarf, she made her way to her desk, deposited her purse and sidearm, hung her jacket on a hook and started through her e-mail and messages, making sure all the reports were filed on one case, getting ready for a deposition on another and seeing if the autopsy report had come in on Len Bradshaw, a local farmer who died in a hunting accident. His friend, Martin Zwolski, had been with him, and while going through a barbed-wired fence, his weapon had gone off, shooting Len in the back and killing him dead.
Accident or premeditated?
Alvarez was buying the accident scenario. Martin had been distraught to the point of tears and beleaguered by Len's friends and family. It all seemed to be an accident, but Alvarez wasn't totally convinced, not until the investigation was buttoned up. There were three loose ends that kept her from totally buying Martin's story.
First, the two men were poaching on private property, neither one with deer tags, and second, Martin and Len had been in a business together that had gone bankrupt two years earlier, largely due to the fact that Len had “loaned” himself a good portion of the company profits. Also, another little tidbit that had come to light was that Len had once been involved with Martin's wife. Martin and Ezzie had been separated at the time, but still ... It was all just a little too messy for Alvarez.
She checked her e-mail.
No autopsy report yet.
Maybe later today. Flipping over to the missing persons information, she checked to see if Lissa Parsons had been found.
Lissa was an acquaintance, a woman Alvarez knew from a couple of classes she took at the gym. Twenty-six and single, with short, black hair and a killer body, she worked as a receptionist for a local law firm and had been reported missing a week earlier. When the detectives started asking questions, they'd deduced that Lissa had actually been missing for over a week. Her boyfriend and she had been through a rough patch and he was “giving her some space,” and her roommate had been out of town for a couple of weeks, an extended trip to Florida, only to come home to an empty apartment where the organic produce in the refrigerator was beginning to rot. Lissa's purse, cell phone, car and laptop were all missing with her, but her closet was untouched, her wardrobe neatly folded or hanging, a hamper in her bedroom filled with dirty workout clothes.
The roommate, boyfriend and an ex-boyfriend had rock-solid alibis. No sign of forced entry or a struggle at the apartment. It was as if Lissa had just left for the day, intended to return and hadn't bothered. Her cell phone and credit card activity showed no use after the day she went missing.
Alvarez didn't like it. Especially the fact that she'd been missing for nearly two weeks. Not good. Not good at all.
And it seemed from the most updated information that she was still missing.
No body.
No crime scene.
No damned crime.
Yet.
All of the nearby hospitals had been checked and she hadn't been admitted, nor had there been any Jane Does brought in. Nor, of course, had Lissa been arrested by any local agency.
Just ... gone.
“Where the hell are you?” Alvarez wondered aloud as she sipped her tepid tea. She didn't expect to see her partner for another hour or so, but Pescoli showed up before her usual time with a cup of coffee from one of the local shops in hand, snow melting in her burnished hair, her face flushed.
“What're you doing here at this hour?” Alvarez asked, spinning her chair around as her partner stood in the doorway. “Somebody die?”
“Bad joke this early in the morning.” She took a sip from her cup. “I had to drop Bianca off at school early for dance practice.” Bianca was Pescoli's teenage daughter, a junior now and as headstrong as she was beautiful. A dangerous combination and it didn't help that the girl was smart enough to play each of her divorced parents against the other. It worked every time. Though Pescoli and her ex had been divorced for years, there was still a lot of animosity between them, especially when it came to their kids. Bianca and her older brother, Jeremy, an off-again college student who lived with Pescoli in between his attempts at “moving out,” worked them both.
“I thought the dance team practiced after school.”
“Limited gym space.” Pescoli glanced to the window. “Basketball, wrestling, cheerleading, dance team ... whatever, they all juggle times, though right now, basketball has priority, I think. So for the next two weeks, Bianca has to be at school at six forty-five; that means she's got to get up around six, and believe me, it's killing her.” Pescoli's lips twisted into a thin smile at the thought of her teenager struggling with the early-morning routine. “And this is just day one. It's damned hard to be a princess when you have to be up and at 'em in the friggin' dark. What did she call it? Oh, yeah, âthe middle of the night when no one with
any
brains would get out of bed.' ” Pescoli was shaking her head. “I'm tellin' ya, we're raising a generation of vampires!”
“Vampires are in.”
“Go figure.” She turned serious, pointed a finger toward the computer screen on Alvarez's desk where a picture of Lissa Parsons was visible. “The autopsy report come in on Bradshaw?”
“Not yet.”
Little lines grooved deep between Pescoli's eyebrows. “You know I'd really like to believe Zwolskiâthat it was an accidentâbut I just can't.”
“I know.”
“Something just doesn't quite fit. What about the Parsons missing persons case?” Pescoli asked.
“Not yet.”
“Hell.” Pescoli took a sip from her coffee. “Hard to say what's going on there,” she thought aloud. “Just a flighty girl who got a wild hair and took off for a while, or something else?” Obviously not liking that idea, she frowned even deeper. “Still nothing on her car?”
“Don't think so. I was going to walk down to Missing Persons and talk to Taj, see what she has to say.”
“Let me know.” Pescoli patted the doorway and started to leave when the familiar
click, click, click
of high heels caught her attention.
“Toot, toot! Coming through!” Joelle warned in her little-girl voice as Alvarez caught a glimpse of the tiny receptionist, her beehive of platinum hair sprayed with red and green glitter, her snowman earrings catching in the fluorescent light as she hauled several stacked plastic tubs toward the lunchroom.
“Breakfast,” Pescoli said. “Come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee.”
Together they followed the bustling dynamo who never seemed happy until every square inch of the station was decorated for the holidays. Paper snowflakes sprayed with silver glitter hung from the ceiling, garlands of fake greenery swagged through the hallways, a revolving Christmas tree was twirling in the reception area and even the copy machine had a red pseudo-velvet bow with a sprig of mistletoe taped to the wall behind it. Like, sureâsomeone would try to steal a kiss while making copies of arrest reports.
Nothing more romantic than a smooch over the hum and click of office machinery,
Alvarez thought cynically.
“Here we go!” Joelle dropped the plastic tubs onto one round table and paused only to unwrap a plaid scarf of green and red before opening the first tub.
“Voila!”
Inside were cupcakes lined up neatly, each decorated with Santa faces or snowmen faces or even reindeer faces. “I picked these up at the bakery,” she announced as if it were a sin, “but I did bake my famous Christmas macaroons and Russian tea cakes.” Another bin was opened to display the cookies. “And the pièce de résistance,” she teased, while opening the third bin, “Grandma Maxie's divinity! Mmm.” She hurried to the cupboard where she'd stashed several trays earlier in the week, and satisfied that they were still sparkling clean, started arranging her favorite delicacies.
“I'm getting a sugar high just looking at these,” Pescoli said.
Pleased, Joelle let out a little-girl giggle. Though she was over sixty, she looked a good ten years younger than her age and her energy seemed boundlessâat least at this time of the year. “Well, help yourselves!” Once the trays were perfect, she scooped up the bins and hurried down the hallway to her desk at the front of the station house. “And remember, the drawing for the Secret Santa is at four!” she called over her shoulder. “Detective Pescoli, I expect you to participate!”
Pescoli had already bitten into a cookie and almost moaned in ecstasy. Under her breath she said to Alvarez, “The woman drives me nuts with all this holiday stuff, but I gotta say, she does bake a mean macaroon!”
Chapter 2
D
etective Taj Nayak didn't have any good news. “It's a mystery,” she said as Alvarez cruised by her office later in the day. “It's like the woman just disappeared into thin air. She left work at her usual time, a little after five, and just never made it home.
“We know she stopped by the gas station, where she bought a full tank, a pack of cigarettesâMarlboro menthols, if that means anythingâa sixteen-ounce Diet Coke and a Twix bar, all put on her debit card. Here, you can view it yourself.” Taj typed into her keyboard and pulled up a black-and-white film, which began to play on her computer monitor. “So here you go. Seeâ” She pointed at the screen where a woman who looked like Lissa was at the counter of the convenience mart. “So here she is paying for the items, then walking back to her car.” The screen flipped from the image of the cash register and attendant to the canopied area where up to eight cars could pull into the pumps. “It's hard to make out too much,” Taj said, “other than that she takes off out of the gas station and heads north when her apartment is south.” Sure enough, on the screen, just visible in the upper corner, Lissa's little Chevy Impala turned right. The film continued to roll. “Here's the SUV that followed her out of the station, but we checked; it was driven by a teenager on her way to basketball practice. Two other girls in the car, all confirmed; a Toyota 4Runner, owned by an insurance salesman in town. It's his daughter's car, and when we talked to the daughter and her friends, none of them even remember following Lissa's Impala.” The tape stopped suddenly. “Search parties have found nothing. So either she disappeared because she wanted to, somehow ditched her credit and debit cards and we'll locate her car, or ...”
“... She's dead.”
Taj nodded as her phone rang and she reached for it. “Then she'll be your problem, I guess.”
“Hope not.” Alvarez meant it. However, the woman had been missing for nearly two weeks. What were the chances that she was still alive?
If she'd been in a bad mood in the morning, the news that Lissa Parsons was still missing only brought her down even further. It didn't help that on the way back to her desk she ran into the sheriff.
A tall, rangy cowboy type, Dan Grayson was one of the best lawmen in the state and had been sheriff for years. Divorced, he'd invited her over to Thanksgiving last year and she'd made a fool of herself by showing up to his place for what turned out to be a family Thanksgiving, complete with Hattie, his very single ex-sister-in-law or some such thing, and her adorable twin girls. She'd come expecting a romantic evening that hadn't developed, and until the moment that she'd met Hattie, Alvarez had actually harbored some ridiculous fantasies about the man, despite their age differencesâfantasies that, no doubt, Grayson and his ex-sister-in-law had witnessed. It probably wasn't as big a deal as she'd made it in her mind, but since then, she'd backed off and reminded herself that he was her boss. Nothing more.
NOTHING
more.
“Mornin',” the sheriff drawled as he met her, his eyes kind, his smile sincere. If he'd felt any awkwardness about the situation last year, he'd been man enough not to show it, and over the months her humiliation had dissipated. He'd even invited her over to Thanksgiving again this year, but she'd worked the holiday instead, preferring to avoid any new, embarrassing scenes.
“Morning. Hey, Sturgis,” she said to his dog, a black lab who followed him everywhere and wagged his tail at the sight of her. She patted his broad head and he yawned, showing off his long teeth and spotted tongue.
“Joelle brought cookies and cupcakes and God only knows what else.”
“Already sampled; got my sugar rush for the morning.”
His lips twisted beneath his moustache. “If she had her way, everyone here would be hopped up for the entire month of December.”
“And twenty pounds heavier.” She made the joke, noticed that his eyes twinkled in that sexy way that always got to her, then made her way back to her desk without veering off to the lunchroom.
She had plenty of work to do and didn't need to think about Dan Grayson.
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Around noon, she drove home and took a crazed Roscoe out for a jog. The walking trails through a nearby park had their paths cleared of snow for the most part, so she walked him into the entrance of the park on Boxer Bluff, then started jogging, urging him to follow on the leash. The air was crisp and cold, burning a little in her lungs as she started breathing harder, but the trail was scenic, winding through the trees on the cliffs high over the river. She hadn't bothered with her iPod or iPhone, and instead of listening to music, heard her own breathing, the slap of her running shoes on the asphalt and the rush of the Grizzly River pouring over the falls for which the town was named. The park was serene, the thick blanket of snow covering the winter grass and clinging to the boughs of the evergreen trees.
She met a few other walkers, bundled in heavy jackets and wool hats and gloves, their breath fogging in the air.
“On your left,” she heard as a tall, athletic runner passed her as if she were standing still, then nearly tangled in Roscoe's leash as the rambunctious pup lunged playfully at him.
“Hey!” the runner said angrily, his pace thrown off.
And merry Christmas to you, too.
Alvarez watched him disappear as snow began to fall again. The dog slowed on mile two, and by the third and final mile, Roscoe's tongue was hanging out and he was panting. “Feel good?” Alvarez asked as they walked back to her town house and she let him inside.
Three miles, come hell or high water, and the dog was good for the day. So tired, he spent the rest of the day in his bed until she returned at night.
As she heated soup in the microwave, she walked through the shower and threw on her clothes. With one eye on the television news, she ate quickly while Jane Doe curled on her lap and the dog eyed her every bite. “Mine,” she reminded him when he belly-swamped across the kitchen linoleum to her and looked up with pitiful dark eyes. “You'll get dinner when I return.”
He thumped his tail but didn't stop staring at her. “I'm not buying it.” After finishing her soup, she placed her dish and spoon in the dishwasher, then, as both her pets settled in for their afternoon naps, she bundled up and headed out again.
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At four o'clock on the nose, Joelle let her assistant handle the front desk and marched into the lunchroom with her red Santa's hat with the well-worn fake white fur. Inside it, Pescoli knew were the names of everyone in the department. “Come in for the drawing!” Joelle yelled. “Secret Santa time!”
“I thought we just did this,” she muttered under her breath to no one in particular. She'd returned to the station only minutes before and now wished her interview of the Bradshaw family had taken longer.
“Come on, come on! You, too, Detective,” Joelle said at the doorway to Pescoli's office.
“This can't be mandatory. Isn't it violating my workplace rights or religious rights in some way?”
“Oh, pooh!” Joelle was having none of it. “Don't be a grinch!” She stood on a little stool in the middle of the lunchroom and seemed oblivious to the fact that other people had serious work to do. Waggling the ridiculous hat, she motioned anyone in the lunchroom closer and the assault wouldn't stop there, Pescoli knew from experience. If someone didn't partake, that employee was hunted down to his or her desk to draw from the hat. If that didn't work, then a name was drawn at random and left in an envelope at the declining employee's work area. It was an unwritten law that everyone, regardless of religious background, partake.
“Santa Claus is nondemoninational!” Joelle had proclaimed one year when Pescoli had played the religion card.
“You mean denominational,” Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, had corrected.
Joelle had winked at him and wrinkled her nose, as if she were being cuteâthe bimbo. “Of course that's what I meant.”
Now, as her iPod played her Christmas carol rotation that seemed to include only Bing Crosby's “White Christmas,” Brenda Lee's “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree” and Burl Ives's “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” the sheriff himself sauntered into the lunchroom; Pescoli rolled her eyes and whispered, “Do something.”
“I will.” To her dismay, Grayson was the first one to draw a name. “Your turn,” he said out of the side of his mouth as he checked the name on his tiny scrap of paper.
Nigel Timmons, the dork from the lab, was up next. His thinning hair was sculpted into a faux hawk, and he'd recently given up glasses for contacts that seemed to bother him and give him a wide-eyed stare. His skin was sallow, his frame slight and he was a genius when it came to anything to do with chemistry or computers. As irritating as he was, the twenty-six-year-old was invaluable to the department and he knew it. Smirking to himselfâwhile once again, Bing was crooning, “I'm dreaming of a ...”âTimmons withdrew a piece of paper from the hat, looked it over and read the name upon it, then, being the goof he was, placed it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Top-secret stuff,” he explained and Alvarez looked pained.
“We're not in sixth grade,” she said.
“Speak for yourself.” Timmons flashed her a grin and started perusing the remainder of the day's baked goods before snagging a cookie that he held in his mouth while he picked over the fudge and cupcakes.
“I think Timmons had graduated from Yale by the sixth grade,” Pescoli whispered and Alvarez's pained expression grew more intense.
“Don't remind me that he's freakin' brilliant, okay?”
Everyone took their turn, then walked back to their desks, and Pescoli, rather than suffer Joelle's ridicule for the second year in a row, plucked a name from the hat.
Anyone but Cort Brewster,
she thought, as she'd had to deal with him last year and their relationship was anything but smooth, as her son, Jeremy, and his daughter, Heidi, couldn't quite break up. Each parent blamed the other for the kids getting into trouble. She opened the scrap of paper, and damn if it didn't have the undersheriff's name on it. “Sorry, it's my own,” she said hastily, returning the label to Joelle's hat before the receptionist could protest. Brenda Lee was rockin' away. Quickly, Pescoli swiped another scrap and this time saw Joelle's name on the paper. God, that was worse, but she was stuck. As it was, Joelle eyed her suspiciously, so she walked quickly back to her desk and wondered what the hell would she get a grandmother who looked like Barbie and was stuck in the sixties. God, that was half a century before.
Pescoli didn't have time for this nonsense. If she were going to fret about Christmas gifts, it damned well better be for her kids or Santana. Good Lord, what was she going to get
him
this year?
“How about nothing?” he'd suggested when she asked him what he wanted for Christmas. “Then after I unwrap the box, you could put it on.”
“Not funny,” she'd said but had to swallow back a smile.
“And you're a liar.” They'd been alone at his cabin and he'd advanced on her, then kissed her and carried her into the bedroom.
That had been a new and heart-racing experience. She'd never been petite and, though not fat, wasn't small. Santana hadn't seemed to notice as he'd hauled her over the threshold and tumbled with her onto the bed, then made love to her as if she were the only woman in the universe.
Now, her blood pumped hot just to think of it.
Which she wouldn't. Not at work. Nor would she examine all her motives for not moving in with him. The invitation had been open for over a year, make that close to two, but she'd resisted, preferring to play it safe. Neither of her previous marriages had been perfect, so she wasn't interested in falling head over heels in love again.
Too late,
her mind told her, but she sat down in her desk chair and turned her attention to her work. Secret Santa be damned; she needed to find out if Martin Zwolski was the most unlucky person on the planet, or if he was a cold-blooded murderer who was about to slip through the cracks.
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The steeple bell was just striking the half hour as Brenda Sutherland hurried across the icy parking lot of the church. So it was eight thirty and Lorraine Mullins, the preacher's wife, had
promised
that it wouldn't run past eight.
Promised.
But then she hadn't counted on Mildred Peeples going on and on about the costs of the new church. Mildred was ninety if she was a day, sharp as a whip and opinionated to the nth. She wasn't about to keep on track with the Bible study meeting about the giving tree they were establishing this year and had preferred to go over, line by line, the “ridiculous” and “outrageous” costs of constructing the new church. “This is the Lord's house,” she'd insisted, “and everyone in town, every single parishioner should give their time, money and labor into its construction. Lorraine?” she'd asked the preacher's wife. “Did you see the estimate for the plumbing? Did you?” Her face had flushed beneath her thick powder and she'd wagged a finger at Dorie Oestergard, wife of the unfortunate contractor assigned to the job. Though it was well known that he'd cut his usual fee by 25 percent for the church, Mildred was certain he'd “padded the bills” and she'd been vocal about it. “Your husband should be ashamed of himself, Dorie. It's highway robbery! Can't he read his own bills?”