“See you around, Ms. Spencer.”

She glanced up from her peaches to where Dylan stood holding the door open for Adam. He looked over at her, one corner of his mouth curved up, and then he was gone.

“Are you ready to be rung up?” the big man behind the counter asked. “ ‘Cause if you’re gonna be a while yet, I’ve got some meat to wrap in the back.”

“I’m ready.” She placed the peaches in a produce baggie and walked to the counter.

“Are you the woman with the car alarm?”

Hope set the basket on the counter, next to a display of cigarettes and lighters. “Yes,” she answered warily.

“Ada called me last night when that thing went off,” he said, his big fingers pecking out the keys on the cash register.

“I’m sorry she disturbed you.”

“She nearly choked to death on a chicken bone, you know.”

Apparently Hope was the only one who found that odd.

He checked the price sticker on the Raid, then rang it up. “Are you going to be in town long?”

“Six months.”

“Oh, yeah?” He looked up. “Are you a tree hugger?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” He reached beneath the counter and pulled out a paper sack. “You don’t look like no tree hugger.”

Hope didn’t know if he was complimenting her or not, so she kept quiet.

“I hear you’re staying at the Donnelly place.”

“Yes, I am.”

“What are you going to do out there?”

That was the second time in two days she’d been asked that question. “Spend a relaxing summer.”

“My wife, Melba, was over at Dixie’s getting her hair kinked when Ada called from the Sandman saying you need some available men.”

“To clean the bats out of the house I leased,” she clarified. He subtotaled her purchases and she pulled a twenty from her wallet.

He looked at her closely and must have decided she was harmless, because he shook his head and smiled. “Yeah, that’s what Ada said.” He took her money, then counted out the change to her. “Too bad. I have a nephew working the mine up near Challis, and he sure could use an available woman. ‘Course, you don’t look like the kind of woman who’d be interested in Alvin.”

He’d piqued her curiosity and she asked, “What kind of woman is that?”

“A woman not in her right mind.” The ends of his mustache curled on his cheeks beneath his eyes.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. My name’s Stanley Caldwell. Me and my wife, Melba own this store, and if there’s something you need in the way of a special order, just let me know.”

“I will.” She took the paper sack. “Do you know where I can get a cappuccino?”

“Yep. Sun Valley.”

She’d never wanted a cappuccino bad enough to drive an hour for it. She thanked him anyway and left the market. Her Porsche was parked by the front doors and she dropped the sack on the passenger seat. As she pulled from the parking lot, she slipped a CD in the player, pumped up the volume, and sang along with Sheryl Crow. “Run baby run baby run,” she sang as she drove down the main street of Gospel and continued around the lake to Timberline Road. It was just after eight when she pulled into the driveway of the house she’d leased. It looked just as bad as it had the day before.

She wasn’t about to step foot inside until it was bat-free. Instead, she walked across the road and knocked on her neighbor’s door. A woman with red, curly hair and freckles, and wearing a blue chintz robe, answered. Hope introduced herself through the screen.

“Dylan said you might be coming by.” She held the door open and Hope entered a living room decorated with a profusion of tole painting. It was everywhere, on pieces of driftwood, old saw blades, and metal milk jugs. “I’m Shelly Aberdeen.” She wore big bunny slippers and could not have stood much over five feet.

“Did Sheriff Taber mention my problem with bats?”

“Yeah, he did. I was just about to wake up the boys. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll tell them what you need.”

She disappeared down a hall and Hope sat in a swivel chair next to the stone fireplace. From the rear of the house she heard a door open.

“Are you the one driving a Porsche?” Shelly called out.

“Yes.”

Silence and then, “Do you know Pamela Anderson or Carmen Electra?”

“Ahh, no.”

More silence and then Shelly reappeared. “Well, that’s a real disappointment to the boys, but they’ll help you out anyway.”

Hope rose. “How much do they usually make an hour? I don’t even know what the minimum wage is anymore.”

“Just pay them what you think is fair, then come back by around noon and I’ll make you lunch.”

Hope didn’t know what to think of the offer, other than it made her uncomfortable.

“I’ll make crab-stuffed pitas and we’ll get to know each other.”

That was the part that made Hope uncomfortable. Shelly would naturally ask what Hope did for a living, and Hope didn’t talk about it with people she didn’t know. She didn’t want to talk about her personal life, either. Yet deep in a buried part of her soul, she wanted it so much she could feel it like a bubble working to get free. And that scared her. “I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,” she said.

“No trouble. Unless you say no and hurt my feelings.”

Hope looked into Shelly’s big brown eyes, and what could she say except, “Okay, I’ll be here.”


The Aberdeen twins, Andrew and Thomas, were tall and blond, and, except for the color of their eyes and the slight difference in the shape of their foreheads, looked exactly alike. A wad of tobacco bulged out their bottom lips in identical spots, and they both stood with their left shoulders higher than the right. They were quiet and well mannered and looked at each other first before they answered a question.

Hope had them search the house for bats while she sat on her front porch. She heard thumping and yelling from the second floor, and about forty minutes later, Thomas came out with the news that they’d found five bats altogether. Two in one bedroom and three in the attic. He spit a stream of tobacco into a Coke can he held in his hand and assured her the bats were no longer a problem. She didn’t ask how. She didn’t care to know.

Once the problem of the bats was solved, she put the boys to work cleaning and vacuuming the upstairs while she started in the kitchen. She cleaned the stove, tossed out the dead mouse, then washed out the oven and refrigerator. The pantry was empty except for a layer of dust, and she cleaned the dishes and pots and pans with soap she found beneath the sink. The windows could wait for another day.

By eleven-thirty, the first floor of the house was close to finished. There was a dark brown stain on the hardwood floor in front of the hearth, and no amount of scrubbing got it up. At noon, she gave the twins the task of taking down the wall of antlers and storing them in a shed out back. Then she headed across the street.

Shelly Aberdeen saw her coming and opened the front door before she had a chance to knock. “Let’s eat before the twins decide to come home for lunch. They eat like every meal is their last.”

Shelly had dressed for the day in a Garth Brooks T-shirt, tight Wranglers with a belt buckle the size of a saucer, and snakeskin boots. Hope had been in town only a day, but she’d already noticed that snakeskin was a fashion must-have in Gospel.

“How are the boys working out?” Shelly asked over her shoulder as Hope followed her into a small dining room off the kitchen.

“They’re doing a good job. They’re very polite and didn’t even complain when I asked them to clean up the bat droppings.”

“Shoot, why would they complain about that? Those two have been tossing cow patties at each other since they could walk. Last summer they worked slaughtering cows over at Wilson Packing.” She poured Hope a glass of iced tea. “I’m glad to hear they’re minding themselves. They’re going to be eighteen in about a week and think they know it all.” She handed the glass to Hope. “How’s the inside of the house look?”

Hope took a drink and let the cool tea wash the dust from her throat. “Better than the outside. Lots of cobwebs and there was a dead mouse in the oven. The good news is that the electricity and the plumbing work.”

“They should,” Shelly said as she set two plates loaded with pita sandwiches on the table covered in a white-and-blue checked cloth. “The realtor who bought the place this past fall had the whole place plumbed and wired. Couldn’t get the bloodstain up, though.”

“Bloodstain?”

“Hiram Donnelly killed himself with his hunting rifle right in front of the fireplace. Blood went everywhere. You might have noticed the stain on the floor.”

Yes, she’d noticed that stain, but she’d assumed someone had skinned some unfortunate animal in the front room. The fact that it was a human bloodstain was kind of freaky. “Why’d he kill himself?”

Shelly shrugged as she sat across from Hope. “He was caught embezzling money from the county to pay for kinky sex.”

“Was he a judge?”

“No, he was our sheriff.”

Hope placed her napkin on her lap, then reached for her pita. Her curiosity piqued more than she wanted her neighbor to know, she asked as if she were inquiring about the weather, “How kinky?”

“Bondage and domination, mostly, but he was into a lot of other weird stuff, too. A year after his wife died, he started getting hooked up with women through the Internet. I think it started out innocent enough. Just a lonely guy looking for some female company. But toward the end, he got real kinky and didn’t care if the women were single or married, their age, or how much it cost him. He was out of control and got careless.”

Hope bit into her pita and tried to recall if she’d read anything about a sheriff embezzling money to pay for his sexual addiction. She didn’t think so, because if she had, she would have remembered. “When did all this happen?”