Killer Summer

33

Fiona studied herself in the mirror. She was wearing a black tea dress. She wore it well. It wouldn’t be considered sexy or daring, just “right.”

Her cottage had warmed with late-afternoon sun. If she stayed too long indoors, she’d break into a sweat. She gathered up her camera bag and her purse, pulled her only black sweater from a hanger, and deposited everything into the passenger’s seat of her Subaru, then headed next door.

Leslie and Michael Engleton had offered her a ride to the auction, but she’d decided to drive herself and wanted to tell them in person. Their house sat atop a secluded hill overlooking a teardrop-shaped pond. It faced the slopes of the Sun Valley ski mountain to the west.

She heard children playing as she entered the house through the kitchen-a niece and two nephews from Carmel, here for two weeks-and wished she’d thought to bring them presents.

Leslie would not be ready on time. She knew she’d find Michael somewhere close by the children, and there he was, dressed for the auction and on his knees, playing pick-up sticks in the house’s main living room, one of three.

Michael was a handsome man, with a shock of white hair in the black that rode above his left ear like a feather. She loved the way he looked at her, like there was no one else in the room-one of his many gifts.

“Perfect,” he said when he spotted her. “She’ll be down in a minute.”

She wondered if he meant the way she looked or the fact that she’d arrived on time. To his credit, Michael never flirted. But she secretly wished he would try just once.

She explained her decision to drive herself, that it was a job for her. Though disappointed, he didn’t act surprised.

“We’ll see you there, then,” he said. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Maybe by dessert.”

She allowed herself a smile, at Leslie’s expense, and was turning to leave when she remembered to say something to the children. She had looked after them on several previous visits and liked all three very much.

It was only then she paid any attention to the pick-up sticks. She stepped closer to the game, looking straight down at the pile of colorful knitting-needle-length wooden sticks interlocked in a jumbled mess.

Perhaps it was flying with Walt, the bird’s-eye view. Perhaps it was her photographer’s eye. Whatever it was, she saw something in that pile of sticks that ran a spike of adrenaline through her.

She was in her car, speeding out the drive, before she realized she’d been rude. She’d forgotten to say good-bye.