“We all have to start somewhere,” Sam said, looking uncomfortable. He glanced at his fiancée, Zoe, and then at Annabel.
Zoe, a librarian, cleared her throat, adjusted her glasses and narrowed her eyes at Sam. It confirmed what Annabel suspected. The entire family knew she was given the worst, most boring assignments in the GGPD.
That made it sting worse and feel as if they were in cahoots against her, even though Ethan, Lizzie, Chris and Zoe had nothing to do with her work duties.
Annabel’s tactics to get better assignments were to act with professionalism and grace regardless of the circumstances. She had to rise above, as she had done all her life. Rise above her father’s terrible legacy. Rise above her foster parents’ crushingly low expectations of her. Rise above the police department’s belief she couldn’t handle the tough assignments. “Did you handle a lot of cases that involved missing cats and handing out tickets along Main Street?” she asked sweetly.
Chris came in from the porch. “Annabel, I thought I heard your voice.” He hugged his sister and then looked at her. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing of note,” she said. Before she could tell him anything about what a rotten day it had been, Lizzie broke in.
“It’s just us tonight. Ridge and Darcy couldn’t make it. Darcy’s on shift at the hospital, and Ridge is working,” Lizzie said.
Ridge, Annabel’s younger brother, worked in search and rescue, and his high school love, Darcy, was an emergency room doctor at Blackthorn County Hospital. Though they’d parted ways after high school, they’d recently reunited, and Annabel had never seen Ridge so happy.
“I thought Trevor was coming by,” Sam said.
“Something came up at work, apparently,” Lizzie said.
“Another dead body,” Chris said, more a question than a statement.
Lizzie shivered. “He didn’t say. He spoke to Ethan when he called. Ethan would be here, but he had a couple of heifers birthing tonight and he’s with them in the barn.”
Trevor and his FBI team were working with the Granite Gulch Police Department, but the FBI was keeping some details of the Alphabet Killer cases to themselves. The FBI had access to the data in the Alphabet Killer case: the complete autopsies, the ballistics reports and detailed crime scene data, analyzed at their state-of-the-art labs.
Annabel wondered how much Trevor shared with Sam. Some details of the case had been made public knowledge, some had been distributed to the members of the GGPD assigned to the case and some were a matter of speculation.
They sat at the table, and after exchanging pleasantries, the conversation turned to Matthew Colton. Since Matthew had first made a deal with Sam to reveal the location of their mother’s body, he had been the focus of discussions often.
Though speaking of him wasn’t the most pleasant topic, Matthew Colton was dying, and he’d engaged them in a game of clues, offering each of his children one word to figure out where their mother had been buried. They were permitted to visit, one Colton per month, on the last Sunday of the month, to receive their clue.
Matthew Colton was serving six consecutive life sentences, and knowing his life would end in prison, perhaps he felt doing something for his children would earn his soul some peace. Matthew did nothing selflessly.
Annabel had considered Matthew was screwing with them, baiting them into visiting him in prison and pretending he was willing to tell them where their mother was buried. Her brothers believed Matthew was genuine in this instance, perhaps attempting one final act to make some amends to his children for what he had done to their family. Nothing would grant him absolution, but at least knowing their mother’s final resting place would provide them closure. They could give Saralee a proper burial and service, which Annabel thought her mother would have liked.
Annabel anticipated Matthew Colton was ultimately trying to manipulate them. No way did visits from his children mean anything to him. If he cared about his children, he wouldn’t have killed their mother and destroyed their family.
“Texas, hill and B,” Zoe said. As a librarian, she had been conducting research on the Colton family and those words, trying to establish connections that the siblings, being too close to the case, hadn’t made on their own.
“Annabel, you’re planning to visit Matthew, aren’t you?” Sam asked.
Why was he on her case? She would go, of course. She hadn’t seen her father in over twenty years, and looking at his murderous face, the face that had haunted her dreams for years, was the last thing she wanted to do. But her siblings needed answers, and even though Annabel had her doubts about Matthew telling the truth, she wasn’t selfish enough to put her hatred of her father above her brothers. “I will go see him. I’ve been combing the letters, and he might give something away during our conversation. Hopefully, I can make a connection to what Regina wrote in her letters,” Annabel said. “I’d like to spare Chris and Trevor the punishment of seeing him.”
Chris patted her hand encouragingly, and Lizzie and Zoe smiled sympathetically. Sam just stared at her.
“Do you want one of us to go with you? I could wait in the car,” Sam said.
He was being supportive, but she couldn’t help feel he was questioning her strength. “I can do it.”
“Alone?”
“I don’t know if he’d be willing to speak to me if I brought someone else,” Annabel said. “The arrangement you made with him was pretty specific, and I’m sure he’d love for one of us to make a mistake so he can renege on the deal partway through.”
As they discussed techniques of dragging more information from their father, Annabel’s thoughts switched to Regina Willard and then to Jesse Willard.
Jesse had to have some connection to his sister, Matthew Colton’s most loyal fan. Having read the letters Regina had sent Matthew, Annabel had no doubt Regina was unhinged. But Jesse had seemed normal. Could Annabel have been wrong about that? Was Jesse just better at hiding his crazy? Annabel’s police instincts were usually reliable. She had dealt with enough nutcases and criminals to intuit when someone was off their rocker.
“Earth to Annabel,” Zoe said softly.
“What?” Annabel asked, straightening. “Sorry, I was thinking about the case.”
“I asked if you’ve been seeing anyone,” Sam said.
Annabel hated that question, because the answer everyone wanted was she was in a stable relationship. She dated, but it never turned into anything serious. “I’ve been busy with work and the letters from Matthew,” Annabel said. Sam, Ethan and Ridge had found love, and she hoped Chris was next, but a great romance wasn’t in the cards for her. She didn’t have time. Past relationships ended because she couldn’t make a connection with someone. Boyfriends were wary of her, suspecting something dark and twisted slept inside her, because she was the daughter of Granite Gulch’s most infamous serial killer.
Chris had found love once, but it had ended tragically. He had lost his wife, and he hadn’t been able to move on yet. The house he had built for Laura remained empty. He couldn’t move into it and, instead, lived in an apartment over Double G Cakes and Pies. They made the best desserts in town, and Chris was lucky he wasn’t a hundred pounds overweight. His PI job kept him hopping. Every time Annabel visited her brother, she couldn’t resist stopping into the Double G for a dessert and to visit with her good friend Mia.
Even so, thinking about the woman Chris had lost made Annabel sad. Chris could have been happy with a family of his own, but instead