Page 82 of Snow Creek

“How could she get away with such a ruse?”

“Easier than you think. Tyra knew her friend had no internet. No way of knowing there was nothing on the news. Her phone, her lifeline, was gone.”

Mindy looks up from her drink.

“That’s twisted, Megan.”

“As Sheriff says, ‘like a soft-serve cone’.”

I look down at my phone, and I hear his voice.

“Hey, Detective,” Dan says as he joins us.

“Hey,” I say. “This is my coworker, Mindy Newsom.”

He smiles. “We’ve met.”

“Yes,” she replies. “At the shop.”

“Didn’t know you worked there too, Megan.”

“She’s also a crime scene tech. And a damned good one.”

“If I were that good,” Mindy says as Dan folds his lean frame into the space next to me, “I’d be somewhere else digging up bodies instead of planting flowers.”

Dan’s wearing a lightweight quilted jacket over a T-shirt that stretches tightly across his chest. He smells a little like a campfire, but not in a bad way. He orders a local distillery’s Scotch.

I should have ordered one too. I drink wine at home only because it goes good with fish sticks or whatever I move from the freezer to the oven when I sit at my table.

Listening to my life unspool on the tapes.

We stay clear of the Wheaton and Burbank investigations and focus our conversation on other things.

Pleasant things. His farm. His woodcarving. Dan looks at me, expecting me to dive into my life. Mindy catches the look and throws me a lifeline and talks up her family and her so far less than successful quest to develop a hydrangea hybrid that will thrive in sunny spaces.

She doesn’t know my story. Not like Sheriff.

And certainly not what I disclosed to Dr. Albright.

“What about you, Detective?” Dan asks.

I shift in my chair. “Megan, please.”

“Okay. What’s your story?”

That question invites me to lie and I don’t want to lie anymore. And yet I do.

“Parents died in a car crash when I was a kid. No other family to take us in.”

He looks at me with eyes full of kindness.

“I’m sorry.”

I acknowledge his concern with a slight nod. I hate that I’ve lived a life of covering my tracks.

“Us?” he asks. “Do you have siblings?”

“A brother. He’s stationed overseas.”

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