Page 4 of Fatal Witness

Keith continued like she hadn’t spoken. “You know how you’re always getting lost. And what if you have car trouble on the road in that little RAV4?”

“I have GPS—I won’t get lost.” If she did, unlike him, she had no problems stopping and getting directions. “And if you’re worried about my SUV, let me drive your Navigator. That way I can take more of my porcelain pieces, you won’t have to worry about me breaking down, and Lizi will be a whole lot more comfortable in the bigger cage.”

Amusement lit his eyes, and his mouth twitched. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”

She gave him a grin for an answer.

He sighed. “Seeing that it’s for Lizi’s comfort, I’ll get it serviced today and fill it up with gas.”

“Thank you.” While Lizi technically belonged to Keith, the Puli had bonded with Dani and would be miserable if she was left behind. Dani hugged him. “You’re the best. I know you worry about me, but I’ll be fine.”

“You two will be back by Monday, right?”

She shot a loaded glare at him.

“Okay ... backing off.” He turned and walked to the door. “I’ll help you load your stuff when I get back.”

“I’ll do it—I know how I want to arrange it.” His way of loading a vehicle made her shudder.

“All right, Miss Persnickety.”

He shut the door behind him, and Dani breathed easier. “Thank you, Lord.”

She’d wanted to ask Keith about driving the Navigator because the university was allowing her to offer her work for sale at the workshops. He’d been so negative about the trip that she hadn’t found the right timing and had resigned herself to only taking what she could fit in her smaller SUV.

Now she’d better finish packing and add the other pieces from her showroom that she wanted to take. She laid the mail on her desk, but instead of packing, Dani removed the magazine from the cellophane and flipped to the section featuring her work.

Front and center was a photo of her looking dead-on at the camera. Her heart stuttered, and she clenched her jaw. It was the very photo the journalist had promised he wouldn’t use. If she’d looked at the article while Keith was with her...

But she hadn’t, and Dani forced her jaw to relax. There wasn’t much danger of him seeing it now, not if she took the magazine with her—it wasn’t like he’d go out and buy a copy. She scanned the article.

“Where didyou get your love for the clay? A relative, maybe?”

The question stopped her just like it had six months ago when the journalist posed it. She didn’t remember her answer and read her response.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think the first time I felt theclay under my hands, I was hooked. Clay gets inyour blood, you know.”

That was true, but the journalist’s question had started herthinking about her family again. It hadn’t been long afterward that the faces started popping into her head.

She scanned the rest of the article, pleased at how he’d captured both in pictures and words her steps in painting on the ceramic canvas. If only he hadn’t included her photo. It was the only image of her anywhere—out of respect for Keith, she hadn’t posted one even on her website.

A shiver ran through her. She didn’t share Keith’s paranoia, and she should be excited to see her photo in an international magazine. The unease running through her had to be from years of Keith’s warnings.

3

Wednesday morning, Mae Richmond bent over her potter’s wheel, putting pressure to the wet clay until it became smooth under her hands. Once the porcelain was centered, she opened it up and pressed her fingers on the bottom of the spinning pot, compressing the clay.

At seventy-eight, she was proud of the fact that she could still throw the large pitchers, but handling more than five pounds of clay was mostly a thing of the past. That didn’t seem to matter to the customers who came to her shop in Russell County, Tennessee, many of them from Pearl Springs, the small town just down the mountain from her home on Eagle Ridge.

An hour later, Mae trimmed the bottom of the fourth pitcher she’d thrown and lifted it from the wheel. She set it on the table beside the others. Once the clay dried to leather hard, she would attach the handles.

A text message chimed. Mae dried her hands and pulled her iPhone from her pocket. Mail was here already? The gizmo she’d installed on the lid of her mailbox had saved her a lot of steps by alerting her when the rural carrier delivered her mail.

She covered the pitchers with plastic so they would dry evenly and walked the quarter mile down the hill to her mailbox, enjoyingthe perfect weather of the late April day—not too hot and not too cold. In the distance, the Cumberland Plateau Mountains in East Tennessee that rose above Eagle Ridge almost took her breath.

The carrier was waiting for her in his small SUV when she reached the box. “Mornin’, Randy. Is there something I need to sign for?”

“No.” The fiftysomething man smiled. “I waited around because I haven’t seen you in a day or two.”

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