Scarlet Nights (Edilean 3)

When Mr. Lang said nothing, Sara spoke. “I don’t mean to butt in, but my guess is that the dogs were Greg’s way of punishing you because you told the sheriff, didn’t you?”

Lang looked down at his hands.

Mike fell back against the couch, his face a study in exasperation. “Are you saying there’s a sheriff in this one-horse town? And you told him about Anders’s thievery?”

Lang shrugged, but he didn’t look up.

Mike turned to Sara. “Why wasn’t I told about a police force in this little town? I figured this place was in Williamsburg’s jurisdiction.”

“It is, more or less, and there’s the county sheriff,” Sara said, “but we have our own, sort of, caretakers. They don’t get paid, so outsiders don’t consider them real.”

Mike waited but neither Lang nor Sara said anything else. “Might I be told who handles this ‘sort of’ police force?”

Sara smiled. “Guess.”

“Sara, I don’t—” He sighed. “My cousins, the Fraziers.”

“You are such a clever man!”

Mike ran his hand over his face, then looked at Lang. “You told the … the honorary sheriff that Anders was sleeping with half the women in the county, mostly married women, and he steals information from them. Was he blackmailing them too?”

Again, Lang shrugged. “I don’t know. Stealing isn’t right.”

“Neither is spying on people,” Mike snapped, then calmed. “I guess the sheriff talked to Anders and later your dogs were …”

“Poisoned,” Mr. Lang said.

“But that wasn’t the end of it,” Mike said, “because afterward you

put up traps all over this place. If you’d put them up beforehand, your dogs wouldn’t have died.”

Mr. Lang nodded, then said quietly, “I think he did it on purpose.”

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“I think Anders wanted me to see him, wanted me to go to a Frazier. He wanted to kill my dogs.” There was a catch in the old man’s throat.

“That would mean that the real target was you,” Mike said. “You’re well known for greeting guests with a shotgun, so is there anything around here that Anders wants?”

Again, there was that flicker in the old man’s eyes.

“What are you hiding?” Mike asked quickly, but Lang said nothing.

“Any Civil War silver?” Sara asked into the silence. “More of this china?”

“No,” Lang said. “It’s not mine any way. Belongs to …” He looked at Mike, his eyes full of love. “Prudie’s grandson.”

“All this makes you even more of a target,” Sara said softly to Mike, with fear in her voice. “If what Greg wants is here, when he finds out you own this place, he’ll … he’ll …”

“Good!” Mike said. He reached into his shirt pocket, withdrew a photo, and handed it to Lang. It was the picture of Mitzi Vandlo, taken when she was a teenager, but it had been age progressed. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

Lang barely glanced at it. “No.”

“Look at it again.”

Reluctantly, Lang took the picture, studied it, then gave it back to Mike. “No.”

“You’re sure?”