Beautiful Villain

“I remember. You made that special extra-bacon burger over at Cassidy’s.”

“You remember that?”

It feels like a lifetime ago.

“Of course, I remember,” she says with a shrug. “It was the best burger I’ve ever had. After you left, they stopped making them.”

“That’s too bad. It was a good place to work.”

“They’re still open, but just barely,” she tells me. “They’re running on fumes at this point. The tourist industry here just isn’t what it used to be.”

“Well, times change, unfortunately.”

It was one of those crappy things about living in a small town. Sometimes you could do all of the right things and still get screwed over when it came to stuff like business or money or jobs.

I check the garlic bread in the oven and once I’m satisfied that everything looks okay, I turn back to Finley.

“So, aside from missing me terribly,” I wink at her. “How was the rest of your day?”

“It was fine,” she shakes her head. “Nothing special.”

She pauses, though, and looks up at me sharply, as though she just remembered something.

“What is it?” I ask, suddenly tense. If she’s looking like that, then whatever she has to say isn’t good. Not at all.

“Someone came into the library today. I didn’t think about it at first.”

Someone?

Who?

Obviously, someone from my past.

“Ted,” she says carefully. “And it was really weird, Neil. His wife came in, too, and they were really strange about him using the computer. First he wanted to talk about you,” she says.

“Did you tell him I’m here with you?” I tense, knowing that there’s no way she’d betray me, but still feeling the need to ask.

“Not a chance,” she says carefully. I appreciate that she’s not offended by the fact that I’m asking. If anything, she seems too calm about the entire thing. “I just listened. He used the computer and then his wife came in. I pretended to be busy so they both finally left, but…”

“What?”

“Neil, I checked the Internet history on the computer he was using. He was trying to find out information about you. He was reading about the murder.”

Chapter Seven

Finley

He looks scared and betrayed and sad, and I can’t stop myself from moving to him and wrapping my arms around him.

“It’s going to be okay,” I tell him.

“We need to go look at the mill,” he says.

“Now?”

I look at the windows. It’s already getting dark. The sun sets early these days, but I know that he’s right. If that was where everything happened, then it’s a good place to start when it comes to finding any long-forgotten or long-missed clues.

“In the morning,” he says. “I’ll go first thing.”