CHAPTER 2

I locked the Holly’s Sweets box in my car and then stopped by Town Hall to see how the Valentine’s Day dance decorations were going. My next-door neighbor, Julia Foster, was on the decorating committee—heaven help the other members—and last night she’d worried aloud that their little crew hanging streamers and hearts and making tissue-paper flowers was grossly inadequate to the task. When I’d told her not to worry, that it was no big deal if they didn’t finish, she’d given me one of her withering looks—the one that could stop a charging elephant.

When I opened the door to the boardroom, where the dance was to be held, I was surprised to find only Julia was inside. No hustle, no bustle. Just Julia making tissue-paper roses. She looked up and smiled as I strode to her table. At least she was in a good mood.

The floor had been cleared of the usual conference tables and chairs, leaving a larger dance floor than I’d imagined possible. Paper hearts floated on ribbons dangling from the ceiling, white string lights hung like beaded curtains in the windows, and red, pink, and white streamers ran from above the windows on one side of the room to the crown molding on the other. When I told Julia the decorations were beautiful, I meant it.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“They’ll be here later,” she said. “I came a little early. Though Brigit Gundersen is terribly late. She promised to be here by eight thirty.”

I sat down across from her. “Brigit Gundersen? What a small world.”

“It’s a small town.” She coiled green florist tape around the fake stem of her rose and set it on a pile of red tissue roses. “What do you mean?”

“I just ran into her. She was on Main Street, tacking up flyers calling her husband a cheater.” I told Julia about Wayne’s reaction and Officer Turner taking Brigit home. “I’m worried about her. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Stop with your bad feelings. Your bad feelings give me bad feelings.”

“I think Brigit is torn between hating Wayne and loving him. She was desperate enough to embarrass herself and him in public.”

Julia picked up a sheet of pink tissue. “That’s marriage for you.”

“That’s awfully cynical.”

“It’s not all roses. So to speak.”

“This was as far from roses as you can get. It was . . . sinister.”

Julia shooed me. “Oh, stop. You and your mystery novels. From what you’ve told me, it was two married people angry with each other. Wayne gets back at Brigit by cheating on her, and Brigit retaliates by humiliating him. That’s the Gundersens for you.”

“What kind of marriage is that?”

“A typical one.”

“Julia Foster, I know you, and you do not believe that.”

“Married people argue, and marriage can be lonelier than single people think.”

I knew that tone. Let me tell you what marriage is really about. She was thinking of her own marriage to a man who had cheated on her—with a woman and with money. He’d chosen both over her. And now, in her early sixties, she was alone. She had two children, but they lived in Montana and Ohio, and they rarely visited her. In the nine months I’d lived in Juniper Grove, I had never met them.

“Of course married people argue, Julia. They argue, they fight, they don’t speak to each other for hours or even days. But not every husband cheats, and not every wife goes on a vengeful rampage.”

She stopped fiddling with the tissue and glanced up at me. “I suppose Chief Gilroy isn’t the cheating kind.”

“He’s a good man. There are good men.”

“Your ex-fiancé wasn’t good. He was rotten to the core.”

Had we reversed roles? Julia had begged me—almost from the day I moved to Juniper Grove—to finally forget that man. He’d proposed to me more than twelve years ago and then deserted me before our wedding. I needed to get on with my life, she’d said, preferably with a man like James Gilroy. Tall, blue-eyed, kind, and brave. The cowboy-boot-wearing chief of police. I had thought he was arrogant, and I was so wrong. We had kissed the day after Thanksgiving as snowflakes swirled about us. The Kiss in the Snow. Now she was telling me to tone down my expectations?

“This is not you, Julia. What’s wrong?”

“For one thing, it sounds like Brigit isn’t going to show up and help out. I shouldn’t have volunteered to decorate. People take advantage of volunteers, especially if they’re older. They think because you’re retired you have endless time to cater to others. So here I am, by myself, working my fingers to the bone.”

“That’s not all of it, I can tell. What else?”

Although she hadn’t finished folding her pink rose, she abandoned it and grabbed a fresh sheet of white tissue. “I hate Valentine’s Day.”

“Really?”

“Did you like it, Rachel? Before you met the chief, I mean.”

“No, I hated it too.”

“Sitting by the door, hoping for a card in the mail.”

“Hoping for a bouquet you know isn’t coming, and watching everyone else get one.”

“It’s a reminder that you’re on the outside looking in.”

“Then why volunteer for the decorating committee?”

Julia smiled wanly. “I thought it would help.”

“Better than eating chocolate candy in front of the TV?”

“That was the idea.”

“It’s not a bad idea. But you’re still coming, aren’t you? The dance wouldn’t be the same without you. The whole town will be here.”

“I’ve been tagged to serve punch, so I have to show up.” She tossed the white tissue aside. “Serving punch like an old lady. I don’t feel old, Rachel. And trust me, neither will you in twenty years. Everyone thinks my life is over, but I think it’s just getting started.”

“I don’t think your life is over.” I looked her square in the eyes. She knew I meant what I said. “And I know it’s hard to be alone.”

“Maybe I will get that box of chocolates.”

“Or a box of raspberry scones from Holly’s Sweets.”

“Now you’re talking. Scones beat a box of stale chocolates any day.”

Julia returned to crafting a white rose from the tissue paper—smiling, I noticed with relief. You couldn’t keep my neighbor down for long. At heart she was an optimist—and she had a spine of steel.

“The chief is still taking you to the dance, I hope,” she said.

“That’s the plan. Turner watches the station while Gilroy and Underhill go to the dance.”

“Officer Underhill?” Julia sounded dubious. “Who could he be going with?”

“I have no idea,” I said with a laugh. “I know he’s dated since I met him, but he never dates the same woman twice, and he never talks about anyone special. I’m dying to see who he’s taking.”

“Whoever it is, he’ll talk her ear off, and she’ll think twice about a second date.”

We both laughed. How well we knew the man. And how fond I’d grown of Juniper Grove’s number two officer. After Gilroy was driven off the road by a lunatic driver last December, Underhill had stepped up to the plate in every way—mounting the hunt for his chief, manning the station by himself, watching over Gilroy in the hospital. He was another good man. Chatty, but good.

“I wonder if the Gundersens will show up,” I said.

“Do you want them to?” Julia said.

“Maybe not. But I’m worried about Brigit. I think I saw the veins on Wayne’s neck throb when he caught her with the flyers.”

“He’ll cool off.”

“I’ve got an idea.” I pressed my palms to the table and stood. “I’ll take her a couple donuts and check up on her. Get her off my mind.”

“That’s a lovely idea. She’ll appreciate that.”

Julia wrote down the Gundersens’ address, handed me the scrap of paper, and shooed me again. “Now go. Let me get more of these flowers done so I can get out of here before dinnertime.”

After making a quick stop for donuts at Holly’s Sweets, I drove east to 811 Songbird Lane. When I pulled in front of the Gundersen house, I had to pick my jaw off the car floor. The place was Valentine Central—decorated as though Julia and the dance committee had paid a visit: a giant red heart fastened to the front gate of the crisp white fence, smaller hearts clothes-pinned to a ribbon strung above the porch, wooden hearts on what looked like metal garden stakes stuck randomly around the front and side yards.

Brigit had gone all out. It must have been Brigit, I thought. No man would decorate his house like this. Had she been planning a special day with Wayne before she’d learned of his infidelity? Or did she do this every year?

I pushed through the front gate and headed up the walk to the porch. When I raised my hand to knock on the door, I noticed it was open a sliver—no doubt the result of Brigit’s intoxicated state. Underhill must have dropped her off at her gate rather than walked her to the door. “Brigit?” I called. I knocked loudly. The door creaked open another inch.

“Brigit?” After a moment’s hesitation, and worried that she had passed out and hurt herself on the way down, I pushed open the door and called her again.

Nothing. I stepped inside. “Brigit, it’s me, Rachel Stowe. Please answer. Your front door was open.”

I shut the door behind me, set the donut box on an end table, and took another few steps inside the house. Looking ahead, past the living room and into the open kitchen, I saw a pair of red high-heeled shoes strewn carelessly across the tile floor.

“Brigit?” Had she fallen? I dashed forward.

Two strides into the kitchen, I saw her face down on the floor, a patch of red the size of a fist in her blonde hair.

I stepped carefully to her, bent low, and touched my fingers to her neck. She was gone.

Pulling my phone from my coat pocket, I dialed the police station. Underhill answered. He told me the obvious—don’t touch anything—and asked me to wait for him and Gilroy.

Sickened at the sight of Brigit’s body, I walked back to where the living room met the kitchen. I’d seen bodies before, but this was brutal. What happened here? Think. Look. There was no blood on the counters, so she hadn’t tripped and hit her head. I committed every detail to memory: no visible weapon, no visible defense wounds on Brigit’s hands, nothing unusually out of place except for the red shoes.

To my right was a plate with half-eaten toast on the kitchen table. Across the kitchen, a half-full carafe of coffee next to the coffeemaker. To my left, a torn Valentine on the counter next to the refrigerator. Someone had ripped the card in half and then, in setting the halves down, joined them together again. Was the tearing an impulsive act and the joining an act of regret?

I sidestepped to the counter. Using my phone, I lifted the top flap on the torn bottom half of the card and peeked at the signature: “All my love forever, Wayne.”

Turning back, I studied every inch of the living room. It was weirdly spotless, like a show home. Aside from two magazines on the coffee table, the only other objects in the room were two couches in an L-shaped layout and two end tables, each topped with a lamp. Even the throw pillows on the couches were set neatly into the corners, as if Brigit had been expecting someone she was eager to impress. It didn’t look lived in—or enjoyed.

I heard footsteps clomp up the porch steps and shot a look out the living-room window. Gilroy and Underhill were at the door. Aware that I’d already had my hands all over the doorknob, I stood back and let Gilroy enter.

“Rachel?” he said, a frown creasing his face. “You all right?”

“I’m fine. Brigit is in the kitchen.”

As he moved for the kitchen, Underhill shut the door with a gloved hand. “Miss Stowe,” he said, “you do have a talent for finding bodies.”