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  “Hey, darlin’.” Gwen sashayed through the kitchen doors, an apron around her waist, white V-neck T-shirt revealing her curves, her red hair carelessly curly. “How’s my daredevil PI? Any Friday specials? Discounts on subpoenas or for tailing cheating husbands?” Not that she would need my services. Gwen wasn’t married. She had dumped her last philandering husband years ago.

  “I actually delivered a restraining order this morning,” I said. “On a runner.”

  “What’s a runner?”

  “A guy who has been on the move, changing address after address so he won’t get caught.”

  “Aha. Inside lingo. I like that. Makes me feel like one of the team.” Gwen wanted me to quit my job and return to being a therapist, but I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Dealing with emotionally troubled teens at the Bay Area Rehabilitation Clinic, also known as BARC, was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my years. The suicide of my last patient had nearly sent me over the edge. My current employment was stimulating and basically safe, seeing as most of my duties involved serving papers or following errant spouses from a distance.

  Gwen wiped perspiration off her upper lip. “Peggy, pour me a water please.”

  Peggy moved away to handle the order.

  Gwen motioned in her direction. “That Peggy is as edgy as a hen in a rooster’s bedroom.” My friend’s southernisms tickled me. She’d moved to Tahoe from North Carolina years ago, but the accent and jargon had remained. “I don’t think that girl will last a month, you ask me.”

  “She seems good with the customers,” I said. “In nothing flat, she put that sunburned guy at the end of the bar in his place.”

  “Good. That dude drives me to drink.”

  Gwen lifted the hatch and moved behind the bar. As the plank slammed into place, the television volume grew in pitch.

  “Turn it down, bozo.” Gwen glared at a stocky man who had taken it upon himself to tweak the sound.

  He pointed to his ears. “I can’t hear.”

  “Get a hearing aid.”

  I took a sip of my wine.

  Gwen jabbed her thumb in the direction of the TV. “Well, look who’s gone prime time.”

  I peered at the television screen. KINC Evening News was on. Gloria Morning, the reporter who had covered Vikki’s murder for the Tahoe Daily Tribune, had switched careers. She was now a co-anchor on the year-old news station.

  “Do you think KINC will make a go of it?” Gwen said.

  “Who knows?”

  Reno was the strongest market in the surrounding area, boasting affiliates for NBC, ABC, and CBS. KINC, which was located in the town of Incline Village at the north end of the lake, had been making a play to become the main news source in the Lake Tahoe area. Its popularity had risen twenty percent since hiring Gloria. With a pixie face, Cupid’s bow mouth, and big doe eyes, Gloria was charming but not in the least intimidating. A winning combination.

  “She reminds me of a young Katie Couric,” Gwen said.

  “Funny you’d say that. In time, she hopes to move to a major network.”

  After Vikki’s murder was solved, Gloria had begged me for an exclusive interview. I’d agreed. To my surprise, she had shown great sensitivity with her questions. Since then, we had become friends and met for coffee the first Friday of every month. Due to her busy schedule, I had yet to introduce Gloria to the Tavern, and more importantly, to Gwen.

  “Did you hear about this, Aspen?” Gwen pointed at the television. A picture of Dr. Fisher had come into view.

  “Nick informed me. I’m so upset. She was my doctor.”

  “It’s harrowing. And here I thought Tahoe was once again serenity personified.”

  On the television, Gloria said, “Many of you know I had the opportunity to interview this popular doctor. The interview aired last night. Here’s a snippet of what she shared with me.”

  Dr. Fisher’s cream-colored office appeared on the screen with Gloria perched on the patient’s table in a dressing gown. Dr. Fisher, who had turned fifty in February, though she barely looked forty, held a file in her hand. Her white jacket looked crisp and fresh. Her understated diamond necklace sparkled. “The most important thing when conferring with your gynecologist is to ask as many questions as you can.”

  Seeing her alive made every ounce of me ache. I swallowed hard.

  “Remember, you are responsible for your body.” She smiled warmly into the camera. “I have an exhaustive checklist that I go over every time I meet with a patient.”

  She wasn’t kidding. I had answered the questions more than once.

  Like a blip on a radar screen, the interview vanished and Gloria, looking appropriately somber, reappeared on the KINC newsroom set. “Sources from the Placer County Sheriff’s Office reveal that the doctor’s ex-husband, Dr. Edward Bogart, a pediatric surgeon in Reno, is a person of interest.”

  I said, “Who leaked that?”

  “Dr. Fisher’s office assistant, I’ll bet.” Candace drew next to me and sipped her soda.

  Shoot. She had been listening to the news report. The music on the jukebox hadn’t distracted her. How I wanted to protect her from the real world. She’d experienced enough suffering in her young lifetime.

  “Sweetie, this isn’t something you should be concerned about.”

  Candace gave me a look that only teenagers could manufacture, head cocked, mouth twisted with mock contempt. “Dr. Fisher was really cool.”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “You know, murder is always about money or revenge.”

  “Okay, that’s it,” I said. “No more crime shows for you. I don’t care how attractive the leading actor is.”

  “C’mon.”

  I sliced the air with my hand, ending the argument.

  “What does Nick think?” Gwen asked.

  I kept mum.

  “Don’t try to pry anything out of her. She won’t say a word,” Candace said to Gwen. “Hey, what if one of the patients got a bad prognosis and lashed out?”

  “Or didn’t like the doctor’s bedside manner?” Gwen said, leaning forward on her elbows, caught up in Candace’s ardor for villainy.

  “Or the killer was Gloria Morning?” Candace chimed.

  “Gloria wasn’t a real patient,” I said.

  “You don’t know that,” Gwen countered. “And are you excluding her because she’s a friend, because—ahem—you’ve thought friends were guilty before.”

  I moaned. Gwen was referring to when I’d suspected her of killing Vikki. Long story, another lifetime. Luckily, she had forgiven me my idiocy. I downed a swallow of wine. “No way would Gloria, or anybody I know for that matter, do something as horrible as—” I stopped short. Tears surfaced. I willed them to stay put.

  “As horrible as what?” Candace reminded me of an alert kit fox with its ears perked up.

  “Do me a favor.” I aimed a finger. “Go see if there are any French fries available in the kitchen.”

  Candace hated being dismissed, but she went anyway.

  “What else is bothering you?” Gwen laid her hand over mine. “You’re as tight as—”

  “A snare drum?” I asked.

  “I was going to say a top.”

  I shrugged. My ex was a conductor. Out of habit, I’d learned to compare things to musical instruments. “I was waiting for some news from Dr. Fisher.”

  “About?”

  “I have a lump.”

  Gwen signaled Peggy to tend the bar and left her post. She perched on the stool next to mine. “You never noticed it before?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did your mother have any lumps, benign or otherwise?”

  “No.” My mother had been fifty-five and in good health when she and my father were killed. I’d never know the odds of whether she would have contracted breast cancer.

  “And Rosie?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” I said.

  My older sister was a mess. Using heroine and more had ravaged her body. Detecting breast cancer, I imagi
ned, was low on her list. Seeing as I had no desire to call and ask, the secrets of her medical history would go with her to her grave.

  “Hey, Gwen, refills,” yelled a guy at the end of the bar.

  Gwen scanned the area. “Where did Peggy go?” She huffed. “Darlin’, I’ll be right back.” She went about her business with the elegance of a dancer, arms moving rhythmically as she emptied old drinks and poured new ones.

  Left alone, I mulled over my last conversation with Dr. Fisher. She’d told me that knowing one’s genetic history was not as reliable as it used to be. Now, one in eight women would develop breast cancer. Even women without a family history of the disease could get it. I could be a statistic.

  When Gwen returned, she covered my hand with hers, the warmth reassuring. “The results were due when?”

  “Monday, but with the murder . . .” I hung my head in shame because I was thinking of my own problem and not Dr. Fisher’s death.

  Gwen squeezed my hand. “Ask Nick to let you peek in your file. He can do that. After all, somebody will take over the doctor’s practice. They’ll be reviewing everything. For all you know, they may already have an interim physician seeing to emergencies.”

  With three hundred patients’ files needing to be sorted out, mine, in the big scheme of things, was insignificant. Other patients had to come first. I sat straighter. Other patients . . .

  “Gwen,” I said, “Candace may be right.”

  “About what?”

  I pulled my cell phone from my tote and dialed Nick. When he answered, I said, “I think your killer may be a patient or someone related to a patient. Not Dr. Fisher’s ex-husband.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Call it professional courtesy, but another doctor knows how long it would take to rearrange all of those files on the floor. A patient with something to hide is who I’d suspect.”

  “Aspen . . .” I pictured Nick scratching the stubble on his chin, trying to maintain his composure.

  “I think it’s one of the patients, too,” Candace said over my shoulder. She set a plate of fries on the bar along with a bottle of catsup. “Because there was no reason to throw around the files unless he was covering up something. He was angry.”

  I said, “He could be a she.”

  “Freshen your soda?” Gwen said to Candace.

  “Yes, please.” Candace leaned in to me. “Tell Nick that when I get angry, I break something. Like when I broke that perfume bottle after Mom called.”

  I winced, recalling the incident all too vividly. A gallon of Clorox had been required to remove the stench from the bathroom. I told Nick Candace’s theory.

  “I’m theoried out,” he said. One of the reasons he had left the San Jose Police Department and found a position with the Placer County Sheriff’s Office was because there had been too much murder, too much blood. Dealing with repeated savage acts had damaged his soul. The homicides cropping up in Lake Tahoe had to be magnifying the pain. “Good night. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “I miss you,” I said, knowing I wasn’t overstepping. He needed to be wanted as much as I did. Our respective divorces had pared a pound of trust from our hearts.

  Nick said to a woman who’d yelled his name in the background, “I’ll be right there.” To me, he said, “I miss you, too.”

  As I pocketed my cell phone, worry cut through me. The sheriff’s department was understaffed and overburdened. What if Nick and his crew couldn’t solve Dr. Fisher’s murder? She deserved justice.

  No, no, no, Aspen. Stand down. If I interfered, I could lose Nick. We had boundaries. He did his job; I did mine. Plus, the memory of a gun aimed at my head last January still made me shudder. And what would Max say? Maxine Adams, my aunt and the owner of the private investigation agency where I worked, had opinions on everything from the daily forecast to the balloting process. When it came to taking risks for no reason, she was more of a mother hen than Nick. No, I would keep my nose out of it.

  If only I could shake the memory of Dr. Fisher calling me and uttering my name.

  Chapter 3

  Over the weekend, Candace and I carried out our normal routine. I gardened and cooked and ran with our retriever, Cinder, a rescue that had survived a fire. Candace studied and slept. Neither of us said much. Our mutual sorrow of knowing another person who had been murdered saturated the air.

  Sunday night I slept fitfully. Just after three a.m., I awoke drenched in sweat. I remembered bits and pieces of the nightmare. My test results. Papers and files strewn everywhere. Scalpels and pools of blood.

  Too revved up to sleep, I knew that I had to do something about Dr. Fisher’s murder, with or without Nick’s approval. At my core, I was a problem solver. I wanted to help people find clarity. To find peace. That was why I’d become a therapist. That was also the reason why I’d changed paths and become a private investigator. Finding solutions for everyone, not just emotionally charged teens, fulfilled me.

  I sat up in bed, opened my laptop computer, and for the next three hours researched Dr. Fisher’s ex, Edward Bogart. There were dozens of articles about him. As I read through them, I made notes on legal pads. Bogart was respected in his field and donated a lot of time to fund-raising for the Children’s Heart Association, Reaching for the Cure, and other pediatric organizations. As far as I could tell, no one had anything bad to say about him. Was he truly a saint? Why had he and Dr. Fisher divorced?

  When my eyes were too tired to continue, I created a file—my aunt demanded a written file for every case—stuffed my notes into it, and tossed it on my bureau.

  At sunrise on Monday, I dressed in jogging shorts, cropped T-shirt, and running shoes, and opened Candace’s door. Out bounded Cinder.

  “Let’s go.” I attached his leash to his collar.

  Together we headed toward Meeks Bay, drinking in the morning air. Exercise always cleared my mind and rid it of cobwebs. However, it didn’t necessarily fill it with solutions.

  When we returned, I showered and donned jeans and a red plaid shirt. On my way to the kitchen, the doting dog at my heels, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Major yuk, as Candace would say: dull eyes, limp hair. Applying blush and lip gloss hadn’t helped.

  “Are you okay?” Candace asked as she opened the refrigerator. She was dressed for school, a backpack slung over one shoulder.

  “I’m out of sorts.”

  “Did you eat?”

  “No.”

  “You need to eat.” She swiped a yogurt and banana from the top shelf and grinned as she offered them to me. “Aha. Who’s the adult in the room now?” She was teasing me because, ever since she’d moved in, I’d made sure she ate right. No more anorexia or bulimia. No more attempts at starving herself or purging. My hounding had paid off. She was a healthy, exuberant teenager. Her face sobered. “Oh, right. You’re off-kilter because of Dr. Fisher’s murder.”

  I nodded and rubbed Cinder’s ears. “I’m certainly not out of sorts because of my run. No, sir. We had a good run, didn’t we, boy? Yes, we did.”

  Candace grabbed a power bar from a container on the counter and juggled it and the yogurt and banana in front of me. “Choose one.”

  I snatched the power bar and said, “Let’s go.”

  After checking the dog’s water, filling his bowl with kibble, and making sure his doggie door was open—he would have free rein of the fenced-in yard—I drove Candace to school and then continued on to Incline Village.

  I parked my Jeep in front of a ranch-style house on the highway and traipsed to the bungalow at the rear. Max’s husband, my uncle, now deceased, had bought the property over thirty years ago. With age, the ferns and evergreens in the front had grown into a virtual forest. A drift of orange alpine lilies led the way to an arbor overrun by clematis vines.

  The moment I stepped into the small house, I drank in the sweet aroma of coffee. At first glance, the main room resembled a den, with couches and love seats and antique lamps in clusters. Beneath its homey vene
er, the Maxine Adams Detective Agency was a state-of-the-art operation, equipped with up-to-date computers, fire alarms, and security devices.

  “I’m here!” I called.

  Three enormous calicos that were nestled on satin pillows in the nook by the bay window raised their heads in greeting and went back to sleep. They weren’t unfriendly; I simply didn’t rock their world. I think they could smell Cinder on me.

  Mornings were traditionally slow at the agency. Our two veteran investigators, Yaz and Darcy, liked to sleep in and work late. Rowena, our chatty receptionist, was missing in action, too. I swear that woman had my aunt wrapped around her little finger. She wouldn’t file; she wouldn’t type. She was one-third the size of my aunt, but apparently power came in a variety of sizes. I was dying to know what hold the woman had over Max. It had to be juicy. She’d known my aunt since college.

  My aunt, on the other hand, regularly showed up at dawn, made a pot of coffee, and reviewed every newspaper she could get her hands on.

  “Good morning, sugar. About time you arrived.” Max lumbered from the kitchenette toward me, draped in yet another muumuu—this one black with yellow hibiscus flowers. “I’m famished and wasting away to nothing.” At six feet and three hundred pounds, she towered over me. Ever since she nearly starved on an anthropology research expedition in the Andes, food had taken on another level of importance for her. “Blueberry muffin? I made them fresh.”

  “Sure.” I had eaten my power bar on the drive, but I would never turn down one of my aunt’s baked goods.

  “Let’s go over today’s goals. Oh, wait, coffee.” Max shambled across the hardwood floor, always swept clean of cat hair. She was finicky about that. “Here we go.”

  She brought mugs of coffee to the table along with two of the biggest muffins I’d ever laid eyes on. I peeled off the wrapper and took a bite. Whole berries exploded in my mouth.

  “Delicious. Um, Max, I’m going to take on a new case. It’s—”