Deadly Gamble by Linda Lael Miller

was right, give or take twenty minutes, I wasn’t due at Uncle Clive’s for over half an hour.
    I decided to drive around a little. Acclimate myself.
    My cell phone played its ditty-of-the-week just as I made a right turn onto Center Street. Certain that something dire was going on with Lillian, I dived for it. The trucker behind me leaned on his air horn, and I swerved to the side of the road, parked.
    â€œHello?” I cried breathlessly.
    â€œIt’s Tucker.”
    I closed my eyes, dizzy with relief. No bad news about Lillian. At least, not yet. “Tucker,” I repeated numbly.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    â€œI’m fine,” I said. He was always asking me that, and I always gave him the same answer, whether it was true or not. This time, I was fine, or I would be, anyway, once the echo of that eighteen-wheeler’s air horn stopped reverberating through my nervous system.
    â€œSorry about cutting you off earlier,” Tucker said. “I was in the middle of something.”
    At the time, I’d thought he was working. Now, I wondered if he’d been with the ex. “If you’re busy, you’re busy,” I said coolly.
    â€œYou’re going out of town?”
    â€œI’m already out of town. I’m on my way to Tucson to see my sister.”
    Long silence. “Probably a good idea,” he said, though he didn’t sound thrilled about it. “What’s with the litter box?”
    For a moment, I was stumped. Then I remembered the sticky note on the fridge door, back there in my kitchen in Cave Creek. “I already told you—I’m thinking of getting a cat.”
    He absorbed that, but didn’t make a comment one way or the other. “We need to talk when you get back,” he said.
    A sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. This was it. He was going back to the wife and kids. Maybe he and the missus would renew their wedding vows, then they’d all go to Disneyland. The wife would graciously forgive Tucker everything he’d done since their divorce, including me, and Tucker would forget I’d ever existed.
    â€œMojo?” It was a verbal nudge.
    â€œI’m here,” I said.
    â€œI’m going to be undercover for a few days. Don’t call me unless it’s really important.”
    My eyes burned. He was moving home, or at least planning on spending some time there. I blinked rapidly and sucked in a deep breath, so my voice wouldn’t sound shaky when I answered. “You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do,” I told him.
    â€œYou sound weird. Are you sure you’re all right?”
    Oh, I’m just terrific . “I told you—I’m fine.”
    â€œI’ll call you if I get the chance.”
    That was big of him. Don’t call me, I’ll call you . That way, he could make sure the kids and the little woman didn’t get the wrong idea. Naturally, he’d lie to them, too.
    â€œDon’t knock yourself out,” I said, and hung up.
    The ditty started up again almost instantly.
    I peered at the little screen. Tucker, all right.
    I ignored the cheerful tune until it stopped, and pulled back onto the road. The car seemed to be driving itself, and it went straight for the local cemetery. Since it was still light outside, I let the vehicle have its way.
    I didn’t have a lot of time, but Cactus Bend is a small place, so I had enough. I stopped at the cemetery office, a small, stucco cottage, and went inside. The keeper-of-the-plots was a man of indeterminate age, as wide as he was tall, and dressed more like a mechanic than a graveyard official. Maybe, I reflected, he did some of the digging.
    â€œI’m looking for the Mayhugh graves. Evelyn and Ronald.”
    The mechanic didn’t bring out a dusty tome, or tap into the computer at the end of the counter. He merely stared at me, as though I’d just wafted up out of the nearest buried