Deadly Gamble by Linda Lael Miller Page A

coffin.
    â€œYou kin of theirs?”
    I checked my watch. Cocktails in ten. Why had I thought I could make this detour and still get to the mansion on time?
    â€œI’m doing some research,” I said. “And I’m in kind of a hurry, so if you’d just give me a map—”
    â€œHorrible thing,” Cemetery Man broke in. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Ron and Evie were both hometown kids. Grew up right in Cactus Bend. Evie had that boy out of wedlock, and we all knew he was a bad seed.” He plucked a sheaf of papers from a stack, flipped through until he came to the page he wanted, and drew X’ s on two small squares, amid dozens of anonymous others. “Killed them in cold blood, he did. And they sent him to one of those country club jails out in California. Ask me, they should have fried him.”
    I shuddered, though it was warm in the office, and my hand shook a little as I took the map. Deciding to dig into my past was one thing, and actually discussing my parents’ grisly fate with one of the locals was another.
    â€œThanks for your help.” I’d come back to the cemetery, I decided, after I’d checked in at Casa Larimer, and perhaps ask a few questions.
    â€œI didn’t get your name,” Cemetery Man said, tagging alongside me all the way to the car. He walked with a funny little hopping trot.
    â€œMojo Sheepshanks,” I answered. I even managed a smile.
    â€œBoomer Harrison,” he supplied. I supposed watching over a cemetery was solitary work, and a person had to take his conversations wherever he found them. “You say you’re doing research? You writing a book or something? I know a lot about that case, if you are. They had a daughter, those folks. Prettiest little girl you ever saw. Somebody found her hidin’ in her mama’s dryer after the murders. Blood from head to foot. She wasn’t right in the head after that—well, you can just imagine—then darned if she didn’t go and get herself abducted ! My wife and me, we always thought there must have been a curse on that whole Mayhugh outfit.”
    â€œI’m not writing a book, Mr. Harrison. Just checking facts for a friend’s genealogy project. I’d like to come back and talk to you again, if you wouldn’t mind. Say, tomorrow?”
    Boomer’s whole face lit up. “Well, that would be fine, Miss Sheepshanks. It would be just fine. I’ll be watchin’ for you.”
    As I got into the Volvo, I was thinking that Boomer was smarter than he looked. He’d heard “Sheepshanks” once, and he’d used it, several minutes later, without stumbling. Usually, when I met a stranger, I had to go into my spiel about how it was English, spelled just like it sounded, and weren’t those British names quaint?
    The Volvo knew its way to the Larimer place, as it happened, as well as the cemetery. At five minutes after four, I drove up a circular driveway and under a portico that made Greer’s seem downright miniature by comparison.
    The house itself looked antebellum, and therefore wildly out of place in a shit-heel town in the belly button of Arizona. I must have been there often, as a child, but I couldn’t work up a memory to save my life. Maybe, I speculated, my folks and the Larimers hadn’t been close. The disparities between their lifestyles would surely have made things awkward.
    I left the cemetery map on the seat, grabbed my purse, and headed for the massive front door, with its lion’s-head knocker. If there was a butler, I could send him to fetch my garbage-bag suitcase.
    As if. My real plan was to wait until it got dark, sneak out, and carry my stuff into the guesthouse by the back door. If guesthouses had back doors.
    Before my hand came to rest on the gleaming lion’s head, the great portal opened, and Clive stood in the gap, flanked by marble floors, a grand, curving staircase and a very