Deadly Harvest by Heather Graham Page A

to? Maybe.
    But she had the strange feeling that it was more.
    â€œCoffee,” she said, “sounds divine.”
    He nodded briefly and headed downstairs. She found herself wondering if she had done something to disturb him. Didn’t new lovers find it almost impossible to resist one another?
    She headed for the shower herself, then found him getting ready to leave when she went downstairs a little while later. “I have to pick up Brad at nine. We’re going to retrace his every step that day, see if there isn’t something, somewhere, anywhere, that we’ve missed so far.”
    â€œGood idea,” she said, wondering why she suddenly felt uneasy. The daylight was coming, and this was her home, for God’s sake. She was going to be fine. She was going to unpack.
    And then, as she had promised Joe when he had dropped her off at the Hawthorne last night, she was going to go into his office and talk with him. Alone.
    â€œWant to meet us for lunch?” Jeremy asked, breaking into her thoughts.
    â€œSure, if you don’t mind a late lunch. I have a few odds and ends to take care of here,” she told him.
    He kissed her on the lips, stared into her eyes and smiled. “See you then. Um, you have a car, right?” he asked.
    She laughed. “I have a car. It’s in the garage out back,” she told him.
    He hugged her, and as she held him, she felt the gun in his waistband. For some odd reason, it gave her a little jolt. He was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, she knew. It shouldn’t have been a shock.
    But it was.
    â€œWhat time?” he asked.
    â€œHow about two?” she asked.
    â€œSounds good. Where?”
    She chose a restaurant down by the water. If she was going to meet Brad, she didn’t really want to be too close to the cemetery. Let the guy have lunch without staring at the place where he’d last seen his wife.
    â€œI’ll see you there,” Jeremy told her, and left.
    She listened to the sound of his car as he drove away. Then she looked at her suitcases and decided that she would unpack, then run over to the MacElroy place and let them know she was back and they might be seeing a strange car in her drive. Then she could head in to see Joe.
    Â 
    When they left Brad’s B and B, Jeremy told Brad again that he wanted to retrace the day of Mary’s disappearance step-by-step.
    â€œWe were all over town,” Brad told him.
    â€œSo we’ll go all over town,” Jeremy said, and started walking.
    They stopped at the Salem Witch Museum first. Brad nearly broke down as he told Jeremy that it had been Mary’s favorite museum, in large part because she’d thought they’d done an excellent job accurately recreating history with few theatrics. They stayed for the twenty-minute presentation, and Jeremy decided that he agreed with Mary. Since none of the people working in the shop or welcoming visitors had been there the day Mary went missing, they left as soon as the presentation ended.
    Brad explained that they had skipped the Peabody Essex Museum, planning to spend the next day there, and had instead gone on to visit a number of the mall’s haunted houses, which were gone now, having been set up specifically for Halloween. Jeremy and Brad boarded the tram and went to the pirate museum, a wax museum and a monster museum. Then they went to one that advertised History! Just History, and Nothing More!
    No sooner had they entered than a man came over to greet them. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He had brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, and was tall and slim. He walked right up to Brad, who clearly recognized him. From the conversation, Jeremy realized the man, a museum employee who introduced himself as Daniel Mie, had struck up a conversation with Brad and Mary that day, and that he’d been hoping to get a chance to tell Brad how sorry he felt about what had happened.
    â€œJeremy and I used