If She Should Die by Carlene Thompson Page A

accident,” then thought about how foolish he sounded. But she’d smiled tremulously and his heart had melted. Three months later they were married. A year after that they were parents of a perfect baby girl they’d named Stacy.
    The ache of loss washed over Michael as if Stacy had died two days ago instead of two years. Well-meaning people had told him that time heals all wounds. They’d been wrong, he thought as he drained the can of beer and went back to the refrigerator for another.
    “Two is the limit, Winter,” he said aloud as he walked back into the living room with his fresh beer. It had been a long, hard day and he had another one starting again in a few hours. He needed to be sharp.
    He turned off the television, although Lisa’s image was long gone. He didn’t want to chance seeing the commercial again. He needed to focus on something immediate, not replay that torturous tape of the past. And what was most immediate? The finding of the body in the river.
    Michael had seen his share of dead bodies when he was a detective in Los Angeles. He’d gazed at the remains of people who had been shot, strangled, and stabbed. He’d looked with cool professionalism at the dreadful wounds one human being had inflicted on another. He’d sat in on autopsies where pathologists had plunged hands into corpses to withdraw organs, each measured and weighed. But nothing had ever sickened him as much as the putrid atrocity he’d seen lying in a shroud of filthy plastic this afternoon. Of course, it shouldn’t have been unwrapped, but eager volunteers did not know police procedures andhad loosened the smothering cover only to jump back in horror and revulsion. By the time Michael got there only minutes later, two of the men had already thrown up and a third barely stood—shaking, sweating, and white-faced.
    Now came the job of finding out who had sent this hideous offering into the Ohio River.
    In spite of the gorge that had risen in his throat when he first saw the body, part of Michael had been able to stand off and observe. That part had judged the body to measure between sixty and sixty-five inches long. The tangled mess at one end was the remains of longish black hair. As he’d watched, flesh had begun falling away from the bones. One of the men who still hung near the site had said hoarsely, “I’ll bet that’s Ames Prince’s girl, sure as I’m living. I knew she hadn’t never run away.”
    Before he left police headquarters that day, Michael had retrieved the file of Dara Prince. He now picked it up from an end table, took another sip of beer, then sat down in a chair and opened the file.
    The first thing he saw was her picture. Her head was slightly tilted, her lips shiny with gloss, her incredible violet eyes seeming to gaze challengingly into his. She looked insouciant, defiant, and just a bit vulnerable around the mouth. She had been a sophomore at Winston University, where she made average to low grades. According to her father, life at the Prince home was one of sweetness and harmony with Dara enjoying a lovely relationship with all members of the family. The comments of outsiders gave a different picture. People said Dara hated her stepmother, Patricia, and resented Christine and Jeremy Ireland, her father’s wards. Dara had few girlfriends and was, according to some, “a shameless flirt.” Michael smiled faintly. That prissy assessment certainly hadn’t come from anyone under sixty.
    Dara had dated jewelry designer and employee ofPrince Jewelry Reynaldo Cimino for a year. According to several sources, although Cimino was clearly serious about her, she didn’t seem quite so devoted to him. Most people couldn’t point to one particular man, though, who’d captured her attention, with the exception of Sloane Caldwell, who was engaged to Christine Ireland. Michael took another sip of beer. Now that was an interesting, although scanty, piece of information. Exactly what kind of attention had Dara