Probable Paws (Mystic Notch Cozy Mystery Series Book 5) by Leighann Dobbs Page B

a man in uniform. He looked a little tired, with a shadow of stubble that I itched to run my fingertips across.
    “Please tell me you didn’t pull me over for speeding,” I said.
    Striker grinned. “You? Never. I noticed you’re getting awfully friendly with the Hamiltons.”
    “Not really. Pepper needed to pay her respects, and she wanted company. I haven’t talked to them other than the two times I came here.” I decided to keep Max’s visit to myself. After all, he did offer to help me and asked me not to tell the police about his suspicions. Okay, that in itself was kind of weird, but I hadn’t decided yet if he was a suspect or an ally, and I didn’t want to say a thing to Striker until I was sure.
    “And the time you were skulking around over at the cottage,” Striker reminded me.
    I wanted to come up with a pithy answer, but a swirling mist on my right distracted me. I blinked, hoping it was just something in my eye.
    “Something wrong with your eye?”
    “No.” My reply had a tinge of irritation, but it wasn’t aimed at Striker. As I’d feared, the swirling mist was Adelaide’s ghost. Why did she have to show up now? Couldn’t she have shown up when I was in the house and needed her guidance to find the book?
    “The book’s not in the house, I don’t think,” Adelaide said. I raised a brow in her direction.
    “Is there something over there?” Striker asked, a curious look on his face as he glanced in Adelaide’s direction. For a split second I feared he could see her, because his brows snapped together, but then his eyes jerked over to some spot behind my left shoulder.
    I turned to look, but nothing was there. “Did you see something?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “Me either.”
    “I had that book carefully hidden, but now all my things are rearranged. Someone has been going through them,” Adelaide continued.
    “Lisa,” I blurted out.
    Striker scrunched up his face. “Who?”
    “Oh, nothing. Sorry.” I shifted my stance so that Adelaide was behind me then focused on Striker. “So did you want something?”
    “I haven’t seen you in a while, and I wanted to catch up.” Striker waved his hand in the air as if waving something away, and I looked behind me again. What was wrong with him?
    “You wanted to catch up out here in the middle of the road?” I asked. Now that I knew Adelaide had been murdered, I was positive Striker was investigating the case. Why wouldn’t he just tell me that? I pushed down a flutter of annoyance. He was always telling me not to butt in as if I were some bumbling idiot that didn’t know how to investigate a murder. He seemed to have forgotten that I was once a top-notch crime journalist in Massachusetts. “Or were you trying to figure out what I knew about Adelaide’s murder?”
    Striker’s eyes snapped from the place beyond my shoulder to my face. “Murder? What are you talking about? I told you she wasn’t murdered.”
    So he was going to play dumb. Well, two could play at that game. I wasn’t going to give him any of the information I’d gleaned. Not that it was much. “You just happened to see me driving here and pulled me over, then?”
    Striker leaned forward and straightened my shirt collar, muddying my thoughts. “Yes. We haven’t seen each other in a while, and I meant to ask you to dinner, but Gus is short-handed, so I’ve been working a shift here in Mystic Notch as well as my regular shift over in Dixford Pass and…” He frowned at something to the left of me, and for a minute I was afraid he could see Adelaide, but her ghost had drifted out from behind me on the right and was now intent on distracting me.
    “You shouldn’t be wasting time here with your guy. I need you to find that book so I can get together with my guy.” Her eyes turned dreamy. “And I feel that he’s close. Very close. But if you don’t find the book soon, I may lose him forever.”
    I glanced over at her and noticed something interesting in the woods. I