Keepsake Read Free Page B

parlors, a breakfast room, a music room, a cozy area, a game room, a reading room, a writing room—Quinn got lost just looking for the phone.
    But he found it at last, an old black one being used to weigh down a slew of papers and magazines on a cluttered desk in a book-filled nook that smelled of fireplace ashes and potpourri. If rooms had personalities, then this one was smart, interesting, and heedless of other people's opinions. Quinn liked it as much as he liked its owner.
    He looked up the number of the Acorn Motel and canceled his reservation there, then meandered back to the kitchen to reminisce with his old teacher over a pot of spiked tea. The second pot was steeping when they heard a sudden, sickening sound of shattering glass from in front of the house.
    An accident, was Quinn's first thought; the street was still unplowed. He ran to the front door and flipped on the porch light, which, not surprisingly, didn't work. The wide street was dark, but he could see no cars embraced i n a fender bender on it. All he saw was his rented brown pickup, parked the way he'd left it in front of the house.
    Actually, not quite the way he'd left it. The front windshield had been smashed to smithereens.
    More surprised than angry, Quinn ran out to the now- deserted street. Hard to believe, but someone must have followed him to Mrs. Dewsbury's house. He peered inside the truck. The front seat was buried under a blanket of broken glass. His camera and duffel bag were where he'd left them, but the caller had left a welcoming bouquet: red carnations, strewn all over the broken glass.
    Somehow they didn't look right. Quinn reached inside and picked up a couple of them.
    What the hell? He fingered the blooms. Wet. He looked at his hand. Red.
    A clutch of carnations, dipped in blood.

Chapter 2
     
    ' Any sign of them?" Mrs. Dewsbury called out.
    Quinn turned to see his elderly hostess standing in the doorway, her small frame silhouetted in the soft glow of the parlor lamps. "Nah," he said. "They're gone."
    He tossed the flowers back on the seat and wiped his fingers on a floor mat, then took a closer look around. He could see evidence in the snow where someone had jumped out of a car, scrambled over to the rental, done the deed, and escaped. The depressions were already filling in with newly fallen snow; no clues there. He scanned the other homes on the street. All were large with lots of windows, but all were dark. No doubt everyone was off doing Christmas errands. Shit.
    He went back to the house, brushing the snow from his sweater before he rejoined Mrs. Dewsbury in the more formal of her two parlors. He expected to find a frightened, agitated little old lady. He was wrong. Old and little she might have been, but the lady was clearly pissed.
    "I have lived in this house for eighty-one years and I have never— never —seen such a thing," she said in a shaking voice. "What will you do? How will you drive?"
    Quinn shrugged reassuringly and said, "It's no big deal. I'll have the car towed and rent another if I have to."
    "Too bad I sold the Buick to my nephew last year. Really, it's just too bad !" Her hands were trembling as she moved from armchair to drum table to davenport to the walker that she'd left in the archway between the two parlors. With white-knuckled fury she reclaimed the walker and began marching out ahead of him .
    "We'll just see what Chief Vickers has to say about this , " she huffed. "Use the phone in the kitchen to call him. It's a speakerphone."
    Oh, perfect. "Y'know, Mrs. Dewsbury," Quinn suggested, "Chief Vickers may not be the most sympathetic man in Keepsake."
    "Sympathy has nothing to do with this! Someone just broke the law, and it's his job to uphold the law."
    Law, shmaw. Quinn was a lot more worried about staying on in the woman's house and putting her at risk. "Okay, look. I'll call and report this, but under the circumstances I think the best thing would be for me to—"
    "Don't even think it!" she said