On the Street Where you Live Read Free Page B

“It could be someone in a victim’s family. It could be someone who saw you in a restaurant and followed you home. It could be someone who knows you came into a lot of money and got fixated on you.”
    And then they’d found Ned Koehler, the son of a woman whose accused killer she had successfully defended, lurking outside her townhouse. He’s off the streets now, Emily reassured herself. There’s no need to worry about him anymore. He’ll get the care he needs.
    He was in a secure psychiatric facility in upstate New York, and this was Spring Lake, not Albany. Out of sight, out of mind, Emily thought, prayerfully. She got into bed, pulled up the covers, and reached for the light switch.
    Across Ocean Avenue, standing on the beach in the shadows of the deserted boardwalk, the wind from the ocean whipping his hair, a man watched as the room became dark.
    â€œSleep well, Emily,” he whispered, his voice gentle.

Wednesday, March 21

three ________________
    H IS BRIEFCASE UNDER HIS ARM, Will Stafford walked with long, brisk strides from the side door of his home to the converted carriage house that, like most of those still existing in Spring Lake, now served as a garage. The rain had stopped sometime during the night and the wind diminished. Even so, the first day of spring had a sharp bite, and Will had the fleeting thought that maybe he should have grabbed a topcoat on the way out.
    Shows what happens when the last birthday in your thirties is looming, he told himself ruefully. Keep it up and you’ll be looking for your earmuffs in July.
    A real estate attorney, he was meeting Emily Graham for breakfast at Who’s on Third?, the whimsical Spring Lake corner café. From there they would go for a final walk-through of the house she was buying, then to his office for the closing.
    As Will backed his aging Jeep down the driveway, he reflected that it had been a day not unlike this in late December when Emily Graham had walked into his office on Third Avenue. “I just put down a depositon a house,” she’d told him. “I asked the broker to recommend a real estate lawyer. She named three, but I’m a pretty good judge of witness testimony. You’re the one she favored. Here’s the binder.”
    She was so fired up about the house that she didn’t even introduce herself, Will remembered with a smile. He got her name from her signature on the binder—“Emily S. Graham.”
    There weren’t too many attractive young women who could pay two million dollars cash for a house. But when he’d suggested that she might want to consider taking a mortgage for at least half the amount, Emily had explained that she just couldn’t imagine owing a million dollars to a bank.
    He was ten minutes early, but she was already in the café, sipping coffee. One-upmanship, Will wondered, or is she compulsively early?
    Then he wondered if she could read his mind.
    â€œI’m not usually the one holding down the fort,” she explained, “but I’m so darn excited about closing on the house that I’m running ahead of the clock.”
    At that first meeting in December, when he had learned that she’d only seen one house, he said, “I don’t like to talk myself out of a job, but Ms. Graham, you’re telling me that you just saw the house for the first time? You didn’t look at any others? This is your first time in Spring Lake? You didn’t make a counter offer but paid full price? I suggest you think this over carefully. By law you have three days to withdraw your offer.”
    That was when she’d told him that the house hadbeen in her family, that the middle initial in her name was for Shapley.
    Emily gave her order to the waitress. Grapefruit juice, a single scrambled egg, toast.
    As Will Stafford studied the menu, she studied him, approving of what she saw. He was certainly an attractive man, a lean six-footer with