The Third Victim Read Free Page A

temperature was mild too. Not as cool as it could be in spring, but not so warm that it started pulling in all the tourists and spoiling the mood.
    The day was perfect, a rare treat for all of Bakers-ville’s citizens, who endured all the other days too—the rainy autumns, the icy winters, the mudslides that sometimes closed the mountain passes, and the spring floods that threatened to destroy all the fertile fields. One good day out of a hundred, her daddy would have noted ironically. But he would’ve been the first to say it was enough.
    Sandra had lived in Bakersville all her life, and there was no other place she’d want to raise her family. Nestled between Oregon’s Coastal Range on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, the valley boasted lush, rolling hills dotted by black and white Holsteins and ringed by towering green mountains. The dairy cows outnumbered the people two to one. The family farm still endured as a way of life. People knew one another and took part in their neighbors’ lives. There were beaches for summer fun and hiking paths for fall glory. For dinner, you could have freshly caught crab, followed by a bowl of freshly picked strawberries topped off with freshly made cream. Not at all a bad life.
    In the end, the only complaint Sandra had ever heard about her community was the weather. The endlessly gray winters, the thick, pea-soup fog that seemed to weigh some folks down. Sandy, however, even loved the gray, misty mornings when the mountains barely peeked over their flannel shrouds and the world was wrapped in silence.
    When she and Shep had been newlyweds, they would go on walks in the early morning hours, before he had to report for duty. They’d layer up in barn coats and black rubber boots and wade through dew-heavy fields, feeling the fog like a silky caress against their cheeks. Once, when Sandy was four months pregnant and her hormones were raging out of control, they’d made love in the mist, rolling beneath an old oak tree and soaking themselves to the bone. Shep had looked at her with such awe and wonder. And she had wrapped her arms tight around his lean waist, listening to his fast-beating heart and daydreaming about the child growing in her belly. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would it have her curly blond hair or Shep’s thick brown locks? How would it feel to have a tiny life nursing at her breast?
    It had been a magic moment. Unfortunately, their marriage had not seen many of those since.
    A knock at her door. Sandy pulled her gaze guiltily from the window and saw her boss, Mitchell Adams, leaning against the old bull’s-eye molding. He had his ankles crossed and his hands thrust deep into the pants pockets of a three-thousand-dollar charcoal-colored suit. Dark hair just brushed his collar in the back, and his lean cheeks were freshly shaved. Mitchell Adams was one of those men who always looked good, whether he wore Armani or L. L. Bean. Shep had hated him on sight.
    “How are those reports coming?” Mitch asked. In spite of Shep’s concern, Mitchell was one-hundred-percent business. He had not hired Sandy because she remained lithe and beautiful even at forty. He had hired her because he’d realized that the former homecoming queen had a brain in her head and a need to succeed. When Sandy had tried explaining this to Shep, he simply hated Mitchell more.
    “The meeting with Wal-Mart is tomorrow,” Mitch was saying. “If we’re really going to convince them to move into our town, we have to have our numbers in order.”
    “So I’d better get the numbers in order.”
    “How far along are you?”
    She hesitated. “I’m getting there.” Code for she hadn’t gotten a damn thing done. Code for she’d had another big fight with Shep last night. Code for she’d be staying late to get the reports done, and that would generate yet another argument with her husband, and she didn’t feel as if she could win anymore. But she was too Catholic to do anything different,