Emily had thought she and Evan were blissfully happy too, but now she was having doubts. And if it could happen to her and Evan, it could also happen to Camille and Jonathan, couldn’t it?
Even in the refreshing spring breeze, sitting in the open and expansive outdoors, Emily felt like she was suffocating under all the talk about unfaithful husbands, and she felt compelled to cut and run. “I’m sorry to cut this lunch short, ladies.” Emily abruptly stood, pulled a twenty dollar bill out of her wallet, and laid it on the table.
“But you’ve hardly touched your lunch,” Camille said in surprise.
“I need to meet those clients I was telling you about. I’ll talk to you all soon.”
Looking stunned and speechless, Maggie, Camille, and Isabel stared in silence as Emily dashed a quick glance behind her then hurried away.
CHAPTER 2
Emily regretted having to lie to her friends, but she simply had to get out of there. All that talk about seemingly happy marriages and possibly unfaithful men was more than she could stomach. After that conversation, she was even more driven to discover who this Delia woman was.
At least it was true that she did have an appointment to show homes later that afternoon, but since she had a couple of hours to kill before then, she’d decided to head over to Evan’s old office. One way or another, for her own peace of mind, she had to find out if her late husband had been cheating on her.
Emily pushed open one of the large wooden doors and entered the lobby of the historic gray-stone building that sat on Main Street in the heart of Paradise Valley, a quaint, picturesque town situated just to the north of Boise, Idaho. After walking down a short hallway, she stood before the door to her late husband’s office. The opaque window in the door still bore the lettering Evan Parker, Private Investigator.
Fidgeting with the key in the old keyhole, it finally gave in and unlocked. She pulled in a deep breath to steady herself as she entered, standing still for a moment, surveying the room. She had not been to this office since Evan was killed in it. The murder had gone unsolved, and she had been left to wrestle with the unknown.
Heart-wrenching memories came flooding back to her, and she was momentarily paralyzed by them. Evan had been found shot to death here, in the corner by the file cabinets, a single gunshot to the back of his head. The local police had no suspects and no prospects.
There had been a fat stack of cash with a rubber band around it found in a locked drawer of his desk, totaling five thousand dollars. Since the money was still there, the authorities figured it wasn’t a robbery, but it did cause them to wonder why he would have that much cash with him. Emily wondered too—on more than one occasion.
Since Evan had been shot at fairly close range, with no sign of a struggle, the police assumed the killer must have been someone he knew. They had questioned every one of his clients after finding their names when they searched his computer and the file folders in the cabinet.
The police had even investigated Emily to rule her out. Fortunately, she was having dinner with the girls at a restaurant when it happened, so she was almost in the clear. There was always the possibility, the detective said, that she’d hired it done. Maybe her paid killer, the detective suggested, was someone posing as a new client that just hadn’t made it into Evan’s records yet.
In time, the police decided Emily probably had nothing to do with her husband’s murder. So, with no real clues, old Joe Tolliver, the town’s only detective, eventually gave up and filed it away as a cold case. The pile of cash was eventually released to Emily.
It wasn’t that Paradise Valley could not afford to hire another detective, because it had grown into a largely affluent community. In the last ten years or so, it had become known for its million-dollar homes built along the Boise River, and there were an ever-increasing number of five- and ten-acre horse property subdivisions gobbling up the surrounding farmland.
The reason for having only one detective was simply that the mayor and city council members saw no need to waste the taxpayers’ money. Paradise Valley hadn’t had a murder in more than twenty years—until Evan was killed.