Kara Lennox - Hometown Honey

She ducked into the kitchen long enough to tell her cook, Manson Grable, that she was going home because she didn’t feel well.

“Is there anything I can do?” Manson asked. He was sixty, portly, round faced and had worked for the Miracle Café his whole adult life. “Can I send you home with some chicken soup?”

“I’ll be fine—just a headache.” She forced a smile and had almost made it out the back door when a booming voice from the dining room snagged her attention.

“I’m looking for Cindy Lefler!”

She considered escaping, then decided it might be important. With a heavy heart, she walked back through the kitchen and out the swinging doors into the dining room.

Standing in the middle of the dining room, looking something like King Henry VIII in madras shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops, was the man who’d spoken.

“Hi, I’m Cindy Lefler,” Cindy said, lacking her usual smiling hospitality. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Ed LaRue.”

She looked at him blankly. The name meant nothing to her.

“I’m the new owner of the Miracle Café,” he continued, still grinning. “Soon to be Ed’s Enchilada Emporium!”

Deputy Luke Rheems looked at first one, then the other of the two women seated in his office. They were both attractive, but beyond their blond hair, they were complete opposites. Sonya Patterson was the epitome of wealth and sophistication. Tall and slim with an elegant, aristocratic face, she wore an ivory linen suit, sheer stockings that looked like silk and cream-colored leather pumps with a medium heel. Her nails were long, probably acrylic, and salon fresh with a coating of pale pink-frosted polish. Her artfully highlighted hair was piled atop her head in a complicated twist, not a strand out of place.

Brenna Thompson was petite, with a pleasantly curvaceous figure, and she looked as if she belonged in an artist’s loft in SoHo. Her platinum-frosted hair was short and spiky, sticking out of her head like a porcupine’s quills, and her eye shadow was a particularly virulent shade of purple. Her left ear was graced with five piercings, each with a distinctly unique silver earring.

The rest of her jewelry was just as interesting, and she wore a lot of it—rings on almost every finger, bracelets jangling with every movement of her arms, a handful of chains around her neck from which dangled charms in whimsical animal shapes, their eyes winking with colored stones. Her snug, tie-dyed T-shirt didn’t quite meet up with her faded hip-hugger jeans, leaving a couple of inches of strategically exposed flesh at her midriff. Though she was categorically not his type, she exuded healthy sex appeal.

“We’re starting to get worried about her,” Sonya was saying. “After we broke the news to her that her supposed fiancée was—”

“Lying, thieving pond scum,” Brenna supplied.

“Yes, exactly. After that, she got the news that her restaurant had been sold out from under her.”

“It must have been too much,” Brenna said. “She’s gone into hiding.”

“We understand she hasn’t come out of her house in days,” Sonya continued. “Now, we hardly know Cindy, but we know what it feels like to have the rug pulled out from underneath you. We figured she needed some time to grieve and we’ve left her alone. But, Deputy Rheems, it’s been almost a week and she hasn’t come out of her house. She won’t answer the phone or the doorbell. We’re worried about her.”

Luke had been worried about Cindy, too. He’d left the Miracle Café just minutes before Ed LaRue’s dramatic arrival, so he hadn’t witnessed it. But he’d heard through the grapevine about it—and that it was all true. Dexter Shalimar, aka Marvin Carter, had sold the Miracle Café, and the sale was more or less legal because Cindy had signed some power-of-attorney paper giving her fiancé the right to conduct all sorts of business for her.

Every suspicion he’d harbored about Cindy’s boyfriend had been right on the money. The man was a liar, a thief, a con man, a snake. The only thing Luke had missed was that Shalimar wasn’t Shalimar at all. He’d borrowed the reclusive real-estate tycoon’s identity. Luke should have suspected that. But when his initial inquiries into Shalimar’s background had checked out, he’d had no legitimate reason to snoop any further, so he hadn’t.

After the manure hit the fan, Luke had tried to call Cindy a couple of times to see if she wanted to press charges. He’d managed to get her on the phone once; she’d brushed him off with a quick, insincere assurance that she was fine, everything was fine—it was all a misunderstanding.

But as his visitors had pointed out, no one had seen her or Adam in almost a week.

“I’ll go to her house, see how she’s doing,” Luke said.

“Please tell her we need to meet with her,” Brenna said. “We need her help if we’re going to catch this guy.”

“Now, ladies, I understand your anger and frustration, but I think you’d better let the law-enforcement authorities handle—”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Brenna interrupted. “If Marvin happens to walk into the House of Donuts and identify himself, maybe the cops’ll stop him. But I wouldn’t count on even that. So far they sent out a couple of faxes, put his name on a list somewhere and went back to sleep.”

“The law-enforcement people don’t care,” Sonya agreed. “Marvin hasn’t murdered anyone. He’s not a bigamist, since he doesn’t actually marry his victims. He’s small potatoes to them. But not to us, and not to the next woman he’ll go after. And believe me, he isn’t going to stop. It might be too late to get our money back, but we’re going to make him pay in ways he never dreamed of.”

“Never underestimate the power of a woman scorned,” Brenna added, sharing a look of solidarity with Sonya.

Luke decided he’d rather have Bubba the Bounty Hunter on his trail than these two. They suddenly seemed a little scary to him.

AS LUKE DROVE HIS SUV DOWN Cindy’s street, his stomach did a little flutter. It was the same little flutter he got every time he walked into the Miracle Café for his morning coffee and biscuit. And it was Cindy Lefler who did it to him.

He’d been crazy in love with her at one time. Cindy’s naive adoration of him, her pure, uncomplicated emotions, her gentle ways, had gone a long way toward healing the abandoned little boy inside him, and he’d never forgotten it. But she’d been appalled when, just after high school graduation he’d suggested they get married and settle down. That was before he’d realized settle down were dirty words to Cindy.

It wasn’t long after that when long-haul trucker Jim Lefler had stopped for lunch at the Miracle Café and had become entranced with his young waitress, and she with him. Three weeks later, they’d eloped.

When Adam had come along and they’d bought a house in Cottonwood, Jim had fit right in, and everyone agreed that they made a terrific family.

Even Luke came to like Jim Lefler. His unexpected death was an awful thing, and Luke had mourned the passing of a friend and an essential member of the community.

But then there was Cindy, alone again and apparently here in Cottonwood to stay. Luke had promised himself he would wait at least a year before even flirting with Cindy. Then that jerk Dexter Shalimar—Marvin Carter, he reminded himself—had shown up, taking advantage of a woman not only grieving for her husband but her mother, who’d passed not long after Jim. Luke’s timing had always been bad when it came to Cindy.

Luke pulled in to the driveway of the tidy little three-bedroom house Jim and Cindy had bought. The grass needed mowing, he noted, and the flower beds were full of weeds. The blinds were drawn.