Carol Ericson - Obsession & Eyewitness

He pinched her chin and grinned. “It didn’t help that you were a bookworm and as smart as all get-out—a total bully magnet. I’m surprised you didn’t escape Coral Cove like the St. Regis twins did.”

“I had to take care of my dad. When Mom left with that boy, Dad collapsed.”

“Do the kids still think this place is haunted?”

“Not just the kids. In fact, it makes me uneasy just standing here even if you do have a gun in your pocket.” Michelle shifted away from Colin’s warm touch and the toe of her shoe lodged against a stepping stone buried beneath the mulch. She tripped and sprawled onto her hands and knees, the flashlight bouncing out of her hand.

Colin dropped beside her. “Are you all right?”

“I banged my knee on a cement stepping stone. I didn’t even see those before.” She sat back and rubbed her throbbing knee. You could dress up a klutz but she’d still be a klutz.

Leaning across her body, Colin reached for the flashlight and cursed.

“What’s wrong? Is it broken?”

He stepped across her and kneeled on the ground, one hand now grasping the flashlight and the other picking through the dirt and leaves. He cursed again, his body tensing.

“What did you find, Colin?” Michelle’s heart banged in her chest, her breath coming out in short spurts.

He extended his hand toward her, cupping several rose petals in his palm.

Michelle swallowed. He’d seemed unusually interested in a petal he’d picked up near Amanda’s body. What significance did a few rose petals have?

“They’re rose petals.” Her words sounded stupid hanging between them. “L-like the one at the crime scene?”

Colin jerked the beam from the flashlight across the tangled bushes bordering Columbella House. “Do you see any roses here, live ones?”

Michelle squinted into the darkness. “No, but I’m sure the Vincents have some. Dorothy Vincent is always giving me tips on mine. Couldn’t the wind have blown the petals over here? What’s with the petals?”

Colin hooked his arm beneath hers and pulled her up. “Let’s get out of here.”

Colin charged through the front yard and this time Michelle clung unabashedly to his arm until they were through the rusty front gate.

Opening his hand, Colin aimed the light at the delicate yellow petals. “Do the Vincents have yellow roses in their yard?”

“I think so.”

“And what about you? Are your roses yellow? The petal I found near the body was pink.”

“I have both pink and yellow. Do you think the killer left the petals near Amanda’s body? Then what? He ran across the street to Columbella House and showered more petals there?”

Michelle didn’t know a thing about murder investigations, but she was a mathematician and she knew logic. And this didn’t seem logical.

Ignoring her questions, Colin dropped to his hands and knees just outside the crime scene tape. He trailed his fingers across the ground and peeled something from the asphalt.

Holding it up to the light, he said, “It’s another petal, a pink one this time. I think Amanda’s murderer left the petals here and the Coral Cove P.D. didn’t see them, didn’t recognize them as being out of place.”

Michelle folded her arms across her churning stomach. “You’re scaring me, Colin. What is all this about?”

The coiled intensity of his frame relaxed and he tipped his head from side to side as if to relieve a kink in his neck. “I’m sorry, Michelle. Let’s go inside.”

He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her body flush against his. His warmth seeped into her, but her teeth insisted on chattering, anyway. Colin had suspected a link between Tiffany Gunderson’s death and Amanda’s murder, and he’d just found it.

After Michelle unlocked her front door, Colin propelled her to the couch, pressing his hand against the small of her back. “Sit.”

She sank into the corner, curling her long legs beneath her. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he released a long breath, obviously coming to some decision. “Do you remember a girl from your class named Belinda Frank?”

The name drew a visceral response from Michelle, as a sour taste flooded her mouth and her hands curled into fists. “I remember her. You talked about my being a magnet for bullies? Well, she must have had the strongest magnetic field of all because she was the worst. She was a witch.”

“Well, ding-dong, the witch is dead.”

Michelle’s jaw dropped as a confusing tumble of emotions swirled through her brain. “I—I didn’t mean… I’d never wish…”

Colin skimmed his fingertips along her cheek. “I know that. Nobody in town knew about her death?”

“The Frank family wasn’t local. They moved here Belinda’s sophomore year and then moved out after she graduated. Nobody could even locate her to send an invitation to the reunion.”

“One of the reasons they couldn’t locate her is because she changed her name to Gigi French.”

“Gigi French? Sounds like a hooker.”

“She worked as a stripper in Vegas.”

Michelle ran a hand through her tangled hair and closed her eyes. “How did she die?”

“Someone slit her throat and then showered her with rose petals.”

Choking, Michelle hid her face in her hands. “They don’t know who did it? How’d you get involved?”

“No. A buddy of mine on the Las Vegas P.D. called me because he saw the Coral Cove connection. Thought I might have known her, but she started at CCHS after I graduated. I didn’t think much about it until Tiffany Gunderson fell down that elevator shaft in San Francisco. I knew the Gunderson family, so I recognized the name.”

“But Tiffany’s death was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“I figured it was when I first heard about it, but I thought it was a weird coincidence that two young women from the same small-town high school had died violent deaths less than a month apart. So I contacted the SFPD about Tiffany’s accident, and suddenly the two deaths didn’t look like a coincidence.”

“Why?” Michelle drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs to keep them from bouncing.

“Both women graduated the same year…and there were rose petals in the elevator shaft.”

Michelle leaned her forehead on her knees, not even minding the pain from her bruises. “So the FBI sent you back home to investigate?”

Colin cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”

Turning her head to the side, Michelle asked, “What does that mean?”

“Technically, I’m on vacation. The FBI didn’t send me here.”

“Great. So this is all off the record and below the radar?”

“That’s right.”

“But now that the killer has struck again, this could be a case for the FBI. A serial killer in different states? Sounds like a job for the Feds to me.”

Colin stretched his arms above his head and yawned, and Michelle’s gaze dropped to the muscles shifting across his chest and bunching his shoulders. He looked even better than he had as a cocky teenager.

“It might be a job for the Feds, but not necessarily for this Fed. The FBI doesn’t usually assign agents to cases in their hometowns.”

“What are you going to do?” Michelle sucked in a breath and held it. She didn’t want another agent on the case. She wanted Colin Roarke to stay right here in Coral Cove. In fact, she wanted him camping outside her house.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m staying on vacation in Coral Cove, but I can use a little help since I won’t be with my regular partner. Do you have any idea why someone might be killing the female graduates of your class?”