Gayle Roper - Caught In The Act

As the lens click-clicked, she stopped abruptly, frozen. I heard a quick intake of breath and saw a flash of tightening jaw through the viewfinder. Then she let out an unearthly shriek.

“Arnie!” She ran into the kitchen, out of my sight for a moment. “No! No! Arnie!”

The hairs on my arm rose at her tone, and I ran into the kitchen myself. I froze for an instant, too.

On the floor by the stove lay Arnie, staring upwards, blood puddling beneath and beside him on the yellow tiles. Jolene knelt in the blood, shaking him, calling him, trying to rouse him.

She would never succeed.

has always loved stories, and as a result she’s authored more than 40 books. Gayle has won a Romance Writers of America’s RITA ®Award for Best Inspirational Romance and finaled repeatedly for both RITA ®and Christy ®awards. Several writers’ conferences have cited her for her contributions to writer training. She enjoys speaking at writers’ conferences and women’s events, reading and eating out. She adores her kids and grandkids, and loves her own personal patron of the arts, her husband, Chuck.

When I am afraid, I will trust in you.

—Psalms 56:3

For my brothers and sisters

at Calvary Fellowship Church

“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.”

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

“Merry, could you drop me at my parents’ after work?” Jolene Meister asked as we left The News office for lunch. “My father brought me in this morning.”

I’d only have to go out of my way a couple of blocks, so I said, “Sure. No problem.”

And that easily and innocently I precipitated my involvement in murder.

Again.

Jolene and I walked to Ferretti’s, the best eating our small town had to offer. The winter wind on this dingy December Tuesday bit through my new red coat, and I suspected my nose was turning almost as rosy as my wool blend. The two scars on my nose that I’d gotten in a bike accident when I was eight years old would be turning a contrasting blue.

Ah, well, I thought. If I smile, I can have a patriotic face: red nose, white teeth and blue scars.

Gene Autry was serenading downtown Amhearst about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer over a tinny public address system by Santa’s little house. How come a cowboy had made millions off a deer’s red nose and all I got from mine was a color scheme?

“Hey, Jolene.” Ferretti’s hostess, a brassy blonde named Astrid, seated us with a smile, then left.

It never ceased to amaze me how everyone in Amhearst knew everyone else. As a recent arrival I found it both cozy and unnerving. “How do you know Astrid?”

“I went to school with her younger sister, Elsa. She’s a real dingbat.”

“Who? Astrid or Elsa?”

“Both.”

Knowing Jolene as I did, that probably meant that the two women were very nice and rather intelligent.

“Does anyone ever move away from Amhearst?”

“Sure.” Jolene indicated our waitress whose name tag read Sally. “Sally’s daughter Caroline moved to California to be in the movies, right?” She looked at Sally.

“Yeah,” Sally said. “But she moved back home last month. Astrid’s sister, Elsa, got her a job as receptionist at Bushay’s. Elsa’s Mr. Bushay’s administrative assistant.”

Didn’t sound like dingbat territory to me, but it sure sounded like Amhearst.

I ordered a Caesar salad and Jolene ordered a huge plate of eggplant parmigiana.

When Sally disappeared with her order pad, I looked at Jolene.

“And how do you know Sally?”

“She and my mom were in the PTA together.”

“And you know Caroline, the would-be movie star?”

“Sure. She was three years ahead of me in school.”

“See? Weird.”

Jolene shrugged and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Do I look flushed to you?”

“Like you’re getting sick, you mean?” Jolene was a hypochondriac.

I looked at her big brown hair and bangs, her bright brown eyes, her flawless skin. “You look great to me.” In an overblown sort of way.

Our lunches came, and I looked from my salad to Jolene’s spicy, cheesy dish. “How can you eat that and not gain weight? It’s swimming in oil. It’s not fair.”

“Fair?” She leveled a forkful of dripping eggplant at me. “Is it fair that you have two gorgeous men chasing you?” She snorted, a noise that sounded decidedly odd coming from her delicate nose. “Don’t give me fair, Merrileigh Kramer. I’m not listening.”

I grinned. I’d never in my life had one man chasing me with any real enthusiasm, and suddenly I had two. It made me feel nervous and powerful. It made me giggle.

It also made me check over my shoulder constantly because I hadn’t quite figured out how to break the news to my new boyfriend that my old boyfriend, suddenly ardent, had come a-courting. And what was worse yet, old Jack didn’t even know that a warm, delightful and charming man named Curt Carlyle existed.

“So Jack just showed up at your door on Sunday?” Jolene buttered a piece of Italian bread with real butter.

I crunched a particularly large chunk of romaine. “You go with a guy for six years, and he refuses to make a commitment,” I began.

“Six years?” Jolene’s voice squeaked with disbelief.

I held up a hand. “Don’t ask. Just accept my word that he’s charming and I was stupid. Anyway he’s hardly contacted me since I moved here in September, and boom! There he is. Although I guess it really wasn’t boom, was it? Four months is hardly boom.”

“Merry Christmas, my Merry,” he’d yelled when I opened my door Sunday afternoon. He pushed a giant silk poinsettia into my hands, smiling broadly at my confusion. Then he grabbed me and hugged me tightly, crushing the poinsettia painfully between us.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, ever gracious.

“Is that any way to greet your sweetheart come this great distance just to be near you?”

Just four months ago I’d have swooned with delight if he’d deigned to call me his sweetheart. Now all I felt was an incipient case of heartburn.

“I’ve moved to Amhearst,” he said, taking off his coat without an invitation. “At least for a while.”

I think he thought I was paralyzed with delight, but it was horror as I tried to imagine him fitting into the new life I’d found when I fled my old in despair over him.

He threw his coat across the back of the chair. A sleeve flopped down and slapped my dozing cat, Whiskers, in the face. He sat up with a sleepy scowl and decided right then and there he didn’t like Jack. When Jack saw the cat, I could tell that the feeling was mutual.

Bad sign.

“You’ve moved to Amhearst?” My voice was heavy with disbelief. “Why?”

“To be near you, sweetheart.” His eyes went soft and dark.

“But—” I sputtered. “Your job. You didn’t quit your job!” Jack was a CPA with a large firm back home in Pittsburgh.