Quietly pawing through the items hanging on the rod, I found two dresses in the back that were certainly not suitable winter wear. They were too skimpy for most summer temperatures, and even then only if you were going for a certain look. I took one out and held it up to the window, noting the outline of the corner of the barn roof outside through the flimsy material.

Wow. There was a part of me that was slightly scandalized, and part of me that admired anyone with the chutzpah to actually wear something like that in public.

More rooting around revealed a few more pieces of barely-there clothing items: tiny halters, short short skirts, and the like. But nothing of real interest. So Ariel had dressed like a hooker when she lived at home-what bearing did that have on her murder? Whenever I'd seen her she'd been dressed provocatively, but nothing like this. It appeared her taste in clothing had matured a little.

I closed the doors to the closet and began opening drawers. I mean, after all, if you put someone in a room for the night and say it's the "guest room," it's not exactly surprising if they open a few drawers, right?

The dressing table held precisely nothing. Not even dust. Thoroughly cleaned out. The small bureau held two utterly empty drawers, but the third, bottom drawer, was full of high school annuals. Some of them were Rocky's, and some were Ariel's. The siblings had been five years apart in age, so their high school careers hadn't overlapped; eight annuals altogether.

Settling myself cross-legged on the floor, I pulled out the first one and thumbed through it. Rocky's, when he was a junior. He was nice enough looking now, but the school picture had captured a gleam in his eye that seemed to be missing in the man I'd met yesterday. He'd been one of the more active kids in school: on the football, basketball, and wrestling teams, as well as belonging to Future Farmers of America and Future Business Leaders of America. The abundance of friends and teachers who had signed his yearbook, and what they wrote, indicated he was well-liked by a variety of people. In fact, he'd been quite the big fish in the small pond of the La Conner school system. I flipped through a few more pages and found Gabi's picture. She was a year younger than Rocky and sported a very short haircut. She had a big happy grin pasted on her face. No doubt a ridiculously well-adjusted teenager.

All his annuals had the same flavor, but when I got to his sister's, they told a slightly different story. The pictures of Ariel as a freshman and a sophomore showed a gawky girl, first slightly gaptoothed, then second with braces presumably to correct said gap. All light-brown hair and hesitant smile, she looked skinny and awkward and very, very uncomfortable about having her picture taken. Frightened, tenuous, unsure; it was shocking how different that little girl in the pictures was from the young woman I'd known.

Something must have happened in the summer between her sophomore and junior year, though, because the Ariel pictured in the last two yearbooks was quite different. She'd dyed her hair blonde, loaded on the eye-liner, lowered her neckline by a degree that no doubt tempted official school reprimand, and gazed at the camera with a hard, determined smile.

Ariel had been sixteen when her parents died. My bet was that it happened between those two yearbook photos. Could her transformation have been a reaction to losing her mother and father?

The new and improved Ariel was certainly sexier in a crass kind of way, and, if the story about the English teacher was true, she'd put it to immediate use. Could Gabi have been jealous of her sister-in-law? Or did she just dislike her? What I'd learned so far about Ariel painted her as the kind of person who demanded instant gratification, took shortcuts to get what she wanted, and was not willing to wait. Impatient. Owed.

In fact, Ariel was beginning to sound like a bit of a sociopath. Could you be a bit of a sociopath? Or was that like being a little pregnant? She was charming as the dickens up front, but as you got to know her those charms faded. A social parasite, taking advantage of the people around her-and especially taking advantage of the particular weaknesses of men-to get what she wanted.

Except she wasn't all that good at it. At least not yet. Still young. And possibly becoming more effective with time.

What had Scott Popper offered her? What practical benefit, as Gabi put it, had Ariel reaped from the affair?

Scott Popper, ready to leave his wife to be with Ariel.

Who died in a car wreck.

Lifting the books to place them back in the drawer, I nearly dropped them.

A good driver, a semi-professional driver, for that matter. Certainly well trained as a police officer. Scott Popper, who died in a car wreck.

Just as his lover's parents had.

His lover, who, whatever she might have wanted from him, might not have wanted his city-salaried self on her hands full time.

His lover, the girl who was such a good car mechanic.

NINETEEN

I MANAGED TO RETURN the high school yearbooks to the dresser drawer. When I pushed the drawer back in, it shrieked as if in agony. Slowly, I pulled it back out and tried to re-align the gliders. This time it slid on the track with only a low moan, but wouldn't go all the way in. I removed the drawer completely and, on my hands and knees, peered into the dark recesses under the dresser.

Something on the floor, way back there.

I leaned in, cheek to the floor and butt up in the air, and scrabbled among the dust bunnies with my fingertips. Finally, I grasped hold of the edge of whatever it was and dragged it out to the light of day.

A book, fabric covered, with one corner all bent up from having the drawer jam into it. It was filthy, and one edge had yellowed after obvious water damage. I opened it and recognized Ariel's spiky handwriting from the few times I'd seen it at the co-op.

Footsteps in the hallway paused outside my door. I froze.

An eon later, they moved on and went downstairs. Hurriedly, I pushed the drawer back in. It moaned like a wounded animal again. Standing, I took the book and stuffed it into the bottom recesses of my tote bag. Then I pulled the covers up, tidied the bed, grabbed the toothbrush Gabi had given me the night before, and opened the door.

Noah and Evan hurtled past me and down the stairs, calling, "Hi!" and "Hello!" over each other. And then, from the kitchen I heard, "Hey Mom, can we have pancakes?"

I turned to see Rocky come out of his and Gabi's bedroom. He paused when he saw me, surprised.

"Good morning," I said, trying to sound cheery.

"Uh, morning." He walked down the hall barefoot, carrying a pair of tube socks in his hand. "Everything all right?"

Meaning, why are you still here?

"Oh, sure. Time just got away from us last night, talking yarn and stuff, and Gabi offered to let me stay." His face remained impassive. "So, I took her up on it," I finished in a more subdued tone.

"I see. Well, I hope you slept well." He didn't wait to find out if, in fact, I had slept well, but walked past me and down the stairs without another word.

Maybe he resented my spending the night in his sister's bed. I had to admit it was a little weird.

I strode down the hallway to the bathroom where I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth and futzed a little with my hair. It looked like I'd just rolled out of bed, which I had, but it always looked like that now, so there wasn't much help for it. I grabbed my bag and followed in Rocky's footsteps.