Danger on Her Doorstep by Rachelle McCalla

Author:Rachelle McCalla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2011-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gideon smelled the welcome aroma of rich coffee as he made his way toward the kitchen with heavy feet. The man had gotten away. Again.

“I should have come on foot,” he said with regret as he took the steaming mug Maggie handed him.

“No.” The little woman shook her head so forcefully the ponytail at the back of her head gave an emphasizing shake of its own. “That would have taken too long. I’m glad he heard you coming. If you’d caught him by surprise, who knows what might have happened. If he was armed—”

“I’m trained to deal with armed men. As it is, he got away.”

“But at least we have a description of him.”

“We have a description of his back,” Gideon countered. “You can’t ID a suspect based on the width of his shoulders alone.”

“Yeah, but how many people with shoulders that broad can dart quickly through the trees? He sounds like a football player to me.”

Gideon had thought of that, but didn’t want to frighten Maggie with his theories. Besides, he didn’t want to name any names before they had any more evidence.

Apparently Maggie had no such qualms. “Ever wonder why Rex Dunham is so eager to get his hands on my father’s properties?”

“He closed on the other house three days ago. Why would he come here?”

Maggie sipped her coffee with a thoughtful look before answering. “You said my father found something suspicious in the basement, and that his pockets had been searched before you found him. I don’t think the thing the killer was looking for was in his pockets. Obviously he’s still looking for it. That’s why he searched the trash in the roll-away Dumpster, but he didn’t find it there, either. He had to give up once he realized we’d discovered what he’d been doing.”

Gideon nodded along with her theory, but he had his doubts. “That still bothers me. Why would he search the Dumpster when we were on-site? We could have caught him at any moment.”

After a thoughtful pause, Maggie shuddered and met his eyes. “Perhaps he figured if we caught him, he could just kill us, too.” Her voice rose a frightened half octave. “If Rex killed my father to get his hands on something but he didn’t find it here, maybe he figured my dad had taken it back to his apartment. And now that he’s had three days to search there, he’s decided it must be here after all.”

The fear and the pain on Maggie’s face were too much for Gideon to see. He couldn’t let her dwell on suspicious theories. They had to do something. “If this guy thinks something is still in the house, then maybe it is. Where haven’t we looked yet?”

“The second floor is wide-open space, except for the chimney, and I guess, the floorboards. So I think we can rule that out.” As she worked toward solving the problem, a calm seemed to come over Maggie, and she grabbed up the new notebook she’d started using ever since the last one had disappeared.

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