Dead of Winter by Staub Wendy Corsi

Author:Staub, Wendy Corsi [Staub, Wendy Corsi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, FIC022070 Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy, Paranormal, Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781683313335
Amazon: 168331333X
Goodreads: 34714099
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Published: 2017-11-07T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The Dale is hushed, Cottage Row draped in fleecy white. Barren cottages are enveloped in drifts. Already, a robust west wind is attempting to obliterate Grange’s tire tracks, and Bella hears the eerie echo of the fading siren.

The lieutenant reminds Bella of Sam’s first oncologist. Dr. Stacey Fischer was highly regarded, but her bedside manner had left something to be desired.

Grange knows what he’s doing, but he’s so cold he makes people nervous.

She remembers the way he was watching Misty as if he doesn’t trust her. That’s his job, Bella knows. Luther once told her that when a child goes missing, the parents always fall under suspicion.

But he’d probably handle this investigation very differently. He knows Jiffy well and might even have some idea where to find him. He wouldn’t dismiss Misty’s concerns, her instincts, or even her psychic visions. Then again, he wouldn’t rely on them either.

Bella doesn’t know about meditation, but if her own son were lost, she’d be doing whatever it took to find him. Misty’s introspection is unnerving, sitting around meditating and analyzing auras when she could be mobilizing search parties and combing the area, putting up posters, making calls . . .

That’s not who Misty is, though. It’s not what she does. She’s magenta. Whatever the hell that means.

Magenta, a medium, mother, wife . . .

Friend.

Bella was surprised Misty used that word to describe her. But it did the trick, just like the other night with Drew. It made her stay.

That’s what friends are for . . .

“Calla?” Bella calls. “Calla!”

Her friend, like Jiffy Arden, seems to have been swallowed by the maelstrom.

She looks toward Calla’s rented cottage across Melrose Park. It’s lost in the whiteout, but now that the wind has shifted, she can see Pandora Feeney’s fairy lights. Flashing bulbs illuminate the tree in the window, outline the roof, and snake around pillars.

“It looks like Snoopy’s damn doghouse in the Charlie Brown special,” Odelia declared when Pandora first plugged them in.

“I think it’s pretty.”

“Just you wait. You’re going to go crazy looking at that for the next six weeks.”

Odelia was right, of course. Yet in this moment, Bella welcomes the garish blinking display, casting bright reassurance into this bleak afternoon.

“Calla! Blue! Where are you guys?”

Unnerved by the silence, Bella starts home. Valley View’s third-story turrets are barely visible through the billowing snow.

What’s happened to her warm and inviting little village? Does the Dale have a dangerous underbelly? Is it brimming with ominous secrets? Who killed Yuri Moroskov? Could he have had local ties? Could it have been someone here? Someone she knows?

She wonders if Misty heard the scream the other night out on the lake—the great horned owl’s cry or Moroskov’s. Either way, it was blood-curdling. Maybe that’s what triggered the vision Grange so readily dismissed.

Bella may only be an amateur detective, but she understands the skepticism. She, too, relies on logic when it comes to solving a crime.

Still, what about maternal instinct? She’d known Max was coming down with something long before he had a fever or started sneezing.

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