Desire After Dark. Amanda Ashley

later, he was on the highway headed for Pear Blossom Creek.

      Chapter 5

      Vicki had never liked funerals and counted herself blessed that she hadn’t had to attend many of them. The last one had been three years ago for her great-grandmother. It hadn’t really been a sad occasion. Great-grandmother Althea Neff had enjoyed good health all her life, lived to be eighty-nine years old, and died peacefully in her sleep. But this…Vicki glanced at Sharlene’s family. Sharlene’s younger sister, Donna Jean, sat between her mother and father trying not to cry. Sharlene’s fiancé, Ron Garcia, sat beside Mrs. Tilden.

      The chapel was full, the pews crowded with Sharlene’s friends from high school and just about everyone else in town. Dozens of bouquets and wreaths made bright splashes of color in the front of the church. Sunlight filtered through a stained-glass window, washing over the closed casket in streams of variegated colors.

      Drawing her gaze from the coffin, Vicki glanced discreetly around the chapel. Was the killer here? She saw Ned and Arnie across the aisle, looking somehow out of place in dark suits instead of their uniforms. Gus was there, along with Bobbie Sue and the other waitresses from the diner. She saw Maddy Malone and Rex Curtis and Judy West. Bert Summers was standing in the back. He was writing something in a small notebook and she wondered if he was there as a friend of the family or in his professional capacity as owner and reporter of the newspaper.

      Vicki turned her attention to the front again as the organ stopped playing and the minister stepped up to the pulpit. After offering a prayer, he read the eulogy, and then he offered words of comfort and assurance to Sharlene’s family and friends.

      Vicki was glad when the service was over. Stepping out of the church into the sunshine, she thought how good it was to be alive on such a glorious day and then felt a rush of guilt for thinking such a thing when Sharlene was gone and her family was grieving.

      Sobering, Vicki got into her car and followed the procession to the cemetery.

      The atmosphere in the diner was subdued that night. Most of Ozzie’s regular customers had been at the funeral that morning. She overheard people talking about the service, expressing sorrow for Sharlene’s family, speculating on who the murderer might be, wondering if, and when, he might strike again and if, heaven forbid, it could be someone they knew.

      Vicki looked around the diner, then shook her head. She couldn’t believe that any of the people she knew, people she had grown up with, could have committed such a horrendous crime not once, but twice.

      A little voice in the back of her head reminded her that there was a man in town whom she didn’t know anything about, a man who had been seen with both of the murdered women.

      She shook the thought from her mind and then, for the third time in thirty minutes, she looked at the clock and the empty booth in the back. It was obvious that he wasn’t coming in tonight. She should have been relieved, so why wasn’t she?

      “Vicki? Hey, Vicki!” Bobbie Sue shook her arm. “Gus has been calling you for the last five minutes. Your order for table two is up.”

      “Oh, thanks.”

      Gus frowned at her when she picked up the tray. “You okay?” he asked. “You seem a little distracted tonight.”

      “Stop worrying, I’m fine.”

      “Funeral got you down, didn’t it? Well, that’s understandable. She was a nice girl.”

      Vicki nodded, but didn’t say anything. No need to tell Gus it wasn’t Sharlene she was thinking about, but the man who might have killed her.

      When another hour passed with no sign of the stranger, she put him out of her mind. No doubt he’d been just passing through, like everyone else. And it was probably just a coincidence that he had left the diner with Sharlene and the other woman.

      When her shift was over, she grabbed her jacket and her handbag, gave Gus a quick hug good night, and went out the back door, only then remembering that she had left her car at home and walked to work that evening.

      Slinging her handbag over her shoulder, she pulled the rubber band from her ponytail and shook out her hair, then crossed the parking lot toward the sidewalk.

      Her steps slowed when she reached the corner. The night seemed quieter than usual, ominous, somehow. A slight breeze rattled through the leaves in the trees along the sidewalk.

      Resisting the urge to glance over her shoulder, she quickened her steps, gasping when a dark shape materialized out of the shadows to her right and a deep voice said,

      “Good evening, Victoria Cavendish.”

      She pressed a hand to her pounding heart. “Lord, you scared me! What are you doing lurking out here in the bushes at this time of night?”

      “Waiting for you, of course.”

      His words pleased her, but only for a moment. Pleasure quickly turned to fright when she remembered that, as far as she knew, this stranger had been the last man to see Sharlene and the Lewis woman alive.

      She came to an abrupt halt under a streetlight, grateful for the illumination, weak as it was. “Why…why were you waiting for…for me?”

      “I thought I would walk you home. There is a killer on the loose and in spite of what you think, it is not me.”

      “How did you know I walked to work?”

      He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

      “Yes. I think it does.” She glanced up and down the sidewalk, dismayed to see that the streets were deserted. Would anyone hear her if she screamed? She did a quick mental search of her handbag, wondering if there was anything in there that she could use as a weapon.

      He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “I was watching your house.”

      “Watching? My house?”

      He nodded.

      “Why?”

      Taking his hand out of his pocket, he wrapped a lock of her hair around his forefinger. “Because you have red hair.”

      She stared up at him, puzzled, and then felt a sliver of ice slide down her spine. Sharlene had had red hair. So had the other woman who had been killed.

      She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “You don’t think he’ll…?”

      “That is exactly what I think.”

      Feeling suddenly light-headed, she swayed on her feet. “It is a serial killer, then, isn’t it?” She had overheard Ned and Arnie discussing the possibility earlier that night.

      “In a manner of speaking.”

      “You sound like you know him.”

      “Indeed.”

      “You do know him? Why haven’t you told someone? You’ve got to go to the police, right away, tonight.”

      “I doubt if they would believe me.”

      “Why not?”

      He took her arm, gently urging her along. “Let us not talk about that now.”

      “But…It’s important.”

      “The police will never catch him.”

      “You sound very sure of that.”

      He nodded. “Surer than you can imagine.” His hand slid down her arm, his fingers entwining with hers. His skin was cool, yet at the touch of his hand, frissons of sexual awareness sizzled up her arm.

      Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. Feeling suddenly breathless, she looked up at him. Had she imagined that unexpected jolt of sensual heat, or had he felt it, too?

      He was watching her in return, his eyes dark and hot.

      It took her a moment to realize they