Dead Wrong. Janice Kay Johnson

and she bitched about her ex because he won’t leave her alone. She thinks…” Bronwen’s voice stumbled. “She thought her parents were sympathetic to him, which annoyed her.”

      “What was he doing to annoy her?”

      “Not what you’re thinking! Doug is an okay guy. He’s just been regretting the divorce. He wouldn’t get violent.” She said it as if the idea was absurd, unthinkable.

      “But somebody did.”

      Bronwen’s fingers twisted together. “God. How was she killed?”

      “We’ll know more after the autopsy. It appears she was strangled.”

      “Was she raped?”

      “Yes.”

      “Doug wouldn’t have raped her,” she said with certainty. “She admitted to me that she let him spend the night not that long ago. He didn’t have to rape her.”

      “Rape is only peripherally about sex. It has more to do with control and power.”

      She kept shaking her head. “Not Doug.”

      Trina didn’t really believe that the ex-husband would prove to be a serious suspect. This murder didn’t have the hallmarks of domestic violence. But it was also possible that they were dealing with a killer who had strangled Amy in a fit of rage, then remembered the murder from six years ago and decided to imitate it to throw the police off. An impulse killer who was also able to keep his cool. Not common, but conceivable.

      “Is Doug a friend of yours, too?” Trina asked.

      “Mine? Heavens, no! Like I said, he’s a nice guy. But honestly, he’s not that bright. Just kind of big and dumb and fun-loving. Not my type.”

      No, Doug sounded like a lousy prospect to have kept his cool and used his head.

      Trina determined that Bronwen and Amy had parted in the parking lot at just after eight.

      “Do you think she might have gone back in?”

      “No, we were parked next to each other and she pulled out of the lot right behind me. I had to get some work done, and I assumed she was going home even though she still seemed…I don’t know.” She visibly groped for a word and settled for the same one she’d used earlier. “Restless. Maybe a little unhappy. Not in the mood to go home and watch reruns and sip cocoa.”

      She suggested other brewhouses and pubs where they might show Amy’s picture, other friends Amy might have called.

      “Guys? Wow. Adrian Benson. Maybe. She was getting bored with him. I mean, they didn’t have that much of a thing, and she was losing interest, but just for something to do… Um, Travis Booth. They were sorta friends, sorta something more.”

      “Travis.” Wasn’t he one of the friends Will Patton had mentioned being with the evening he ran into Amy at J.R.’s? “I remember him. He was a friend of Will Patton’s.”

      “Right. Only he didn’t do high school sports because he ski-raced. He actually made the U.S. ski team, but then he was hurt really badly training for the downhill.”

      “Yeah, yeah, I remember.” Like most guys that age, Will had run in a pack. His buddies were jocks, but the smart ones. Most had gone on to college after they graduated. “I didn’t realize he was still in Elk Springs.”

      “He’s head of the ski school at Juanita Butte. But he’s getting some success as an artist, too. Don’t you read your newspaper? They did a feature on him—I don’t know—a month or so ago.” Her voice changed, relaxed fractionally as she reminisced. “He used to draw really wicked caricatures. He did this fantastic one of Mr. Jones, only one of the teachers snagged it when it was being passed around, and he ended up in detention for a week.”

      Mr. Jones, then high school principal and not a popular one, had been ripe for caricature with his double chins and beady eyes.

      Trina forced herself back to more relevant subjects. Travis Booth, for one. He’d seen Amy fall anew for Will Patton, maybe resented it. Trina starred his name, too.

      She flipped back through her notes. “Do you know a Gavin, who seems to be a friend of Travis’s?”

      Bronwen pursed her lips. “Gavin. You mean Huseby? He kind of hung around Will. I never paid any attention to him. I know he’s around again.”

      Bronwen supplied a few new names of people in Amy’s circle. At the end, she asked, “Do you think this guy killed Amy in particular? Or was she just…”

      “Convenient?”

      “That sounds awful, but…” She fidgeted. “Yeah. I mean, should single women be scared?”

      “At this point, we simply don’t know the motive. It wouldn’t hurt to use extra caution.”

      “Okay.” Bronwen gave a wry smile. “Thanks, Trina. Wow. Business is slow, anyway. Maybe I’ll close. Or maybe not.” She shivered. “I don’t want to go home alone. I could call around. Some of us could get together and have a kind of wake.”

      “That might help all of you.” Trina nodded. “I appreciate your assistance.”

      She was at the door when Bronwen called, “Trina? That employee discount? I meant it, you know. Come back someday.”

      “I just might.” Trina nodded and left, the bell tinkling as she let the door shut behind her.

      She started her Explorer to get the heat cranking, but didn’t pull away from the curb immediately. Instead, she thought about Amy Owen as her friends described her.

      On the surface, a party girl. An easy victim, because she’d bar-hopped, lowered her guard by drinking and been sexually promiscuous enough to end her evening with any man who appealed. Yet, it was clear from what her parents, Marcie and Bronwen had said that Amy wanted something different. That she was filling time until she found the white-picket-fence ending she craved. As much as she liked to party, she also possessed a quality of sweetness that drew people. She had a huge circle of friends. Trina had two best friends, a couple more casual ones and a few other people who might invite her to Christmas gatherings. She thought she was more the norm than Amy Owen.

      An amazing number of those friendships dated from high school. In fact, it seemed every conversation today had twisted back to the halls of Elk Springs High School. Maybe that was natural in a small town. But given that they’d all graduated ten years ago, wouldn’t you think the group would include more newcomers, and that more of the high school crowd would have left town? The jocks were still the only desirable guys for the popular girls, who still clustered to flip their shiny hair and giggle at jokes no one else would get.

      Not fair. Trina grimaced. They had lives. She was the one directing the conversations, asking them to dredge up memories.

      Anyway, who was she to talk? She could have gone anywhere, but had chosen to come home to Elk Springs even though her childhood wasn’t what you’d call happy. And didn’t she still nurse a little bit of a crush on Will Patton, Homecoming King?

      Besides—chances were none of this had anything whatsoever to do with Amy Owen’s murder. She’d likely been chosen at random, because she was available: sitting alone at a table in a pub or walking out to her car in a dark parking lot by herself. The odds, Trina thought, finally switching on her turn signal, were against Amy having been raped and murdered by a friend or even acquaintance.

      BETH HAD GONE TO WORK, the girls to school. Will had intended to hunt for an apartment today. He wanted to buy, but was finding little for sale at this time of year. Absentee owners could rent by the week at astronomical rates. Spring, when the out-of-towners melted away with the snow, was when houses appeared on the market, according to the real estate agent who was helping him look.

      The guy had called that morning. His income was probably zip at this time of year, and he was trying like hell to find something Will would buy.

      When