Order here. A sneak peek at Chapter 1:
The sedan halted on a parking apron in front of the mausoleum building. One middle-aged woman got out. She wasn’t tall, but she was determinedly straight-backed. Perfectly put together. After using her fob to lock the car, she shook her head as if at her own folly, car thieves being unlikely to hide out in a cemetery before dawn. She barely glanced at the bronze plaque on a sandstone pedestal: “State register of Historic Buildings. 1789.”
This had once been her ancestors’ land, the mausoleum still her family’s place of interment. The heavy wood door stood ajar. Enough light spilled out to illuminate her short journey up the three stone steps to the entrance. It had been decades since she’d visited. Since her grandmother’s funeral.
Inside, the caskets resided in long vaults to the left, behind large engraved brass plates identifying each resident. In the center was a sandstone bench, incongruously modern-looking, pale and finely veined. The edges blackened by centuries of dust rubbed from mourners’ clothing.
To the right was the columbarium. The woman frowned. She couldn’t recall if that was the name of the individual niches that held the urns with the cremains, or if it could be applied to the wall of niches as a whole. Perhaps the tall man in the three-piece suit waiting at the back of the dank room would know.
“Ma’am,” he intoned gravely, inclining his head slightly. She wanted to smile at her thought. Gravely. She didn’t. She knew better than to let unguarded moments occur in the presence of anyone not close staff. And rarely then.
“You’re Mr. … I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten your name.”
He was dark-haired, striking-looking. His gaze penetrating. She couldn’t tell what color his eyes were in the gloom where light from the two lamps by the door didn’t penetrate. “You’re the cemetery manager?”
He stepped forward. He was younger than she expected. Mid-thirties. It was remarkable how graceful he seemed to her, in that one, strong, sure step.
“I’m not,” he said quietly, the surety of his movements replicated in his tone. “I volunteered to accompany the urn. Bring her personal things. To assure the safety …” He looked down and then back up.
“You flew in from Denver?”
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted. “Not here.”
He inclined his head very slightly, again. “I drove from Colorado.”
“A long drive,” she said. What was that? Sixteen hundred miles? Eighteen? She used to know those things.
He shrugged. “It’s more … discreet. To make sure …” He hesitated. “I thought you might have some questions. Or something you’d want to say to me.”
She looked past him at the small marble urn on the bench, like a box with a curved lid. Ten inches long and eight wide. It would sit easily on a piece of copy paper. Seven or eight inches high. Pale marble with gray and cinnamon veining. Not a bad match to the native sandstone.
She realized he was studying her, as if for a clue to something. Reporters looked at her that way during interviews.
“Who are you? Why would I want to say anything to you?”
The tall man didn’t shift or sway or blink. Or even seem to breathe.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Hunter Dane, Denver Police Homicide.”
A blankness settled over her features, like snowfall shrouding a winter lawn.
“I’m the man who killed your daughter.”
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