Free A Shot to Die For by Libby Fischer Hellmann

didn’t know Luke Sutton at all. And I didn’t have any reason—or desire—to get involved in the investigation. I had quite enough on my plate. I stood up, dropped two tens on the table, and started for the exit.
    Mac joined me at the door.
    “That was a nice vanishing act.”
    “I told you—I saw someone I knew.”
    “Your long-lost uncle?” Mac has perfected the ability to slip through walls at the first sign of trouble. I wouldn’t put it past him to disappear just so he wouldn’t have to plead knowledge about my activities.
    “Better.” He yanked a thumb behind him.
    I looked over my shoulder. The lounge area was filling up now, but I didn’t recognize anyone.
    “Remember Mister Mustard? Owns the museum in Mount Horeb?”
    “How could I forget? How many hundred mustard jars did we shoot?”
    “About a truckload.”
    “He’s here?”
    Mac nodded.
    I looked over my shoulder again. This time I spotted him: a pleasant-looking man in glasses next to an attractive woman with long red hair. He lifted a hand and waved.
    “What were we shooting when we met him? Vienna hot dogs?”
    Mac snorted. “You’ve been doing this way too long. It was the Food Marketing Institute.”
    “I remember now.” I waved back.
    Mac put his hand on my back and guided me out. “What did the barmaid have to say?”
    “Something about a rich guy fooling around with the girl who was killed at the rest stop.”
    “What rich guy?”
    “Sutton. Luke Sutton.”
    Mac shrugged.
    “Family lives in one of those mansions on the lake,” I said. “Flies his own plane. You know the type. Probably never worked a day in his life.”
    Mac squeezed his lips together, the way he does when he’s annoyed. I winced. When would I learn to keep my mouth shut? For all his down-to-earth, middle-class ways, Mac had once been a charter member of the same club.

Chapter Nine
    There’s something about the quality of summer light that pulls me back to my childhood. Driving back from Lake Geneva, the setting sun shimmering like molten gold, I dimly remembered evening skies full of light, warm breezes drifting through the window. Lying in bed under nothing more than a smooth cotton sheet, those being the days before air conditioning, I would watch the slanting rays of the sun inch across the wall. I’d hear my parents talking softly, relaxing now that I was safely in bed. Sometimes their voices mingled with a muted Big Band tune; sometimes with the chirr of crickets. I’d fall into a sound, secure slumber, unaware of the fragility of life.
    Maybe that’s why I tensed when I passed the rest stop where Daria Flynn had been shot. Two weeks after the tragedy, scrubbed clean of all traces, the oasis was just another outpost on the highway. But the memory of what happened there would be fixed in my mind forever. I flipped on the radio, hoping for Springsteen or Jagger to distract me. I must have pushed the wrong button, though, because instead of classic rock, a chorus of powerful female voices, accompanied by a full orchestra, belted out, “He had it comin’…he had it comin’….”
    Rachel and I had seen
Chicago
three times, rented the DVD twice, and bought the CD. We especially liked the number I heard now, “Cell Block Tango,” in which female prisoners tell how and why they murdered their men. As I listened to their stories, I thought about Daria Flynn. The female killers on the CD were impulsive; they’d struck out of passion, betrayal, revenge.
    Now there were rumors of late-night trysts between Daria and one of the richest men in Lake Geneva. Rumors that Daria’s family apparently didn’t know about. Daria had been arguing with her boyfriend just before she was killed. Was there a relationship? Had Daria been the victim of the same hot-blooded rage the women sang about? Or was her murder the act of a cold-blooded sniper?
    I accelerated past the rest stop. I had a name to go with the boyfriend. The police probably had more. So why hadn’t