Free Whispers of Murder by Cheryl Bradshaw

to say for sure—she’d been so frazzled that day, everything was a blur.
    “What are your plans?” Tara said.
    “After this?  I have to stop by the sheriff’s office.  I found a necklace in the field next to the vineyard I wanted to show him.”
    Tara raised an eyebrow.  “Why?”
    “I’m sure it would help me to talk to someone about what’s going on and get it all out, but I’m not very good at it.”
    “What?”
    “Communicating.” 
    Tara smiled.  “Go ahead, unload on me—I’ve got time.”
    Over the next several minutes Isabelle explained what had occurred over the last week, only omitting what had transpired between herself and Emmett.  Things were messy enough without adding him to the mix. 
    When she finished, Tara said, “I can’t believe it.  Do you have any idea who’s after your family?”
    “Maybe.  There was an initial on the necklace I found.  And even though it wasn’t at the exact spot where the police think the shooting took place—my guess is the necklace snagged on something when the person was trying to get away.”
    “What was the initial?”
    “M.”
    “Didn’t you say the other woman your husband was married to was named Marsha?”
    Isabelle nodded. 
    “That is a big coincidence,” Tara said.
    “Have you ever thought you had your life all figured out and then something happened that changed it?”
    Tara stepped out of the hot tub, grabbed a towel from the rack and mopped her hair dry.  “Every day is like that, I believe it’s called being a woman.”
    Isabelle laughed.  “When I was sixteen I thought I would have it all figured out by the time I was eighteen, and then at eighteen I was sure I’d be settled into my life by the time I was twenty-one.  Now I feel like I keep adjusting the years hoping one day I’ll feel settled.”
    “Maybe that’s where you’ve gone wrong.  Have you ever embraced life for what it offered you right here, right now?  No plan, just an appreciation every moment.  I see what I want and I get it.  I don’t let anything get in the way of my own personal dreams.  That’s what life is to me. ”
    Isabelle wanted to say yes, she had lived like that, but the truth was, she never had.

CHAPTER 20
     
    I sabelle wheeled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office just in time to see him headed out.  He drove up beside her, retracted his window, looked at the sling on her arm and then at her.  “You okay to drive with that thing?”
    “I came to give you something.”
    She arched her body over and popped open her glove box but didn’t see the necklace.
    “Just a second,” she said.  “I know it’s in here.   Maybe it got jostled around while I was driving.”  A minute later she’d removed everything the box contained.  The necklace was gone.
    “It was here an hour ago,” she said. 
    “What was it?”
    “A necklace.”
    He looked confused.  “I don’t mean to sound ignorant, but why’d you want to give it to me?”
    “I think it fell off the person who shot my father.”
    He squinted.  “How’d you come up with that?”
    “I was on a walk the other day, and I saw it on a rock.  The chain around it was broken like it got caught on something.”
    “We checked the area and never found a necklace.  Couldn’t it have belonged to the staff?”
    She shook her head.  “The pickers are men, the sorters are women—and they’re inside and not out in the part of the field that’s beyond the vineyard.  Plus, it had an initial engraved on it…an M.”
    “What about Melanie?  You sure it’s not hers?”
    “I doubt it.”
    Isabelle had to admit she hadn’t thought of that, but she’d never seen her sister with a necklace like the one she’d found.
    The sheriff ruminated on her words for a moment and then parked his truck and got out.   After he exited, he motioned for her to do the same.  “Let’s talk in my office for a minute.”
    When they were both inside with the door secured behind