Free Her Last Letter by Nancy C. Johnson

down too quick.”
    I laughed as he hustled from the room.
    When dinner was ready, he pulled out my chair and brought our plates to the table. He actually wasn’t a bad cook. The chicken was done, not raw or overcooked, as was the potato. Of course, at that moment, it didn’t matter to me one bit how it tasted. I wouldn’t think of criticizing his efforts.
    He lit a candle for the table and turned down the lights, and by the time we’d moved to the living room and the hypnotic warmth of the fire, I was ready to love Trevor again, the way I’d loved him in the past, before I’d discovered Kelly’s letter.

Chapter 5
    The drive to Denver was bleak. Rain turned quickly to sleet, a heavy slushy mess that my windshield wipers struggled hopelessly to remove. I strained to see the road, slowing to just under fifty, made more nervous as other less intimidated drivers flew by on Route 70 hurling splatters of the heavy stuff against the van.
    I’d rented a large cargo van to carry all of my artwork and the panels I would display it on. The Jeep was just too small. Unfortunately, I didn’t expect to be driving with an unfamiliar vehicle in such nasty weather. Still, it would take a lot more than bad driving conditions for me to cancel. I’d arranged this particular mall exhibition at Vista Meadows a year in advance, before the mall was even completed. An art agent I’d met at one of Linda’s parties had mentioned that the new mall would be a good opportunity for newer artists, if they moved quickly.
    I’d brought twenty pieces to display, a feat, considering all the setbacks in the past two weeks. Eight of the paintings were new. I also had a large stack of four-color brochures I’d designed which had turned out really spectacular, and a nice looking mauve plastic name tag with my name in gold.
    It would be late afternoon by the time I arrived at my hotel, enough time to have dinner, then call and make sure all the arrangements I’d made earlier, and confirmed by phone, had not somehow been lost in the shuffle of changing mall personnel.
    As much as I wanted to do this show, I didn’t like the idea of leaving when things were so unsettled. They’d discharged Linda from the hospital on Thursday, yesterday, and I’d visited her at home and brought her favorite pastries and other treats, along with lots of sympathy. Each time I asked her about the accident, as subtly as I could considering her tendency to close up on me, I got the same response. She’d tripped on the stairs. She said again she hadn’t been able to reach Wolfgang and she didn’t want the neighbors asking a lot of nosy questions, so she’d called me. Simple as that.
    I’d made a decision to show Linda the letter as soon as she recovered. I suspected Wolfgang was the one responsible for Kelly’s murder, but I had no answer as to why. At the time Kelly died, Linda and Wolfgang had been married for a year and a half, certainly sufficient time for him to get to know Kelly fairly well. Maybe something had been going on. Was he afraid that Kelly would expose the affair and jeopardize his marriage to Linda? No, that didn’t seem reasonable. Wolfgang had to know that Linda wouldn’t leave him. Not for any reason. Not as crazy as she was about him.
    Kelly had mentioned a box … that he may have found the box. This box must certainly be the clue that tied everything together. Could Kelly have stumbled onto something, some secret Wolfgang didn’t want revealed? Or possibly, Kelly, with her habit of writing everything down, had put what she’d learned into the box, and Wolfgang had found that. Or maybe not. Maybe it was something entirely different. What was so important about this box?
    I worried about showing the letter to Linda. I worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut, that she’d either intentionally or accidentally reveal the contents of it to Wolfgang. Then the both of us would be at risk.
    The sky was the same dull gray and still