Free Forgotten (Shattered Sisters Book 2) by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page A

frowned. He couldn't remember the look on Caroline's face. Only the devastation and panic on Joey's. "I'd have married her sooner if I'd known your dinners were a fringe benefit, Caroline." He made an effort to keep up the conversation, to appear the polite, friendly new brother-in-law trying to get to know his wife's family.
    "What blows me away," Ted went on, "is that you two were able to put it together at all, after the accident and everything." His brown hair was sprinkled with gray, and his face was too lean—like a weasel's face.
    "Ted, maybe Ash would rather not talk about that," Caroline put in.
    "No, it's okay." Ash reached out and grabbed the glass of milk Bethany had just set on the table's edge just before it tipped into her lap, sent her a wink and kept on talking. "Truth is, I don't remember a thing about Joey and me. It's like that day she showed up at the hospital was the first time I'd ever met her."
    Ted's gaze narrowed, and he sent Joey a probing glance. She ignored it.
    "Where
did
you meet, Joey?" Caroline asked her sister.
    Ash speared a succulent piece of meat and relaxed in his seat to listen to her answer. Ought to be entertaining.
    "I'll bet it was something to do with that Slasher case, wasn't it?"
    Ash frowned, his brain instantly going on alert. He swallowed his food and sat straighter. "Why would you think that, Ted?"
    Ted shrugged. "Well, you were investigating it. She's been obsessed with it since the first—"
    "I haven't been obsessed. You're exaggerating."
    "Interested is probably a better term," Caroline put in quickly, as if she was jumping to her sister's defense. "But no more than most of the people who live around here."
    Ted frowned hard at his wife, and she sent him a silent message, a powerful one. A puzzled expression settled over his face, but he shrugged and leaned back in his chair.
    "I certainly understand her interest in the murders better now. She was seeing you, Ash, and you were investigating them. It's only natural she'd want to know all she could."
    Ash nodded, but kept glancing at Joey's face. She looked as if she were sitting on a pile of thumbtacks.
    "There was another one last night, you know," Ted put in, and when Ash glanced at him it was to see him watching Joey's face, as well.
    "Another what, Daddy?"
    "Another of the great ice-cream robberies," Ash said quickly, not missing a beat. "Three gallons of Heavenly Hash. Someone's going to have a whale of a belly ache this morning."
    Brittany giggled, and Caroline shot Ash a grateful glance. Ash felt something warm press against his calf and looked down. A black-and-white cat the size of a small cow looked back, purring loudly. "Well, now. Who's this?" Ash stroked the cat's head and fed it a bit of his meat
    "Felix," the girls chimed in unison.
    "He likes you, Uncle Ash."
    "I think he likes everybody who feeds him."
    The cat moved on to the next seat, panhandling for scraps, and Ted picked up the conversation. "Where
did
you two meet?"
    Joey shifted in her seat. "At the theater...the one at Destiny, USA. We were both there to see the same movie and we ended up sitting together."
    It wasn't bad, as far as lies went. Wasn't good, either, but it wasn't bad. "And the next thing she knew, I'd spirited her off to Vegas and married her,” he said. “Right, Joey?"
    She bit her lip, nodded and applied herself to her dinner.
    "You ever been there?" His question was directed to Ted. He couldn’t quite get a read on the man. There was sheer adoration in his eyes when he looked at his girls. He fed the cat a scrap every few seconds. Those things seemed to lend credence to him being a decent guy and a family man. But when he met his wife’s eyes, there was something decidedly uncomfortable there, and he was watching Joey with a depth of scrutiny probably similar to Ash’s own. As if he knew or suspected she was hiding something.
    "I used to live there," Ted said, glancing away from his sister-in-law for once.
    "You miss it much?"