Free Grave Danger by Rachel Grant

people than Lyle ever did, yet he convinced everyone that shutting down was in their best interests. Half the old mill employees thank him for ‘looking out for them.’ What a load of bull. Jason Caruthers only knows how to look out for himself.”
    “Don’t bring anything personal into this investigation, Luke. It’s just a simple inquiry as to where people were at the times in question.” He’d cautioned himself in the same way when he added Jason’s name to the list.
    Luckily, his phone rang and he waved Luke out of the room and took the call.
    “I owe you a beer. Make that a case of beer,” Bobby said. “I’m sitting in the bar last night, bored as hell and waiting to see if Brady will show up, when this tiny little blonde with the most amazing rack walks in. Next thing I know, she’s arguing with our boy, giving me the perfect excuse to talk to her.”
    “Please tell me you questioned her before you hit on her.”
    “Hey, man, I’m a professional.”
    Mark laughed. “Yeah. Right. What’d you find out?”
    “She’s friends with Maitland. She was checking up on Brady, because for some reason she didn’t think you would. I got an earful on the evils of Officer Brady, but more important, the woman seemed credible.”
    “Which part of your anatomy finds her credible?”
    “My gut says she’s telling the truth.”
    “You sure? Because your dick doesn’t have the best track record.”
    “And yours is so much smarter.”
    “I just don’t let mine make decisions for me.”
    “Yeah, right. Listen, after I walked Simone to her car, I went back in and observed Brady. My take—he’s an asshole who uses his badge to wield power over anyone he perceives as weaker. Probably stunned the hell out of him when Maitland reported him. Didn’t you say he had her trapped financially?”
    “His brother was her client.”
    “Sounds like his style. I don’t know if Brady is stalking Maitland again or not but it wouldn’t be out of character from what I saw.”
    They talked for a minute more and then Mark ended the conversation. He sat in his quiet office, thinking about Libby Maitland. She wasn’t paranoid, a groupie, or a flake. It sounded as if she’d had real reason to fear Aaron Brady in the past. Her belief someone put a nail in her tire and hid in the blackberries to scare her seemed plausible now.

    T HE BEAUTIFUL OLD V ICTORIAN MANSION sat high on the hill on the edge of the historic district and loomed over the town and mill properties. The residence had been known as Thorpe House until 1940, when Lyle Montgomery fired two mill workers for using that name in front of him. Forever afterward, the house was called Montgomery Mansion.
    Back then, the company provided nearly all employee housing. TL&L owned the company store, the gas station, the hotel, the church; even the United States Postal Service paid rent to TL&L to have an office within the town. The only building in the area not owned by the company was the Masonic Hall, and the fired workers and their families had to stay in the Hall until they could find a way to leave Coho forever.
    The mansion sat in a park-like setting, with huge old oak trees and a manicured lawn. The Queen Anne-style house had a complicated, asymmetrical shape, which included a wide porch next to a rounded tower on the east-facing front of the house. Decorative shingles adorned the upper floors and stained glass sparkled in the smaller side windows. Carved moldings adorned every window frame and most joints. The ornamental balusters that supported the porch railing were a work of art in their own right.
    From the first time Libby had driven through Coho, she’d wanted to enter this house. Architecturally, it was superb. Built in 1885 after the first Thorpe House burned down, it wasn’t the oldest structure in Coho, but it was the most gorgeous. As Libby and Jason stepped onto the porch, she was saddened such a beautiful old structure had a long history of needless