Free Murder on the Horizon by M.L. Rowland Page B

glance at the clock above the doorway told her it was 5:18 a.m. “Too early to be up. Too late to go back to bed.” In the mudroom off the kitchen, she scooped a cup of dry dog food from a giant bag next to the back door and dropped it into Minnie’s silver dish.
    Back in the kitchen, she grabbed up the teakettle, filled it with exactly the right amount of water for two giant panda mugs of coffee. Then she smacked the kettle back on the stove and turned the burner on.
    Hands gripping the edge of the stove, she stared at, but didn’t see the blue flame. “Yeeesh,” she whispered. “That was real. Bad idea to watch a Rob movie. Very bad. Idiotic.”
    Because just like that, Rob Christian was back inside her head. And her heart.
    Rob Christian—British megastar, whose life Gracie had saved on a nightmare search the previous Thanksgiving, the man whose mere proximity set her body aflame from head to toe, the man with whom Gracie had played emotional cat and mouse until the last time she had seen him, when she had realized with a sudden onslaught of self-awareness that she was in love with him. She had left him still sleeping. No note. No explanation. Her inability, or unwillingness, to answer his calls and e-mails in the days following had apparently angered him so royally she hadn’t heard from him in the months since. The mouse had gotten away. Or had he been the cat? Gracie didn’t know and really didn’t want to explore the question.
    Fed and happy, Minnie pranced back into the kitchen.“You ready to go out, little girl?” Gracie walked into the living room, pulled open the sliding glass door, and let Minnie out to do her morning doggie duty down in the fenced-in backyard.
    Gracie had been able to tamp down to numbness her feelings for Rob. Or at least she had fooled herself into thinking so.
    Now, with a single dream, months later, the feelings had roared back to the surface, knocking her feet out from under her.
    Back in the kitchen, the kettle wound up to a whistle. Gracie scooped two heaping spoonfuls of Folgers Instant into the panda mug and stirred in the crystals. “So what am I going to do about him? Call him? E-mail him? How about nothing?”
    A tinny piano played “Für Elise” on her cell phone charging on the counter.
    Gracie looked up at the clock again. “Who’s that this early in the morning?”
    She made no move to answer the call. Anyone she wanted to talk to knew she had no cell coverage at the cabin. Unless she performed aerial gymnastics on the northwest corner of the deck railing, the good old-fashioned landline was the only way to have an intelligible conversation when she was at home.
    The cell phone stopped ringing. Seconds later, the phone on the counter rang.
    Gracie took a sip of scalding coffee, leaned over, and checked the caller ID. Three-one-three area code.
    â€œEvelyn.” Once again, her mother had forgotten about the three-hour time difference between Michigan and California.
    The phone kept ringing.
    Gracie took another sip of coffee, relishing the liquid caffeine surging through her body. “To answer or not to answer.” It wasn’t like she was doing much of anything else at the moment. She grabbed up the receiver. “Hello?”
    â€œMoMo is dying!” her mother wailed.
    Gracie blinked. “What?”
    â€œMoMo. He’s dying. It’s vascular disease. The doctors don’t give him very long.”
    Gracie set her mug on the kitchen table and sank down onto one of the ladder-backed chairs.
    â€œYou need to come to Detroit,” her mother continued in a quivering voice. She blew her nose loudly, then said, “He wants to see you.”
    Quick! Think of an excuse!
“I can’t. I . . . have a dog now.”
Yeah, that’s it. A dog.
    â€œPut the dog in a kennel, for Christ’s sake! It’s a dog, not a child.”
    â€œAnd I have a job now,