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Scarlett raised her perfectly microbladed eyebrows, though it was hardly noticeable. All that botox had pretty much lulled her facial muscles to sleep.“My, my, aren’t you the ambitious little watch leader. A car and surveillance equipment. What next? Stun guns and a rocket launcher? This is just a small town, Vesta, and we’re just a small-town neighborhood watch. The kind of crime we get is peanuts compared to big-city crime.”

“Yeah, but it still pays to be prepared,” Vesta grunted. The thing was that she hated not to feel appreciated—even laughed at, she felt, by the police department and even her own son. They thought they were just a bunch of old fruitcakes farting around and dabbling in crime prevention. “I want to be taken seriously, Scarlett,” she said. “I want people to sit up and take notice when we pass them by on the street. I want them to point and say: look, there goes Vesta Muffin, she of the watch.”

“Sure,” said Scarlett with a grin. “Next you want them to start applauding. Face it, Vesta, that’s never gonna happen. They’ll always think of us as a bunch of busybodies sticking our noses where they don’t belong. That’s human nature for you.”

“Well, I’m going to change all that,” said Vesta stubbornly.

“You do whatever you like,” said Scarlett, stifling a little yawn with the back of her hand. “I’ve got a mani-pedi at eleven and a massage at twelve.” She directed a knowing look at her friend. “Wanna join me? You could use a nice massage, Vesta. You’re a bundle of nerves.”

“I’m a bundle of nerves cause I know that if only we can find Vicky we’ll get all the respect we deserve and more.” Not to mention that reward money she was sure existed.

“Vicky Gardner,” said Scarlett, draining her flat white. “Wasn’t she in school with Marge?”

“She was. Pretty little thing she was, too. Turned all the boys’ heads.”

“I’ll help you find Vicky on one condition and one condition only,” said Scarlett, placing a perfectly manicured hand on Vesta’s arm.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“That you join me for a nice relaxing morning at the spa.”

“I don’t do spas,” Vesta growled. “Spas are for pampered old fools and airless bimbos.” But instead of being offended, Scarlett merely cocked her head, like a bird sitting in a tree. Finally Vesta groaned. “Oh, all right. One visit to the spa, that’s it. And if they so much as come near me with one of those torture instruments I’ll punch them in the snoot.”

“You’ll love it,” Scarlett said with a laugh.

“Somehow I doubt that,” Vesta muttered. She was getting soft in her old age, if she allowed herself to be dragged into the spa. Then again, ever since she and Scarlett had renewed their friendship something had changed that she couldn’t put her finger on. Almost as if she was becoming a mellower version of the old Vesta.

And she didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Chapter 9

Ted Trapper was traipsing through the fields surrounding the lovely little hamlet of Hampton Cove, photographing birds, butterflies and other representatives of Mother Nature, and having a whale of a time. He didn’t get a lot of time off from his job at the accountancy firm where he worked, and so when he did he tried to make the most of it.

On a scorching hot day, like today was promising to be, most people headed down to the beach or the pool to cool off. But not Ted Trapper. He was lying in a shallow ditch, his camera prone, shooting pictures of birds in action, and inaction, too.

And he’d just pointed his viewfinder at a particularly interesting specimen he thought might be an osprey when suddenly he became aware of a distinct smell filling his nostrils.

It was not a pleasant smell. On the contrary, it was the smell of death and decay.

As he wrinkled up his nose, he glanced around and inspected the ditch he’d selected as his bird hide, and wondered about the nature of the pervasive and unpleasant smell.

And then, suddenly, and much to his dismay, he saw a foot.

Then, relaxing, he realized it was probably not a foot as such but a shoe.

“What people throw away these days,” Ted muttered to himself, and moved over to pick up the shoe with the intention of getting rid of it at a later date. He then discovered that the shoe was stuck, and as he pulled this way and that to dislodge it, he suddenly realized to his horror that it wasattached not to the soil, but the sole of someone’s foot!

The stockinged foot stared back at him, as he stared at it, and soon he realized that the weird and unpleasant smell must have come from the human being who was lying in the ditch, which meant that this human being was very much… dead!

He yelped again as the realization hit that he’d been lying right next to a dead body.

And as he scrambled to his own feet, he finally saw the body whole and saw it well: it was a young woman, dressed in a flashy-colored leotard, with blond hair partly covering her face but not enough to hide the fact that she was, indeed, dead, and that she’d been, in life, a very lovely young woman indeed.