Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) by Janice Kay Johnson Read Free Book Online

part of the evening with her.
    “I’ve had the most to do with Elaine,” he said.  Elaine
Terwilliger was a pain in the butt.  Probably every police department had one
or more of her kind.  He’d swear she averaged a complaint a week.  Somebody was
parked illegally.  A teenage kid was playing his music too loud.  She spent a
lot of time outraged because her next door neighbor, Conrad Neufeld, liked to
start shedding clothes as he wandered through his house on his way to bed. 
Some nights he didn’t pull his bedroom blind until he was stark naked.  Daniel
would rather wrestle down and cuff a two hundred and fifty pound biker hopped
on crack than visit Conrad yet again to discuss how he might avoid offending
his spinster neighbor’s delicate sensibilities.  Daniel had begun to suspect
that Elaine settled down every night at her window to enjoy the show, and that
Conrad was either thumbing his nose – not to mention something else – at her,
or else he was enjoying putting on the show.  Either way, Daniel was not fond
of Elaine Terwilliger, and getting less so by the week of Conrad Neufeld, too.
    “I know Hannah, too,” he said.  “I buy a lot of books.  And,
damn, but she makes incredible caramel truffles.  Seems like a nice lady. 
Naomi Kendrick, though, I don’t think I’d ever met.”  Even her voice on the
phone hadn’t rung any bells for him.  He’d eaten in her café – she or whoever
was in the kitchen made the best French toast he’d ever had in his life – but
the waitress who’d waited on him there was a middle-aged woman whose husband
was an insurance agent and he’d never caught even a glimpse of the cook.
    “She made fabulous lasagna.”
    “I’m glad somebody thought to feed you.”  The minute he said
it, he felt a little embarrassed.  He was going to have to be careful not to
get too personal with Sophie Thomsen.  It had been a mistake, earlier, to beg
lunch off her.  Friends ate together.  Investigators didn’t dine with people
they were interviewing.
    Keeping an appropriate distance, he’d been discovering since
he took this job, was one of the toughest parts of small town policing.
    It was going to be harder yet keeping that distance from
Sophie.  A voice in him was saying, You know she didn’t kill her aunt, so
why not get personal?
    Since he came to Cape Trouble, he hadn’t had anything but a
couple of one-offs with women staying at a local inn for a weekend of sand,
sun, fog and – it turned out – sex.  Mostly that suited him.  He wasn’t
interested in getting serious, investing that much of himself in a wife and
children.  People died, or couples split up.  Why invite pain? was his
philosophy.  But Sophie not only attracted him, she came with an end date.  She
was in town for four weeks.  After that she’d have no reason to return except
to close out her aunt’s estate, assuming she really was the heir – finding out
for sure was on tomorrow’s to-do list.
    You can’t sleep with her until you’ve eliminated her as a
suspect once and for all , he argued with himself.
    So do that, was the easy answer.
    And then find out if she was interested.
    As they ended the call a little awkwardly, Daniel liked
knowing he’d be seeing her tomorrow morning.
    Even if a brutal crime was the excuse.
     
    *****
     
    He could give her a few hours, Daniel told her when they met
out front of the office at the storage facility.  He claimed to want to see for
himself her system, but Sophie suspected he was also being nice.  He had to
have been aware of her shock and distress yesterday, and wanted to be sure she
could actually handle working here so soon after discovering Doreen’s body.
    No uniform today – he wore dark brown chinos, athletic
shoes, and a sweater over a T-shirt.  The casual attire did nothing to reduce
his impact or air of authority.  Somehow she couldn’t imagine anyone having the
nerve to give him orders.
    He was driving a dark SUV today,