Dream Eyes

all those years ago and buried him out in the desert
.
No one would have found the body, and I wouldn’t be dealing with this problem today
.
    But a neat, tidy solution had been impossible. Willow had forbidden it. And when you got right down to it, how did you go about killing a man who had saved your ass more than once in the middle of a firefight and whose ass you had saved, in turn? Some lines could not be crossed. There was a rule about it somewhere.
    “You can’t know for sure that Barrett’s not involved,” he insisted.
    But his own logic was flawed and he knew it. Judson was right. Wilby was a small town. If Gideon Barrett had come here to get the stone, he would have found it and taken it.
    Gwen spoke up from her chair.
    “I don’t know anything more about the Barretts or Helicon Stone than what Judson has told me,” she said, “but I do know a considerable amount about Evelyn Ballinger and the circumstances here in Wilby. I agree with Judson. I very much doubt that Evelyn was murdered by outsiders. This was local and it was personal.”
    “Yeah?” Elias rounded on her. He was aware that he was in what Willow called his bristling mode, but that was too damn bad. The situation was serious. “And just how would you know that, Ms. Frazier? Are you a trained investigator?”
    “No, but I’m capable of applying common sense to a problem,” Gwen said coolly. “I find that approach so much more helpful than allowing an obsession with an old grudge to mess up my thinking.”
    Elias raised his brows.
Didn’t see that coming,
he thought. He regarded Gwen with fresh interest and some curiosity. Very few people outside his family had the nerve to put him in his place. Willow told him that he intimidated most folks. That was fine with him. Intimidation was useful.
    But Gwen Frazier looked anything but intimidated. She sat there in the big reading chair, one leg crossed over the other, radiating a calm poise that matched the
You don’t scare me
message in her eyes.
    He caught the brief, amused smile that edged Judson’s mouth. That startled him even more than discovering that Gwen had claws. Everyone in the family knew that Judson hadn’t smiled much since he had returned from the island job. He had, in fact, been ducking them all, hiding out in a little town on the Oregon coast, licking his wounds.
    Elias understood. A man needed time to recover from betrayal and a close brush with death. He was pretty sure that the explosion inside the cave had done some unseen damage, as well. The family had agreed to give Judson some space. But now it was starting to look like Gwen Frazier and a small-time murder investigation were exactly what the doctor should have ordered.
    Nick let out a crack of laughter and reached for the last sandwich.
    “Welcome to my world,” he said to Gwen. He popped the dainty sandwich into his mouth and brushed crumbs from his hands. “I had to listen to Wyatt Earp, here, carry on about those badass Barretts the whole trip down from Seattle. It gets old.”
    Judson looked at him. “You’re bored after a few hours of listening to him obsess about Hank Barrett and son? Try listening to him harp on the subject your entire life. When we were growing up, Mom had to institute a No Barrett rule at the dinner table and on family vacations.”
    “No kidding?” Nick said with what appeared to be an utter lack of interest. “I can sure see how having your old man lecture you about your future business competition might ruin a trip to Disneyland, all right. Bummer.”
    But his air of monumental unconcern was belied by the look that he exchanged with Gwen. Their eyes met for no more than an instant, but Elias was pretty sure he could read the message that had passed between them. If these two had any memories of conversations around the family dinner table or vacations to Disneyland, they were not good ones.
    “Speaking of business,” Elias said, “let’s get back to it.” He beetled his brows at Judson. “Tell me what you found in Ballinger’s house.”
    “It had the feel of a planned hit,” Judson said. “I think the murder was done to silence a potential witness, someone who had discovered something the killer did not want her to know.”
    “Huh.” Elias turned back to the window. “Got to admit killing an unarmed woman doesn’t sound like Barrett. But I’m telling you that geode is a damn good motive for murder.”
    “I know,” Judson said. “But there are others.