Murder Deja Vu

rusty. He didn’t score the trifecta in honky-tonk bars, but he wasn’t after looks in those places.
    Dana Minette possessed something quite different. Determination, humor, and warmth, all wrapped up in an attractive package about sixty-three inches in height. Better still, she didn’t appear the type to genuflect for money or position. So how did a creep like Robert Minette get a woman like her to stay with him for twenty years?
    He remembered the first time he saw Minette, with his white-collared, pin-striped shirt, suspenders, and shiny suit. The man had done everything to rally the townspeople against the murderer who wanted to live among them. Reece had run too far and too long to run again. He fought Minette and won. So where did the lawyer find the nerve to drive into his yard, say he had no hard feelings, and act like Reece should fall at his feet and say Yassuh, Masser .
    “No one refuses Robert Minette ,” he’d said, slicked-back hair glistening in the morning sun. “Robert Minette gets what he wants.”
    Reece laughed and ordered him off his property. The attorney stormed away in his Escalade, a spray of gravel spitting from its tires.
    Not this time, bub, and good riddance to you.

Chapter Two
Out in the Open

    D ana drove home with Daughtry’s promise to meet at eight the next morning to draw up plans for her fireplace. Harris told her Daughtry was a strange man, and he was right. But after he’d spent fifteen years caged like an animal, rarely seeing the light of day or a kind face, she couldn’t blame him for being antisocial. Especially after being wrongly convicted. If he was. But she didn’t believe a man who fitted a menagerie of animals with electronic collars could ever kill. She saw three more dogs roaming the property before she left. How many more were in the house?
    There were many types of prisons. Dana could have walked away from hers sooner, but the penalty would have been unbearable. After her younger son left for college and a TV movie deal for one of her books gave her financial independence, she thrust her middle finger at Robert and left his house with nothing but the clothes on her back. She would have left those too, but walking naked into the cold mountain air didn’t seem like an option. She filed for divorce shortly after. Robert dumped her? What a joke. Yes, Dana knew the freedom Daughtry must feel.
    Robert would blow a gasket when he found out Daughtry was building her a fireplace. A smile curled her lips. No one rejected Robert Minette, and no one called him Bob or Bobby or Rob or any of the pat-on-the-back nicknames most Roberts answered to. It was Robert Minette, and don’t you forget it. She hated him with a passion she never thought herself capable of.
    She sat with a glass of wine in her unfinished great room and stared at the fireplace wall. What magnificence would Daughtry construct? The magazine pictures and the breathtaking beauty of his house sparked her imagination. She drank another glass of wine and sat there until dark, then went to bed to wait for morning.
    * * * * *
    D ana usually rose at six, but the wine had put her into a deep sleep, and she woke a few minutes after seven. She hopped out of bed, padded into the kitchen, and ground coffee for a full pot rather than her usual two cups. Maybe Daughtry didn’t drink coffee, but if he did…
    After a quick shower, she fluffed her short wet hair to dry naturally and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She rarely wore more than a dab of lipstick and didn’t put on any more than that this morning.
    With a mug of coffee in hand, she slid open the glass door and went outside to enjoy the morning sun, scaring off a cardinal perched on her bird feeder. Dew covered the blanket of winter turf, interrupted by a few sprouts of green struggling to make an appearance. May mornings in the North Carolina mountains still held the nip of late winter instead of late spring. A brisk gust of wind sent her back inside for a sweater.
    Her house overlooked the picture-postcard view of the valley. Houses and farms peppering the countryside, church steeples, pastures, and barns. No lake like Daughtry’s, but that was okay. She preferred this.
    A truck groaned up the steep drive. A door opened and closed. She waited until he saw her on the patio and joined her, the little three-legged mutt trailing behind. Daughtry wore jeans, a plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt, and work boots.
    The dog hobbled straight to