Roadside Crosses

them.” She pulled on a sweater. “In fact, I think I’ll go outside and visit.”
    Dance briefly embraced her, feeling stiffness in her mother’s shoulders. For an awkward moment the women held each other’s eyes. Then Edie stepped outside.
    Dance hugged her father too. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tomorrow?” she asked him.
    “We’ll see.”
    “Really. It’d be good. For Mom. For you, everybody.”
    “I’ll talk to her about it.”
    Dance headed back to the office where she spent the next few hours coordinating stakeouts of the possible victims’ houses and of the Brighams’ residence, deploying the manpower as best she could. And running the frustratingly hopeless search for the boy, who was proving to be as invisible as the electrons making up the vicious messages that had sent him on his deadly quest.
    COMFORT .
    Pulling up to her house in Pacific Grove at 11:00 p.m., Dance felt a tiny shiver of relief. After this long, long day she was so glad to be home.
    The classic Victorian was dark green with gray banisters, shutters and trim—it was in the northwestern part of Pacific Grove; if the time of year, the wind and your attitude about leaning over a shaky railing coincided, you could see the ocean.
    Walking into the small entryway, she flicked the light on and locked the door behind her. The dogs charged up to greet her. Dylan, a black-and-tan German shepherd, and Patsy, a dainty flat-coat retriever. They were named respectively for the greatest folk-rock songwriter and for the greatest country-western vocalist in the past hundred years.
    Dance reviewed emails but there were no new developments in the case. In the kitchen, spacious but equipped with appliances from a different decade, she poured a glass of wine and foraged for some leftovers, settling on half a turkey sandwich that hadn’t been resident in the fridge for too long.
    She fed the dogs and then let them out into the back. But as she was about to return to her computer she jumped at the raucous fuss they made, barking and charging down the stairs. They did this sometimes when a squirrel or cat had had the poor judgment to come for a visit. But that was rare at this time of night. Dance set the wineglass down and, tapping the butt of her Glock, walked out onto the deck.
    She gasped.
    A cross lay on the ground about forty feet away from the house.
    No!
    Drawing the gun, she grabbed a flashlight, called the dogs to her and swept the beam into the backyard. It was a narrow space, but extended for fifty feet behind the house and was filled with monkey flowers, scrub oak and maple trees, asters, lupine, potato vines, clover and renegade grass. The only flora that did well here thrived on sandy soil and shade.
    She saw no one, though there were places where an intruder could remain hidden from the deck.
    Dance hurried down the stairs into the dimness and looked around at the dozen of unsettling shadows cast by branches rocking in the wind.
    Pausing, then moving slowly, her eyes on the paths and the dogs, which tracked around the yard, edgy, wary.
    Their tense gait and Dylan’s raised hackles were unsettling.
    She approached the corner of the yard slowly. Looking for movement, listening for footsteps. When she heard and saw no signs of an intruder, she shined the flashlight onto the ground.
    It seemed to be a cross, but up close Dance couldn’t tell if it had been left intentionally or been created by falling branches. It wasn’t bound with wire and there were no flowers. But the back gate was a few feet away, which, though locked, could easily have been vaulted by a seventeen-year-old boy.
    Travis Brigham, she recalled, knew her name. And could easily find where she lived.
    She walked in a slow circle around the cross. Werethose footsteps beside it in the trampled grass? She couldn’t tell.
    The uncertainty was almost more troubling than if the cross had been left as a threat.
    Dance returned to the house, stuffing her weapon in the holster.
    She locked up and stepped into the living room, filled with furniture as mismatched as that in Travis Brigham’s house, but nicer and homier, no leather or chrome. Mostly overstuffed, upholstered in rusts and earth colors. All purchased during shopping trips with her late husband. Dropping onto the sofa, Dance noticed a missed call. She flipped eagerly to the log. It was from Jon Boling, not her mother.
    Boling was reporting that the “associate” had had no luck as yet with cracking