Page 16 of K-9 in Pursuit

“I will. I promise.”

“You can take some more time off if you need to,” Connor said.

“No,” Brian said. “I want to work.” Being on the snow with his dog and the other members of the team would pull him back into some semblance of normal life. In that world his job was to protect and save people—not to stand accused of murder.

Chapter Five

“I can’t believe they let that man go! He killed my baby!” Darinda pressed a wadded tissue to her reddened eyes and sniffed. They had all spent a restless night, but the Monday-morning news that the only suspect in Sharee’s murder was released had done nothing to improve anyone’s mood.

“They let him go because they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him,” Chloe said. Though she had stepped into her meeting with Brian ready to believe he was her sister’s murderer, his protestations of innocence had seemed so genuine.

“They found his glove!” Darinda said. If the sheriff’s office had thought to keep this information secret, they had failed miserably. Everyone in town seemed to know about Brian’s ski glove being found next to the body.

“He lost the glove several days ago,” Chloe said. “His fellow ski patrollers all said so.”

“He could have pretended to lose it, knowing he was going to use it when he murdered Sharee,” Darinda said.

Maybe. Except why leave a glove that he knew had his name written inside? “The sheriff’s department is testing for DNA,” Chloe said. “If Chloe was killed by someone wearing that glove, her DNA will be on it.” And the wearer’s would be on the inside—Brian, or whoever had framed him. Chloe would reserve judgment until DNA confirmed or ruled out Brian’s involvement. Though she had a hard time believing the easygoing ski patroller would be so evil.

“Why are you defending him?” Darinda snapped.

“I’m not defending him. But they can’t hold someone for murder if they don’t have evidence.”

“He hated Sharee,” Darinda said. “That’s motive.”

Did he? Brian had admitted to being annoyed with Sharee, but Chloe had detected no real heat behind this admission. “Why do you think he hated her?” she asked.

“He’s exactly like that teacher. He led her on, then tried to dump her.” She looked up toward the ceiling and her voice rose. “An innocent girl cut down in the prime of life.” Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks, and she dabbed at them delicately. Chloe had the eerie sensation of having seen this before. What was that role Darinda had played a couple of years ago—something with a grieving mother? That last sentence sounded like one of the lines from that play.

Chloe looked at her dad. He shook his head and patted his wife’s back. “Don’t get yourself so worked up, Darinda,” he said. “It isn’t healthy for your heart.”

“I need my pills.” Darinda looked around her. “Where are my pills?”

“They’re in your purse,” Chloe’s dad said.

“I’ll get them.” Chloe stood and retrieved the purse, found the bottle of Xanax, and passed it over. She was trying hard to make allowances for Darinda’s grief. No parent should have to lose a child, and Sharee was Darinda’s only offspring. Chloe was the stepdaughter. She didn’t have the same kind of relationship with Darinda.

Darinda gulped down one of the pills and drank from the half-empty glass of water beside her. “I need to lie down,” she said, then rose and staggered from the room.

When she was gone, Chloe moved to sit beside her dad. “How are you doing?” she asked.

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.” He wiped his hand down his face. “How could this have happened?”

“I keep asking myself the same thing,” Chloe said. “I don’t know. Sharee could be impulsive sometimes. Maybe too trusting. She didn’t have sense where men were concerned. Maybe she met the wrong person and got in over her head.”

“Do you know this Brian person well?”

“Not at all, really. He came to me to ask me to talk to Sharee about leaving him alone. She kept following him at work, making suggestive comments. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Like with that teacher,” her father said.

“Is that how it happened with the teacher?” Chloe asked.

Her father slumped lower in his seat. “In the beginning. Then it progressed. Sharee started calling his cell phone. She stopped by his house after school and on weekends—uninvited, according to him. He was married, with two children. He ended up filing a complaint and got a restraining order. Sharee couldn’t continue to go to school after that.” He sighed, and his shoulders sagged further. “Darinda thinks the whole thing was an overreaction on the part of the teacher and his wife. I wanted to believe that, too.”

“But maybe it wasn’t,” Chloe said. She picked lint from her leggings, avoiding her father’s gaze. “Someone called the ski resort and complained about Brian,” she said. “A woman. She used fake names. That kind of thing could have cost him his job. I can see how the teacher would have felt threatened, too.”

“So the sheriff is right—this guy did have a reason to want to get rid of Sharee.”