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Chloe looked at her with solemn eyes. “You want to talk now?”
“Are you ready?” So much had happened, Elizabeth had thought Chloe had forgotten their deal.
“Can I eat first?”
“You bet. I’ve got to get ready anyway.”
Elizabeth quickly went through her morning routine, starting with a quick shower. Normally, she cranked up the hot water to just below uncomfortable, but today she threw the taps to cold and dunked her head under the spray. Frigid water blasted her and she gasped in shock. She shampooed her hair in record time. Good . . . great . . . she needed to wake the hell up and push aside all her fears. And she also needed to freeze out crazy thoughts of Rex Kingston’s mouth.
A few moments later, she switched off the taps, briskly toweled off, then grabbed up her robe, cinching it around her waist. Brrr . . . But it felt good, too.
She returned to the kitchen and found the coffeemaker had hissed to a stop. Pouring herself a cup, she watched Chloe slide her bowl across the counter. Elizabeth caught it just before it plunged over the edge to crash on the floor.
“More cereal,” her daughter demanded.
“More cereal what?”
“More cereal . . . please?”
“You know you’re a carb-freak, right?”
Chloe’s little eyebrows knitted. “Not a freak.”
“Poor choice of words,” Elizabeth agreed but didn’t add that she, with her visions, was certainly the freak in the house. She found the carton of milk in the fridge and topped off Chloe’s small bowl so that the Cheerios were swimming again. “Do you know who this man is who did some bad things?”
“You mean, the one who loves you?”
“I guess so, yes.”
Chloe shook her head.
“You don’t . . . um . . . see him in your mind?”
“Uh-uh. He just says how much he loves you, and you’re going to find out pretty soon.” She moved her spoon around in her bowl but had lost all interest in her cereal.
“I’m making you uncomfortable.”
“I don’t like him very much.”
In a terrible moment, Elizabeth’s coffee cup halfway to her lips, it occurred to her that her own sudden interest in Rex Kingston was an aberration. Was he the man Chloe seemed to be sensing? “It . . . um, he wasn’t the man who came to the door last night, was he?”
“What man?”
“The one with Ravinia?”
“No,” Chloe said, looking at Elizabeth as if she were way off base. “Was that his dog?”
“I don’t . . . think so.” She was relieved that Chloe had been so positive about Rex.
“Are we done with the deal now?” she asked anxiously.
Elizabeth nodded, then left to work on the tangle of her hair and to get dressed. She dried the still-wet strands, twisted them up into her ubiquitous messy bun, then brushed on enough makeup to disguise the dark circles under her eyes. When she noticed that the bedside clock that had been her tormentor during the night was registering eight fifteen, she found her cell and, though it was low on battery life, put in a call to one of the numbers Ravinia had given her. The Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.
“Could I speak to Detective Savannah Dunbar?” she asked when the phone was answered.
To her surprise, she was immediately connected.
“Detective Dunbar,” a woman’s voice answered evenly.
