Page 177 of Hidden Nature

Everything Sloan read said Lori Preston had been a harmless woman. Divorced nearly a decade, she had no serious romantic relationships and maintained a civil one with her ex. They’d had two children, both now married. A son who’d moved to Atlanta for work, and a daughter who worked at a resort in the Laurel Highlands, and had given Lori her first grandchild.

A boy, now four months old.

She’d owned a small gift shop—a lot of crystals, wind chimes, candleholders, and candles—that appeared to be as much hobby as business.

Neighbors described her as a friendly, outgoing woman who’d loved to garden and putter around her house.

And when she’d puttered a few months before the birth of her grandchild, she’d started to change out a dated ceiling light for a new one.

Whether she’d been distracted or just careless, she hadn’t turned off the breaker. She’d suffered an electrical shock that had stopped her heart, along with a fall off her stepladder.

Her daughter had been there, heard her fall, called nine-one-one, done CPR. And saved her.

Until now.

So another face on Sloan’s wall, more pins in her map.

She worked the cases in on her own time—an hour here, two hours there—and admitted she just kept going around the same circles.

She got up at the knock on the door, and found Nash and Tic.

“I brought pizza, and the dog.”

“Both are welcome.” She bent down to greet the happy dog. “I see you dug out.”

“Yeah. Too much for the snowblower, but your father has a plow. I think I might get one myself.”

“Dad’s the plow master. He loves plowing.”

When she straightened with Tic leaning lovingly against her legs, Nash took a long look before he kissed her. “You need a break.”

“It shows?”

“Yeah, so take one. Got a beer?”

“Sure.”

She went back, got one out, and a Coke for herself as he set the pizza on the table.

“Let’s try this. Tell me again what you know about Lori Preston, and what you’ve found out, get it out and off your mind.”

“A nice woman, a good mother, a new and excited grandmother. She loved her little, barely-making-the-rent shop, and switching up the decor in her house from pieces she carried in it.”

She got out plates, a treat for Tic.

“The accident made her only more determined to enjoy her life, according to her children. She’d planned to go to Atlanta to visit her son and his wife next month. She had investment income—you’d get that—so she could have her shop, live that life. No current men in her life.”

She sat, grateful she could say it all to someone other than herself.

“She told her daughter she liked being single, independent, getting together with girlfriends now and then.

“Her daughter, the daughter’s husband, and the baby arrived at herhouse about five-thirty for a visit. Planned. The shop opened noon to four on Sundays.”

Though her appetite had waned again, Sloan ate a bite of pizza.

“She wasn’t there, her car wasn’t there. The daughter has a key, so they went in. She called her mother’s phone, but it wouldn’t go through. No signs she’d started on the Sunday dinner she’d planned.

“Thinking she’d gotten stuck at the shop, the son-in-law drove over. He found her car, locked, in its usual place. The shop locked. They checked with friends, with neighbors. Nobody’d heard from her or seen her since the day before. They called the cops.”

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