His eyes lit up. “Hey, your phone works here, right?”

I grabbed my cell phone out of my purse. “Three bars.”

“Okay,” he said, taking the recorder, “call me and tuck your phone into your purse. If you leave it on top, with nothing over it, I should be able to listen to your conversation. I can tape the conversation on mine.”

“Oh! Good idea.” I called his number, and as soon as he answered, I put the phone in my bag.

“Let’s do this,” I said, reaching for the door handle.

“Carly,” Marco said, worry in his voice. “Be careful.”

I nodded, then headed inside, feeling like a bundle of nerves as I tried to figure out how to approach her. Once I got into the store, I saw her turn down an aisle, so I grabbed a shopping cart and headed to the aisle next to hers, which turned out to be the chips and snacks aisle. I grabbed a box of crackers and some microwave popcorn, and then feigned serious interest in the ingredients listed on a jar of almonds. I snuck glances out of the corner of my eye, watching for her to turn down my aisle. After several seconds, I set down the jar and picked up a random can, still watching.

Had she skipped this aisle? Maybe she was picking up a short list of things instead of doing her weekly shopping.

Time to go search for her.

I set the can back on the shelf and started pushing my cart to the end of the aisle when a cart with an infant car seat locked onto the front turned down the aisle.

Mitzi.

She stopped to grab two different flavors of Doritos, so I pushed my cart toward hers, my heart beating frantically against my ribs. I really hoped I didn’t blow this.

“Excuse me,” I said as I stopped next to her. “Mitzi?”

Her eyes flew wide, giving me a panicked look that suggested she was on the verge of grabbing the kids and running.

I held up my hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Carly. Abby told you I needed to talk to you.”

Her head swiveled from side to side as though looking to see if we had any witnesses. “Why are you talkin’ to me here?”

“I came by your house yesterday and your husband didn’t want me to talk to you.”

“I shouldn’t be talkin’ to you now.” She glanced down at the little boy in her cart, who looked up at me with a curious scrutiny. Her gaze jerked up to mine. “Are you followin’ me?”

“Mitzi, I only want to ask you a few questions about Heather.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about her in front of my kids.”

“Okay,” I said in a sympathetic tone. “I understand. Can we meet somewhere else?”

“I don’t know.” She looked doubtful. “Maybe when Paul leaves for work.”

“Do you want me to come to your house?”

She shook her head with panic in her eyes. “No! The neighbors will tell him.”

I slid between the carts until I was standing on the other side of her, away from her cart and her son’s listening ears, and whispered, “Mitzi, do you need help?”

Tears slid down her cheeks. “You need to go.”

“Okay,” I said, “I will, but I’m worried about you. I can help you if you need it.”

Her back stiffened, and she swiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’m fine. Maybe we can talk about it next week when things die down.”

“It can’t wait until next week,” I said. “I can walk with you while you shop, and we can talk in code if you like. So we don’t scare your son.”

The look on her face suggested she was about to shoot me down, but to my surprise, she nodded. “Okay.”

She started down the aisle, and I said, “I’m going to just leave my cart here and walk with you.”

“Okay.”

“Were you and her close before she left?” I asked.

Her mouth twisted wistfully. “I thought so, but lookin’ back, I don’t know that she could be friends with people. Paul says she was a user, and even though he’s guilty of a lot of things, he knows how to read people.”

“Did Paul know her?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. I didn’t know him through our friends.”

“But you knew him back then.”

Her cheeks pinkened. “Not before she left, but we met soon afterward.”

“How did you meet?”

She grimaced and leaned closer, lowering her voice. “Paul pulled me over for speedin’, even though I wasn’t, and made me get out of the car. He said he was goin’ to let me off with a warnin’, but only if I gave him my phone number.”

I gasped. “Are you kiddin’ me?”

A smile lifted the corner of her lips. “He told me that he’d seen me around town before and didn’t know how else to approach me.”

“And you said this was after Heather left?”

“About six months after.” She leaned in further, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “He was married, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

“Did he take you to the Mountain View Lodge?” I asked.

She looked taken aback by my question, so I was surprised when she said, “No. He’d always come to my house. I always thought it was strange that we didn’t go to his place, but he always had an excuse. Then the one time we went there, his wife found us.” She sniffed. “Lookin’ back, I think he planned it that way.”

What a first-class asshole. But she clearly wasn’t ready to talk about that yet, at least not to me, so I veered back to the subject at hand.

“Was Heather upset when Wyatt didn’t propose at Christmas?”

She rolled her eyes. “Boy, was she. She’d been countin’ on it. She’d already asked me and Abby to be her maids of honor.”

“Really?” I said. “I didn’t think she and Abby were close at that point.”

“That’s the sad thing. They weren’t. But Abby came home over her Christmas break, and Heather asked us both then. When she told us that Wyatt hadn’t proposed like she’d planned, I told her not to worry. He’d come around. And then he did, only Bart wouldn’t give Wyatt the tavern or any piece of his inheritance, and Heather was fit to be tied. I tried to tell her that any woman in town would kill to have Wyatt Drummond for a husband, with or without the money, but she said she wanted more.”

“So she set him up to get arrested?”

Guilt filled her eyes. “I don’t know for sure, but I’ve suspected.”

“Do you know if Heather had another boyfriend after the arrest?”

“She met someone at the salon. She was always pretty vague about him. One night she got super drunk and admitted he was married. But it fizzled out, because the next thing I knew, she was askin’ me to arrange a going-away party for her. She seemed excited about her plan to leave, even if she kept it close to her chest. I have to confess that part of me was happy she was goin’.”

“But you threw her a going-away party anyway?”

“Yeah,” she said with a sniff. “I’d just lost my job at the Mountain View Lodge after snatchin’ a key and lettin’ Heather use a room to meet her guy from the salon. They’d taken to meeting there, I guess, but she was running short on money and she seemed desperate when she asked me for a room that night.”