A Wicked Kiss Read Online Free Page B

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    I should’ve just thrown it away with the rest of the junk mail. I should’ve left it alone. I didn’t need to open it because I knew it wasn’t going to be anything nice. Nothing nice ever came in a relatively blank envelope.
    But I opened it anyway.
    It was short and to the point, brutal in its content and delivery. I was glad I was sitting down when I started to read it because if I hadn’t been, I would’ve ended up on my ass.
    Allen Lockwood wasn’t a good man. He was a liar and a bastard. The world is a better place without him.
    I read it three times, each time hoping that it would somehow say something different. That those horrible words would somehow be changed into something that reflected the man I’d known. Yes, he’d lied to me about being sick and what he’d done had been awful, but as much as his actions pained me, I knew they’d been done out of love. No matter how angry I was at him, I couldn’t imagine the world being better off for him having died. He hadn’t been perfect, but he’d been a good man.
    Who would send a letter like this to someone’s widow? It was impossibly cruel.
    Once I’d recovered enough to start thinking, the Lockwoods were the first people to pop into my mind. Maybe they thought if I was upset enough, I’d want to get away from any place that reminded me of Allen and I’d either give or sell them the vineyard. After all, the letter hadn’t come right away. Allen had been gone for nearly four months. Why else would whoever this was wait so long before sending it?
    I didn’t have proof though. There was no postage on the envelope, which only meant that it hadn’t been mailed. The Lockwoods had enough contacts in St. Helena that delivering a letter wouldn’t be a big deal, especially since I wouldn’t be around to catch anyone doing it.
    If I’d thought it’d do any good, I would’ve taken it to the police so they could test it for fingerprints or DNA or whatever else they could find with their various toys. I knew, however, that no one would care. It wasn’t a threat on my life or even against my property. Nothing that could even be interpreted as intimidation. There was no law against being mean and therefore no reason to run expensive tests.
    I could have argued that the person who’d written it could’ve been involved in the arson, but based on the way I’d been treated during the investigation into Allen’s death, I didn’t trust the St. Helena Police Department to take anything I said seriously, especially since the lead detectives in both cases were the same. Detective Reed didn’t even try to hide his low opinion of me and even the “good cop” of the two, Detective Rheingard, most likely believed that I’d had something to do with either Allen’s death or the fire, perhaps even both, but he was at least polite about it.
    I wanted to crumple it into a ball and throw it away. Tear it into tiny pieces and burn it. I also wanted to hit something, so I knew that giving in to any impulses I currently had would be a bad idea. I carefully folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. I didn’t want it out where I could see it though. It was going to be hard enough to get those words out of my head. I didn’t need them coming back to me every time I saw the envelope. I went to the office and tucked the letter into one of the desk drawers where I wouldn’t accidentally throw it away. It would be available if I needed it for some reason.
    I took a slow breath and counted to ten. I couldn’t let this letter get me off track. I had some curriculum to look over to see if I wanted to change books the next year. I also had to go over the schedule Jacques Rohner – the foreman at the vineyard – had sent over. The harvest was approaching fast and, as always, it would be a race between ripening and the frost. Between that and the arson, we’d had to take on extra hands to keep an eye on the crop around the clock. I trusted Jacque implicitly