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half flight of stairs to the loft.
    The office finally felt like my space. Fresca’s collection of cookbooks and food magazines had migrated, stack by stack, to shelves we’d installed in the basement—given a thorough cleaning and spiffing after last summer’s misadventures. We’d swapped the old green-and-gold linoleum for a slate look and painted the walls Roasted Red Pepper, a name that always makes me hungry. I’d begun sprinkling in personal touches, including a painting I bought from Christine last summer at the Art and Food Festival.
    I sank into the fancy desk chair Tracy had scored second-hand, remembering what I’d rather forget. Murder andmayhem. Threats to my family, my friends, and this marvelous, maddening pile of bricks.
    And to me.
    My right hand circled automatically around my left wrist, my thumb massaging the three colored stars tattooed there.
    Thank goodness for winter. Cold, calm, peaceful winter.

• Two •
    â€œF our in the corner pocket,” Kyle Caldwell said, and I knew we were sunk.
    If you had told me a year ago that the highlight of my week would be a burger and a beer at Red’s followed by hours of good-natured but competitive pool shooting, I’d have asked what you’d been smoking.
    Well, everyone else is competitive. My run of beginner’s luck was screeching to a halt.
    Adam leaned his long frame against the paneled wall, fingers wrapped loosely around a cue, a bottle of Moose Drool brown ale dangling from the other hand. A neon sign for Pabst Blue Ribbon glowed above him, giving his dark curls red and blue highlights. He has a natural detachment, an ease that rarely fails. “Unflappable,” my mother says. Good trait in a man who runs outdoor programs and a summer wilderness camp for kids.
    Also, a nice balance for what my mother calls my “energy.”
    His black-coffee eyes met my brown ones. He winked.
    â€œFive in the side.” Kyle tapped the cue ball with a softtouch, the cue ball hit the five with a heavy clonk, and the solid orange ball slid down the hole and rattled down the rail to join its littermates.
    â€œHe’s running the table,” Christine said. She’d wrapped red and white ribbons around her coil of hair, making it look like a drunken candy cane.
    When he was on it, and we gave him half a chance, Kyle often ran the table. As the last shooter, I’d given him more than half a chance. Three-quarters, at least.
    Nick crept up behind Christine and leaned in to kiss her neck, her short sturdy frame a contrast to his slender height. When we started playing a few weeks ago, after Christmas, he’d sworn they were just friends.
    That was then; this was now.
    The game ended. Kyle racked and his teammate and cousin, Kim Caldwell, broke with a sharp, satisfying crack. This round pitted them against Nick and Christine, so I two-stepped across the room, in time to the music blaring through the speakers. Satellite radio.
    â€œHey, good-lookin.’”
    â€œHey, yourself.” Adam set his cue aside and drew me close. He tasted like chocolate and hops. “Your brother and Christine are having fun.”
    â€œI like her,” I said. “A lot. But she dumped him once, a couple of years ago, and it hit him hard. I hope she isn’t using him because she’s lonely.”
    â€œYou mean after Iggy died.”
    â€œYeah. Not that one relationship is anything like the other, but . . .” Despite a fifty-year or more age gap, Iggy and Christine had been fast friends as well as studio mates and painting partners.
    â€œBut Nick came back to town right about the time Iggy died, and you can’t help wondering if Christine latched onto him for the right reasons.”
    Adam’s astute observation made me wonder if myboyfriend and my brother had been talking. “I guess I should let him figure that out,” I said.
    He squeezed my shoulder in agreement.