On the Street Where you Live Read Online Free Page B

hotel. A week later she rented the townhouse.
    The house she had lived in with Gary was owned by his wealthy family. It had never felt like hers. But walking through this house seemed to evoke sensory memory. “I almost feel as though it’s welcoming me,” she told Will Stafford.
    â€œI think it might be. You should see the expression on your face. Ready to go to my office and sign the papers?”
    T HREE HOURS LATER Emily returned to the house and once more pulled into the driveway. “Home sweet home,” she said joyously as she got out of the car and opened the trunk to collect the groceries she’d purchased after the closing.
    An area near the new cabana was being excavated for the pool. Three men were working on the site. After the walk-through she’d been introduced to Manny Dexter, the foreman. Now he caught her eye and waved.
    The rumble of the backhoe drowned out her footsteps as she hurried along the blue flagstone walk to the back door. This I could do without, she thought, then reminded herself again that the pool would be nice to have when her brothers and their families came to visit.
    She was wearing one of her favorite outfits, a dark green winter-weight pantsuit and white turtleneck sweater. Warm as they were, Emily shivered as sheshifted the grocery bag from one arm to the other and put the key in the door. A gust of wind blew her hair in her face, and as she shook it away, she jostled the bag and a box of cereal dropped onto the flooring of the porch.
    The extra moment it took to pick up the box meant that Emily was still outside when Manny Dexter shouted frantically to the operator of the backhoe. “Turn that thing off! Stop digging! There’s a skeleton down there!”

four ________________
    D ETECTIVE T OMMY D UGGAN did not always agree with his boss, Elliot Osborne, the Monmouth County prosecutor. Tommy knew Osborne considered his unceasing investigation into the disappearance of Martha Lawrence an obsession that might only succeed in keeping her killer in a state of high alert.
    â€œThat is unless the killer is a drive-through nut who grabbed her and dumped her body hundreds of miles from here,” Osborne would point out.
    Tommy Duggan had been a detective for the last fifteen of his forty-two years. In that time he’d married, fathered two sons, and watched his hairline go south while his waistline traveled east and west. With his round, good-humored face and ready smile, he gave the impression of being an easygoing fellow whohad never encountered a problem more serious than a flat tire.
    In fact, he was a crackerjack investigator. In the department, he was admired and envied for his ability to pick up a seemingly useless piece of information and follow it until it proved to be the break in his case. Over the years, Tommy had turned down several generous offers to join private security firms. He loved the job.
    All his life he had lived in Avon by the Sea, an oceanside town a few miles from Spring Lake. As a college student he had been a busboy and then a waiter at the Warren Hotel in Spring Lake. That was how he had come to know Martha Lawrence’s grandparents, who regularly dined there.
    Again today, as he sat in his private cubbyhole, he spent the short lunch break he allotted himself glancing once more through the Lawrence file. He knew that Elliot Osborne wanted to nail Martha Lawrence’s killer as much as he did. The only thing that differed was their ideas of how to go about solving the crime.
    Tommy stared at a picture of Martha that had been taken on the boardwalk in Spring Lake. She’d been wearing a tee shirt and shorts. Her long blond hair caressed her shoulders, her smile was sunny and confident. She had been a beautiful twenty-one-year-old who, when that picture was taken, should have had another fifty or sixty years of life. Instead she had had less than forty-eight hours.
    Tommy shook his head and closed the file. He was