Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
She bit her lip again and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t... I can’t think of anyone who would...” She cut off and let out a sigh. “You should know, I fired Matthew yesterday.”
“Your brewmaster? Why?” I’d never liked the guy. He was conceited, convinced he was God’s gift to beer, Sawyers Bend, and women, not necessarily in that order.
She shrugged. “It was time for him to move on,” she answered cryptically.
“Did he go quietly?” I asked, surprised when she nodded.
“Quietly enough. You know, the typical, ‘You’ll never make it without me, I’ll make you pay.’” Avery rolled her eyes.
“He said that? He’d make you pay?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “But I had the locks changed yesterday. Only Cammie and I have keys right now. And no one has the key to my desk.” Her eyes flicked down to the open drawer. “It doesn’t look like it was forced.”
“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t. Where else do you keep your recipes? Were they all in the drawer?”
“Only that one. The rest are all on my laptop. This one was new. I’m still tinkering with it.”
She let out a long breath, seeming to deflate. “It was my only copy. Matt kept his own notes. He wouldn’t have had to steal the notebook for the recipe.”
“The recipe was in a notebook?” I asked. Avery nodded.
“Was that the only thing in the notebook? If someone had opened it, would they have known what it was?”
She shook her head. “It was my everything notebook. I jotted down everything in there. To-do lists, random stuff, and sometimes, recipes I was working on or ideas I was still playing with. Whoever was after the file probably grabbed it thinking they were connected.” She rubbed her palms over her face. “Fuck!” Tipping her head back, she squeezed her eyes shut. “What are the chances Matt would let me see his notes on the recipe?” Shaking her head, she answered her own question. “Zero. Considering he hates me. Fuck.”
“Can you recreate it?” I asked.
She lifted and dropped her shoulder. “Exactly? I don’t know. I had different drafts of the recipe. My memory isn’t bad, but it’s not photographic. I have an idea of what I did, but— Fuck! It was going to be so good. And now, even if it’s as good as I hoped, I won’t be able to make it again.”
“Forget the recipe for a second,” I said. “If whoever broke in was after your research, we have a problem. I don’t want you on this guy’s radar.” I stared down into Avery’s eyes, her long, dark lashes doing nothing to hide her frustration.
“Then I guess you’d better help me catch him,” she said.
“Do you think I haven’t tried?” I asked. I’d been looking for the son of a bitch since the day Prentice was shot, and everywhere I turned, I came up empty. My eyes dropped to the open desk drawer, my gut icing over as the implications of what this break-in could mean sank in. “It’s likely that whoever killed your father also killed Ford’s ex-wife and was behind the assassination attempt on Ford last spring. Now he’s looking at you.”
If I was hoping to scare Avery off, I was out of luck. She glared up at me, that stubborn chin raised, her eyes hot with emotion. “Then I guess you’d better help me track down the necklace before he gets to me, too.”
Chapter Three
WEST
Iwas halfway through the stack of paperwork on my desk when a quick triple knock sounded on my open door. I wasn’t expecting to see Avery Sawyer standing there. Avery didn’t show her face in the police station often, a good thing, since it meant she mostly stayed out of trouble. It wasn’t her presence that had me concerned. It was the big, bright smile on her face. With that wide mouth and her full lips, her smile was a showstopper. Always had been, even when she’d been tiny.
As her brother’s best friend, I never got that smile. That was her tourist smile. Her—Don’t you love my beer? Spend some money in my taproom!—smile. I was more likely to get a scowl for bossing her around. If I was getting her tourist smile, she had to want something. And I had a good idea what it was.
If I was right, I was going to make her work for it.
“Avery. Everything okay at the brewery?”
“So far, so good,” she said, inclining her head at the empty seat on the other side of my desk. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. It’s been a few days. You here for an update on the break-in?” I straightened the stack of paperwork, setting it out of sight, and picked up the pen on my desk, flipping it through my fingers.
Avery nodded, though I didn’t think details on my investigation were her reason for stopping by. She knew I would have called her if I had anything, and getting news about the break-in wouldn’t call for that smile. It was easy enough to fill her in on what little info I had. She’d get to the real reason she was here eventually. And maybe I’d get another of those smiles along the way. I wasn’t susceptible to her charm, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy it.