Scoop to Kill: A Mystery a La Mode - By Wendy Lyn Watson Page 0,1

by the barbecue.”

“Diabetic.”

“Oh.” Alice raved about Emily Clowper’s brilliant mind, but she sure couldn’t carry a conversation.

She looked at her watch again and sighed.

“Uh, thank you for taking Alice under your wing. She loves working for you.”

Emily’s mouth softened into something approaching a smile. “The pleasure is mine. This paper she’s presenting today on the misogynist subtext of Robin-son Crusoe is graduate-level work. I’m not a Freudian, but she’s made a compelling case for the island as a symbol of dehumanized female sexuality.”

“Oh.”

“Her mother?”

“What? Oh, no. Aunt. Well, actually first cousin once removed.” One of her eyebrows shot up, and I felt like I’d got caught passing notes in class. “I’m her aunt.”

I glanced nervously across the room to where Bree continued to hold court. This woman would make Bree cry.

When I looked back at Emily, her attention had moved to something—or someone—behind me. Now there was no mistaking her smile or the crinkling at the corners of her eyes, the subtle softening of her posture.

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Finn,” she said.

My heart did a somersault in my chest as I turned to find Finn Harper standing at my shoulder, a camera hanging from a strap around his neck. His mouth curled in a devilish smile, and I couldn’t tell whether the heat in his velvet green eyes was for me or for Emily.

Either way, I wanted to curl up in a tiny ball and die.

My relationship with Finn remained uncertain. After a near twenty-year absence, he had returned to Dalliance about six months ago to take care of his ailing mother. A bizarre set of circumstances threw us together, and I flirted with the notion that we’d pick up our teenage romance right where we’d left off.

But, of course, real life didn’t have fairy-tale endings. I still needed to unload a lot of baggage from my marriage and divorce, and I struggled to untangle the dreamy memories of my high school heartthrob from the man he had become. Bottom line, we’d both done a lot of living since I broke his heart in the Tasty-Swirl parking lot when I was eighteen.

I still saw him out and about, at the cafés and shops that circled the courthouse square of Dalliance, Texas, and at the various events he covered as a reporter for the Dalliance News-Letter. But every single encounter reduced me to a stammering, gelatinous mess.

Dr. Emily Clowper held out her arms, and Finn stepped awkwardly into her embrace. I couldn’t bear to look at him, so I studied her, instead, seeing her this time the way a man would see her. Like the eye doctor switching from one lens to the next, my perception of her shifted from awkward and angular to tall and lithe, from cold and abrupt to smart and edgy.

When Finn stepped back, he looked at me, eyes narrowed and appraising. I prayed I didn’t look as miserable as I felt.

“Emily and I met when I lived in Minneapolis,” Finn offered.

Her smile widened into an almost girlish grin. “Many years and three moves ago. Back in my wild gradschool days.”

Finn held up a hand in protest. “Not that long ago. And not that wild.”

They both laughed, and I forced myself to join in. No matter how long ago they’d been together, their relationship was more recent than ours. And certainly more wild. Emily Clowper had known Finn as an adult, as a self-sufficient man, a person I’d only recently met.

I tried to find something clever to say. “How convenient that fate landed you both in the same Podunk town,” I said, then cringed. Even to my ears, my words sounded bitter. “I mean—”

A piercing scream rang through the room, echoing off the high ceiling and leaving an unnatural stillness in its wake.

Alice.

My legs were moving before my brain even finished the thought, but still I was three steps behind Bree as she sprinted across the tile floor of the atrium in her tight dress and hooker heels. I sensed movement behind me, others running toward the cry of distress, which had now settled into a keening wail.

Ahead of me, Bree took the half flight of steps from the atrium into the main body of Sinclair Hall two at a time, then disappeared through the heavy oak doors propped open for the festivities.

I took the corner onto the first floor in a blind panic and nearly fell over Bree, who’d come to a dead stop, staring in horror at the scene in the hallway.

Alice,