“Another call from our self-proclaimed killer?” Dean asked.

Rachel huffed. “Yeah.” She kept her gaze connected to his. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”

“I tried to set up an appointment with Mrs. Dewey, but she refuses to see us.”

“What? Why?”

After Mandy’s murder, Dean and Rachel had postponed their trip to Salem to question Patrick Dewey’s widow about her husband and the fact that his bow had been used in Jake’s murder. Then yesterday, Dean had suggested they make the trip today.

“The only reason her son gave me for her refusal was that she had nothing new to add to what she’d told the police twenty years ago,” Dean said.

“Did you tell her son why we-?”

Rachel’s cell phone rang again. She tensed instantly.

Dean eyed the phone lying on her desk. “Want me to get it?”

She shook her head. “Our killer calls only once a day.” She lifted the phone, flipped it open, and breathed a sigh of relief when she recognized the caller ID name and number.

“Hello, Lin,” Rachel said. The day after Mandy’s murder, Rachel had called her old friend from their days as cops together on the Chattanooga P.D. Lin McAllister now worked for Powell’s Private Security and Investigation, one of the most prestigious firms in the country.

“I’ve got the information you requested on those six women,” Lin said. “We did a rush job just for you.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one. A job like this took several days of Powell’s brainpower, as well as calling in a few favors and bypassing some laws.”

“If I could afford to pay you what this info is worth, I would.”

Lin laughed. “Wait until you read the report, then decide what it’s worth. I sent each report as a separate e-mail attachment. Check your e-mail as soon I hang up.”

“Was there anything that stood out, anyone that appeared suspect for any reason?” The last thing Rachel wanted was for one of her old friends to have a suspicious skeleton in her closet, but if there was information that might point to them as being capable of murder…

“Just about anybody over the age of thirty-five probably has a secret or two,” Lin said. “Your friends are no different, but nothing that sent up a red flag.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure thing. Look, take care of yourself. I don’t want to hear that you’ve become a victim of this resurrected Cupid Killer.”

A shiver of foreboding tingled along Rachel’s nerve endings. “I’ll be careful.”

After she ended the conversation and placed the phone on her desk, she turned on her laptop computer and waited for it to boot up. “I need a printer I can connect to,” she told Dean. “My old Chattanooga P.D. friend who’s now with Powell’s Private Security agency got the info I wanted.”

“You know, it’s just wrong somehow that a private agency can get hold of information the police can’t legally obtain, at least not without going through an act of Congress.” Dean motioned to Rachel. “You can use the captain’s secretary’s printer. Tracy won’t ask too many questions.”

Fifteen minutes later, with six reports in one hand and her closed laptop in the other, Rachel headed to Dean’s office cubicle. When she didn’t see him at his desk, she looked around, searching for him. He came toward her, a cup of coffee in each hand. She placed her laptop on his desk, set the reports on top of the computer, and pulled up a chair from a nearby empty desk.

Dean handed her a cup.

“Thanks.” She accepted the coffee, then sat.

Dean put his cup on his desk, then pulled out his chair and sat beside Rachel.

“How do you want to do this-you take three and I take three or we read each one together?”

“It’s your call,” he told her.

“You take Lindsay, Kristen, and Bella. I’ll take April, DeLynn, and Martina.”

She handed Dean three of the six reports, then pulled up the fourth one and began reading. As she read and then reread portions of each report, she felt as if she were invading the privacy of her old friends. There were things in her life that she would rather keep private.

“Finished?” Dean asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“I suggest that we shred these reports,” Dean said. “Keep them on your laptop for the time being, but we don’t want to share this info with anyone else. Not yet, possibly not ever.”

“Agreed.” Rachel realized that he felt as she did-that these reports revealed things no one else needed to know. Not unless one of these six women turned out to be a murderer.

He glanced around, checking to make sure their conversation would be private. “I can make this quick,” he told her. “Lindsay’s as clean as a whistle, except for the illegitimate son she gave away nineteen years ago.”

Rachel smiled. “She and Mandy were always the good girls.”

“So were you, honey.”

Rachel shrugged. “I just didn’t have the guts to do anything bad.”

“No, that wasn’t it. You were just too smart to do anything really stupid.”

“I had a crush on Jake. That was pretty stupid.”

“That was youthful foolishness.”

She cleared her throat. “DeLynn had a nervous breakdown right after college and attempted suicide. She spent two years in therapy. And April Wright had an abortion our senior year of high school, then in college she got hooked on drugs, but she turned her life around a few years later and has been clean and sober ever since.”

“Kristen did some drinking and used marijuana in college. That’s it for her, except for one police report about a minor road rage incident five years ago.”

“Martina went through a court-appointed anger management course,” Rachel said. “It seems she had a problem with a neighbor and wound up painting red polka dots on his chartreuse green house. That was eight years ago.”

“There seems to have been an epidemic of teenage pregnancies,” Dean said. “Bella got an abortion, too, which is surprising, considering that her parents were staunch Catholics. I’d have thought she would have done as Lindsay did and have the baby, then give it up for adoption.”

“Poor Bella.” Rachel shook her head. “April put out in high school because she thought it was the only way to get a boyfriend. I knew she was having sex with several different guys. But Bella having an abortion surprises me. I had no idea she had a boyfriend, that she ever dated for that matter. She was more than a year younger than the rest of us, just a kid really.”

“Bella had some severe emotional problems after Jake’s murder.” Dean laid the three reports down on top of his desk. “It seems her parents put her into therapy for a couple of years.”

Rachel heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t know what I expected these reports would prove. I guess I hoped something would show up that would point us in the right direction.”

“All the reports proved is that nobody’s perfect.”

“Two nervous breakdowns, one road rage, one illegitimate child, two abortions, one drug addiction, one suicide attempt, one anger management class. Nothing that shouts ‘I’m capable of cold-blooded murder.’”

“So what now?” Dean asked. “Dig deeper? Move on to the guys who were closest to Jake or-?”

“You’d be on that list.”

“Yeah, I would.”

“You didn’t kill Jake.”

“No, I didn’t kill him, but…” Their gazes linked, the connection sexually charged. “If he had ever hurt you, I would have.”