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carefully. I sure as hell didn’t want to end up in the hospital room next to Grace.
    A few feet back from the infamous, door-jamming pole, I stopped. The grass all around it seemed to glow, lit up by the scattering of tiny glass fragments twinkling in the afternoon sun. I looked back up to the roadway, and tried to picture her car careening off the road, rolling down the hill, and landing against the pole before me. All that careening and rolling had my breakfast threatening to make an encore appearance. I took several quick gulps of fresh air and pleaded with my stomach to settle.
    Nauseous or not, after another minute or two of self-inflicted torture, I’d had enough. I turned back and headed for the car, no longer bothering to stick to the path. I reached the top of the hill, and continued along the shoulder toward my Civic.
    But halfway back, something in the grass a short way down the hill caught my eye. Something outside the well-worn path. I carefully made my way back down the slope and squatted down to take a better look.
    At first glance, I thought it might be some sort of gold-colored trinket. And judging by its semi-brilliant sheen, I suspected whatever it was hadn’t been there long. I reached down with a shaking hand and retrieved it from its grassy lair. The golden object weighed next to nothing. Three tiny chain links dangled from one end.
    “Huh. Just a broken key chain.” I turned the trinket over in my hand and brushed away a fine layer of dust that covered its other side. My eyes widened as a company logo came into view.
    Maxwell Office Solutions.
     

 
    Chapter 4
     
    “I’m telling you, something is not adding up.” I paced back and forth across the living room floor, cell phone jammed to my ear with one hand, the trinket in the other.
    “So you found a key chain? Heck, it could have been Grace’s. Probably flew out of her car when it rolled down the embankment.”
    “No, it wasn’t hers. I’ve never seen this key chain before.”
    “Maybe because she’d just gotten it yesterday?”
    “Matt, this thing has 24K stamped on its back. No one at that company gets a gold key chain for reaching their five-month mark.”
    “Well, I don’t know, Jess.” Frustration crept into his voice. “So the key chain was there? Maybe it belonged to someone else. Why are you so up in arms over it?”
    I thumped a fist to my forehead. “Because! It proves someone from her work was at the scene of the accident.”
    “Lots of people were there!”
    “Okay. And where were all these people standing?”
    “Back by the road. Look, maybe the person who lost their key chain recognized her car and pulled over to see if she was okay.”
    “Sounds logical. Only, I found this key chain stomped into the ground well away from the edge of the road.” Matt remained silent, so I pushed on. “But that’s not the only thing that worries me. Last night, after I got home, I took another look inside Grace’s purse. And you know what I found?”
    “No,” he said, his tone flat, “but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
    “Grace’s notepad, with a sliver of paper tucked in its binding.”
    “Tucked in its binding,” he echoed. “And that would be suspicious because...”
    “You know how meticulous Grace is with everything she touches! In all the years I’ve known her, I have never, ever seen Grace tear off a piece of paper and not make sure that she got every last little bit of it free from its binding. It…it just doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Okay, I finally agree with you on something.”
    My chest swelled with hope. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. That it doesn’t make sense. Any of it. Why can’t you just accept that this whole thing was a fluke accident and let it go?”
    I could feel my blood pressure rise. “Because I know it wasn’t.”
    “Look, I love you to pieces, but this is crazy talk. And even if your ideas had a sliver of truth to them, who’s gonna believe you?”
    I stopped pacing.