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had uploaded all of the photos to a digital cloud service so that she could access them from any computer or her phone. As she scrolled through the pictures, she noticed another shutterbug had been in the tent. Most of the contest entrants had been women, so they composed the majority of the audience. But the person with a camera trained constantly on Phoebe Plymouth was a man wearing jeans and a wrinkled blue T-shirt. Amy leaned closer to her phone as she scrolled through the photos. Since the man was sitting in the front row, all she could see was the back of his head in frame after frame. He seemed to have skipped combing his hair that morning, and that was the only distinguishing feature she could see. She sucked in a breath when she flicked to the next picture. Judging from all of the people standing in the audience, the pre-judging presentation had ended, but Amy remembered she had tried to get one last shot of the television star. Phoebe was blurred because of her hasty exit from the judge's table, but the rumpled man was standing still and looking straight at Amy's camera. Had she captured an image of the killer?

CHAPTER FOUR
    (Carla)
     
    Carla stared at the chunks of broken plate scattered on the floor in front of the sink. A patch of ketchup had been her downfall. The plate was heavy. The thin layer of unconsumed condiment was slippery. Her once cat-like reflexes had developed a two-second delay thanks to a perpetual lack of sleep. So now one of the beautiful, one-of-a-kind plates that her mother had made was shattered, just inches away from its intended destination—the top rack of the dishwasher.
    "Are you okay?" Bruce called from the living room.
    "I'm fine. The plate…not so much."
    "Let me know if you need any help. I'm…" Her husband's voice trailed off. He was camped out in his recliner in the living room, doing research for his latest case. Something interesting must've popped up onto the screen. His laser focus and machine-like work ethic made him a fantastic homicide detective, but sometimes those admirable qualities didn't make being his wife easy. On top of that, their daughter had inherited his stubborn tenacity and applied it as much as possible to not sleeping at night. The crankiness from colic was beginning to lessen, but even though she was feeling better, the baby was still staying up until the wee hours of the morning. Routines were important to babies, and Macy had developed one heck of a mind-bending one that she was determined to keep with or without a tummy ache.
    Carla swiped the back of her hand across a tear that had escaped from her eye. The wife and mom gig was hard. She stooped to pick up the ceramic shards. Bruce's voice filtered into the small kitchen again. Macy cooed in response. He was a wonderful father, but she was feeling like a hot mess of a mother. At the moment, she certainly looked like one. Her hair hadn't been washed for at least two days. And she was wearing puke-splattered scrubs, even though the only nursing she was doing was to provide nourishment for her infant daughter. Although she had kept the comfortable uniforms, it had been over six months since she last worked in the Kellerton Hospital emergency room, the place that used to be her second home.
    After stacking the sharp pottery shards on a paper towel, she carefully folded in the sides and stood up. Carla turned toward the garbage can, took one step, and smacked her shin on the open dishwasher door. That did it. The lone tear from a moment ago turned into a torrent. "Stupid tiny kitchen," she whispered to herself.
    She and Bruce had planned on moving out of the cramped townhouse soon after the baby was born but hadn't gotten around to doing so yet. Carla wasn't a cook like Amy was, but even she was becoming annoyed with the narrow galley kitchen. When she didn't get enough sleep, which was pretty much every day, she tended to smack sensitive body parts into cabinet knobs and open appliance doors. Yet the