Read Mann 01 - Where Angels Rest for Free Online Page B

a stay of execution for Justin Sims. Enough to bring his dogged big sister to Hopewell on a quest to unearth the truth.
    The Angelmaker smiled.
Don’t look too closely, Dr. Sims. If you find what you’re looking for, it will be the last thing you see. You could be an angel, after all.
    Ohio greeted Erin with open hostility: a sky like steel wool, forty-one degrees and spitting. Two hours afterher flight landed, her phone’s nav-system had her tooling through sparsely populated cattle pastures and dead corn fields. A couple of gallons of coffee wore off near a town called Tiffin, so she stopped at a gas station for a Mountain Dew and Snickers bar, then drove five miles out of her way to find a Kinkos and bought a ream of bright yellow card stock—just in case. Yellow, advertisers said, was eye-catching.
    A mile into Hopewell County, the Chamber of Commerce’s welcome station came up, a white building with dark beams that made it look like a German cottage. Erin considered it, then pulled in and looked at the wall of information. Hopewell, the county seat, boasted a population of 16,000. It was the site of Mansfeld College (“home of the 2007 and 2008 National Champion Women’s volleyball team”), an annual Oktoberfest, and a “Spring Arts Fling” each May. Next weekend, a kids’ soccer league would host regional finals at Blue Limestone Park. And at a newly renovated vaudeville theater called “The Palace,” a community group was doing the opera
Hansel and Gretel
this weekend.
    “Geesh,” Erin muttered. “I wonder where Aunt Bea and Andy live.”
    She found a phone book—the thickness of a magazine—beside an old pay phone and flipped through the scant yellow pages. There it was. S PACIOUS ROOMS, FULLY FURNISHED, HISTORIC ATMOSPHERE . M AKE YOUR STAY THE H ILLTOP WAY, CALL 1-800-555-6038 . V ISIT OUR ART POTTERY GIFT SHOP . O WNED AND OPERATED BY J ACK AND M ARGARET C ALLOWAY, SERVING GUESTS SINCE 2007.
    Her heart bumped. The bastard, living his Norman Rockwell existence while Justin sat on Death Row. Well, no longer. This time, she’d make someone listen to whatshe knew: Lauren McAllister had an affair with Huggins. She’d confided to Justin that he scared her. She’d drawn a picture of him before her death that could only be interpreted as disturbed.
    And while none of that had been sufficient to get anyone to look at the case again, Erin’s discovery last week was different. Her PI learned that Huggins had fled to Virginia after she chased him from Raleigh, and another young woman—a woman just like Lauren—had an affair with him and then disappeared. She’d been gone for five years now, presumed dead. Erin had spoken with the girl’s parents last week, got enough information that the PI traced the lover to Hopewell and found a man who could be John Huggins.
    Could be.
Erin’s own turn of thought drained some of the strength from her limbs. She looked at the ad in the yellow pages. What if the owners of this inn
weren’t
John and Maggie Huggins?
    Time to find out. She’d dealt with enough indifferent sheriffs over the years to know she wasn’t going to leave the job to this one. She wanted to go to Huggins herself, see him with her own eyes and hear his voice. Then, when she was armed with the certainty that she’d found Huggins, she’d bully the sheriff into listening to her.
    She checked into a Red Roof Inn, washed her face and added a sweater and denim jacket, then headed to Hilltop House. She tooled up the winding drive and parked the rental car in a gravel lot with three others. She looked around. The main house was huge, in the middle of a spread of outbuildings: an enormous barn, an old-fashioned carriage house, a modern garage. A pickup truck crouched outside the garage, freshly washed and looking out of place among the other vehicles, with undercarriages smatteredwith slush and salt. The flower beds that had bloomed so colorfully in the online photo were empty now, but the boy and