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and over to I-17.”
    “All right, then,” Edie said. “Stop by the restaurant on your way out of town. I’m going to make a couple of extra trays of sweet rolls for you to drop off at the sheriff’s office in Prescott on your way through.”
    Working together day after day, Edie and Bob Larson squabbled a lot, but they were definitely of a mind on most things, especially anything concerning their daughter. Clearly the two of them had decided that helping fix Ali’s difficulties at work was a project worthy of a team effort. Sugarloaf Cafe sweet rolls were legendary throughout the Verde Valley, where they routinely placed first when it came time to tally the votes in annual Best of Sedona contests. Ali knew that passing some of her mother’s rolls around the office would be a very effective tactic for keeping her departmental enemies close.
    “I’ll also put my ear to the ground,” Edie Larson promised. “I may be able to learn something useful. But right now I’d better hit the hay. Since I’m doing extra batches of sweet rolls in the morning, I’ll need to get an early start.”
    Ali knew Edie was usually in the restaurant baking rolls by four o’clock in the morning. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “I’ll stop by and pick them up.”
    “Kill ’em with kindness,” Edie added. “That’s what I always say.”
    Ali put down the phone. Leaving the book she had been reading facedown on the side table, she walked over to the shelf that held her yearbooks. Family finances had been so tough her senior year in high school that Ali hadn’t been able to buy one of her own, and she never expected to have one. Two yearsearlier, however, her best childhood friend, Reenie Bernard, had died tragically. In the aftermath of her death, Reenie’s less-than-grieving husband and his girlfriend had packed up all of Reenie’s worldly possessions and shipped them off to Goodwill. Fortunately, one of Ali’s friends had intervened and intercepted the castoffs before they could be unpacked and sold.
    Reenie’s kids, eleven-year-old Matthew and eight-year-old Julie, had been sent to live with Reenie’s parents in Cottonwood. Since the kids’ grandfather was allergic to cats, their overweight kitty, the incredibly ugly Samantha, who had been mauled by a raccoon long before she came to live with Reenie’s kids, had been pawned off on Ali, supposedly on a temporary basis. Two years after the fact, that temporary arrangement was pretty much permanent. Sam had adjusted. So had Ali.
    Months after their mother’s death, Ali had invited Reenie’s orphaned kids to spend the weekend at her house. They had spent the better part of three days going through the boxes of their mother’s goods, sorting out and repacking what they wanted to keep and getting rid of the rest. One of the boxes of reject books had held Reenie’s complete four-year collection of yearbooks.
    The last evening of the three, Ali and Reenie’s kids had gone through the yearbooks one by one, with Ali recounting stories about things she and Reenie had done together back then, laughing at their exploits and the weird clothing and the even weirder hairdos.
    “Until I saw this, I had forgotten all about that Halloween party our senior year,” Ali said, studying a photo in which she and Reenie had been dressed in sheets turned into Roman attire. Or maybe Greek.
    “How come?” Matt had asked. “Don’t you have a book like this?”
    Matt, the older of Reenie’s two kids, was red-haired, while his sister was blond. She was a lighthearted whirling dervish of a child. Matt was more reserved and serious, their mother’s death still weighed heavily on his spindly shoulders. Ali didn’t want to add anything more to his burden by mentioning how poor her family had been back then.
    “I think I must have lost mine somewhere along the way,” Ali had lied.
    “Why don’t you take this one then?” Matt asked. “I think Mom would like you to have it.”
    It was true.