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their way down the hall, Rachel asked, “You think they’ll sell the land to Packard?”
    Joanna nodded and opened the door to the home office to let Rachel carry the rabbits in. “I feel so selfish for even thinking about it at a time like this, with Lincoln and Marie—” She shook her head. “But I can’t help it. If Ronan and Sheila decide to sell, I’ll probably be the only holdout, and I’ll never have another minute’s peace as long as I live.”
    While Rachel tried to find words that would calm Joanna’s anxiety, she set down the carrier next to the desk and peered in at the rabbits. The white female had burrowed under the towel in the bottom of the carrier, facing the back, so that only her puff of a tail showed. Her male companion crouched, frozen in terror, next to the lump she created. Rachel took the bag from Joanna and removed two bowls and the rabbit kibble. “But what about the Jones sisters? They don’t want to uproot themselves at this stage of their lives, do they?”
    Joanna hugged her waist and bounced on her toes, her whole body thrumming with tension. “Who knows what those flakes might do? I can’t get a straight answer out of them.” Joanna launched into an imitation of Winter’s stern schoolmarm tone. “We prefer to keep our own counsel for the time being. We won’t be rushed into a commitment one way or the other.”
    Rachel had to smile at the pitch-perfect rendering, but she didn’t find anything about this situation amusing. Two good people, a couple Tom had known all his life, had been gunned down in their own yard in broad daylight, the person who did it was walking around loose, and their deaths would pit neighbor against neighbor in a nasty fight over the resort development. Rachel crouched to pour kibble into the rabbits’ bowls and place the food inside the carrier. “What about your other neighbors? Won’t anybody stand with you?”
    “Oh, Tavia Richardson’s hell-bent on selling to Packard and getting her hands on all that money, and that means Jake Hollinger’s in favor of it too. Tavia’s got him dreaming about the two of them living the good life someplace where it never gets cold.”
    Rachel stood, frowning. “Hold on, you’ve lost me. Mrs. Richardson and Jake Hollinger are an item? Since when?”
    “Oh, they’ll admit they’ve been seeing each other since Sue Ellen Hollinger died last year. But the truth is, it started months before that. All the time Sue Ellen was going through torture with chemo and radiation, her shit of a husband—” Joanna’s voice choked up. “I can’t even think about it without getting mad enough to strangle him. Sue Ellen was my friend. And so were Lincoln and Marie.”
    Joanna didn’t cry easily, and she was fighting the tears now, but her pain escaped in tremors and gulped-back sobs. At a loss for words or actions that could make a difference, Rachel placed an arm around her shoulders. This basket case was not the strong woman Rachel knew. In Joanna’s distress Rachel saw something more than grief for lost friends, something darker than anger over events she couldn’t control.
    A half-formed fear had been niggling at the back of Rachel’s mind for the last hour, and now she couldn’t stop it from pushing forward, full-blown. Joanna seemed positive the Kellys would not have sold their land to Packard , that they would have stood firm with her to block the company’s plan for a luxurious mountain resort in Mason County. Now the Kellys were dead.
    Although she feared the answer, Rachel voiced the question. “Do you think the Kellys were murdered because they refused to sell their land?”
    “You bet I do. Nothing else makes sense.” Joanna’s shoulders felt rigid in Rachel’s embrace, and her expression was hardening, the sorrow and agitation giving way to a grim determination. “Well, nobody’s going to get me. The next time I point my shotgun, you can bet it’ll be loaded.”

Chapter Six
    “This is kind of