The Face That Launched a 1000 Scams

The creature looked like a middle-aged woman with dark eyes and long, rusty-black hair. Her oval face had rosy cheeks, kohl rimmed eyes, and red lips that curled down at the corners.

She was wearing a white summer dress and outfitted with red shoes and an enormous, red purse. She was proportioned very like a buxom, well-fed woman too. The pearl earrings were a nice touch, but they couldn't make up for the coldest, darkest set of eyes he'd yet encountered.

She bared the fangs which had been carefully hidden behind her red lips until now. "Of course, you know Samantha Warrington, Mr. Bergeron!"

Well, they weren't exactly fangs but close enough. He shook his head. "I have never heard that name before in my life." He was too tired to cope. "I'm sorry, Ms. Hayes, but you're obviously not looking for accounting services, and that is all that I can offer you..."

She dug a phone out of the red bag and found a photo. "See! This is Samantha and her vicious husband, Per Isak Sparre!"

His drooping eyes may have opened wide. There might have been some slight pupil dilation and eyebrow arching, but he said nothing. Well, inside his head, a bunch of synapses screamed, "Angelica Amici Butler!" But his exterior was the very image of blithe unconcern. Mostly.

Ms. Hayes smiled. This smile was the first human expression she'd managed since she'd traipsed into Garst Accounting. "Where is she? She's my daughter, Mr. Bergeron, and I'm sick with worry about her."

But he hadn't been able to give her a location; mostly because he had no idea where her "daughter" might be. He had been hoped that he'd never see the rapturously beautiful Angelica again after she'd disappeared, leaving her husband, Will Butler, his high school classmate, to cope with prison on his own. And he was clinging desperately to that hope.

But then Detective Vonda Golczewski summoned him to a crime scene where the body of Ms. Millie Biggs was lying under a sheet. Millie Biggs had his address and phone number in her purse, but he could truthfully tell Vonda that he'd never seen poor Millie before.

Close upon Millie's misfortune, he became aware that a very large individual who resembled a less genial King Kong was stalking him. Said individual might have tortured and murdered Millie and her companion?

He felt sure all this was all the fault of Angelica. Somehow?