"You okay?" Broadrick yelled from my car in the driveway.

Angry sister-in-law was a lot to take in at one time. Especially while being shouted at by a crazy person. No one answered, so I held down the doorbell again. I stepped back and stared at the Torres's front door, gathering my wits and deciding what to do next.

"Von?" Broadrick yelled again.

I waved my hand at him and pretended that getting a door slammed in my face hadn't fluffed me. I had to do something. He'd totally doubt my awesomeness at this job if I walked away now.

I rang the doorbell again. She's only slammed it in my face once. One foul ball wouldn't take me out of the game. I had three more swings.

Damn it.

I had to stop with the puns.

A seagull cawed overhead, and I pressed the buzzer harder. Hopefully, it wasn't a trained seagull out to get me for standing on the porch too long. Attack seagulls were the last thing this town needed.

The door opened partially, and a woman who resembled the first but with long hair so dark it had to be black stuck her head out. "I'm so sorry about my sister. Susan from the newspaper was here earlier and now she thinks it's her job to protect me."

"Sisters. I get it."

The woman sniffled. She wasn't actively crying, but red rimmed her eyes and they seemed puffy. At least Coach Torres's death affected someone. "She also handles grief weird."

"I have no grief," came from somewhere in the house from, I imagined, the first sister.

The woman at the door shook her head. "We lost a guinea pig once, and she banned the entire family from talking about any type of rodent for five years."

"Don't talk about Mr. Winky Face!" the voice yelled.

I had to question if insanity ran in the family, but right then wasn't the proper time. I'd have to ambush Mrs. Torres at the bakery or hardware store the next time I saw her. Some families were weird. Look at mine.

"I'm Vonnie Vines," I said, holding out my hand.

She shook it and then reached into her pocket and pulled out a used tissue to blow her nose. "Kristen."

"I'm sorry about your husband's death." What else did you say to the poor woman?

She lowered her gaze and rested her head against the doorjamb. "Ex. Our divorce completed two months ago."

"It's final?" I asked to clarify. It's possible she meant they filed two months ago.

She nodded. "Signed, sealed, and dated. This should be my year of new beginnings."

Hmm. That meant she didn't kill him for the insurance money. If they were no longer married, she wouldn't gain anything from a current policy. Unless he never updated his beneficiaries. Did it work that way? I'd have to research it more.

But Kristen didn't seem like the murdering type. Her nails were pristine. I had vibes about these types of things and her vibes said "tired," not murderous. As she rested her body against the door frame, she seemed frail. Not the baseball-bat-wielding, murderous, ex type.

"Did you two get along?" I asked, not sure where to go with my next line of questioning. I didn't have a ton of experience interrogating newly ex-wives of dead coaches.

Kristen rolled her eyes. "As much as we could for a man who cheated on me with someone from his work."

I perked up. Now we were getting somewhere. "Are you sure?" I asked, trying not to sound too excited. An affair at the high school? How did he keep that under wraps?

She glanced at me, and I forced my slight smile into a frown. There probably wasn't an acceptable level of excitement to display.

"I found the love notes from her myself. He kept denying it." She looked away in pain.

I moved in an inch closer because no one confessed their secrets at a high volume. "But you didn't believe him?"

She wrung her hands together. "I almost did. Once. But I knew if I stayed I'd always question his actions, and I couldn't live that way. I'm just glad we never had kids."

Either someone needed to write Kristen down as the world's best actress or she did not kill Coach Torres.

I let the silence linger between us for a moment. Sometimes when that happened, people blurted things out they wouldn't normally say. Also, I'd run out of questions.

"Jared wasn't a bad guy. We just got married too young, and he wasn't ready to grow up yet," she said. "Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

I shook my head. "Not today, but thank you for your answers. I hope we're able to find his killer quickly."

She stared out into the open yard behind me. "I hope so too."

The door closed as she left me, and I returned to Broadrick in the car. Kristen Torres looked and sounded sincere, but that didn't mean she hadn't taken a baseball bat to her husband. She wasn't my top suspect, but at that moment, I hadn't removed her from my list of possibilities.

"You think she killed him?" Broadrick asked, after I filled him in on what Kristen said.

He drove toward my office as I reviewed the facts. I needed a few hours of peace to sit in my desk chair and think about this case. Make a potential suspect flow chart. Find that red yarn I purchased for just this purpose.

We drove past the bakery as I sucked on the iced coffee and shrugged. "Why wait until the divorce is final? I'm sure the coach had insurance, so why give up the money?" Unless he hadn't changed his beneficiary on the policies? But then why not? Maybe he'd done something else to piss Kristen off enough she wanted to remove him from earth.

Their divorce was still fresh enough the police would obviously look at her as a suspect. None of it made sense.

Murder rarely did.

I'd have to find time to track down the lawyers they used in the divorce and see if they had any light to shed on the case. "Do you have my notebook?"

Broadrick watched as I searched for the small flip pad I used for notes and lists. "No. Did you lose it again?"

"No, I did not lose it. I misplaced it for the moment." A piece of paper stuck out from the center console so I grabbed it, scratched out the old grocery list from last month, and made a new list of suspects.

1. Kristen Torres.

2. Allen Culpepper-I hated writing my sister's boyfriend's name on the list, but he found the body.

3. Everyone else.

4. Definitely not me.

I'd have saved time making a list of all the people who hadn't killed Coach Torres. The case was just too new to take anyone-besides myself-off the possible suspect list.

Broadrick opened the main door to my office building, and sawdust hit me in the face. I squinted and blinked to clear my eyes as the particles stuffed up my nose with the fresh wood scent. Somewhere behind my closed office door. A saw turned on and sputtered, shaking the walls.

"You didn't tell me the crew planned to be here today," Broadrick said with a backward glance at me.

I jerked up my shoulders. "No one told me."

In February a portion of my drop ceiling collapsed while I was sitting under it, spilling water everywhere and leaving my space a debris minefield. The building's owner warned me he had a crew coming to fix it, but that was over a month ago and he'd never given a timeline. As the time passed, I'd given up hope and just learned to work with the gaping hole above my head.

I covered my ears as Broadrick opened the door to my office, which unleashed the noise. Wood dust floated in the air and created a fine coat on my desk and filing cabinet. Two men stood in the room's corner, ripping more of the ceiling down from an area the water hadn't damaged in the leak.

"Whoa, what are you guys doing?" I asked, bypassing the makeshift saw department in the middle of the room.

The two men turned toward me and the taller of the two adjusted his yellow hardhat. "This is a work zone, Miss."

I threw my arms wide to encompass the room. "Yes, I work here."

Did he think a stranger just wandered into the building and asked questions? Actually, that might happen in this town.

"What are you doing to my ceiling? The leak was over there," I said, pointing to the original hole. It was quite large and hard to miss.