Katie still felt shaky midway through her clinic. Fortunately, the problems had been routine, and she was moving along much more quickly than she had thought she would. A nasty virus was making its way through the preschool set. Katie’s biggest problem was convincing the parents that the kids would get better on their own—without antibiotics.

After three vomiters, a hypertension patient, and a yearly physical, Katie saw a break in her schedule and hurried to her office. She shut the door behind her and slumped into her desk chair. Even though clinic had been easy so far, she wasn’t sure she would get through a whole day of it. Her brain was so focused on Ellen’s murder that the rest of what she did was on autopilot.

She paged through the notes on her desk to see if anything was urgent. Debra and the nurses wrote phone messages on old-fashioned pink slips of paper and attached them to the patient’s chart. Katie identified several that Angie could deal with, but stuck in the middle of the stack was a loose sheet with no chart attached.

“Beth Wixom called, said to call as soon as you can.”

Katie fished her cell phone out of her bag and clicked on Beth’s name.

Beth answered on the first ring. “Dr. LeClair, thanks for calling back. Have you found anything on the computer yet?”

“No, nothing we didn’t already know. It might take a little while.”

“Can I come see you sometime today?” Beth asked. “I have something I need to show you.”

Katie glanced at her schedule for the day. Her eleven thirty had canceled, so she would have a little time around noon.

“I have some time around lunch. Want to meet me here?”

“Sure. I’ll bring sandwiches from Riley’s,” Beth said. “But is there a place nearby we can go that’s private?”

Katie flashed back to the meeting with Matt in the gardens. If that didn’t work, they could always go to Katie’s house.

“Meet me here at eleven forty-five, and we can walk to the hospital gardens. Hopefully, they’ll be deserted as usual.”

Just before noon, the women shut the back door of the clinic and found the path around the hospital. Katie was relieved to see that the garden was empty, and they sat on one of the benches facing the pathway.

Beth handed Katie a white bag with a turkey Reuben inside and rummaged in her large tote bag. She pulled out a beat-up spiral notebook and set it on her lap. She sat for a moment with her hands on the cover as if she was protecting it.

“I was going through my mom’s things last night. Along with her computer, she had some file folders and this notebook. The file folders weren’t very useful—they were mostly clippings from psychology journals. There was no unifying theme, and I think they were just general research she was doing for her business.” Beth tapped the notebook. “This was different.”

“Different?”

Beth looked down at the notebook. “She had notes about color-blindness, similar to the information we found with her computer searches. She has a hand-drawn chart that I think is a family tree with circles and squares, Xs and Ys. And a to-do list of people she wanted to talk to. Emmett Hawkins was one, and Chief Carlson’s wife.”

“Carlson’s wife?” Katie asked. “Why?”

“She’s been the editor of the weekly Baxter newspaper for years,” said Beth. “I think my mom wanted to ask her about the town’s history. She has some notes about it here.” Beth flipped a page and pointed to printed questions about Baxter and the families that had been living here for more than a generation.

“And you said she had a number for the historical society in her datebook,” Katie said. “There must be something from the past she was interested in.”

“I can’t see what could be dangerous about the past,” Beth said. “I mean, it’s over, right?”

“Was she looking into Christopher’s family?”

Beth raised her shoulders. “I can’t tell. Her notes are kind of cryptic. My mom could be like that. If she didn’t want anyone to be able to read her notes, she used her own form of shorthand. The problem was, she said sometimes even she couldn’t figure out what she meant.”

“I hope the computer files are more straightforward if we ever get into them.”

Beth flipped to the back of the notebook. “Then I found this tucked in the middle.”

She pulled out a folded piece of white paper and handed it to Katie.

Katie took it and unfolded it. It wasn’t a surprise, not really, but still she sucked in air when she saw what was written there in block letters: “MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.”

“I got one of these this morning,” Katie said in a shaky voice.

“What?” Beth took the note and shoved it back between the pages as if that would keep it from harming them. “How? Why?”

Katie shook her head. “I don’t know why, but I can only assume that someone knows we’re looking into what your mom was doing, and they don’t like it. The notes are identical. They broke my car window and left it on the dashboard.”

“Where is it now? You’re sure it’s the same writing?”

“It looked the same to me. I called Chief Carlson, and he took it away to examine it.”

“I wish my mom had done that.” Beth’s eyes filled with tears. “Maybe she would still be alive.”

Katie put her hand over Beth’s, which was gripping the notebook with white knuckles.

“She must have thought it had to do with one of her clients and didn’t want to involve the police,” Beth said. “She was militant about privacy. And knowing my mom, she would have seen it as more of a cry for help than a threat.”

Katie nodded. “I can appreciate that. It’s not explicitly threatening, depending on how she received it. Breaking my window and leaving it among shards of glass felt a little more dangerous than if it had been left on the doorstep.”

“Dr. LeClair, I think you should stop helping me.” Beth turned on the bench to face Katie. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. I haven’t received any notes, so maybe they don’t know what I’m doing. But you should lay low for a while. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

“No.” Katie shook her head. “I don’t like bullies, and I’m not going to just sit back and let this person get away with murder.”

Beth smiled and let out a breath. “I’m so glad you said that. I really don’t want to do this alone.”

Beth stood then and said she was going to be late for her appointment with the lawyer. They agreed to talk later, and Beth walked down the path that led to Katie’s office. Katie stayed behind in the pleasant garden to think and grab a few minutes alone before her afternoon clinic.

She was less shaky now than angry. Angry that someone would kill Ellen Riley, a woman who only wanted to help others. And angry that she had doubted herself. She’d ruminated over whether she had written that prescription and questioned her own judgment about Ellen’s mental state.

She was startled out of her thoughts by the sound of footsteps approaching. She turned toward the sound, but no one was there. Several birds rose through the trees, squawking and chirping. She heard rustling in the bushes as a small creature ran past, and then all was silent.

It must have been an animal she heard.

Katie glanced at her watch and stood. She needed to get back for her clinic, or she’d run late all day and Angie would sigh heavily and glance at the clock after every patient. She pulled out her phone to check her messages and walked toward the pathway. As she turned to step onto the path, she was surprised to see Matt Gregor, who was also focused on his phone.

They jumped away from each other, both of them starting apologies, and Katie’s phone slipped out of her hand. They both bent to pick it up and grabbed it at the same moment. His hand was warm, and Katie jerked away quickly at the sudden contact.

“You’ve stolen my secret hideaway, I see,” Matt said. He handed her the phone.

“Sorry, I didn’t see your name on it. Did I miss the sign?” She took the phone and slipped it into her bag.

“It’s more of an unwritten thing . . .”

“So you’re the only one who knows it’s yours?”

“Well, yeah.” He smiled. “And you. You know it’s mine.”

Katie crossed her arms in mock annoyance. “Maybe I was looking for you.” She mentally smacked her forehead. No matter that the jittery bubbly feeling was back, she was too busy for a relationship. And if she was honest with herself, she was afraid of her reaction to Matt Gregor. She felt more comfortable with subdued pleasure at seeing someone than this weird teenager-y thing that was happening.

Matt’s smile was brilliant and warm. “You were?”

Katie looked at the ground, thinking fast. She remembered what Gabrielle had said about Matt swearing off of anyone in medicine. She wasn’t going to try to convince him to date another doctor. But he seemed . . . interested. Didn’t he?

“Yes, I wanted to ask you about Ellen Riley.” As soon as she said it, she knew she’d blown it.

“Oh, sure.” His smile faded to a polite interest. “What did you want to know?”

What did she want to know? Besides who killed Ellen and who could be threatening her, Katie, now?

“I just wondered . . . if she said anything when she arrived at the ER the other night.”

Matt shook his head. “She never regained consciousness. I thought you knew that.” He tilted his head and met her eyes. “She never had a chance. I’m not sure how we even managed to get a heartbeat.”

“Right.” Leave it to her to turn a perfectly fun interaction into a depressing medical discussion. Maybe he was right about not dating a medical person. She should adopt the same rule—then they could just be friends with no weird subtext. “I’d better head off to clinic—my nurse hates it when I run late.”

Matt chuckled. “Don’t they all. They’re very schedule-conscious, those nurses.”

Katie turned and walked slowly down the pathway, mentally berating herself for getting flustered by some guy.

“Dr. LeClair?”

Katie turned. Matt walked slowly toward her down the treelined path. A breeze loosed a handful of colorful leaves from their branches, and they fluttered gently down between them. She felt the good kind of butterflies in her stomach.

“Please, call me Katie,” she said when he stopped a couple of feet from where she stood.

He held her gaze for a long moment. “Can I . . . I’d like to . . .” He looked away.

Katie curled her fingers into her hand to keep them steady. Maybe Gabrielle was way off base. He was going to ask her out—what should she do?

“I heard you’re looking into Ellen’s death. I’d like to help, if I can.”

It took Katie a moment to shift gears from imagining a date to feeling paranoid that people knew what she was up to.

“You . . . heard?” Katie’s mind raced, trying to figure out who knew and who could be talking about it. Other than Patsy Travers, Beth, and Caleb, there was no one. “How did you hear?”

Matt’s cheeks turned deep red, and he ran his hand through his hair. “Let’s say I overheard that you’re looking into her death.”

“You were spying on me?” Katie took a step back from him.

“No.” Matt held his hands out, palms up. “It was an accident. I came to the benches during a break, and I saw you there talking to someone. I was about to say hello, but something about the way you two were sitting made me think it was a serious conversation and I should leave you alone.”

“Okaaaaay,” Katie said. She waited for him to go on.

“So I was about to head back down the path, but I heard you say that you weren’t going to let this person get away with murder. At that point, I did leave and waited until the other person left. I saw that it was Beth Wixom.” Matt looked at his shoes. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I really liked Ellen, and if she was murdered, I’ll help in any way I can.”

Katie considered for a moment. She didn’t see a downside. Matt wasn’t on her list of suspects. He wasn’t even from Baxter. But he had been with Ellen in her last moments and had done all he could to save her. Katie understood the desire for closure.

“Okay, yes.” Katie’s voice cracked. “I’d really like that.”

“Good.” He held out his hand. “Let me give you my number, and you can text me when you think I can help.”

Katie clicked open her phone and handed it to him.

He punched in some numbers and handed the phone back. His warm fingers brushed against hers as he took it. Their eyes met, and Katie let her hand linger a second longer.

Matt smiled. “See you soon.”

Katie nodded and hurried down the path toward her office.