Every Move She Makes by Beverly Barton

library. And several copy shops provided laser printers for use by their customers. Unless there were fingerprints on the envelope or the plain white paper, there was probably no way to trace the letter.
    Was this a prank? Dan Gilmore certainly hadn’t penned the heated love letter. Did she have a secret admirer out there somewhere? Was someone stalking her, watching her without her being aware of his presence? A chill raced up her spine. She’d heard of women being stalked by ex-lovers or ex-husbands, and celebrities being harassed by crazed fans. But she had no “ex” anything. And she certainly wasn’t famous. However, she was a well-known figure in the community, in all of Bryant County for that matter.
    Ella Porter, you aren’t the type of woman that men become obsessed with and you know it. No one would ever…Oh, dear Lord, no! Years ago, Reed Conway had written her two letters very similar to this one. Until her father had seen to it that he couldn’t send any more. And Reed Conway had been released from prison yesterday. Was it possible that he had written her this crude love letter? Yes, of course it was possible. If the man still blamed her father for his imprisonment, then he might be trying to get to her father through her. He’d done it once before; why not now?
    Daddy would be furious. He would confront Reed and accuse him of harassing her. Even though she couldn’t be sure the letter had come from Reed, there would be no doubt in her father’s mind. He would condemn Reed without benefit of hard evidence. The police would be called in and the story might leak to the media, and her mother would find out and become terribly upset. Ella could well remember the hullabaloo that went on in the Porter household when Reed had written to her from prison. She didn’t want a repeat of those nerve-racking days.
    The letter can’t hurt you , she reminded herself. It’s only a bunch of words . If Reed had written it, he had done it solely to get a rise out of Webb Porter. If she didn’t show anyone the letter, then Reed wouldn’t have accomplished his goal. Surely, if he realized she had ignored the silly piece of trash, he wouldn’t bother writing another.
    Ella removed a key chain from her pocket and unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk. After pulling out the drawer, she lifted and opened her gray leather purse, then stuffed the letter back into the envelope. She slid the envelope into her purse behind her wallet and closed her purse. The best thing to do was forget about the message and hope that would be the end of it. But she wouldn’t destroy the letter. Not yet.
    She didn’t want to involve her father or the local authorities unless it was absolutely necessary. She wasn’t a sixteen-year-old innocent. She was a grown woman, a thirty-year-old circuit court judge. She could certainly handle this situation without help. She would find Reed Conway and confront him with the letter, then warn him that if he knew what was good for him, he’d leave her alone.
     
     
    Jeff Henry Carlisle sipped tea from a Moss Rose Havi-land china cup. The silver tea service that Judy Conway had placed on his intricately carved mahogany desk in the study had been in his family for six generations. The desk itself had come overland from Virginia and then down the Tennessee River to Alabama before the War Between the States, as a wedding present for one of his ancestresses. Of all the fine rooms in his home, he thought he loved this one best. His own private domain, filled with beloved treasures, both family heirlooms and items he had acquired at estate sales and out-of-the-way antique shops. There were even a few items he had picked up on his and Cybil’s trips to Europe. Unfortunately, his wife didn’t give two hoots about the things that were precious to him. “A bunch of old junk,” she’d once said of the priceless antiques that adorned each of the twelve rooms in their home. All the rooms, that is, except her