Hare Today, Dead Tomorrow by Cynthia Baxter

suddenly it branched off into a maze of narrow, unpaved streets that meandered toward the coast.
    I braked heavily, not only for safety but also to allow myself a closer look at the residential enclave I’d just entered. Most of the houses had clearly been built decades earlier as summer bungalows. But interspersed among the boxy, one-story buildings were larger, more modern houses. These were at least two stories high, and many were perched atop hills that afforded them a view of the Long Island Sound, only a few hundred yards away.
    I hadn’t ventured far along Seashore Lane before I spotted a weather-worn sign that read CAPTAIN KIDD COVE. I had to smile. As most Long Islanders know, in the late 1600s the infamous pirate William Kidd buried booty that was reportedly worth a small fortune on nearby Gardiner’s Island, marking the spot with a pile of rocks that still stood. Shortly afterward, he was arrested. He was eventually hanged, but not until the governor of New York had seized his treasure.
    Yet the notorious pillager and plunderer was said to have buried some additional loot in this area, hidden treasure that had never been recovered. There was even a rocky spot known as “Kidd’s Ledge” that garnered some coverage in the local media every now and then. The legend of Captain Kidd and his missing treasure had never been proven—nor had it ever been forgotten.
    I checked my map one more time before turning onto Cliffside Lane. My poor little VW bumped along the gutted, muddy road, which ran parallel to the coast. On the sea side, the terrain dropped sharply. Forty or fifty feet below stretched a narrow strip of sand, edged with the calm, lapping waves of Long Island Sound. Most of the houses on that side of the street, particularly the newer, larger ones, had long wooden staircases leading down to the beach.
    I focused on the six or eight houses that dotted both sides of the street, figuring their inhabitants were the witnesses who had noticed Suzanne in the neighborhood the same afternoon Cassandra had been murdered. On a quiet back street like this one, I could understand that a visit from an outsider was something they would have noticed.
    At the same time, if Cassandra’s killer had been someone she knew, her neighbors wouldn’t have thought twice about the appearance of a vehicle and driver they recognized. It may not even have registered in their minds—which would have explained why they hadn’t mentioned it to the cops.
    I immediately knew which house had belonged to Cassandra Thorndike: the one with Forrester Sloan’s dark-green SUV parked in front of it. I pulled up behind it. Before getting out, I took a minute to study the house with the faded 254 stenciled onto the mailbox and the red Miata with the CASSLASS plates parked in the driveway. It was one of the small houses that had originally been built as a summer place. It probably consisted of no more than a living room, kitchen, and a couple of bedrooms, all nestled together on the main floor. From the outside, its most distinctive features were its weather-beaten unpainted cedar shingles and the broken step leading up to the front porch. There were few signs that it was lived in, and even fewer that it was loved. No cheerful curtains in the windows, no flowerpots on the porch, no brightly painted birdhouses in the few scraggly trees that somehow managed to grow so close to the cliffs. While I had yet to learn a single fact about its owner, I already knew she hadn’t possessed the Martha Stewart gene.
    Of course, the yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the front didn’t exactly scream Home Sweet Home.
    I climbed out of my car, wondering if I’d get the chance to see if any more of Cassandra’s personality was reflected on the inside, when I heard someone cry, “Hey, Popper!”
    I whipped my head around and saw my host for the afternoon striding toward me.
    “Thought you might turn up,” Forrester said, grinning. “I guess I’m as