See No Evil by Gayle Roper

situations?
    When he drove away, I locked the front door and leaned against it. I shuddered as I heard the drip, drip again and saw the bright pool of blood in the beam of Gray’s penlight. I tried to imagine how a man could shoot someone willfully and in cold blood.
    Life was precious, not something to be done away withat whim. As long as life continued, a connection with God the Father might be made through Jesus the Son. Then when life ended, there was heaven. Snuff out a life prematurely, and a person might never have the opportunity to make that choice for God.
    I wondered about Dorothy Ryder. Had she known God? Had she even thought about Him? Not that anything could be changed now. Her opportunity to decide for God was gone. She’d either made that decision previously, or she’d never make it.
    Lord, take care of Mr. Ryder. Comfort him. And help the authorities find the guy who did it—without me getting killed, too, okay?
    Maybe I should call Sergeant Poole and ask the police to assign someone to guard me. I shook my head. Amhearst didn’t have a big force, and I suspected there weren’t extra cops lying around to take on a duty like that.
    I went to my room rather than down to the cellar to work. As I walked in, my eyes were drawn to the fabric mosaic over the bed, and I smiled. It was a three-foot-by-four-foot whimsical depiction of the Ark with its animals, sewn from hundreds of little pieces of material of different hues, textures and patterns to get the shadings of color I wanted. It had taken me a year to finish it, but every time I looked at it, I felt better, no matter how bad my day had been.
    A pair of giraffes held their heads high, each spot several tiny scraps of rusts or ecrus, their manes brown embroidery floss. The smiling lion’s mane was several shades of gold and bronze yarn packed tight and cut into eighth- to quarter-inch lengths. His lioness was a tawny collage of beige and amber calicos. The elephants were strips of varying shades of gray, gathered to create their wrinkles. The porcupines squatting on the roof had their laid-back quills made from the straws of a new broom.
    Meg kept urging me to take part in high-end craft shows or at least sell my mosaics on eBay. “You could make a fortune, Anna. Your stuff is so beautiful.”
    â€œI just do this for fun,” I always answered.
    Last Christmas I’d given Meg a mosaic of a single rose in myriad shades of pink, rose and crimson, the leaves made up of more greens than a spring meadow. I’d made Lucy a whimsical red-headed cat, its color slowly darkening until its tail was a deep, almost black crimson. Two years ago I’d given my father a pair of cardinals, male and female, sitting on a snow-laden pine bough. I’d loved the challenge of the slender needles and the fluffy snow, the subtle shading of the feathers.
    I turned from my masterpiece-to-date and settled myself against the headboard of my bed. I reached for my Bible. I wanted the comfort of others who had lived through danger and adversity and had written about God’s faithfulness in their dark nights. I wanted to be reminded that God was ever faithful. I turned to Psalm 66, one of Mom’s favorite passages during her illness.
    You let men ride over our heads;
We went through fire and water,
But you brought us to a place of abundance.
    I put the Bible back on the bedside table.
    Lord, not too much fire and water? Not too many men riding over my head? But I’ll take that place of abundance whenever You send it my way.

SEVEN
    T hursday morning Dar walked in the back door of his home on the beach. A grocery bag crackled in his arms. Freshly ground coffee, half and half, a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread and a beautiful, thick filet mignon to grill for tonight’s dinner. This afternoon he’d run up the road to a produce stand for some fresh Jersey beefsteak tomatoes. He’d grill them with the steak. He’d also get