Echoes of the Heart

Corey Beckett is a doll maker who designs and creates porcelain dolls to order. Her specialty is replications of real persons. Her latest is a doll representing Hillsborough County Commissioner Lucinda Rae Morton Douglas.
Corey meets her sister, Cynthia (nicknamed Cyndi), for lunch and tells her that the doll has been picked up and paid for. Cynthia invites her to join her and her husband, David, for dinner out that evening. She accepts.
At the restaurant that evening, she meets a friend of Cyndi and David—Trevor McCauley, a Detective with the Sheriff’s office. She suspects that Cyndi and David have arranged this meeting with their friend.
Trevor is attracted to Corey as she is attracted to him. She has been through a divorce, however, and is wary of getting involved with a man again. Trevor was once engaged to be married but his fiancée, Stephanie, broke off with him because he chose to go into Law Enforcement instead of his original plan to be an attorney.
The doll is delivered to Mrs. Douglas on her birthday. When she opens the box, she is surprised and pleased to see it. As she lifts it out of the box, a pressure bomb is activated and she is killed in the explosion.
Trevor and his partner, Jaimz Stevenson, are assigned to the homicide investigation. Forensics has identified bits and pieces of silk, synthetic hair and porcelain at the scene. Remnants of a doll. Trevor knows the doll maker. Could she possibly be the killer? Or the killer’s accomplice? Trevor does not want to believe that she could be involved. Usually, the spouse is the first suspect, but Owen Douglas was teaching an evening class at a local college and has several students as witnesses to prove his alibi.
According to the paperwork in Corey’s files, the doll was commissioned by the Douglas Booster Club and picked up by Keith Patterson—a person of interest who is nowhere to be found.
In the course of their investigation, the detectives learn that Owen Douglas once served in the Army. He is an expert in demolitions. They interview Bruce Wingate, the supervisor at the latest project site being developed by Douglas’s company and Corey’s former husband. Do they use explosives to clear land? Yes. He produces the permits and license for usage. They ask if Owen Douglas knows about Corey’s dolls. He says he doesn’t know if he does.
After Trevor and Jaimz leave, Wingate figures they suspect his boss of killing his wife. He forms a plan to make some extra money.
Detectives Holt and Fulton are assigned to shadow Douglas. They follow him to the home of Professor Melanie Fisher, with whom he is having an affair. Motive for murder?
Regina Morrow, a student at Collingswood, has also followed Douglas to the professor’s house. Is he cheating on her with Melanie Fisher?
Trevor gets a day off. He and Corey go to Bok Tower and while there, she receives a call from Bruce telling her that she might be in danger. He won’t say why over the phone but insists that they meet to discuss it.
A few days later, Bruce opens a document box at the building site and is killed when he reaches in for paperwork and sets off the bomb that has been planted there.