by Molly Fitz
“That’s a good question,” he answered after a short pause.
When I glanced over toward him, his eyes were closed, and he wore a subtle smile on his face. “You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want,” I offered, hoping like heck he wouldn’t accept.
He sighed and shifted in his seat, his brow furrowed in a pained look. “I think I was just lonely after having moved so far away to start my new life in Blueberry Bay. I was trying to put down roots.”
“Like with the house and the cats,” I suggested. See, there are other ways to build a life. No Breanne Calhoun required.
“Yeah, and the firm. I never thought I’d make senior partner so fast or that we’d have so much turnover with our associates. It’s kept me very busy. Perhaps too busy to really pay attention to what was going on with me and Breanne.”
Well, this was a fresh, new perspective. “What do you mean?”
“I guess that it was just easier to keep dating her, to maintain status quo, you know?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “I really don’t.”
He took a deep breath and squinted over at me for a moment before pressing his eyelids shut once more. “I always liked spending time with Breanne. I know she hated you, but she was always nice to me. I enjoyed being with her, and that was the crucial part. I enjoyed it. It was nice. Fine. Not something I craved. I never counted down the hours until I could see her again. I never let it distract me from work or anything else I had going on in my life. She filled a hole in my life, but didn’t overfill it, I guess.”
“That’s what she said,” I muttered when I sensed the mood was getting too serious.
Charles chuckled softly but stayed on topic anyway. “Maybe I was unfair to her, letting it go on as long as it did. I’d feel guilty if I weren’t so furious about what she did to you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ll be just fine.”
“I know you will be. You’re the strongest person I know,” he said softly as another rush of heat flooded my cheeks.
Was now the time I should confess how I felt about him?
It seemed he had just offered me the perfect segue, and this was the first time in our relationship I actually could share my feelings without it getting in the way of a shared case at work or having an angry girlfriend to answer to. We were both free to explore what had been there between us from the very start.
Now was as good a time as there had ever been. I needed to be brave. This was it…
“Charles…” I mumbled, glancing over toward him. There was so much that needed to be said.
But now wasn’t the time, seeing as Charles was fast asleep.
I’d never been great at city driving, but luckily we reached Boston before the sun even had its chance to rise for the day. I woke Charles right around the time the GPS informed me we had five minutes left in our drive.
“Why’d you let me sleep so long?” he exclaimed with a groan.
“It seemed like you needed it,” I said with a smile. I’d been so close to revealing everything, all my secret longings and wishes. Thank goodness he had nodded off and saved me—saved both of us—from myself. I needed to focus on Octo-Cat right now. We both did.
Charles straightened in his seat and slapped his cheeks a few times to wake himself a bit more. “So, what’s the plan?”
Luckily, I’d had a lot of time to think things over as I drove with only Charles’s eclectic playlist to keep me company on the long, lonely road. “I thought you could be the one to approach her. Make some excuse about the estate and the arbitration. Use a lot of legal terms, and I’m sure she won’t question you.”
He nodded, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Okay. Then what?”
“Get her to invite you inside. Excuse yourself to use the bathroom. Then see if you can find him.”
“That’s all a good plan, but…” He sighed and stretched his legs out in front of him, then turned back toward me. “Don’t you think it will be suspicious that we’re doing all this before six a.m.?”
“Yeah, probably,” I admitted. It looked like we’d just fallen into a hurry up and wait trap. I hated those.
Charles seemed unbothered by the inconvenient hour. He smiled over at me and asked, “Don’t you think it would be better if we grabbed some breakfast first and then came back at a more reasonable hour so we can sell our story better?”
“Yeah, probably,” I agreed.
His smile widened, and he pointed at a big, bright sign diner just down the road. “Then, c’mon. Let’s load up on eggs and bacon. My treat.”
I nodded and turned into the parking lot, wishing we would have timed this a little better but happy we were at least making some form of progress.
Charles held open the door for me, which was a small thing but felt monumentally huge. “Ladies first,” he said.
And I blushed.
Me and my stupid crush.
Chapter Eighteen
Breakfast was slow, leisurely, and full of unspoken angst on my part. At around seven thirty, Charles handed the waitress his credit card and asked if I was ready to head over to Anne’s place.
Oh, was I ever.
“Thanks for the hot meal,” I mumbled shyly. “I needed that.”
He looped an arm over my shoulders as we made our way through the mostly empty diner. “No thanks needed between friends.”
Friends, right.
“How do you think Octo-Cat will react once we find him?” I asked, once again trying to pull my head back into the game we were actually playing here.
Charles smiled and widened his eyes. “My money’s on one very grateful kitty. There may even be licks and scritches involved.”
I giggled as he held the door open for me on the way out. “I’ll take that bet, because I’m pretty sure he’s going to demand a proper meal and then chastise us for taking so long to find him.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Charles said, joining me in my laughter. “Of course he’s going to be grateful. Why would he complain after all we’ve been through?”
“First agree to the bet,” I insisted, not making eye contact with him as we crossed through the parking lot. “Twenty bucks?”
“You’re on.” Charles slid behind the steering wheel, and I climbed into the passenger seat. “Now explain yourself, Russo.”
“Let’s just say that I’m the only one who can actually understand him, and well… I might just censor out his catittude when translating for you and Nan.” I just couldn’t stop smiling. I missed Octo-Cat and his grandiose way of doing absolutely everything.
“Wait!” Charles shifted in his seat and faced me head-on. “Has he been saying awful things about me all this time? And here I had no idea.”
I laughed again. It felt so good to laugh. Almost like Octo-Cat was here with us now. “Not lots of bad things. He does call you UpChuck, though.”
“What a bratty cat!” Charles cried. “First, let’s get him home safe and sound, and then I’m going to come up with an equally disgusting nickname for him.”
“You’ve got it,” I said between laughs.
Oh, I couldn’t wait to see how this played out.
We reached Anne’s bungalow about five minutes later. We were early, but some of the neighbor kids were already milling around at what appeared to be the local bus stop.
“I’ll wait here. You go ahead.” I gave Charles a little push, then watched as he marched confidently up to Anne’s front door, briefcase in hand. Despite the five o’clock shadow and noticeable bags under his eyes, he certainly looked the part of a lawyer visiting on official estate business.
Let’s just hope Anne would buy it.
He pressed the doorbell and waited.
When nothing happened, he pressed again.
“Maybe it’s broken,” I texted rather than calling out, just in case Anne remembered me and chose to hide for that reason alone. “Try knocking.”
Charles knocked several times, but nobody came. If Anne was inside,
she clearly refused to answer the door.
I scrambled out of the car and joined Charles on the porch. “Open up, Anne Fulton!” I shouted into the hard wood of the door. “We know you’re in there!”
“Um, excuse me,” a woman’s voice called from the next condo over. “Are you looking for Anne?”
Well, it looked like I wasn’t the only one with ace detective skills around here. Charles and I both backed down off the porch and came to join the woman where her yard met up with Anne’s.
“Yes,” he said with a nod in greeting. “We’re from the firm representing her late aunt’s estate and have some very important developments to discuss.”
The woman frowned and shook her head. “I’m so sorry. You just missed her. Well, missed her by a few days actually. She’s on vacation this week. I’ve been collecting her mail and watering her flowerbeds. Can I take a message for you?”
“Thank you, but that’s all right,” I said, forcing a smile. It wasn’t the neighbor’s fault that Anne was nowhere to be found. It was, however, her fault that we couldn’t break in to explore the premises.
“Do you know what day she left?” Charles asked intelligently.
“Tuesday morning, bright and early.”
“Great, thanks. You’ve been a huge help,” he said with another nod to say goodbye.
I followed him back to the car. Neither of us spoke until the neighbor woman gave us one final wave and walked back into her condo.
“The timelines match up perfectly,” he said, his hands shaking with excitement. “Anne left Boston early enough to take Octo-Cat. For all we know, she’s had him this whole time.”
“Do you think she’s hanging out somewhere in Blueberry Bay?”
“Call Nan. She’ll know what to do on her end. We can discuss the rest on our way back home.”
Sure enough, Nan picked up on the first ring, then immediately launched into her plan of attack once I’d caught her up on what had gone down in Boston. “If that wretched woman’s staying anywhere near here, I’ll find her. I have the perfect costume for this role.”
“What role?” I asked.
“Why, of the forgetful but well-intentioned elderly aunt, of course. Nobody ever suspects the little old lady, you know. They’ll hand over her room number in a heartbeat, and when I find her, I’ll—”
“You’ll wait for me and Charles,” I interrupted. “Promise me, you’ll wait for us.”
“Fine. I’ll find her and then I’ll stake things out until the B team can arrive.”
“So we’re the B team now?” I asked with a chuckle.
“We can’t all be the A team, dear. Now get that man to drive fast, so we can bust in on the bad gal and take back what’s ours.”
After hanging up with Nan, I turned to Charles with a giant grin and asked, “How fast are you willing to book it back there?”
He pressed down a bit harder on the accelerator, and we were off.
I felt confident we’d find Octo-Cat before the day was through, but I still had questions. Mainly, if Anne was staying locally, why would she have hired Breanne to hand-deliver her ransom notes? And also, why do all this now when the arbitration for Ethel’s estate was already scheduled for tomorrow?
Charles didn’t have any good answers, either, which meant the best we could hope for was a crazed confession when we caught Anne red-handed later that morning—or afternoon, depending on the traffic we had to fight coming back home.
We were still a couple hours outside of Glendale when Nan called. I put the phone on speaker so Charles could hear, too.
“The eagle is in the nest!” she shouted into the phone. “I repeat, the eagle is in the nest!”
“Does this mean you found Anne?” I asked, hope rising in me like a shiny, Mylar balloon floating toward the ceiling.
Nan giggled. “Of course we found her. We are the A Team, after all.”
I let out a giant, relieved sigh. We were so close to bringing our boy home. Something about what Nan had said didn’t quite make sense, though, so I asked, “Awesome, so I just have two questions. Where are you, and who else is part of that we you just mentioned?”
“Um, just a second, dear.” Nan’s track pants swished, and a moment later she explained, “Sorry, I wanted to get a bit of privacy for this part. I’m with Cal and his sister.”
“You’re with Breanne?” I growled, immediately tensing up all over again. “Why?”
“Relax. I know we hate her, but she’s the one who found out where Anne was staying and led us straight to her.”
Charles sent me a panicked glance, and I made a gun out of my thumb and index finger and pointed it at my head with a grimace.
“Are you ready for the address?” Nan asked. Apparently, we were done talking about both Breanne and Anne now.
I agreed. No more talking. It was time for action.
I jotted the address down and made Nan promise to text it over, too. Apparently, Anne had taken a motel room in the nearby town of Cooper Cove. And we’d be there in less than two hours.
“You got that twenty bucks ready?” I asked Charles. Soon I’d be collecting on our little bet, but even more importantly, soon I’d have my cat back and would finally be able to figure out why he was taken in the first place.
This was it. Everything was about to go down.
Anne didn’t stand a chance.
I was one angry cat-mama, and I was coming for her.
Chapter Nineteen
Charles and I made it to that dingy motel in Cooper Cove in record time. When we arrived, we found Nan waiting with the Calhoun twins in the parking lot. Nan and Charles sat together in Nan’s sports coupe while Breanne sat parked a few spots away, flipping through a giant stack of papers in the driver’s seat of her luxury SUV.
The moment Charles and I pulled into that parking lot, everyone scrambled out of their cars and rushed over to join us.
Cal gave me a huge hug. “Welcome back,” he said with a charming grin.
Breanne tried to hug Charles, but he was having none of that.
“Let’s do this!” Nan let out a battle cry and led the charge up the outdoor staircase and toward motel room number twenty-six.
The rest of us followed like obedient little ducklings.
We found the room third on the right after exiting the narrow stairway. Charles nudged his way to the front of our pack and banged on the door. “Open up,” he called, his voice much deeper than usual. Maybe to sound more intimidating. Yeah, because that was the way to get her to voluntarily open the door.
“Are you sure Anne’s even in there?” I asked. A frustrating sense of déjà vu had already begun to set in. What if this was Boston all over again?
“Anne? No,” Nan admitted with a look of determination that didn’t waver. “The catnapper? Yes.”
“How…?” I began. My voice shook just as much as my hands in that moment.
Cal generously explained the situation to Charles and me, who were now both utterly confused. “So hang on a sec. Here’s what happened. First off, Breanne felt really bad about her role in all of this, so she agreed to help.”
“It’s true. I did. I do.” Bree placed a hand on Charles’s arm, but he ripped it away.
“I’d prefer to hear this from your brother, thank you very much,” he grumbled, refusing to even look at his recent ex.
Cal waited until I nodded for him to go ahead. “Well, um, Bree sent an email since that was the only form of contact she had for the ransom note writer, and basically, well, she said that the plan had worked and that you had agreed to give up the house, Angie.” The poor guy seemed so nervous. It was obvious he didn’t like being the middleman in this lovers’ spat, and I couldn’t say I blamed him.
When Cal hesitated again, Breanne took over the recap. “I told the person that I had the preliminary paperwork and that we needed to meet face-to-face in order to move on with the next phase of the plan. About an hour later, I was sent this address and room number.”
“Have you been inside yet?” I asked, glancing back toward the closed door.
“No, we were waiting for you,” Nan said. “We wouldn’t have solved the case without you.”
“Yes, unfortunately, we’ve been here for quite a while now,” Bree snapped, focusing all her hostility on me now that Charles had made it clear he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. “So can we please just get this over with already? I have other things to do today, you know.”
“Like delivering more ransom notes?” Nan quipped, laughing at her own joke.
It may not have been the most mature decision, but I couldn’t resist giving her a high five for that perfect joke.
Bree scowled at both of us, reminding me how serious this situation was.
“She’s not answering,” I muttered, staring at the cheap motel door and wishing I had the power to see right through it. “Why is she not answering?”
Nan cleared her throat and held up one pointer finger. “Housekeeping,” she called out happily, giving the door an upbeat series of knocks.
The door in front of us remained closed, but the one to the next room opened a crack and a middle-aged man peeked his head out. “Housekeeping?” he asked us with a confused expression.
“They just went inside another room. Looks like you’ve got a bit of time to make yourself decent,” Nan said with a flirtatious wink.
“Wait,” I cried just as the door was closing the last bit of the way.
The man nudged it open a few inches and stared at me curiously.
“Did you happen to run into the woman who was staying in this room? We were supposed to get together today, but she’s not answering.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, no. I just got in last night.”
Click. The door closed again.
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Breanne groused. “C’mon,” she told Cal, grabbing his arm and pulling him along. “We’ll go check with the front desk. You can all stay here.”
Nan, Charles, and I waited in silence. What was left to say? Octo-Cat might be in the room, but he might also not be. It was like Schrödinger’s cat but without the box and hopefully without the dead cat, too.