“Those bodies aren’t going anywhere, and it’s not like anyone’s interrogating Josephine Flores. They know where to find me if they need me.” He sat down next to me on the bed and reached for my hand. “I’d told the officers that I was going to take you home but then I found out someone had beaten me to it. Miscommunication there.”
“Look, Garrett...” I pulled my hand from his.
“Don’t say it.” His voice was low and colored with hurt.
“We need time apart to think about us and—”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently. “We need to stick together. Forever.” He reached again for my hand and this time squeezed it tightly. “Nothing is resolved by us being apart. I was an idiot. I let my fear for you turn into anger and I said some horrible things.”
“You did.” I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “But I am who I am. I am the dowsing girlfriend. That’s not going to change.”
“I don’t want it to.” He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed my wrist.
“You want what you had with her...with Faith.” I nodded to the ring. “Who am I to take that from you? I don’t know if I’ll ever want to be a wife. Or have children. I can’t ever promise you any kind of family. Even though, sure, I wouldn’t mind wearing your ring on my finger, but—”
“Really?” He grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him. “I’d love for you to wear a ring from me, and it only has to mean that we are a team. Forever.”
“I’d like that too, but only if you realize that I’m not going to change who I am or what I do, even if it makes you uncomfortable. I don’t need you to save me. I just want you to support me while I save myself.”
He pulled me against him and breathed into my neck. “I’ll do that and, because I never said it before...” He kissed my ear. “Thank you for saving my dumb ass.”
“There’s no other dumb ass I’d rather save.” I laughed and then Wookie bounded into the room, happy to have both of us at home with him. “He’s our baby, you know?”
Garrett laughed and scratched Wookie behind the ears. “He must take after your side of the family, because he doesn’t look anything like me!”
We chuckled and suddenly I was on my feet frowning.
“Did I say something wrong?” Garrett asked and the cringed. “I didn’t mean that about the dog looking like your side—”
“It’s not that. It’s the baby...”
“What?”
“Sid’s notes...” I went to the corner of the room and picked up my backpack. I found the bag of notes and dumped them all onto the bed and began searching. “First time I went to his place, I gathered up all his notes, hoping they’d lead me to you, but most of it was nonsense. But this one...” I held out the piece of paper excitedly.
“All it says is ‘4-26 Burke.’” Garrett looked at me and shrugged. “Does that mean something?”
“Tomorrow is April 26, so that’s what the numbers 4-26 represent.” I snatched up my phone and began doing a search. “And Burke is Dr. B.”
“Dr. B?” Garrett frowned.
“Karla Powel’s obstetrician.”
Garrett looked down at the paper in his hand as if still trying to connect the dots.
“You thought Jerry Mayer was the father of Karla Powel’s baby but he’s not.” I tapped the note still in his hand. “Sid’s the father.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Sid’s not the father. How could he be?” Garrett shook his head as if trying to shake the very notion from his brain. “If Sid is the father of Karla Powel’s baby, that would mean that Sid didn’t call because he needed help, he...”
“He needed someone on the inside who was preparing to intercept that big shipment of Mexican Mud. With Powel on maternity leave and no longer able to get up-to-date intel on when you feds were going to intercept that large shipment, she suggested he reach out to you. She used and manipulated him into roping you into helping him.”
“The original delivery date of all that heroin had been moved up because Josephine’s happy trigger finger was making things too dicey around Seattle,” Garrett said. “They sped up the date and Powel could no longer guarantee the shipment would get through by messing with the intel she provided the Bureau. She gave us incorrect information before, and that’s why we were always a day late on other shipments. She needed me so she could feed accurate information to Mateo Flores. Pretending both you and Sid would be slaughtered unless I turned away and allowed the shipment to get through.”
“She left Sid’s name off the original list of employees,” I said. “Because, in the beginning, she was handling all the inside work. Getting pregnant changed that.”
“Sid used me. He knew I’d try to help him. For Faith.” Garret looked up at the ceiling as if the answer to that level of exploitation lay written up there. “How could I have been so blind?”
“You were just protecting the people you care about. It’s what you do,” I said gently.
We spent that night wrapped in each other’s arms and making love with a kind of desperation to try to cleanse our minds.
A week later, when Garrett’s face only showed a faint yellow tinge where bright bruises once lay, and after I’d had a couple more face-to-face visits with Dr. Chen, we packed up my repaired Jeep and headed north. Tracey and Craig stayed at our house with Fluffy and Wookie while Garrett and I drove across the border and up to Whistler Mountain.
We stayed in a chalet just outside of the ski village. The May air was still crisp from mountain snow, and the chill woke our minds and bodies to long walks and deep talks. One evening after dinner in the village, we walked past an artisan jewelry shop and decided to go inside. There we chose matching platinum bands that were etched with a scene of mountains and sea. The ring felt more right on my finger than any diamond, and the look of love on Garrett’s face was every vow I’d ever need.
After a few lazy days, Garrett began returning calls to his office and I began looking through my overflowing email inbox for my next case. There would always be more criminals for him to catch.
And the dead would always be waiting for me to help find their way home.
* * *
Also by Carina Press and Wendy Roberts
Latte, espresso, cappuccino & murder!
Read on for an excerpt from
Grounds to Kill,
now available at all participating e-retailers.
Chapter One
There’s a superstition that says if the palm of your hand is itchy you’ll soon be receiving money. If that were true, I’d be a gazillionaire instead of an underpaid barista. Instinctively, I felt my itchy hand might one day bring me luck. So far, nada.
I rubbed my burning palm on the countertop while I concentrated on whipping up a large café mocha, no sugar, no whip, extra-dry, half-skim, half-whole milk, with chocolate syrup.
“Watch your back, Jen.” My coworker Mitch squeezed behind me to get to the cooler for more milk.
Mitch was tall and muscular with golden hair and eyes like hot espresso. When Mitch worked, Merlot’s Café saw a fifty percent increase in female clientele. The estrogen-enriched customers flocked to flirt with him. They tended to hang around too long and talk too much, but I didn’t mind. Mitch’s hundred watt smiles had a direct correlation to how the tip jar overflowed, and we shared gratuities. I reaped the benefits without having to sell my own soul with plunging necklines and pushup bras.
My palm was itching even more, so I snagged a wooden stir stick and scraped it roughly against my hand.
“Eczema acting up?” Mitch asked, raising his eyebrows.
I merely shrugged. No sense in complicating our working relationship by telling him I was crazy.
Mitch took a woman’s coffee order, then elbowed me good-naturedly.
“Hey, look.” He indicated outside the coffee shop
with his chin. “It’s your pal, Mr. Stinky.”
He chuckled, but I didn’t. My teeth clenched as I glanced out the coffee shop’s window. A disheveled homeless man took up his usual sloppy stance on the sidewalk across the street.
“He’s not my friend.”
I took an order for a medium, extra-dry café mocha with raspberry syrup.
“You say he’s not your friend but I doubt you’ve bought anyone else on the planet as many coffees as that guy.”
Mitch was bent at the waist restocking the pastry case and looked up at me with a smarmy grin. He was trying to be funny so I resisted the temptation to send him flying into the lemon scones.
“Admit it,” Mitch chided as he got to his feet. “As far as coffee dates go, you and Mr. Stinky are on a roll.”
“Right. You caught me.” I tucked a wayward strand of brown hair back into my loose ponytail.
Normally, working with Mitch was a coaster ride of wit made even more fun because he was so easy on the eyes. But it was only halfway through my shift and my feet already hurt in my new espadrilles. Don’t mess with a girl with sore feet.
“Oh you li-i-ike him,” Mitch teased. He elbowed me in the ribs as he passed.
“You got me. I’m a pushover for skinny fifty-year-olds that smell like a dumpster.”
“Fifty? You think he’s fifty?” Mitch straightened, tilted his head and stared out the window. “I’d say a hard sixty.”
A bouffant-blonde regular stepped up to the counter in thigh-high boots and an impossibly tight blue dress.
“What do you think, Molly?” Mitch asked her. “How old do you think Mr. Stinky is? Jen says fifty and I’m going with early sixties.”
“Who?” she asked, looking confused.
“The homeless dude who’s been sitting across the street every day the last month or so.” When Molly continued to offer him a blank stare, Mitch added, “You walk by him every morning to get your tea.”
Molly glanced quickly over her shoulder.
“He’s there every day?” She frowned and blinked long false eyelashes. “I never noticed.”
I poured Molly her usual peppermint tea, but the steam rising came from between my ears, not from the small vent at the top of the plastic lid. Pushing Mitch aside, I thrust the cup into Molly’s hand and took her two dollars. I gave her a quarter in change, and she deposited it into the tip jar. Great, I could plan my trip to Hawaii now.
“Thanks, Mitch.” Molly fluttered her eyelashes.
Once Molly was out the door with her tea, I picked up a rag and began energetically wiping down the counter and pastry case.
Merlot’s Café was just one of thousands of independent coffee shops in Seattle. I’d been whipping up java there for nearly two years. It was located on the main floor of an old, five-story brown brick office building on James Street halfway between Yesler and Second in Pioneer Square. The place was owned by a seldom-seen owner named Mervin Lo. Here at Merlot’s we served fair trade, shade grown, organic coffee usually with a smile. The inside was long and narrow with lots of exposed brick, a wide glass pastry case, half a dozen tables and counters with bar stools at the front windows. The walls were lined with framed black-and-white photos from long-ago Seattle when vegetable stands stood where Pike’s Place sprawls today.
“Amazing that she could walk by every day and not even see him,” I snarled under my breath. “Obviously her dresses are too tight and have cut off circulation to the gray matter beneath her dyed roots.”
“Nothing amazing about it, Jen. Hundreds of people walk down the streets of Seattle every day and I bet most of those don’t give the homeless a second thought.” He stood next to me and nudged my shoulder. “C’mon, even you must’ve had times when you crossed the street to avoid a panhandler or pretended not to hear the guy asking you for spare change.”
“Whatever. Just drop it.”
My gaze cut sideways to the guy across the street. It was starting to rain. My throat constricted. You’d think if you chose to be homeless, you’d at least have the sense to thumb a ride south until you hit the California sun instead of hanging out in Seattle. The burning itch in my palm ramped up a notch and I rubbed my hand against my blue-jean-clad thigh.
Mitch caught me staring across the street and said, “I told you when he started coming round a few weeks ago that if you feed him he’d keep coming back.” He paused. They’re kind of like cats, and for him...” he nodded across the street “...coffee is like tuna.”
“Shut up!” I slammed my palm on the counter, somewhat for emphasis but also to help relieve the itch. The half-dozen customers in Merlot’s looked up from their newspapers and laptops to regard me curiously.
We served the last of the customers in a long line and I picked up a pen in my left hand to offer my itchy palm some solace. I doodled on the thick pad left near the register.
“How come you write with your right hand, but you always doodle with your left?” Mitch asked.
“Guess I’m just talented.” I winked.
I wiped the already clean counter and Mitch went off to make small talk with a petite brunette. After a minute, I began to feel restless.
“It’s slow.” I two-pointed my rag into a nearby sink. “I’m going on my break.”
Mitch wisely kept any snarky comments to himself when I poured a large black coffee in a to-go cup, snagged a bran muffin from the basket containing the day-olds and headed out the door.
As I crossed the street, I observed Mr. Stinky was still getting organized. He finished a smoke and ground it under his toe as I walked over. Placing a twelve-inch square piece of cardboard on the damp sidewalk, he sat down, crisscrossing his legs clad in dirty blue jeans. He had on a denim jacket and leaned his back against the gray concrete slab of the parking garage behind him. In a death grip in his left hand he held the orange JanSport backpack containing all his worldly possessions.
His eyes looked dead ahead at Merlot’s, and he didn’t acknowledge me in any way as I dodged traffic and risked becoming the victim to an angry Prius driver. Once I was right in front of him, I crouched down to eye level. The stench of him brought tears to my eyes. At least I told myself it was the smell.
A curl of steam rose from the vented lid of the hot coffee that I placed on the concrete sidewalk. He took the muffin from my outstretched hand and unzipped his backpack using a small yellow compass dangling from the center pocket zipper pull. He placed the muffin gingerly inside next to the oatmeal bar I gave him yesterday and the cinnamon roll from who knows when. Then he reached deeper to the bottom of the pack and pulled out two things—his usual worn paper coffee cup with “change please” scrawled in black Sharpie and a lost dog flyer. He placed the cup in front of him and handed me the sheet.
I sighed, barely glancing at it.
“Right. Lost black lab. Got it. You’ve given me the same paper every day for a month. You know that you don’t have a dog, right?”
I ran an impatient hand through my hair, tugged out the ponytail then scrunched up my hair and pulled the elastic around it tighter than before.
“Look, you gotta find somewhere else to hang out.” I dug in my pocket for a folded index card. “I’ve made a list of all the shelters and soup kitchens in the area. The one up on Third even has a daytime program. You could, you know, be inside all day. No more sitting in the rain. Wouldn’t that be nice? Plus, they’d feed you so, um, yeah...wouldn’t that be good?”
I held out the card but he continued to look straight ahead. Not at me but through me. For a minute we stayed like that. Him staring. Me holding out the list. I’m sure he could’ve easily done this all day but I had a life. The rain ramped up from mist to drizzle and pasted my hair to my head and made my mascara run but did nothing to wash away his eau de toilet. Finally, with a small exasperated sigh, I tucked the card into his donation cup along with a twenty I couldn’t afford
.
I was about to get to my feet then changed my mind and leaned in to snap my fingers in front of his face to try to get his attention. His gray eyes flicked to my face then away.
“I don’t get it.” I threw up my hands in exasperation. “Why the hell do you come here every day if you don’t even want to talk to me?”
He reached out a grubby hand and tapped the lost dog flyer I still held in my left hand.
“The dog? There is no dog!” I crumpled the sheet and tossed it at him angrily. It bounced off his stained jacket and landed in his lap.
“You can’t keep coming here.” My voice hitched. I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, Dad, but you just can’t.”
Don’t miss
Grounds to Kill by Wendy Roberts,
available wherever
Carina Press ebooks are sold.
www.CarinaPress.com
To purchase Grounds to Kill and other books
by Wendy Roberts,
please visit Wendy’s website at:
http://www.wendyroberts.com/books
Copyright © 2013 by Wendy Roberts
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my agent, Melissa Jeglinski. This book is made better by the tireless efforts of my editor, Deborah Nemeth, and all the wonderful people at Carina.
Also available from Wendy Roberts
and Carina Press
Grounds to Kill
Bodies of Evidence
A Grave Calling
A Grave Search
and watch for A Grave End, coming soon!
Also available from Wendy Roberts and Harlequin
Dating Can Be Deadly
Also available from Wendy Roberts
Remains of the Dead
Devil May Ride
Dead and Kicking
Dead Suite
Drop Dead Beauty
About the Author
A Grave Peril Page 23