Yet another reason for her surveillance work. It had been over a decade since she and her sister had raced around the old neighborhood with Chip. She needed to learn more about the present-day man other than the scanty intel she’d garnered from the police database, which revealed he didn’t have a record. He’d never even been arrested. A few speeding tickets were all that had shown up, which didn’t surprise her one iota.
He drove like a maniac. Or used to, anyway.
She didn’t like the idea of meeting a murderer alone somewhere, even in a public place. She was five-five, and he was at least six-one. She’d be packing her service weapon and was trained in self-defense, but Chip was one tall, well-built dude.
Which hopefully meant he’d be easy to spot on campus.
As she conjured up an image of how he’d been dressed Saturday night—crisp khakis and a pale blue, button-down shirt that highlighted his piercing blue eyes—she felt a tug of something suspiciously sensual in her gut. Chip had looked damn good.
She shook her head and focused on a group of tall men who entered the courtyard.
“May I join you?”
Lana looked up to find a Hispanic man with smooth skin and dark hair and eyes, in his late twenties, looming over her table. He held a giant iced drink and a bag from the burger concession that smelled deliciously of fresh fries.
“The tables are all full,” he explained with an apologetic smile.
A quick glance revealed the area had grown crowded. It was almost noon and she was sitting alone with books spread out over the entire table.
“Oh, of course,” she said, and moved her belongings to give him room. He would provide good cover, anyway. A woman sitting alone too often attracted attention, the very thing she wanted to avoid in case Chip showed up.
After settling himself, the stranger motioned with his chin toward her text. “Are you in Professor Wilcox’s section?”
“Uh, no,” she said. “Just reviewing some old notes.”
Not wanting to get caught up in a conversation, which would most definitely give her away as an impostor on this campus, she hunched over her book and ignored the handsome newcomer.
“I’m Rafael,” he said.
“Lana,” she murmured without making eye contact. She didn’t want to be rude, but she didn’t want to be friendly, either. If she started chatting with this guy, she could miss Chip’s arrival.
“Haven’t seen you here before,” he said.
“Nope,” she said.
“I have great notes from that class. Would you like me to email you a copy?”
Lana looked up. “Why would you—” Rafael grinned at her, and she got it that this good-looking student was hitting on her. He looked so open, so pleasant, for heaven’s sake, she couldn’t help but smile back.
How the hell did she shut this dude down without hurting his feelings? On Saturday night all she’d been able to do was stare at Chip in mute horror. And she was doing the same thing now. Snap out of it, Lana. Just tell him you’re married.
“Listen,” she began, trying to make her voice kind and regretful, “I’m—” And at that moment, Chip Peterson strolled into The Bricks, deep in conversation with a female student. Lana ducked her head and stuffed her belongings into her pack.
Damn. Chip could not see her sitting here. What would he think?
Rafael watched her quick movements with a confused smile. “Was it something I said?”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “Gotta go.”
Shouldering on her backpack, she hurried to the other side of the fountain, where Chip wouldn’t notice her but she could observe him through the spray. He and his companion gazed around the courtyard, searching for an empty seat. Sure enough, they made a beeline for the table she’d just vacated.
Rafael spread his arms wide, indicating they could join him. Chip sat with his back toward her. Good. She didn’t have to lurk behind a column or tree and make herself quite so obvious. She sat on the damp knee-high wall that contained the fountain’s pool and pulled out her phone. She pretended to send a text, but watched Chip from underneath her cap. He dropped his own backpack and entered the food court. After a few pleasantries, Rafael ate his meal in silence and then left the area with a nod to the female.
Chip returned with a tray and several bags of food and cold drinks. He and his companion ate their meals, chatting like normal people. Hardly sociopathic behavior. After twenty-three minutes, they gathered their belongings and strolled out of The Bricks. Lunch break must be over. When they reached the Shalala Student Union, the woman waved goodbye.
Chip kept moving and entered a building marked Law Library, and she decided not to follow him inside. What suspicious activity could he engage in inside a library? And he might spot her and wonder what the hell she was doing, why she was here. He’d think she was stalking him—which she damn well was—and that would blow her chance to take him up on dinner.
According to the schedule she’d obtained from the university—being a cop did have its advantages—he had an hour break until his next class at 2:00 p.m., and he obviously intended to make good use of that time by studying. Should she remain here and follow him to class?
No. She’d seen enough to know Chip behaved like any normal student during his routine day. That didn’t mean he wasn’t Dan’s killer.
However, it confirmed what she’d known for twenty years. Chip Peterson was smart. Smart enough to gain admittance to the U of M Law School—no easy task. Too smart to call attention to himself with deviant behavior.
But was he smart enough to get away with murder?
* * *
CHIP PUSHED BACK from the desk in his bedroom and ran a hand through his hair. Even through the closed door, the commotion in his parents’ living room was deafening. Well, not deafening maybe, but beyond distracting. His sister had dropped off her kids for his mom and dad to babysit, allowing Jan and her husband a much-needed dinner out alone.
What the hell made him think he could live in his parents’ home again?
He was only halfway through the hundreds of pages of reading he had to complete tonight, and he couldn’t get behind. Everyone—including his dad—had warned him to stay current with the reading or he’d never catch up. The first year of law school was killer. Deliberately so to weed out the slackers.
And contrary to popular opinion, he was no slacker. Or not anymore.
A peal of laughter rang out. He recognized it as Gwen, his sister’s youngest.
He reread the same paragraph again, realizing he’d lost the flow of the topic. Awesome job, Chip. He needed to learn how to focus, how to shut out the noise. He should have remained on campus and used the library. He’d do that from now on. On days without classes, he could stake out a table in the local public library. He’d check how late the building remained open.
He reached for his lukewarm coffee and took a swallow. Yeah, and would he be allowed to guzzle necessary caffeine in the library? When he wanted to take a break, go for a walk to clear his head, he couldn’t leave his books and notes spread out or risk them getting stolen.
The door burst open and Gwen charged in. “Uncle Chip!” she squealed.
Blonde, five-year-old Gwen, the cutest thing on two feet, barreled toward him. Chip moved to allow her to climb into his lap.
“Whatcha doing?” she demanded.
“Reading.”
She screwed up her adorable face. “I’m learning how to read.”
“I heard that. How do you like kindergarten these days?”
“It’s fun. I’m real smart.”
Dark-haired Nina, two years older and the more serious of his two nieces, appeared at his door. “You weren’t supposed to bother Uncle Chip,” she scolded her sister. “He’s studying.”
“He doesn’t mind,” Gwen said, twirling a lock of her long hair. “Do you, Uncle Chi
p?”
Chip smiled at Nina. “It’s okay. I can take a short break.” As if he could ever say no to his nieces.
“Really?” Nina moved deeper into the room. “Will you play Monopoly with us?”
“No,” Gwen objected. “I want to play Candyland.”
“That’s a baby game,” Nina said.
Gwen stuck out her lower lip. In her world there was nothing worse than being called a baby by her older sister.
“Why don’t we go outside for a few minutes, before it gets too dark?” Chip suggested.
Gwen leaped from his lap. “Will you teach us on the skateboard?”
“Yes!” Nina exclaimed. “Show us how to do those tricks.”
“Tricks take practice,” Chip said. “Lots and lots of practice.” And a few broken bones along the way. His sister had given him a strict warning about luring her daughters into the evil ways of daredevil skateboard maneuvers.
“Please, Uncle Chip,” Gwen pleaded.
Chip stood, a twinge in his right knee reminding him he was no longer the age of his nieces. After his last broken arm, he’d retired from extreme skateboarding. Rock climbing had been a good challenge for a while, but way too damn expensive. So now he stuck mainly to kiteboarding. The fall into the water might still hurt, but didn’t break any bones. At least not yet.
Nina grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the room. “Please, please, Uncle Chip.”
Chip sighed. Resistance was futile. Two cuter sirens had never been born. Well, maybe Lana Lettino. He’d even fantasized he’d caught a glimpse of her on campus today.
“No tricks,” he said firmly to Nina. “But we can practice making safe stops.”
“Yeah,” the girls screamed simultaneously and ran into the living room.
“What’s all this racket?” his mother demanded, hands on her hips. Her frown told Chip she knew exactly what was going on.
“Uncle Chip is going to take us skateboarding,” Nina said.
“Chip,” his mother began.
He held up his hands. “They already know the basics.”
“Don’t worry, Grandma. It’s okay,” Nina said.
“We both got skateboards last Christmas,” Gwen said, jumping up and down, in a hurry to get started.
“Only because of your crazy uncle,” his mom pointed out.
Chip gave his mother a quick kiss on the cheek. “Nothing scary. I promise.”
His father appeared beside his mother, glasses perched low on his nose, a sheaf of papers in his hand. So, he’d been reading law, too.
“Finished your work for the night, son?” his dad asked.
Chip sighed. He was twenty-seven years old and his parents were admonishing him about doing his homework instead of playing dangerous games. Had nothing changed in the past two decades?
“Come on, Uncle Chip,” Gwen said, yanking him toward the front door.
He’d made a serious error moving back home. Yeah, he’d wanted to save money for that trip out west to climb Desert Towers, but forget Utah and the lure of the ultimate climb. He needed to find an apartment, a studio, a trailer, a broken-down RV—something. Anything.
As much as he loved his family, his current living arrangements were so not working.
* * *
AT HER APARTMENT, after changing into comfortable sweats, Lana opened a chamomile tea bag and plopped it into her favorite mug. When the water began to roil, she poured the steaming liquid over the bag, added a generous squeeze of honey, almost tasting the golden sweetness as it entered the tea.
Grabbing the mug, she moved to her dining room table, where she’d spread out her files on Dan’s murder. She sat, opened the notebook containing a section on each of her suspects and added notes from today’s surveillance of Chip.
When finished, she sat back and took a sip of her still-hot tea. She’d learned nothing new at the university, but most police work consisted of basic observation, knocking on doors and asking questions. Nothing glamorous. As her training officer liked to say, “A cop’s time on the job is 95 percent boredom and 5 percent sheer terror.”
Her next step would be a conversation with Chip to probe what had caused the big fight with her brother that led to the exchange of notes. Did Chip still have the note Dan had to have sent him, or had that evidence been destroyed years ago?
She needed to suck it up, give Chip a call and accept his invitation. Although at this point it would be her invitation.
She’d never called a guy to ask him out on a date. Well, she’d asked Dale to escort her to the party Saturday night, but Dale was her brother in arms. They both knew that she’d brought him along only to help her look at suspects. Too bad he’d gotten sidetracked. She took another sip of tea, wondering if Dale had scored with Cindy. They’d been all over each other by the end of the evening.
Lana shook her head at the memory. She couldn’t remember ever feeling that way about a man, unable to stop touching him. And why was that? Because she was careful.
She had no intentions of making the same mistakes with men as her mother.
But Dale just liked women. All women. And he was so honest and up front about the fact that he never intended to settle down, how could anyone hold it against him? One thing for sure. If Dale ever fell in love, it wouldn’t be with a woman as obvious as Cindy Arroyo had become. Maybe Dan’s death had changed her, too.
Lana unfolded the note Chip had written to Danny after their altercation and read it again.
What was Dan’s secret? What did he swear to do?
Lana pulled Chip’s driver’s license photo from her file and stared at his smiling image. Did you kill my brother?
She considered Chip’s alibi for the time of Dan’s murder weak. His mother and father confirmed his story that he’d been home, but Lana knew Chip regularly sneaked out of his bedroom window at night without his parents’ knowledge. She’d met him sometimes at the corner when she was supposed to be in bed, usually after one of her parents’ horrible arguments. She’d been terrified of getting caught by her dad—God, he had a violent temper—but Chip could always calm her down. And he’d always known when she needed to talk.
She glanced at the clock on the table. Nine o’clock. Was it too late to call him? Should she suggest a weekend dinner date or a get-together some evening during the week? On her current schedule, her tour ended at three o’clock, so the day didn’t matter.
During the week, Chip’s early class schedule could be a problem, but her background check hadn’t revealed he held down a job to work his way through law school. Not likely he’d need an income stream. His old man was one of the most successful corporate lawyers on Brickell Avenue, his firm housed in one of the soaring iconic structures often featured in ads for South Florida. She’d been awestruck by the beauty of the lobby, remembering her one and only visit. One of the partners in the firm had represented her mother in her parents’ divorce.
Do not go there, girl. Ancient history.
Lana pushed away thoughts of the second-worst event in her life, the bitter rupture of her family that had forced her mom to move from their beautiful home next door to Chip into a small condo, one barely in the district so she and Sandy and Dan didn’t have to change schools.
Her focus needed to remain on her goal: find Dan’s murderer, a stone-cold case that law enforcement no longer even pretended to try to solve. Cases went cold for a lot of reasons. Inexperienced personnel. Lack of personnel. Detectives retired, got promoted or transferred. Lack of public cooperation.
She suspected the lack of an arrest in Danny’s case stemmed from a little bit of everything.
As soon as she’d obtained computer access, she’d read every detail in the investigative file at least three times. Her mother might not believe it, but she’d looked and relooked at all the leads. She had every scrap of information known by the original detect
ives, both of whom had retired and moved from the area.
She’d spoken to Detectives Harnage and Rivera so many times on the phone that they rarely accepted her calls now.
She fingered Chip’s note again, wondering if she should turn over this new evidence to the department.
She knew what would happen if she did. A clerk would scan the document into the computer, stash the physical note in the evidence vault, and that would be the end of it.
No one cared anymore.
Lana sighed. She was putting off what she didn’t want to do, place that call to The Chipper. What the hell was wrong with her? Someone—and Chip Peterson was her prime suspect at this point—had killed her brother. Her family had waited eight long years to find justice. Get moving, girl. Make it count.
She snatched her phone from the desk, checked the info in Chip’s file for his number and placed the call.
She connected to his voice mail.
“Hi, Chip. It’s Lana Lettino. Um, I’ve been thinking about your invitation for dinner, and I’d like—no, I’d love to take you up on that, um, if...if you’re still interested, that is. Sorry about Cindy pulling me away. I didn’t mean to be rude, but you know how Cindy is. Can you believe we did that old cheer? Oh my God. So lame. Anyway, call me. Okay. Bye.”
Lana closed her eyes when she terminated the call. She’d sounded like a complete bubblehead. Why hadn’t she written out a script? Chip would laugh his fool head off when he listened to her pathetic message. He would never call her back.
Now what? She flipped open her notebook to Coach Robby’s section and began to read. What exactly had happened between him and Mr. Feldman over Dan’s grades? Had Coach gotten Feldman fired? If so, had Feldman nursed a grudge against Dan? Where was Feldman now?
She’d promised her mother to relook at every lead.
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER MIDNIGHT, CHIP closed his tort textbook and pushed back from his desk. Done. His eyes felt tired and gritty; his whole body ached from sitting too long, but he’d read every fricking page. And damn if that didn’t feel good. Yes, sir. His slacker days were definitely over.
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