Spooning Leads to Forking (Hot in the Kitchen Book 2)

by Kilby Blades

  “What do you mean, he’s about to find you?” Tasha asked evenly from the other end of the phone. Her perpetually calm voice had once irked Shea. Today, she understood and appreciated it for the first time. Tasha had been grooming her for the moment when things would get bad.

  Though, Shea doubted Tasha had anticipated the extent of Shea’s predicament. Shea didn’t like to be long-winded, but there was no Cliff’s Notes version of her decision to record Don Jr.’s plans for the town. By the time Shea finished recounting the whole story, she was no longer in her closet. She’d migrated to the kitchen, swallowed an entire glass of cool water from the fridge and was somehow still shaky and out of breath. Butters sniffed around her worriedly, trying to offer comfort of her own.

  “Shea. I need you to calm down,” Tasha commanded gently, seconds after Shea told her about the audio clip. “Or I need you to do whatever it is you do, to get yourself in your right mind. Go for a walk or something. You’ve got a lot of adrenaline in your system.”

  Shea opened one of the heavy glass doors that took her out back, took a deep breath of afternoon and walked to her favorite spot by the aspen trees near the back. She wasn’t ready to leave this—wasn’t ready to leave him. Maybe once this was all over, Kendrick would let her come back and Dev would let her make things right.

  She took a few more breaths, closing her eyes and trying to focus on slowing her heartbeat.

  “Alright…” Shea said finally. “Alright…I’m ready.”

  “Good…” Tasha said. “Now I’m gonna ask a question and I don’t care what you ever have or haven’t told me in the past—all I care about is your gut feeling, right now.” Tasha paused for a long beat, and then asked. “How sure are you that Keenan is coming?”

  “A hundred percent,” Shea answered without hesitation. “Just so he can force me into that conversation I keep telling him I don’t want to have. It’s about control for him. If he gets a lead, he’ll drop everything just to corner me. He always has to have the last word.”

  “Okay…” Tasha said slowly. “But what you just described is obsessive and potentially dangerous behavior. Sometimes, when you’re with someone for a long time, you lose perspective on normal. What I need to understand right now is whether there’s a chance that Keenan poses a threat to your physical safety.”

  “I understand what you’re asking, but that’s just not how he is. Keenan’s all about psychological games. He hangs all these tacky motivational post-it notes around the house that say things like, Outwit. Outlast. Outplay.”

  “Isn’t that the tagline for Survivor?” Tasha asked with unmasked distaste.

  Shea pursed her lips. “Exactly.”

  “There’s a risky approach we could take, but it could backfire. Doing it would have to be your decision.”

  Shea felt tired in that moment, like she had lost all intelligence and perspective. “What’s your idea?”

  “Stay there. And make sure he finds you.”

  Shea blinked, letting it set in for a long moment as Tasha kept on talking. How could seeing Keenan possibly be a good idea?

  “Right now, one of his counterclaims in the divorce is abandonment. His attorney is going to argue that you rejected repeated attempts at reconciliation after leaving the marital home. But if Keenan pursues you now, after you’ve filed and he’s countersued, and your attorneys are officially acting as your representatives during legal proceedings, any contact he initiates with you can be charged as fourth-degree stalking.”

  Shea blinked again.

  “What about the other scenario? The one in which he calls the feds and tells them exactly where they can find his felonious wife?”

  “Technically, you’re still wanted for questioning. But I’ve filed the petition with the courts, explaining that I know your whereabouts and documenting that you’ve disappeared for your own protection. I’m telling you, Shea—if Keenan shows up there, it cinches your case.”

  Twenty minutes later, long past the time she’d hung up from talking with Tasha, Shea still stared out at the forest, not having made any decisions, and not feeling any closer to fleeing, even though it might still come to that. She needed a drink. She needed a nap. She needed a long run to get rid of all of her adrenaline. But before she’d do either of those things, she needed to make a call.

  “Hey, Kendrick.” Shea picked up his call promptly on the first ring. She’d texted him half an hour earlier—a casual request for him to give her a call when he had the chance.

  “Hey, girl…” he replied with the same gladness he always seemed to have to hear her voice. “I was gonna call you this week anyway, to see when I could come to visit. What do you think about next month, on the thirteenth?”

  Shea wished it could be like all the other times, when she’d let the warmth of his friendship soothe her, when announcing his intention to pay her a visit would have created a thrill. She wished that nothing had changed—that she could busy herself preparing for the visit she’d looked forward to. Now, fear of what she was about to ask of him only had her scared.

  “I might be gone by then.”

  Her voice remained even but she winced as she said it, squeezing both eyes shut for a long second before cracking one eye open in anticipation of a less than favorable response.

  “Gone where? You finish your script already?” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Look—I’m sorry it had to come out this way but there’s something I didn’t tell you. I didn’t just come here to write a script.”

  She heard footsteps, and a door close.

  “That much I already gathered. You’re too young for a midlife crisis, so I figured, divorce.”

  “If you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” The adrenaline was back. Seconds felt like minutes as she waited for him to answer.

  “First of all, I didn’t know for sure. Second, you know I’ve never liked Keenan, so I didn’t want to rub it in. Third, you’re worse than a dude—the way you keep everything to yourself and hide things in your cave.”

  “Damn…” It was a lot to unpack, even if it all was as simple as that. Only, it really wasn’t.

  “Does this mean you’re coming back to New York?” Kendrick wanted to know.

  “I might need to leave kind of suddenly…Keenan just found out where I am. And you should know there’s three quarters of a million dollars in cash sitting in your downstairs bedroom. I can make arrangements to move it eventually, but right now…keeping it in your bedroom is my best plan.”

  Shea squeezed her eyes shut and winced again.

  “What do you mean, he just found out where you are?” Kendrick demanded. Shea hadn’t expected him to latch on to that part. The money seemed most relevant to him, as was the fact that she was hiding it on his premises. But he forged on, “Do you just want some distance or are you literally hiding from him?”

  Shea swallowed what was left of her pride and admitted the truth on a sigh. “I moved out of state to lower the potential for drama. He’s like, this master manipulator…,” she tried to explain. “Did you hear the part where I just told you I’m hiding money in your house?”

  Kendrick forged forward. “I’m going to implement some advanced remote-monitoring security features, and other safety features all around the house. Is anyone else staying with you?”

  Shea shook her head, then remembered to speak out loud. “No, it’s just me.”

  “Sit tight. I’ll be there by morning.”

  33

  The Private Event

  Dev

  “You look like shit.”

  Dev had the good sense to call ahead to Delilah’s for a 4:30 PM pickup order. Every other restaurant kitchen in town was closed. It was too early for dinner at The Spoon or for takeout at Gator’s. Delilah’s was the only place where he could pick something up in the middle of the day. Rattled enough from hearing Shea’s voice over and over as they’d studied the recording, Dev had volunteered to grab caffeine and sustenance for the team.

>   They’d spent the past few hours at Sapling Police Station deep in conversation, where plentiful meeting space abounded, despite a barren wasteland of nothing to eat. What little was in the cupboards had been devoured hours before. In addition to the coffee, Dev would leave with a box of pastries—buns and scones and croissants and some of those little quiches Delilah made.

  He might have known that a late-afternoon audience with Delilah would do him no favors. The bakery tended to be empty by then. His sister was none too happy about what had happened between he and Shea, not that she knew the details. She’d commented each time she’d seen him on how it had turned her brother into a zombie and caused her friend to disappear.

  “No lectures today,” he warned as he made his way up to the counter. “I was up half the night on a call. Then I got a bomb dropped on me today, about the case. Anybody call you yet to tell you we’re closing The Spoon tonight for a meeting with business owners?”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Delilah lowered her voice. “What the hell is going on?”

  Dev didn’t even try to begin to explain. “Nothing good.”

  Delilah looked alarmed, but acquiesced, placing the fourth large coffee cup that had stood waiting on the counter in the drink holder. “Alright…but even if I lay off of you right now, you’re gonna get it from Evie. You missed Sunday dinner last night, which left me to make excuses for you both.”

  Brody had called Dev in for backup on a domestic disturbance call and, he’d forgotten all obligations, including the day of the week. The “both” referred to him and Shea.

  “No one asked you to make excuses,” he pointed out, feeling as irritable as he had all week but trying to clamp it down.

  “Come on, Dev…if I’d told her what was going on, she’d have grilled me for information all night.”

  Dev bit his tongue against mentioning that even Delilah didn’t know what the truth was—that he’d been harboring Shea’s secret on his own. He doubted Delilah knew about the money, though he’d never forgotten her warnings. She’d sensed trouble all along.

  “Well you were right about her,” Dev said, figuring Delilah ought to know at least this. “She did have something to hide.”

  “I never said that,” Delilah defended, looking a bit hurt. “I said she had things she was working out. And that you needed to stop dating women who were bound to leave.”

  Dev really didn’t like that Delilah had been right, but he didn’t want to think about it now. What he wanted was to make an arrest and figure out how to stop the development deal. It scared him that the two weren’t mutually exclusive. They might successfully arrest—and convict—the vandals, but that alone had no bearing on the future of how the property would be used.

  “I wanted it to work out, you know…” Delilah confessed softly. “At first, I thought it was doomed, but I started rooting for you somewhere along the way.”

  “Yeah, well…sometimes things just don’t work out.”

  Delilah looked sad. “Except you guys make each other sickeningly happy. And she’s really warmed up to this place. Couldn’t you picture her staying here?”

  Dev had pictured a lot of things that now felt faraway. He’d pictured taking her to California—hiking with her in redwood forests and taking her for weekends in Half Moon Bay; he’d pictured going to Yosemite with her to see the firefalls; he’d pictured turning the strange room at the end of the hallway in his cabin into a writing loft for her; and remodeling two of his upstairs bedrooms into play rooms and nurseries.

  “I can’t think about her right now,” Dev said out loud what he kept repeating in his mind. “I need to get back. And I need you to show up tonight. We got a credible tip on a suspect.”

  Delilah’s eyes widened. “Who?”

  “We’re not sure which one, or whether we can charge all of them. But I need you to think back to everything you’ve ever seen from Don Jr. and the Packard boys.”

  “You can’t bring your bird in here,” Dev said to Dallas Eaton as he walked up to the door of The Big Spoon.

  “Pet-friendly restaurant,” Dallas protested lightly.

  “You got a leash for him or something?” Dev looked speculatively at Dallas’s macaw. Once you got over its sheer size, it was a beautiful bird. Dev still didn’t know how Dallas perched him like that. The man must have shoulders made of leather.

  “You don’t leash a macaw,” Dallas said a bit impatiently, like it wasn’t weird to bring a tropical bird to a restaurant.

  Dev pointed around the side, indicating that Dallas should use that entrance. “Then I hope he doesn’t fly away. You’ve gotta leave him on the porch.”

  Dallas scowled a bit and mumbled something about discrimination as he made his way around to comply. Good thing he did, because Dev wasn’t in the mood.

  “Sorry. Private party,” Dev explained to the party who was hot on Dallas’s heels. They were the fifteenth set of people Dev had turned away. Closing on short notice was why Dev stood like a bouncer at the door.

  The “private” part of the party had mostly to do with who wasn’t allowed inside, though the guest list had been a hodge podge of residents. You had to be known and trusted. Business owners had all been invited, but there were plenty who didn’t own businesses who had a role to play in helping the case.

  It was an active criminal investigation so they couldn’t say much about the case—what they could do was ask for information. Knowing what they knew was one thing, but Shea’s recording wasn’t admissible in court. Don Jr. hadn’t known he was being recorded and Shea was a weak witness. Her dubious identity made her risky to have on their side. What they needed were people who had heard things that corroborated the story told on the recording.

  “What we need from you,” Duff was saying after Dev decided he’d stood outside long enough. He’d simply locked the door behind him when he’d come in. “…is any information you have on what they’ve been doing. It could be information on some place you’ve seen them, what they were doing there, anything they might have said to you, or anything you might have overheard.”

  “He likes to drink,” Hank Bowen announced testily. Ironic, considering that Hank liked to drink, too. “He’s gotten rowdy a couple of times. I’ve seen Trudy cut him off myself.”

  When Dev darted his eyes to Trudy, she was slow to realize someone had mentioned her name and she looked a little sick. Dev would bet she’d put two-and-two together based on what they hadn’t said about what all of this meant for the town.

  “He nearly had the law called on his ass last week at Gator’s,” Betty said. “I was there to see that one myself. They don’t stop serving as soon as they should up there. He got so fresh with a girl at the bar who didn’t like his attentions, Tina straight-up kicked him out.”

  “Good. What else?” Duff asked, not saying what Dev knew: they needed more. Disappointing as it was, being a buffoon wasn’t a crime. Being a drunken one was, and so was harassment. But, in this case, the moment had passed.

  “They’ve had girls up at the house,” Phoebe Tran popped up in a hesitant voice. “I don’t want to sully anyone’s reputation, but I’m pretty sure a couple of them were underage. Maybe I could say more…you know…in private?”

  Dev clenched his jaw, too furious to speak as Duff nodded in agreement, saying in a softer voice. “Alright. We’ll talk after.”

  “I once saw him—”

  “Dev!” Trudy whisper-hissed in his ear sharply, coming out of nowhere and interrupting what looked like it was shaping up to be good. “I’ve got something to tell you, but not here.”

  “Can it wait?” he asked distractedly, swinging his eyes to her as he tried to listen to the story being told with one ear.

  “No…” Tears shone in Trudy’s eyes. “It can’t.”

  Not much rattled Trudy, which was to say, her plea got his attention.

  “Alright,” he nodded. “Let’s go in the back.”

  By the time Dev closed the office door behind him, Trudy’s brow
knitted, and she wrung her hands and paced a little back and forth within the confines of the tiny office. It was clear that Trudy knew something—something not fit for public consumption. The question was, what?

  “I’d always planned to tell you, but I’d never planned to tell you like this. Everything I’m gonna say to you tonight was s’posed to happen another way. You’ll see in a minute why it has to happen like this, right now.”

  But after the week he’d had, Dev didn’t have much patience for preamble, even though this was Trudy and he owed she of all people time to say what she needed to say.

  “Trudy, if you know something about the investigation, I’d appreciate it if you—”

  But she cut him off. “Jake Hamren isn’t your daddy, Dev.”

  That tiny little statement involving the theory that only Dev was supposed to know about kicked him in the chest and stole away his breath.

  “Your grandpa told you what he knew—a rumor told to him by your mom. It was designed to protect everyone from the naked truth.”

  But Trudy stopped right there, seeming choked and unable to spit out the words that Dev had needed to know all his life. Only, why now? Why was this coming up during what was arguably the most important discussion in decades to decide the fate of the town? It took effort to refrain from asking stupid, secondary questions about her motives and timing first, in favor of asking the only one that mattered.

  “Trudy…” His voice held warning he wasn’t proud of using with his mother’s best friend.

  “No, Dev. You gotta let me tell it my way.”

  He quieted and waited. Complying did nothing to stop his body from trembling with something that felt like rage—powerful and angry but several degrees milder. He wasn’t angry with Trudy. She was clearly set to be the one person who would do right by him. He was angry at life itself for fating him to reach his thirties without knowing the truth of his parentage. And on bad days, like today, he was really angry with his mom.