Trouble Comes Knocking (Entangled Embrace)

by Duncanson, Mary

  “Thing is,” Aunt Dolores said, giving Ana a dirty look at the last part, “I knew you were mine. And it didn’t matter if you acted right or not, you were my brother’s so you were mine.”

  “But I wasn’t his.” Officer Henderson never said who our father was, only that our mother died. “Did Ana tell you there were three of us?”

  Dee’s countenance fell. “I’m sorry about your sisters,” she said quietly, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why your parents took you and not them, but I want you to know that you are a gift to me. I wish I had answers, something I could tell you. No matter what, though, blood or not, secrets or not, you are mine. Don’t you never forget that.” She reached her hand across the island and placed it on top of mine. Our eyes locked.

  “I won’t.”

  The stove timer dinged as if on cue. “Thank God that’s over with,” Ana said in a voice so overly dramatic she could go up for an Oscar. “I’m starving. Dolores, since you’re being all sappy and sentimental right now, do you need me to get everything to the table?”

  Dee rolled her eyes and smacked at her with a towel. “I can manage just fine, little girl. Get your ass in there. Both of you get your asses in there.”

  I stood and grabbed her into a hug before I went. “I love you so much,” I whispered into her ear.

  “Back at’cha,” she whispered, her own version of ditto.

  I called John three times the next day, and when he still wasn’t answering the day after, Eli’s suspicions about him grew like a poison in the back of my brain.

  Although, to John’s defense, Eli didn’t answer, either.

  Even though I should have been a walking ball of anxiety, for the first time in weeks I could breathe; no men around to suck the life from me. Wednesday I returned to work, where I was immediately called into Seth’s office and written up for having missed so many days.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Carver, but you can’t keep calling in sick and expect it to be okay. When you’re out the entire department suffers, do you understand?”

  “You know I was shot at and in the hospital, right?” I asked, not quite believing he was reaming me out. Then again, he did care a lot about professionalism. I mentally gave a one-fingered salute.

  “Regardless,” he said, tenting his fingers and tapping his fingertips. “Might I remind you, you are still on probation in this department. Other people would kill to work for HGR, and you need to have that in mind next time you decide to take a few days off.”

  I nodded, keeping what I wanted to say deep in my mind and far away from the tip of my tongue where it wanted to be. What he said made me think, though, and after he excused me I went back to my desk to make some notes. I looked over my cubical wall to where Natalie usually sat. Even though her mom bailed her out, she hadn’t been back since her arrest—on leave pending further investigation—and they hadn’t replaced her with a temp yet.

  Who would have wanted to kill to get Mr. Winters’s job? No clues showed up in Central Processing, and I hadn’t had any further success in investigating anything at HGR, so I thought about that question. Lana Sousa was in line to take over the department, according to rumors, but she didn’t strike me as someone willing to kill for the chance. No one else in his department, or anyone I’d talked to about him, had a bad thing to say so it didn’t seem likely his death had anything to do with HGR. Which meant HGR was a front for something else, and if someone didn’t want his job, what else could it have been?

  My brain slipped again to The Slotted Spoon.

  I really, truly needed to talk to John.

  He finally answered the next morning. “I’m sorry. I’ve been sick and my phone was missing. I found it in my car this morning,” he said, in possibly the lamest excuse ever. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay.” I hadn’t planned to ask, but I knew I couldn’t go forward until I did. “You were the only person who knew I went to Eli’s. He thinks you are involved somehow with the person trying to kill me.” Okay, so I didn’t exactly ask, I more tossed it out there. Still, the ball now sat firmly in his court.

  “Lucy, I hope you don’t think I’m involved.”

  I waited in silence, not sure how to respond. No! The fight. John would be covered in bruises.

  “Lucy, I swear I don’t know who is doin’ this to you. If I did, I would kill them myself. I would never hurt you.”

  “I know,” I said simply. And I knew for sure now. I smiled; I couldn’t wait to tell Eli how wrong he was.

  John was silent for a few moments. “When you texted me to say you were spending the night at Eli’s, Lucy, it hurt my feelings. I know I’m not as macho, but I can protect you, too. I mean, I know I’m not a cop or anything, and I certainly wouldn’t have known what to do if someone was shooting at you, but I would do everything I could to protect you. Don’t you get that?”

  I hadn’t thought about it. I only wanted to be honest with him, not hurt him. “I’m sorry.”

  He was quiet again. I let the silence settle between us. “I guess I’m saying give me a chance next time, okay? I mean, not that I want there to be a next time.”

  I nodded but knew he couldn’t see me. “Okay.”

  He came to my house to pick me up for breakfast before work, but I took his hand and led him up to my room instead. Dee went grocery shopping early, but I didn’t want to risk being interrupted. “You mean so much to me,” I said, sitting next to John on my bed, holding his hand. “I don’t think I’m the best at showing my emotions, but you need to know I think about you all the time.”

  He squeezed my hand, which was enough to propel me forward.

  “I lost my parents when I was sixteen. I just recently found out I had sisters I didn’t get to know.” I looked him in the eye. “We’ve only been on a few dates, but I don’t want to lose you. Do you understand that?”

  He pushed his hand into my hair and held my face. “Lucy, you aren’t losing me.” He kissed me, gently at first and then with a little more urgency. We’d had our few stolen moments at work and a couple of amazing kisses beyond, but this one reminded me he was mine.

  He pulled me to his shoulder, rubbed my back, and held me close. “You aren’t losing me,” he said again.

  We stayed like that for a few minutes before he spoke again. “So this is your room, huh?”

  I laughed a little and sat up. “In all of its glory.”

  “Lots of notebooks,” he noted.

  I nodded. I’d already told him about my family. I didn’t want to get into my obsessive journaling, too. “At least my pony figurine collection has been packed away.”

  He rubbed my back for a second, then took my hand and led me downstairs to go to breakfast.

  “So The Slotted Spoon,” I said between sips of coffee. “We know Mr. Winters owned it with Mr. Smith, but the place doesn’t seem like it turns a profit. What are we missing?”

  “One question I have,” John said, taking a bite of sausage, “is why was Mr. Winters doing anything separate from HGR in the first place? I mean, did he have some great passion for soup or was it only because of his mistress? Or did he owe his friend something?”

  “Or was he being blackmailed?” I asked.

  Plausible as anything.

  “Over a restaurant?” John asked skeptically. “No way. There has to be more to it.”

  “Maybe. We know he and Bonnie Kent went there for their affair, but maybe the business is a front for something else.”

  “Can you get Detective Reyes to look into it?” John asked, his face lit up, eyes sparkled. This all excited him. I could see the younger John walking around with a magnifying glass piecing together clues regarding the mysteriously missing leftovers.

  “Probably not,” I said, hating to burst his bubble. “We haven’t talked since the day he was shot. I know he’s in trouble at work because of me, so I don’t want to get him into any more.”

  John smiled, seeming to shrug it off quick
ly. “I’m pretty good with computers. Want to come over tonight and see if we can come up with anything?”

  “Think we can?”

  He shrugged and took a big bite of his hash browns, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

  I giggled. “Okay. So tonight you can show me your stuff.” I said it as suggestively as I could. Truth is, I’d been thinking about John’s “stuff” since our first night together. I’d wanted another opportunity to finish what we started that night, so this seemed as good an excuse as any. Even if he couldn’t ferret anything out, maybe we could find some other wonderful way to fill our time.

  John wasn’t good at computers. John made love to computers the way Dee made love to her kitchen. He worked sweet magic with them and created life. The first time I’d been in his room and saw several monitors, I figured he was a big gamer, or he used the setup for writing music or something. No. Calling John a computer genius would be a bit akin to saying I could remember things okay or that Picasso liked to doodle in his spare time. Why was John wasting his time as a security guard when he could easily be so much more?

  Watching his fingers whiz over the keyboard gave me girl wood.

  “Let’s start with searches for Simon Winters and Ulysses Smith together.”

  I sat back and let him do his thing. His eyes shot back and forth between the screens, and boxes popped up that I’d never seen before. “What kind of system is this?” I asked.

  “Completely Linux based. I built it myself.” He turned to face me. “Truth is, I love my music, but I’m a realist, too. I know I’m not going to make a living as a musician.”

  “No,” I argued, ever the optimist. “You can if you work at it.”

  He laughed and leaned back, his long legs stretching out in front of him. “No, I can’t. So let’s call this my insurance policy. Security is a great job for benefits and having time to sit back, but I’m going to make my real money here.”

  “Hacking?” I asked, wondering about the data at work. I hated that John kept coming into the investigation, kept coming into my mind when things looked off. I wanted so much to believe in his innocence. Why did he have to seem so damn guilty?

  “No, I mean, yeah, I pirate movies, but no. I design apps, websites. Games, sometimes. I’m teaching myself, but someday I’m going to make something that’ll take off and then…”

  I grinned, getting it. “Your Angry Birds.”

  “Hell yes. My Angry Birds.”

  “All right.”

  He turned back to the screen and clicked a few more keys, then slowed. “This is something,” he said, motioning me closer. “Look at this. Closed records about Mr. Winters. Seems his first university expelled him for running an underground poker ring. Ohio State accepted him after that.”

  “Can you look to see if Ulysses went to that same first school?”

  “One step ahead of you.” He clicked a few more buttons, going back and forth between several screens, and then it popped up. “Bingo. They were kicked out together for the same thing.”

  I moved forward from my place on his bed and knelt next to him. “Do you think they were involved in something similar here?”

  “Could be.” John turned to face me. “I can hack,” he said. “I’ve done it before, but I don’t do bad things with it. I mean, I don’t try to cause havoc or anything. Mostly look things up for people sometimes or things like this.”

  I frowned, moving back to the bed. “What are you trying not to tell me?”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You told me about what happened with the data entry, and I wanted to tell you that Natalie isn’t involved.”

  “I didn’t think so,” I said, my lips turning downward.

  “But Mr. Winters absolutely was. And there is still someone working at HGR trying to cover his tracks. I’ve been able to trace a little of it, but whoever it is, they’re good.”

  Shaking my head, I stood and paced the room. “So how do we find out who?”

  “Problem is they’re using Natalie’s log-in. That’s why it’s tracing back to her. I have to try to find a time that they logged in when Natalie wasn’t there or something that will prove beyond a doubt she isn’t the one.”

  “And there hasn’t been anything since she’s been gone?”

  “No,” he said, puffing his cheeks for a moment while he thought. “What’s so annoying is I found it going back to Natalie before the police did, but now I can’t track it anymore. And I can’t go to the police with what I’ve found because what I’m doing here isn’t exactly legal.”

  By “exactly legal” I knew he was telling me it was completely illegal, and while it tied our hands, I decided it still gave us something to work from. I stopped pacing and faced him. “Let’s go back to The Slotted Spoon.” I scraped my hands over my hair. “Right now. Let’s see if we can find something there, or maybe figure out what’s going on.”

  “Do you think they’d do something at the restaurant?” he asked, skepticism written across his face like a graphic novel.

  “Why else would they have a restaurant that no one eats at? Maybe they’re running the same kind of thing and they had a falling out.”

  John shrugged and our eyes met moments before he pulled me into a kiss.

  Our second of the night, and my head spun as his kiss electrified and excited me. Tongues dancing, his hand rubbing on the back of my neck. It took all my effort not to push him onto the bed right that minute.

  He pulled back and brushed a fingertip across my nose. “Let’s go.”

  Inside the restaurant there still weren’t any customers. Only me, John, and the same waitress from the other night.

  She brought us our waters and later our soups, and nothing at all stood out.

  “I don’t know,” I told John. “I mean, maybe Ulysses has family money, or maybe Mr. Winters was fronting or something.”

  “But why would he risk his career for the sake of an old college friend?”

  All I knew was even though the soup didn’t suck, it certainly wouldn’t win any awards, either. We finished eating and sat around wasting time to see if any customers showed up. Baby’s first stakeout, I thought with a little mental giggle. Not a single other person arrived. “Look, I’m going to the restroom, and then I think we should skedaddle,” I told him.

  Some guys do what you want just to get something from you. John had spent several hours sitting in an abandoned restaurant with me. Not only to support me but because he clearly had sleuthing in his blood. His deflation at our lack of action couldn’t be hidden if he’d tried. “Sorry, Lucy, I thought we’d see something. Maybe like a trail of guys going to the back or something.”

  Poor John, poor us. I’d been waiting for the same exact thing, though I hoped I hid my disappointment better. “Perhaps you and I watch way too much television,” I told him. “Be right back.”

  I walked down the hallway and found the women’s room easily enough. Sitting down, I listened for a second. The sound of voices filtered through the vent above the stall. My breath held as I tried to make out the words.

  It didn’t help. They were too muffled. I finished and washed my hands. Stepping out of the restroom, I saw a door marked Employees Only. Which, of course, in every movie is where they hide the bad guys and the good guys only go if they want to be attacked by eight evil ninjas. It took me only a second’s hesitation to turn the handle and peek inside.

  I expected a janitor’s closet and instead found that the hallway continued to what had to be the outside. Why is this Employees Only?

  The door at the end opened, and I stumbled back, shutting the door as quietly as possible. I waited to see if the footsteps came in my direction, but they stopped.

  Inching it open again, I saw a man hesitate before knocking on a door I hadn’t seen, tentatively at first, then with determination.

  The door opened, and a man about the size of a refrigerator stepped through and blocked the entrance. “Name,” he demanded in a terrifying voice—deep
and not to be trifled with. He crossed his arms, and his body filled the entire doorway, spilling over like a woman in the wrong size Spanx.

  “Tom Schmidt. Frank sent me? I’m here for poker. This is the place, right? I mean, Frank said I just had to bring the money and I could play? Said there were games nine o’clock, every night,” the man spoke as fast as possible, and his voice ended in what sounded like a question rather than a statement.

  He was new to this. He wouldn’t have to explain any of that had he been there before. I could nearly hear the sweat drip from his body.

  “You have the money?”

  I heard a slight rustling and something fell to the floor. Tom let out an expletive. “Sorry.” He fell to his knees before finally gathering everything together and handing it over. What a Melvin. This all might be illegal, but he certainly wasn’t some criminal mastermind or anything. More some poor schmuck who liked playing poker and had money to burn.

  The refrigerator let him into the room, and the door shut behind them, a loud clink sounding as the dead bolt slid into place.

  Shutting the door, I turned and leaned against it, breathing a sigh of relief. I wasn’t crazy, there was something going on here. Not a little something, either. Another poker ring, only more organized and much more expensive. An electrifying energy raced through my body like a panic attack or a jellyfish sting. My heart pounded, and I settled my hand over my chest to try to calm it. I had to tell John.

  The door to the kitchen opened, and the waitress spotted me. “What are you doing at that door? That’s for employees.” She reached into the pocket of her smock and pulled out a cell phone.

  Suddenly my pounding heart was the least of my concerns. I would see those ninjas after all. I was about to be whacked, Dee would have to ID my body, Eli would feel guilty for never having answered my calls. “Sorry, I didn’t feel too great when I left the restroom. I had to take a minute before I went back to my date.” I motioned her closer and whispered, “You know, gas.”

  She took an immediate step back, dropping the phone into her smock. “You don’t need to be here. Finish up and get out front before you get hurt.” She stepped past me and into the Employees Only area.