Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series

by Hart, Liliana

  Someone at the police station had been busy gossiping. And if I had to hazard a guess I’d say it was Barbara Blanton, the dispatch operator. The woman had a mouth the size of Kentucky and a finger on speed dial at all times. We’d barely left the Murphy house ourselves more than an hour before.

  What if George hadn’t killed Fiona? What if it was only made to look that way?

  I kept coming back to that thought. Something felt off. But no one would know for sure until the DNA test came back for the sperm sample I’d sent off with Jack.

  “That’s interesting, Mr. Fisk, but we won’t know anything for sure until later next week.”

  “I know, I know, but I’ve got a feeling that this is more than it seems,” he said. “I surely do. And you know how accurate my feelings are.”

  I knew all too well. Mr. Fisk was the one who’d told my parents it wasn’t a good weekend to go to their cabin in the mountains only a few hours before they drove their car over a two hundred foot cliff. The police report mentioned that the steering on the car had seized up, but a witness had come forward saying it looked like there was a struggle going on inside the car and that it had looked like they’d driven over that cliff on purpose. All I knew for sure was the insurance company still hadn’t made up their mind, so I couldn’t collect their life insurance policy.

  “Oh, by the way,” Carlton said. “There was a young man in here earlier looking for you. Nice looking fellow. An out-of-towner. And he had a nice set of teeth. I know how picky you are about that. This is opportunity knocking on your door. I can feel it.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Fisk,” I said, my teeth clenched so hard I was giving myself a headache. Whenever there was someone new in town, I got phone calls to let me know that I was more than welcome to call dibs, since I was one of the oldest unattached females in the county. It seemed there were a lot of people in Bloody Mary looking out for me. Whoever this man was asking where to find me had just opened a whole can of worms that he was liable to regret. But like Mr. Fisk said, I wasn’t going to be one of those people to let an opportunity pass me by. I wasn’t stupid. I hadn’t had a date in eight months and twelve days. Not that I was counting. And it had been longer than that since I’d had sex.

  I stopped by Martin’s Grocery to pick up a few necessities and heard about the mystery man and Fiona’s murder once again as I raced my basket up and down the aisles, throwing in only essentials and wincing at the thought of adding to the total on my credit card. But a girl had to eat, and I handed over the plastic to Hilda Martin while calculating how much spending room was left.

  “I heard George is so upset by Fiona’s death that they had to sedate him at the hospital.” Hilda clucked her tongue as she waited for my card to go through. “One of the nurses said he was bawling like a baby, and makin’ himself sick with grief. You just never know what’s really going on with a person.”

  I ummhmmmed appropriately and signed my name to the credit slip. I grabbed my bags and headed out the door when I heard her call out, “Bring your young man by later and introduce us. He looks like a movie star. And he has very nice teeth.”

  I grimaced a smile in reply and bulldozed my way to the Suburban, head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone who might try to stop and talk. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was finally inside the safety of my own vehicle. There was a reason I liked living so far away from town.

  The road crews had been out salting and sanding, and it crunched under my tires on my way back to the funeral home. We’d have snow before nightfall. I could smell it in the air, and thought it was a hell of a time to have to bury someone in the ground.

  I pulled the Suburban under the covered portico attached to the funeral home. My great-grandparents had built the funeral home after World War II. It was a monstrous three-story Colonial with dark red brick and white columns. It was hell to heat in the winter and even worse to cool in the summer. My grandparents had been short on money after it was built and they’d turned the top two floors into their living quarters.

  And it was my parents, thank the Lord, who’d bought the cliff house where I grew up and currently reside. I wasn’t fond of the dead on my best days. I sure as hell wasn’t going to live with them. I’d closed the third floor of the funeral home off completely and divided the second level into three large viewing rooms just on the off chance that there was more than one death in a day. Sometimes I was lucky to get one death in a week, so odds were it wouldn’t ever be a problem.

  I noticed the man who’d been the subject of town gossip for the last half hour sitting on the porch swing under the wide columned front porch. The idiot should have been freezing, but he looked comfortable in his black leather jacket and scarf. Or at least I assumed it was the man from town. It wasn’t often I had incredibly fine specimens of the opposite sex camped out on my doorstep.

  I regretted not taking a little time on myself before I’d headed to the murder scene this morning. A little makeup, maybe a slinky dress and heels with matching lingerie would have been along the right lines to make the kind of impression I wanted. Instead I looked like a round, makeup-less meatball in my winter coat. I scowled and wondered not for the first time when Lady Luck was going to give me a little help. Or maybe even a warning. It probably didn’t matter anyway. This guy was way out of my league, so I just resigned myself to disappointment.

  I pulled grocery bags out of my backseat and watched out of the corner of my eye as he headed my way. His walk was confident. He knew where he was going and what he was doing, and dollars to donuts the man wasn’t told no very often.

  “Are you Dr. Graves?” he asked, taking a paper sack full of macaroni and cheese, powdered donuts, and Pringles out of my hands. Like I said, I only got the essentials.

  He gave me a full wattage smile, and I couldn’t help but notice that his teeth were very fine indeed. “I’m Dr. Graves.” I took his offered hand briefly and then grabbed another bag. “You must be the nice looking fellow who’s been asking about me around town.”

  He laughed with just the right amount of apology and chagrin, and a low throb I hadn’t felt in a long time pulsed its way beneath my skin and tingled along my spine. Laugh lines crinkled attractively around his eyes. His hair was dark blond and long over his ears and neck—long enough to pull back in a stubby tale. Some would say he looked shabby or careless, but sexy was the only word that came to my mind. His clothes were high quality and his watch was expensive. And everything about him only made me more self conscious. I broke eye contact and started moving toward the kitchen door. But then I stopped and stared at him again. There was something about him. Something…familiar.

  “Do I know you?” I asked, trying to place him.

  His moss green eyes were serious, but there was a sparkle of humor in them. And I could have sworn they’d looked at me exactly that way before.

  “Well, I guess that would depend.”

  I unlocked the side door that led into the kitchen and plopped the groceries on the table. “What should it depend on?”

  “On whether or not you’ve read my books. But don’t worry if you haven’t. I hardly have any ego at all.”

  Then it clicked, and I knew who stood in front of me. “Brody Collins.”

  “Ahh, I was just kidding about the ego. I have an enormous one, so thank you for boosting it a bit.”

  “You look fairly normal for someone with such a twisted imagination.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  I fought the urge to grin and turned my back to put the groceries away. “So what brings you to my doorstep?”

  “I hear you’re the woman to talk to about dead bodies.”

  “You could say that.” The bitterness in my voice was obvious even to me, but there was nothing I could do to give him a different impression.

  “Good. I was hoping you could help me,” he said as he leaned against the kitchen counter. A man who looked as if he’d never had a care in the world. “Because I just killed a woman.”

&nb
sp; Chapter Five

  I had one of those moments where I could literally feel the blood drain from my face, and my life flashed before my eyes. I thought of regrets and things I wanted to do but would never get the chance—like going to Hawaii, having children, and getting revenge on Floyd Parker. Not necessarily in that order.

  And sex. Sex should be at the top of the list. I hadn’t done the deed in four years. I knew I was picky. Despite the hard shell I’d been forced to wrap around my emotions, I was a romantic at heart. I was just waiting for the right guy to come along. And the two sexual encounters I’d previously had—one being when I lost my virginity (which was never the most comfortable of situations) and the other being with Floyd Parker (which was worse than losing my virginity)—were NOT with the right guy.

  It was a hell of a way to die. A sexless, dried up, thirty year old mortician. If Brody Collins wasn’t about to kill me, I might consider jumping off the Potomac River Bridge with cinder blocks tied to my ankles just because my life was so depressing.

  “Dr. Graves?” Brody asked, a quizzical brow arched. “Are you all right? You’re awfully pale.”

  “This is Virginia in the middle of winter. Everyone’s pale.” I cleared my throat and edged my way towards the knife block. “I’m sorry, maybe I misheard you. Did you just say you killed a woman?”

  “Yeah.” His enthusiasm was visible as it changed his entire expression. His eyes darkened to the deepest jade and his cheeks flushed with pleasure. His entire body moved with excitement. I’d never seen someone so happy about death.

  “She’s the first in my new book, and you always remember the first. It was a real gruesome murder. She was barely recognizable when they found her. But I’ll bring her justice in that final chapter. That’s the ultimate payback.”

  “Book?” I asked.

  “Yes. I write books,” he said patiently, as if he were talking to someone only slightly smarter than a turnip. “I believe you said you’ve read a few. And if you’ve read my books, you know I always kill someone. Usually several people.”

  “I know you write books.” Embarrassment tinged my voice.

  All I wanted to do was slink down into the basement and finish what I’d started with Fiona. Working with the dead had obviously stunted my social skills. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe when you worked around embalming fluid it started to seep into your skin and eventually you became a perfectly preserved specimen of something not quite normal.

  “I was just confused about the killing part. You never know what to expect in my business, and it’s been a long morning.”

  “I’ve heard, which is why I’d like to work with you while I’m in town. If you don’t mind, of course.”

  He gave me that smile again that made me want to nibble at his lips like candy, and I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped. I knew there was no way he could seriously be flirting with me, and I knew for a fact he was trying to charm me into getting his way, but damned if I could control my reaction to it.

  He brushed a lock of hair behind my ear like he’d been doing so his whole life, and I froze like a deer in the headlights. He continued his explanation as if he hadn’t noticed my reaction to his touch.

  “I’d like to see the process of how you, being a small town coroner, deal with violent post-mortems. And then observe how you put the pieces back together, so to speak, for their funeral. You’re the whole package. Exactly what I need.”

  I realized I was still wearing my coat and sweating like a pig, so I yanked off my hat and gloves and stripped out of my coat to reveal my sweats. I decided I needed to do something to keep occupied while all of that testosterone was in the room. My face was hot, and I didn’t know if it was from temperature, embarrassment or because I was turned on. Maybe all three.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I asked. I put grounds in the coffee maker and poured in water. I looked longingly at the cupboard where I had a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey stored and wished I lived in a culture that found it appropriate to tipple a little before performing an autopsy.

  “Coffee’s fine,” he said.

  “How did you find out about this so quickly?” It was still shy of noon. “You can’t tell me you had any interest in researching me before this happened. Bloody Mary is barely a speck on the map, and my career as coroner has been less than that.”

  “You could say it was fate. I happen to live in Richmond and saw the story on the early morning news. And I can also say that I’ve got friends in the police department who were happy to let a few details slip. After I heard the nature of the crime, I decided it fit perfectly for my newest book. Bloody Mary is the perfect town for these crimes, and you’re right in the middle of it all. I think you’d be just the kind of character I could use as a female lead to drive my detective crazy.”

  I snorted out a laugh before I could help it. “News flash, Brody Collins. I’m not some simpering fan who can be persuaded to do something foolish because you have an overabundance of charm. Men like you do not flirt with women like me, and I think it undermines both our intelligence to pretend otherwise. I’m a lot easier to impress when honesty is involved.” That had never been more true until after my parents died. That was when I’d realized my entire life had been a lie.

  “Honesty then,” he nodded soberly. “I’d really like to observe you for a few days.”

  “I’ll give you fair warning, murders are few and far between in Bloody Mary. In the whole county, for that matter. It’s going to be a short research session.”

  “Does that mean you’ll let me observe you?” He held out his hand and watched me with patient eyes. I had a feeling they saw more of me than what I was comfortable with.

  “I guess so, for what it’s worth.” I held out my hand for a no-nonsense shake between two business partners.

  Awareness flared inside of me just before his skin touched mine. My mind was screaming mistake! even as my nipples hardened and moisture pooled between my thighs. As skin touched skin, my breath caught in my chest and I watched in fascination as his pupils flared and the thin green ring seemed to glow with the heat of his desire. His thumb rubbed over the pulse in my wrist and he took a step closer.

  “You’re wrong, you know.” His breath whispered across my skin, and it took all my willpower to keep from leaning into him.

  “About what?”

  “A man like me can’t help but flirt with a woman like you. I’d be insane not to. That lean, sexy body under layers of clothes is wreaking havoc on my imagination. Full lips that beg to be kissed. And wounded eyes the color of cloudy skies. Your eyes undo me.” He leaned closer, his lips barely a whisper from mine, and I knew if I didn’t stop things now he’d find out how his much his words affected me. No one had ever spoken to me as if, in that one moment of time, I was the center of their universe. It had been so long since I’d been held. And my body and my soul thirsted for contact.

  I pulled away quickly, and wiped my hands on my legs nervously.

  He looked at me with a combination of understanding, sympathy and lust, but he let me escape. “Why don’t you give things a chance? You might be surprised to see where it goes. I have a feeling there could be something amazing between us.”

  “Or it could be a complete disaster,” I returned.

  I was a complete fraud. I wanted honesty between us, but there was no way in hell I could tell him how afraid I was of the chemistry that had just plastered me against my kitchen counters. I’d never felt anything like it before, and I was terrified I’d be the ones to screw things up. I had a hell of a lot of baggage I carried around with me.

  He smiled as if he’d heard my thoughts, and the look he gave me was one of fierce determination. “I’ve been known to be patient.”

  I nodded and fled toward the basement door. I hated to break it to him, but he was going to need a lot more than patience. Something more concrete—like a good attorney or a private investigator that would keep his mouth shut. In my experience, most people di
dn’t want to associate with anyone whose parents’ activities were being investigated by the FBI.

  Chapter Six

  “That’s a pretty high tech security system for a small town coroner,” Brody said. “The medical examiner in Baltimore has the same system.”

  I keyed in the code and waited as a series of locks unbolted. The thick metal door opened on silent hinges, and I led the way down metal stairs that echoed loudly with every footstep. The basement room was sterile and white from floor to ceiling. Metal shelves with my equipment lined one wall, four filing cabinets lined another, and a long counter with double sinks lined the third. On the fourth wall was the walk-in refrigeration unit and the metal tables I used for embalming. The fluorescent lights glared blindingly over the metal and white, and the ventilation system whirred softly in the background.

  “My parents had the extra security added when I was a teenager,” I said. “A few of the high school kids decided it would be fun to break into the funeral home on Halloween, drink beer, look at dead bodies and generally scare themselves shitless. Sheriff Drummond was in charge then, and he showed them what it felt like to sleep inside a cell for a night.” I didn’t add that the current sheriff was one of the guilty parties involved. And Jack’s mama put the fear of God into him way more than a jail cell ever could.

  “My parents didn’t press charges, and those kids are all fine, upstanding citizens of Bloody Mary today. But my parents had to overdo it on the security because the relatives of the deceased weren’t too happy about the situation.” And in hindsight, the added security had probably been necessary for my parents’ extracurricular activities.

  “Ahh, to be young and foolish again,” Brody said with a wistful smile.

  I went to the walk-in refrigeration unit and pulled out Fiona Murphy. The unit was meant to hold three bodies comfortably on gurneys, and I hoped I never saw the day when there were more than three residing there.