The Sweetheart Kiss

by Cheryl Ann Smith

As if on cue, the harsh lighting caught the diamond on her ring finger. She held up her hand and Summer and Jess gasped.

  “You’re engaged?” Jess and Summer said simultaneously.

  Taryn wiggled her fingers. “That’s usually what this means.” Squealing in the way women cheer for engagements and news of pregnancies, Jess and Summer jumped to their feet and enveloped her in a gentle hug. She was still recovering from her injury and they didn’t want to put her in traction.

  The ring was understated, like Taryn, and perfect. She’d never wear anything ostentatious. Rick had done well.

  “Tell us what he said,” Jess ordered as the three of them sat. “Every detail.”

  There was wine and a meadow and mosquitoes, the unofficial Michigan bird, to witness the event. Rick had gotten down on one knee and proposed after telling her he loved her and wanted to lock her down before she wised up and ditched him for a nice safe doctor. By the time the story ended, all three were dabbing their eyes with tissues.

  “I can’t believe I’m getting married again,” Taryn said. She’d been married to a cheating jerk when she was younger and it had ended badly. “Who knew I’d find the one while working a case?”

  “That seems to be the theme around here,” Summer said and fingered her wedding ring. She and Taryn looked at Jess.

  “What? Uh-uh.” She held up her hands, palms open. “Sam and I are not in a long-term thing. We are having fun. That’s it.”

  “Do you believe her?” Taryn said out of the corner of her mouth to Summer.

  Summer shook her head. “Nope.”

  Now was the time to flee before they got rolling. “Look at the time. I should get home to feed my Naked Protester before his body starts eating his 1 percent body fat.”

  Taryn stopped her. “Wait. I have one more piece of big news.” Jess sat. “I heard from my lawyer today. There is finally a conclusion to my lawsuit in the horizon. Willard had decided to settle rather than face me in court.”

  “Are you serious?” Jess said. “I thought he vowed that you’d have to pry every penny from his cold dead fingers.”

  Summer added, “And Jess offered to make that happen.”

  Taryn grinned. “Well, it seems as if being a team owner was more important to him than losing a few million dollars to me. He’ll keep the team but is on probation. The details haven’t been worked out, but we should have a final settlement by the end of the month.”

  This news took a second to grasp. “Hold up. Did you say millions?” Jess said with a cough. “As in seven figure millions?”

  “O-M-G,” Summer said when Taryn nodded. Squealing began anew. Okay, high-pitched noise wasn’t reserved only for engagements and babies. The noise was so loud that Alvin appeared in the doorway with his hand on his gun with Irving right behind him clutching his decorative cane like a sword.

  That set the three women into fits of laughter.

  The two men slowly backed out once the threat assessment was determined to be at zero. They didn’t want any part of the female gaggle.

  “Poor Irving,” Summer said. “He should have hired male PIs. The sweet guy is out numbered.”

  “True, but they wouldn’t be as much fun,” Taryn countered. “Talk of tires and golf shoes all the time. I’d rather eat my own brain.”

  Summer made a face. “Ew.”

  “Hey, did you know that Alvin is seeing someone from Brash,” Jess interjected. That killed the self-cannibalization topic before it got rolling. Thankfully.

  “Who?” Summer said. They both gaped.

  “I don’t know, but we should keep an eye out.” Jess expressed a look of horror at the idea of Alvin and, well, anyone, getting it on. “The poor woman needs to be warned to flee while she gets a chance. Clearly, she can’t see his dark soul beyond all his frowning…and hair.”

  They fell into PI mode and ran through all the candidates for Alvin’s secret lover. By the time Jess and Taryn left Summer to get back to work, there was no clear winner. But they each promised to keep watch for covert glances and lusty looks at the water cooler. If Alvin had taken a mate, they’d flush her out.

  Jess got to her office when her phone rang. It was the vet. They’d discovered that somehow Spike had been drugged with a powerful heart medication that could have killed him.

  Shocked, Jess didn’t hear much else as the vet finished and hung up. She texted the news to Sam. He was just as disbelieving as her.

  She slumped in her chair. How and when had that happened? Her mind flipped back to that day. She went through every step from waking up to chasing Olive from the hotel, to the sniper shooting Spike. At no time could he have been drugged on her watch. He was with her the entire time.

  Wasn’t he?

  Deep in the back of her mind where Summer liked to say dust and crazy lived, a niggling of a thought took root, but not enough to form any sort of solid picture.

  No matter how hard she focused, she couldn’t get a clear view. Still, she knew somehow that she’d find the answer, the one string that would crochet the TP poodle together. So to speak. And soon.

  Olive was going down.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sam and Jess worked the case until he needed a bottle of aspirin to keep his head-pounding ‘Olive’s’ in check.

  Jess pulled out the leather pants, which led to some chasing around the house until he caught her and worked her out of the skin tight outfit and had his way with her. This tamped down the headache for about an hour until duty called and they were back to the case.

  They were both sick and tired of one dead end after another as they followed lead after lead in the car, driving around the city and beyond. It was like Olive and Albert were figments of their imaginations.

  How could they hide so well? “We’re missing something.”

  Jess looked up from the file. Spike sniffed her ear from the back seat. She rubbed his face. “I agree. Ever since the vet called, there is something bothering me, but I can’t get a fix on it. It has something to do with that medication.”

  He looked down at his laptop. “We’ve checked. Neither Olive or Albert have heart conditions.”

  “I know. But Spike didn’t find the prescription medication by himself. He was with me.” She reached for the last breadstick that came with the pizza order. “If only he could talk.”

  The dog’s big head lifted off his foot. Sam reached down to rub the goofy mug. Once they figured out how to coexist without Spike eating his things, he’d softened to the dog. A little. The mutt still slobbered all over his SUV. Cleaning that mess up was a bitch.

  However, Jess and Spike were a team. He’d have to take both, or neither. He was still weighing his options.

  His eyes took her in and his heart hitched. She was deep in thought and frowning. He cared about her. That was a given. He liked having Jess in his bed and his life. He just wasn’t sure how far he wanted it to go.

  Was he ready for a forever? They didn’t know each other that well. He’d come close once to taking a leap into forever before and was kicked in the nuts. Was he ready to take another chance at love?

  “Can you please hand me the photo of Irving and Albert.” He shifted through the papers and found the printout. She took it and scanned the page.

  “You got something?”

  “I’m not sure.” She held up the magnifier they’d swiped from Brash and began a slow sweep over the page. “The solution is right here in our files. I know it is.”

  Leaving a reply unsaid, he knew the connections in her brain where working the puzzle. He didn’t want to interrupt. Not when they were very close to solving the case.

  If anyone could make the dots come together it was her.

  “Huh.” She adjusted the page, took another look, and closed her eyes. “Where have I seen that before?”

  Jess was talking to herself. “Where? Where? Where?”

  Minutes passed and he was sure she’d lapsed into a Calv
in-like trance; without the humming and rocking. Thankfully, she was still breathing. Then, slowly, her eyes opened and surprise lit her lavender eyes. “I can’t believe this. I know where Albert is.”

  * * *

  Had Jess been an “OMG” kind of person, she’d be going wild. Instead, the light bulb moment was expressed with a shocked look of surprise as she locked on to Sam’s eyes. All this time and Albert had been right under their noses. How had she not seen it?

  “The man at the motel in the wheelchair,” she stated flatly and wondered how she could have missed putting the Albert and the senior with the phone together. “He’d been fumbling with his phone when I walked to Olive’s room. Later when the crime techs were there, I don’t remember seeing him outside. A normal person would have come out to gawk at the chaos. It’s human nature.”

  Sam stared as she spoke in a rush. When she took a breath, he jumped in. “What man?”

  “We thought the clerk alerted Olive to my presence despite the fact that he denied it. When I went to the room, Albert was there on the sidewalk. He nodded when I passed.”

  “Are you sure?” Hope filled his expression. “You couldn’t have had much of a look.”

  “I’m positive.” She handed him the photo and the magnifier. “Look at Albert’s hand. See how his left thumb is bent. My cousin had the same thing when he was a kid. Surgery corrected it.” She paused. “Albert has an uncorrected trigger thumb. The man in the wheelchair has the same thing. It showed when he was playing with his phone. I just didn’t lock on to the clue at the time.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Sam called for a warrant and impatiently waited for it to come through. Since Olive was armed and dangerous, a judge signed off.

  With Spike in the back for guard duty, they took Jess’s SUV to the motel. The door to 110 had been fixed with an equally cheap quality replacement. But that wasn’t the room that drew her attention as they headed toward the motel office. There was no sign of Albert sitting outside.

  The clerk groaned when Jess busted through the door with Sam on her tail.

  “I haven’t seen her in two days,” he said, then realized they knew he’d continued harboring a fugitive and whined, “She has those eyes that suck you in. I can’t say no.”

  “Where is she now?” Sam said and leaned over the counter. The clerk took two big steps back.

  “I don’t know.”

  The detective wasn’t about to put up with any more lies. He slapped the countertop. “Give me the key to room 106.”

  Taken aback, the clerk froze. “She’s in 110.”

  “And her grandfather is in 106,” Sam growled. “Give me the fucking key or I’m going to charge you with so many crimes that you’re going to be sucking soup through a straw before you get out of prison.”

  The threat brought the desired action. Olive with the eyes wasn’t worth incarceration well into the next decade. The man reached under the desk, fumbled around, and came up with a worn key card. He tossed it onto the counter, afraid to get within ass-whooping range of the angry Wheeler.

  “If I so much as think you’ve reached for your phone to warn them, I’m coming back and beating the shit out of you,” Sam said. The clerk nodded with a gulp and scampered off into the back room, slamming the door behind him.

  Jess was impressed. They’d gotten the key without bloodshed. She’d save that for when they got ahold of Olive.

  “You have to promise not to shoot, Taser, or Mace Olive unless under direct threat,” Sam said as they pushed out the door and hung a left. “The city has rules.”

  “You’re no fun.” At his glare, she nodded. “Fine. But if she twitches, I’m giving her a chemical facial.”

  * * *

  Knowing Jess as he did, keeping her reined-in would be impossible. She was ready to pound Olive. However, if pepper spraying the sniper rather than full-on murder would keep Jess from serving twenty to life, he’d be okay with that.

  “Deal.”

  They both had their hands on their guns as they stood on either side of 106. Jess knocked. “Room service.”

  No explosion. No shots.

  Sam slipped the key card into the lock. It took a couple of tries to get the worn magnetic code to read and unlock the door.

  The room was empty. However, there were clear signs that Albert was coming back.

  There was junk everywhere.

  “At least they haven’t moved out,” Jess said and stepped over the threshold. She looked around. “And I found where Olive keeps her girly stuff.” She lifted a dress off the bed. It was a bright floral. “It’s not very stylish, but at least she wears something other than camo and hoodies.”

  Loud music thumped, rattling the walls, and sending Sam and Jess to the open door to investigate the source. A familiar black car with gray smoke spewing from the tailpipe rolled past. The male passenger was old, wearing sunglasses, and his graying head bobbed along to the beat.

  Gangsta’ Grandpa.

  A gnarled middle finger went up as the car lurched past.

  “Are you kidding me?” Jess ran to the SUV where Spike was slobbering and barking like a rabid wolf. Sam jumped in as the car hit the street and took off.

  Sam flicked on the blue overhead lights and followed.

  The SUV was on the piece of shit car before it could make a right, away from the highway. That didn’t stop Olive, despite having a SUV driven by a pissed off detective up her ass.

  “Where in the hell is she going?” Jess called out over the sound of barking as Olive whipped left and right from one street to another like she thought she could lose them. Olive sideswiped a parked truck, righted the car, and kept going. “There isn’t much out here.”

  They’d left civilization after the first half mile. An occasional subdivision dotting the landscape and a farm with a big white barn stood close to the road. Otherwise, nothing.

  After about ten minutes of Sam bearing down on the car, hoping to spook her, Olive took a hard left into a county park. She blew past the ranger in the booth. The guy came out and shook a fist. He jumped back inside the small brown building as Sam raced past him, lights flashing.

  “She’s trying to lose us,” Sam said. Olive came to a fork in the road and went right.

  “She can’t honestly think that’ll work?”

  Olive took a curve in a squeal of tires and vanished. Sam hit the gas. They rounded the curve. The black car was stopped in the middle of the road, Jess shouted, “Watch out!”

  Sam swore and braced for impact.

  * * *

  The SUV clipped the back bumper when Sam jerked the steering wheel to a hard left. It spun Olive’s car around and into a small tree. Sam’s SUV lurched into a ditch and he and Jess got a face full of airbags.

  When the dust settled, Jess yelled, “Are you okay?”

  He nodded while trying to get the bag out of his line of vision. His nose felt a little out of joint, but it wouldn’t be the first time. It had been straightened out twice.

  “Your face is screwed up,” she said.

  “I’m fine. Go!”

  She had to get her seatbelt off around the deflated bag and then she was gone. Sam heard shouting as he worked to extricate himself from the SUV with a trio of sharp kicks. The door popped open at last.

  There were two paths heading into the woods. Somehow, Albert had made it out of the car and was hoofing it in one direction with the aid of a walker and Olive was running down the other path with a determined Jess trying to catch up with her.

  Shit! The overwhelming desire to back-up Jess warred with the need to get hold of Albert.

  The sound of a car spun him around. A mini-van screeched to a halt sideways on the road and Calvin jumped out before a short middle-aged woman in curlers and a quilted bathrobe got the car into park and followed him.

  Behind them, a foursome of ladies Sam sort-of recognized as the neighborhood Calvin watch brigade scrambled from the van. Most of them w
ere older, though one was the hot mom from two doors down.

  How in the hell did they find him and Jess?

  Calvin ran over, his loin cloth flapping against his muscled thighs. “Let us help.”

  For the first time since meeting Calvin, he was happy to see him, loin cloth and all.

  The gaggle of female crime fighters filled in behind him. Sam pointed toward Albert, who was making decent time through the woods for a man of his advanced years.

  “Catch him!”

  There was no hesitation. Calvin took off, the women right on his sandal-covered heels. Sam spun and ran for the other trail, almost getting knocked down by a large furry body. In the commotion, he’d forgotten the dog was in the SUV.

  Calling him back was a waste of time, as the dog was intent on going after the women. He could only hope that they were not going off road. With a head start, and thick underbrush, finding them could be tricky.

  The dog vanished ahead. Sam did his best to keep up. Having an injured nose didn’t help. Running required breathing. He only had half of that going on.

  He made it about four hundred yards when a scream permeated the dense woods.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Jess saw a flash of dog and her stomach sank, while trying not to die from the flat out run. Although she was fit, it had been awhile since she’d sprinted for any distance. Eating most of a box of butterscotch discs over the last few days didn’t help either. She was in sugar overload and worried about a dog heading full steam toward danger on four paws.

  Damn, Spike. Damn Darren for the candy gift.

  Olive must have heard the dog coming because when Jess finally caught up to the sniper over the next hill, she was about five feet up a tree with Spike locked on to her sneaker.

  He was growling and slobbering and shaking his head, trying to wrench her from the tree.

  “Let go!” Olive screamed, more out of outrage than fear. As a hunter, she was getting a taste of her own medicine. She was now the prey, and treed. There was no place to go.