She zipped up her jeans. “Look, Tucker, I’ll admit it’s been a while for me, but usually I know when I’ve had sex.” She put her shirt on and slid her hands under her hair, lifting it up from where it was caught under the shirt. She watched him for a moment longer, enjoying a few more moments when she could see him but he couldn’t see her. Then, she said, “You can turn around now.”
Tucker pushed himself up from the floor and brushed off the knees of his jeans, then tucked his hands in his pockets as he stood facing her.
“So,” he said, one side of his mouth curling up into a sweet smile, “how about them Mets?”
Flynn crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, then stuck one hand in her front jeans pocket, then pulled it out. Christ. She didn’t even know how to stand. Her thigh muscles shook, calmed, and then shook again, which had always been a sign that her body was taking the hit for emotions her mind wasn’t ready to process. She sat back down on the couch, pulling a cushion into her lap to hide her legs.
“The Mets suck,” she said.
Tucker nodded, keeping his eyes on hers. “Yeah. Yeah, they really do.”
Flynn concentrated on her fingers. Her manicure was pretty much ruined. Of course, that was the least of her problems right now.
“Flynn?”
She raised her eyes to Tucker. He smiled softly and moved to the couch, sitting down next to her but taking special care not to touch her, she noticed.
“It never happened,” he said.
She tightened her grip on the couch cushion. “Tucker. It happened, okay? So stop trying to—”
“Hey.” He put one finger under her chin and guided her to look at him, lowering his hand the second their eyes met. His expression was achingly in earnest, and she felt both intrigued and weirded out by this new, sincere Tucker. “It wouldn’t have happened. If we hadn’t gotten shot at, if you hadn’t gotten hysterical, if I had slapped you instead of . . .” He gestured toward the knotted rug, then angled his body toward hers and leaned closer, speaking softly. “I don’t think either of us would have chosen to have it happen that way if the circumstances hadn’t been . . . extraordinary. So, you know, I think we deserve a clean slate. No embarrassment. No guilt. What do you say?”
“I say you’re crazy,” Flynn said, focusing her attention on pulling at a stray thread on the cushion as her leg muscles convulsed underneath it.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was so soft, she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right until she looked up and saw his face.
“Oh, please,” she said. “What do you have to be sorry about? You didn’t even . . .” She made a motion with her hands that wasn’t accurately indicative of what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter. She could tell by his light laugh that he got it.
“You have an unhealthy fixation on that,” he said, taking her hands and lowering them back to the cushion in her lap. “And I have plenty to be sorry about. I should have stopped you if I didn’t think you were thinking clearly. The problem was, I wasn’t thinking clearly, either, and even if I had been . . .” He paused, shook his head. “I couldn’t have stopped.”
She tried to laugh, but her discomfort overcompensated with a decidedly unfeminine snort. “Well, any man and any woman in that situation would have been unable to stop—”
“You’re not any woman, Flynn,” he said, his eyes on the fire. “You had me since the second you got off that train. You know that.”
“I do?” Flynn felt her breath catch on the words. “I mean, I did?”
Tucker turned back to look at her, surprise in his expression. He reached up and put one hand on the side of her neck, his fingers extending into her hair, as his eyes searched hers. “You didn’t know that?”
“No,” she said. “I thought you thought I was some spoiled little Daddy’s girl sweeping into town to shut down the plant and send everyone home to cheating wives and starving babies.”
“No.” He watched her with that intent, sincere expression, and her legs shook again. “I never thought that.”
She smiled, and he leaned forward and kissed her lightly, sweetly. It was the kind of kiss that said, No rush. There’s plenty more where this came from. Flynn leaned into it, took comfort from it, and when they broke, her legs were calm.
How did he do that?
“So . . .” she said after a minute, “it never happened?”
He pulled her into his arms and she leaned her face against his chest, listening to the steady heartbeat within.
“Well,” he said, “I figure we can do one of two things. We can talk the whole thing to death, feel embarrassed and guilty despite the fact that there’s nothing we can do to change anything, let the awkwardness run its course and hope we come out okay on the other end, or we can say it never happened, wipe the slate clean, and have something to eat.” He kissed the top of her head. “I think you know my vote.”
Flynn snuggled deeper against his chest and stared at the fire. The fact was, right now, she didn’t feel embarrassed or awkward at all. She felt calm, and comfortable, and happy. Somehow, Tucker had managed to fix everything before it had gotten too broken.
She had to find out how he did that.
She lifted her head and looked up at him with a smile.
“Whatcha got in the basket?”
“So, you’re going to break in again to return the laptop and the folder?”
“That’s the plan,” Jake said. Flynn’s astounded face peered at him between the two candles that sat on the table. Her hair fell around her shoulders in wild waves, and the candlelight flickered warmly over her face. Despite the attempt on their lives and the totally botched lovemaking, he felt calmer and happier than he had in recent memory.
He was toast.
She leaned forward. “Explain to me again why you can’t just give it to the police?”
Jake nudged the last plate of finger sandwiches her way. There wasn’t much left—two hours of bringing Flynn up-to-date on the Chase situation had pretty much annihilated the picnic fodder. Still, there was something about watching Flynn nibble on finger sandwiches that never got old.
“Illegally gotten gains,” he said. “Not admissible in a court of law. Gerard Levy—he’s the sergeant at the Scheintown Police Department, my old boss—he’s going to have to go in with a search warrant in order for anything to be worth anything legally. Let’s just hope he doesn’t ask me where I got the printouts.”
Flynn nibbled her lip and shook her head. “Something’s not right.”
“Typically, when people are shooting at you, that’s the case.”
“Okay.” She put her napkin down on the table, and pushed herself up out of her chair. “I’m going to say everything back to you the way that I understand it, because I’m pretty sure I’m missing something.”
Jake sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Go.”
She started to pace. “Okay. So. Chase is the head of the historical whatsis—”
“President of the Historical Preservation Society of Scheintown, yes.”
“Okay. So, this society has healthy funding.”
“About a million dollars a year, when you combine fund-raisers, private donations, and government grants.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
He grinned. He liked watching her pace. “Your tax dollars at work.”
“Okay, so Chase has been approving consultation fees for this historian guy to come up here and make sure everything’s historically accurate.”
“Professor Gavin P. Krunk, a specialist in post- Colonial architecture in upstate New York.”
“Only he’s been dead for . . . how long?”
“Fifteen years.”
“Which is bad because unless Chase is able to transfer funds to the other side, the money for Krunk’s consultation has been going somewhere else.”
“You learn quick, Grasshoppah.”
Flynn ignored him. He liked it when she did that, too. “And the laptop also had recor
ds for a subsidiary consulting company Chase owns?”
“Yes. With liquid assets equaling roughly the amount paid to Krunk over the last three years.”
“In excess of fifty thousand dollars,” Flynn said.
“Yep. Not so much that anyone would miss it, but enough to get Chase a good, relaxing stretch in the pokey.”
Flynn sighed, walked back to the table, sat down, and grabbed her wineglass. “Except you don’t think Chase did it.”
Jake sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “No. Fifty thousand over the course of three years? That’s chump change to Chase. Also, why use the laptop that was stolen from evidence to keep the records? If he stole that laptop to keep the police from tracing that real estate scheme back to him, then he would have had it destroyed. Even wiped clean, the serial numbers would trace it back to him, which links him to stolen evidence. Chase is smarter than that.”
Flynn put her wineglass down. “So, Rhonda’s backup plan was that if the embezzlement didn’t stick, he’d still be in trouble for stealing the laptop?”
“That’s my theory. I just don’t know why.”
Flynn blinked. “She told you why.”
Jake raised his eyes to Flynn’s. “What? That bit about being in love with him? You believe that?”
“Hell, yeah. You say she’s a mousy type, right? Guys like Chase don’t even see girls like her, and she probably has no idea that she’s way out of his league, anyway, because women are stupid that way. So, she cooks up a plan to get herself on his radar by being the faithful friend while he’s in jail. It fits.”
He stared at her for a moment, turning it over in his head. And the thing was, Flynn was right.
“Women are scary,” he said.
“Well, we know she did it. She’s got Embezzling for Dummies taped under her desk.” Flynn motioned toward the manila folder that was sitting on the table, containing handwritten instructions outlining exactly how to embezzle the money from the historical society, written in what appeared to be a woman’s hand. “And if she just wanted Chase to rot in jail, she would have gone to the police herself. This is the only thing that fits.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just get a pair of contacts and buy some new clothes if she wanted Chase’s attention?”
“Sure, but we’re dealing with a CWIL, here.”
“A quill? We’re dealing with a feather pen?”
“No. CWIL. Crazy Woman In Love. Freya coined the term. She tends to attract men that come with CWILs attached. It’s a long story, but . . . yeah. Rhonda is a classic CWIL. She doesn’t want to compete for his affection when she could lose. Her plan is to make it impossible for him not to love her.” Flynn sat back, a self-satisfied expression on her face. “I’m totally right on this. Trust me.” The satisfaction faded into worry. “But, the thing is, why try to kill us? Rhonda’s the only one who knows that you’ve got the laptop, and you’re playing right into her hands, so what’s her beef?”
Jake shrugged. “If she knows I also have a folder full of information that basically implicates her in the crime, then I imagine that’s her beef.”
“Good point.” Flynn shook her head. “Except, if she wanted us dead, we were sitting ducks. Unarmed sitting ducks. But she just shot and ran away.”
“If it was Rhonda who shot at us. This is no time to jump to conclusions.”
“Who else would it be?”
“A bad shot who tried to kill us and then got scared off,” Jake said, “or a good shot who wanted to send a message.”
“What message?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t like you?”
Flynn raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you think it’s the same person who killed Elaine Placie?”
“Eileen Dietz,” Jake corrected.
“Eileen. Elaine. Whatever. The only person connected to Eileen-Elaine is Chase.”
Jake got up and started to clear the table. Here comes the tough part.
“Well, he’s not the only one.”
Flynn was quiet for a while. “What do you mean?”
“She screwed me over, babe. That speaks to motive.”
She snorted, watching him to see if he was joking. A moment later, her face went serious. “Yeah, but you didn’t kill her.”
“I know that. You know that. But the police?” He shrugged. “They may not know that.”
She pushed herself up from the table. “Of course they know that. They know you.”
He stopped clearing the table and looked at her. “There’s something I haven’t told you, Flynn. That pan that they found with the body, the one that was dented and very likely the murder weapon?”
She nodded. “Yeah?”
He grabbed a plate and held it out to her. “You want the last petit four?”
She shook her head slowly, not taking her eyes off him.
“Suit yourself.” He popped it in his mouth. “Anyway, the pan was from Mercy’s kitchen. I wasn’t working at the Arms at the time that Eileen-Elaine-Whatever was killed, but I ate lunch there almost every day. That speaks to means.”
Even in just the light from the fire and the candles, Tucker could see her posture go tight and freeze.
“Exactly what are you saying, Tucker?”
He grabbed a napkin and wiped a wineglass. “Tracking the exact time of death is gonna be tricky after six months with the fishes, but they can estimate a fairly accurate window based on the last time anyone saw her. And, considering that I didn’t start working at the Arms until sometime in April, that gives me the death row trifecta.” He tucked the glass into the basket. “Means. Motive. Opportunity.”
She advanced on him. “The police could viably bring you in for murder, and you’re making jokes?”
Jake stuck the cork back in the wine bottle, then turned to face her. “Look, I didn’t do it, which means the cops probably have evidence we don’t know about that will point to whoever did. Chances are eighty-twenty I’ll be questioned, fifty-fifty I’ll be brought in, and maybe ten-ninety I’ll be convicted of a murder I didn’t commit. Going to the police with this information about Chase and Rhonda gives them more to go on, and I think it improves my odds. So, no, I’m not really worried about it and I don’t think you should be either.”
Flynn shook her head. “How can you be so casual about this?”
He walked around the table to her and reached out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away from him.
“The best thing I can do for myself is keep a clear head, so that’s what I’m doing. Gerard Levy is an old family friend. That’s how I started out there in the first place, so that’s something else I’ve got going for me. The chances are pretty good that I’ll come out on the other side of this okay, so there’s no need to panic.”
Her stance softened a little, and he reached for her hand. This time, she didn’t pull away, but she wouldn’t look at him, either. He looked down at her hand in his and spoke.
“I want you to know that if you want to bail, go back to Boston, and let me deal with this by myself, I won’t hold it against you.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “You think I would do that?”
He had to take a moment before answering her. “I think you’d be crazy if you didn’t, Flynn.”
She looked stunned, then hurt. “Well. Okay then. I’ll just pack my bags and leave you here to deal with everything on your own.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. She raised her eyes to his. “I don’t want you to go. I’m handing this thing over to Gerard Levy and I’m out. I don’t even care anymore what happens to him. But . . . you could have been seriously hurt tonight, Flynn.”
“So could . . .” she started, but he held up his hand to stop her.
“I would have been asking for it. I’ve been so focused on getting back at Gordon Chase that if I’d been shot tonight, it would have been well earned. But you . . . you didn’t sign up for that. And I’m just glad it didn’t take you getting killed for me to finally get tha
t some things just don’t matter as much as I thought.” He swallowed hard, surprised at how difficult it was to get the next part out. “And other things matter a lot more than I ever realized.”
He reached for her, pulling her to him. Looking down into her eyes, he felt sure that everything was going to turn out fine. He didn’t know how; even if he didn’t get wrongfully accused of murder, she was going to leave eventually. But he didn’t want to worry about how it was all going to work out right now. It didn’t matter. He leaned down to her and kissed her slowly, putting into that kiss everything he didn’t know how to say, every question he didn’t know how to ask.
Based on her response, he guessed her answer was yes. That had to be a good sign.
When they parted, there were tears in her eyes.
Bad sign.
“Hey,” he said, wiping his thumb at a stray tear. “What’s this?”
She rolled her eyes. “Allergies.”
He didn’t smile. “Flynn . . .”
She pushed away from him, turned, and grabbed the messenger bag.
“Dampen the fire and blow out the candles,” she said as she headed out. “We’ve got some breaking and entering to do.”
Chapter Twelve
Flynn sat on her Nazi love seat in her flannel pajamas sipping a cappuccino she’d had Herman bring her from the kitchen when she realized that, for the first time since she’d been to Shiny, she’d slept a full night at the cottage without Esther’s interference.
Wow. ’Magine that.
She raised her eyes to the ceramic cows on the shelf, lifted her cup to them in tribute, and returned her gaze to the spot on the wall that she’d been staring at all morning, trying to sort out the big mass of ugly in her head. First on the roster: the murder of Eileen-Elaine-Whatever, and who might have really done it. Next was the attempt on her own life, which seemed so surreal to her that part of her still believed it had all been in her imagination. Rounding out the bottom were Rhonda Bacon and Gordon Chase, twisted love gone trainwreck-ugly; the future of the Goodhouse Arms; and her own future as a cog in her father’s real estate development machine.
Crazy in Love Page 19