Tutu Deadly

  “Bye, Jenny,” she whispered, as she scuttled off down the hallway toward an exit.

  Tate rounded the corner and watched her disappear with puzzlement.

  “Homeless person get inside somehow?”

  “Monica.”

  “Monica?” His voice rose a notch and he pulled his phone off his belt and opened it, his body poised as if about to run after her. Then he turned to look at me, shaking my head, and a grin formed on his face. He dialed the police dispatcher, then put his hand over the phone to ask me to give him a good description. He relayed that information to the dispatcher, then hung up.

  “You aren’t going after her?”

  “No. We still have cops all around this place, since Taylee just barely left. She won’t get away.”

  “She might. She’s sneaky. She’s been getting away with things for years. I mean, think about it. If Sandra Epstein hadn’t died, and all that other stuff hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t even have known she was a fugitive.”

  “True, but our force is good. They’ll get her.”

  I didn’t feel like arguing with him, but I suspected she was long gone.

  TATE escorted me home, following behind me as I drove my pink Bug to the front of my apartment building, where, for a change, there was a spot. Maybe my luck was turning.

  I got out of the car and locked it, then turned to watch as Tate Wilson stepped out of his police vehicle and walked toward me.

  “Thanks for the meal, again, and for following me home, but I think I’ll be okay now.”

  “Actually,” he said, his voice a low sexy growl, “I think you and I have some unfinished business. This case is over, you know. I believe I mentioned what I wanted to do when this case was over?”

  My heart raced and I could feel a thunk-thunk in my ears, and I got warm in places that hadn’t been warm since the last time he gave me that look, his cobalt blue eyes searing into me.

  I gulped, and said, “I’m really tired. I think maybe another time.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I don’t mean that. Wait, I mean, yes, I do. I mean it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “No, I don’t,” I admitted. I was terrified—both of what would happen if he did come in, and what would happen if he didn’t. “But, I have to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Where the hell do you keep disappearing to? Do you have a girlfriend? A wife? You keep taking off without explanation. I don’t do wives and girlfriends.”

  He raised an eyebrow and a silky smile slid across his face, and I blushed. “I did not mean it that way. And I’m serious here.”

  He sighed, and then smiled. “Invite me in, Jenny T. Partridge, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Anything at all.”

  “Would you like to come in, Tate?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he answered, and he turned and escorted me up the walk, the gentle pressure on my back just enough to send shock waves through all my senses.

  I unlocked my door, and we stepped inside, then I re-locked the door, turning the dead bolt. He surprised me by pressing me tightly against the door, and he moved into me, putting his hands on my neck and lifting my hair, kissing my neck and back where they were left bare by the tiny black dress I had worn for the performance. His left hand moved down to caress my backside and I shivered with desire.

  He turned me to face him, and kissed me, desire coursing from his tongue into my mouth, and I lost all rational thought as pleasure ran through my body. His left hand raised my dress and caressed my behind, covered only with a thin layer of panty hose and a very, very brief thong, and then it dipped down dangerously close to a place that hadn’t seen any male interaction in quite a while.

  “Wait, wait, please wait. You haven’t told me yet. Where do you go?”

  Tate pulled away slightly, and then sighed. “I didn’t exactly tell you the truth.”

  Oh great. I should have known. “Married,” I said, despair I couldn’t hide tingeing my voice.

  He chuckled. “God, no. It is another woman. No, not a woman. She thinks she’s a woman, but she’s still a child. Seventeen, and before you freak out she’s my half sister. Product of an affair my father had years back. My mother pretends she doesn’t exist. My father sends her mother money, and a few presents on holidays. In short, she is not acknowledged as a Wilson. And predictably, it has impacted how she acts. She gets in trouble. A lot. And when she does, I bail her out. So there you have it.”

  “Well, that’s a bit of a downer. Here I was thinking you had this great mysterious past, and instead . . .”

  “Downer? Mysterious past?”

  I couldn’t help myself, and a giggle escaped.

  “You are messing with me,” he said in a low growl, and then resumed his exploration of my womanly parts, and I melted back against the door. He ran his fingers across the inside of my thigh, rasping through the nylons, and I gasped, and my heart pounded so loudly it sounded like someone was hitting my door . . . Wait. Someone was pounding on the door.

  Tate groaned. “Ignore it,” he said into my hair.

  “Jennifer. Jennifer, I know you are in there. Let me in. It’s James.”

  James? Oh yeah, James. My friend who was always getting me into trouble, because he wasn’t willing to admit that he was gay, at least to his mother. James. James?

  I turned and unlocked the door, opening it to peer out at a frantic and disheveled James. Even worse than seeing James was realizing that he was holding a small carrying case that was barking at me, like the banshees from hell. Or wherever those banshees were from. Winkie the rat dog was back. I heard a sigh of disappointment behind me, but considering the trouble James kept getting me into, and the fact that he was my friend, I had to find out what was wrong.

  “What do you want, James? This isn’t a good time.”

  “You have to let me in, Jenny. Things are bad. Really bad. Turns out Cullin’s wife thinks he was having an affair with you, since she didn’t know Cullin was gay, and it also turns out she’s pretty damn twisted. Not only that, but Mother is on the way over here, and we have to get our stories straight before she arrives. Please, Jennifer, let me in.”

  Turns out she thought I was having an affair with the dastardly Cullin? Affair? Our stories straight?

  I was going to kill him.