by Annie Knox
He shoved his hands in his pockets in that familiar rebel high school boy pose. “Fair enough. And I guess I’m not really in a position to offer you an alternative.”
“Not now,” I allowed.
“Just promise me you won’t jump into anything. Can you at least give us a little time?”
“I can’t wait forever, Sean. But I can wait for now.”
CHAPTER
Nineteen
As promised, Jack picked me up at seven. He stood at the front door of Trendy Tails in a jacket and tie, a single red rose in his hand. He looked as nervous and uncomfortable as a fourteen-year-old going to his first dance.
“Hi, Jack,” I said.
He looked into my eyes and then gave me the once-over. “Holy . . . You’re gorgeous.”
I laughed as I took both the rose and his arm.
“You’ve seen me every day this week. I’m the same me.”
“You know what I mean,” he said, leading me down the front steps. “You’re always gorgeous, but tonight you are breathtaking. Extra-gorgeous. Smokin’.”
I laughed. I had taken a lot of time getting ready for this date. I’d traded in my usual jeans and Trendy Tails golf shirt for a pair of black leggings, knee-high black boots, a black lace cami, and a billowing scarlet silk shirt. My black hair usually fell in irregular waves around my face, but I’d taken the time to blow it out straight and use a serum to make it shine. I’d donned a pair of Jolly Nielson’s pussy willow earrings and done my makeup like a proper girl. It was nice to be rewarded for all that effort.
We strolled down the quiet streets of Merryville, the slowly sinking sun casting a golden glow over everything. It was like a natural soft focus, making every brick, every curl of ironwork, every fence post, look flawless.
I watched Jack out of the corner of my eye. He, too, appeared flawless in the evening light. His dark blond hair usually looked like it had been buzzed by a military barber, but that evening the longer pieces on top fell forward over his brow, framing his violet blue eyes. His jaw was strong, but not square, and his lips had a sultry quality that made me feel a little light-headed.
I’d spent all week seeing this man, but I hadn’t really noticed how gorgeous he was until that evening. I guess that made us even.
We turned the corner onto Laurel Street and climbed the steps to the Koi Pond, a shockingly authentic Chinese restaurant.
The host led us to a curved banquette separated from the rest of the restaurant by a fish tank filled with waving kelp and brilliant orange koi fish.
“Wow.”
Jack shrugged. “Roger Choi and I go way back. He always gets me the best table in the house.” He was trying to pass it off like it was no big deal, but I could see the small smile and the look of pride in his eyes. He’d done good and he knew it.
We got settled and the waiter brought us water and menus.
“So,” Jack said, “I know we’re not going to make it through the evening without talking about Daniel Colona’s murder, so let’s just get it over with now.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes tops, and then the topic is taboo for the rest of the evening. Fair?”
“Fair.”
“I have no doubt that you have completely ignored my pleas that you leave the policing to the police, so why don’t you tell me what trouble you’ve gotten into today?”
“Well, I spent part of today pretty sure Ken West was the murderer.”
He smiled at me resignedly. “Only part of the day and only pretty sure?”
I explained to him about the Madison Mystery Chef and how we’d figured out that Ken was the guy. I was fair, though, and I explained Ken’s insistence that he had no motive for murder.
“Besides,” Jack added, “Ken has an alibi.”
“Uh-uh. That alibi’s no good. Steve doesn’t smoke.”
“Well, maybe Steve just went out in the alley to keep him company. The two are doing business together after all.”
“I just can’t see it. From what Ama said, Steve is just too darned antismoking to hang out with Ken while he gets his fix.”
Jack shrugged. “Whatever the reason, the alibi checks out. Steve corroborated Ken’s story. He says he was outside with Ken having a smoke.”
“But—”
“But maybe both Ama and Steve are each hiding their smoking from the other. Sort of like ‘The Gift of the Magi’ but with tobacco products.”
I giggled.
No lie. I didn’t laugh or chuckle; I giggled like a little girl. Something—my conversation with Sean, Jack’s masculine presence, the mystical ambience of the restaurant—something made me giddy that night.
“How about this?” Jack said, opening his menu. “I promise I’ll look into this angle further. I’ll talk to Ken, get him down to the station, even. If there’s anything there, I’ll find it.”
“What about the journal I turned over? Did you guys get any more clues out of it?”
“Repeat after me: I cannot talk about an ongoing investigation.”
“Oh, I know. But I told you about the calls to Dee Dee and the owls.”
“I know. The calls to Dee Dee, the dratted owls, the calls to Ama . . . You were very forthcoming.”
I turned my head to give him a sidelong squint. “Calls to Ama?”
Jack slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.
“You’ve bewitched me, Izzy McHale. Forget I ever said that.”
“But it was calls, plural?”
He drew his fingers across his lips, twisted them, and made a tossing motion. He’d thrown away the key and would not answer my question. But it was an interesting tidbit. Why hadn’t Ama admitted that she’d talked to Daniel?
“Okay,” I said. “Our ten minutes are up, right? So we can just talk like normal people?”
He grinned. “I thought it would never end. Let’s talk like completely normal people.”
“Do you like being a cop?” I asked.
He looked past my shoulder, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Yes and no.”
“Why yes?”
“Because I like order. Because I like the idea of people doing the right thing. Because I’m damned good at it.”
“And why no?”
“The law’s a blunt instrument. People are complex and their lives are complex, but the law—at least the way cops have to follow it—is so black-and-white. Sometimes I appreciate those clear guidelines, but sometimes I feel like I can’t really do the right thing, the thing that’s going to make everyone whole. I just have to haul someone off to jail.
“You should ask your friend Sean sometime if it feels that way for lawyers, too.”
He’d raised Sean’s name nonchalantly, but I detected a note of questioning there. I imagined that everyone in town had picked up on the tension between Sean and me by that point. It was only fair that he should be curious.
“You know,” I said, “you’re one of the big reasons Sean and I became friends in the first place.”
“Really?”
“You don’t remember?”
He shook his head. “Tell me.”
“Fourth grade, Mrs. Adams’s class. It must have been November because I know it was before Christmas but I remember wearing my parka. You bet me a cream-filled cupcake that I couldn’t spin around sixty times with my eyes closed. I got to something like twenty-four before I stopped in my tracks and upchucked all over Sean Tucker. My mom and I went to his house after we’d gotten his parka cleaned, and I ended up staying over to help him build a snow fort. The rest is history.”
“I have no recollection of that.”
“Oh no? Well, I remember you being quite a pill in grade school.”
He grinned a wolfish grin. “I liked to tease the girls.”
“I’ll say.”
“Well, if I te
ased you, it only meant that I liked you. My way with the ladies has improved considerably since then.”
“Has it really?”
“I guess we’ll just have to see.”
* * *
I’d expected dinner to pass in a wave of small talk, but Jack turned out to be more complex and sensitive than I’d given him credit for. He was a far cry from the blunt-force hammer Sean had labeled him. But over plates of Szechuan eggplant and spicy prawns, our conversation turned personal quickly.
Jack told me about his mother, and his concern that she wouldn’t be able to live independently much longer. I told him about my effort to buy 801 Maple from Ingrid. Jack told me about a girl he’d proposed to in college, about how they got to within a week of the wedding before she got cold feet and canceled it all. I told him about the heartbreak of Casey leaving me stranded, with no way to pursue my half of our grand dream.
“Maybe it’s fate,” Jack mused.
“What?”
“That we both got dumped before we actually married our fiancés. Jenny was a great girl—before she dumped me, that is—but she was a girl. She was pretty, not beautiful. She laughed a lot, but she wasn’t funny. I saw her last year at our tenth reunion, and she hadn’t changed a whit since college. Heck, she was still doing Jell-O shots.
“You’re more interesting than she could ever be. Big heart, big spirit.”
“I thought I drove you crazy with my snooping.”
He laughed. “You do. But that’s just it. Jenny would never have had the curiosity to go looking for a murderer. You are irrepressible. Crazy-making, but in an exciting sort of way.”
I saw his chopsticks creeping toward my eggplant, and I used my own to block them.
“I just wanted a taste. Big spirit, right?”
“All you have to do is ask.”
“Please.”
“Of course.”
He managed to pick up a piece of the slick eggplant and get it all the way to his mouth without dropping it or even dribbling its rich sauce onto the white tablecloth.
“Good, huh?”
He smiled a wicked smile. “Delicious.”
I could have gotten lost in his deep blue eyes right at that moment, but instead I took a bracing sip of water.
“So, I’m starting to see what you get out of this deal. You’re right that I am far superior to this Jenny person.”
He laughed. “Did I mention modest?”
“But,” I continued, “how do I know that you’re a better catch than Casey?”
“You forget, I went to school with Casey, too. He was a nice enough guy if you didn’t mind a little arrogance.”
Point well-taken.
“But he isn’t what you need,” he said with a slow shake of his head.
“And what exactly do I need?” I murmured.
He rested his chin in his hand and squinted his eyes like he could see some part of me beneath my skin.
“You need someone whose spirit is as strong as yours. Someone who will take delight in your successes and give you comfort when you fall.”
By that point, my heart was ringing in my ears.
He grinned. “But most of all, you need someone who can save your bacon the next time you accuse the wrong person of murder.”
This last teasing remark broke the tension between us, but my heart was still beating a million miles a minute.
I mustered a smile. “Yes, I can see where an armed bodyguard might come in handy.”
He cleared his throat. “I hope you enjoyed dinner.”
“It was delicious,” I said. That was it, the date was over. I found myself surprisingly sad to see the evening come to an end.
He tucked a handful of bills into the folder the waiter had left behind, stood, and held my chair for me. Once again, I felt the need to write his mother a thank-you note for raising such a polite son.
He walked me home, and we teased each other as we strolled hand in hand. Our steps slowed as we approached 801 Maple. But despite our foot-dragging, we were eventually on my front porch.
I tucked my hands behind my back, and Jack tipped back on the heels of his shoes.
He cleared his throat. “This was a proper date, Izzy.”
Though he said it with such force, I took it as a question.
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Then it should end properly.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice barely audible.
He raised his large hands and cupped my face with them. The tips of his fingers crept into my hair, tickled the edges of my ears. Slowly, he leaned down—giving me every opportunity to pull away—and rested his lips on mine. After a breath, he deepened the pressure and I felt his lips part just enough to nibble my bottom lip. It was a gentle kiss, but with the promise of passion simmering right beneath the surface.
When he pulled back, I stumbled back a step. He grabbed my arms to stop my fall, and a smile of pure, masculine self-satisfaction lifted his lips.
He let me go, tipped an imaginary hat. “Good night, Izzy McHale.”
I couldn’t find my words. All I could do was unlock the front door and dart inside. I didn’t turn on the light, so I could see him standing on the porch. He stood there for a full minute, that smile never fading. When he spun on his heel, shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and started the trek to his car, I could hear his off-key whistling.
I couldn’t make out the tune, but something told me that one day soon we’d be dancing to it.
CHAPTER
Twenty
My sisters, Dru and Lucy, stopped by the shop on their lunch hour, with my mother and Aunt Dolly in tow. Mom carried a covered dish, the luscious scent of her ratatouille already making its way across the showroom, and Dolly had a loaf of bread in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. At the smell of food, Packer and Daisy May came thundering down the steps. Dru and Lucy blocked the dogs until Mom got the ratatouille safely to the table.
Both of my sisters worked strictly nine-to-five jobs. Dru was a CPA who worked for a firm that handled both private clients and audits of the city treasury, and Lucy was a court reporter. The irony of Lucy working as an officer of the court was not lost on anyone. My baby sister broke every rule in the book, and still managed not to get caught. That ability to get away with everything shy of murder had earned her the nickname Lucky Lucy. She insisted there was no luck to it at all; she just knew how to manipulate people. When she announced that at the dining room table, my mother nearly passed out.
I got along just fine with both of my sisters. I was Switzerland. But proper, rule-following, i-dotting and t-crossing Dru found Lucy’s wanton ways infuriating. And Lucy thought Dru was just a prude, the cloud over everyone’s party. They often had words with each other, Dru trying to keep her temper in check while Lucy taunted her every which way from Sunday.
Today, though, my night and day sisters appeared to be in cahoots. And they’d brought lunch.
“Guess what we have.” Dru crooned.
“You’ll never guess,” Lucy added.
“Okay, then I’ll skip the pointless guessing and just ask you what you have.”
“Party pooper,” Lucy said before sticking her tongue out at me.
“We,” Dru said with a flourish, “have Daniel Colona’s obituary from the Madison Standard.” She pulled a folded piece of printer paper from her purse and handed it to me.
Sure enough, it was Daniel’s obituary, shockingly short considering he’d actually worked for the paper.
“What’s it say?” Rena asked impatiently.
I read aloud:
Reporter Daniel Colona died on Friday, April 4, in the town of Merryville, Minnesota. Police assert that Daniel was a victim of foul play.
The deceased was an active member of a local animal rights organization and a deacon in
his church. He frequently gave back to the journalism community by speaking at conferences and organizing Shot Heard Round the World, a workshop held every year on September 17—the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution—for small-town reporters on how to find wire-worthy stories in their communities. Colleagues remember him as a quiet but generous man who always had the time to help young reporters.
He is survived by his parents, Tony and Margaret Colona, and a sister, Marilyn. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Madison Paws for a Cause Foundation.
“Wow,” Rena said. “Can you imagine? A whole life boiled down to three simple paragraphs.”
My mom, Dolly, and Dru began the age-old dance of putting a meal on a table. Mom set the covered dish on the hot pads she’d used to carry it, a sort of makeshift trivet. Dolly laid out the bread and wine and fetched salt and pepper off a shelf behind the barkery display case.
“And he sounds like a nice guy,” I said. Something about the obituary was tugging at the corner of my mind, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“I know, right?” Lucy said.
“He even loved animals,” Dru added as she returned from the kitchen with a stack of plates and silverware.
“No kids,” Lucy said. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, he didn’t have a chance to have a child. On the other, there’s no kid out there crying for his daddy.”
“This is really a bummer,” Rena said. “I know it’s silly, because no one deserves to be murdered, but I’d sorta hoped he was a sleaze.”
“Well,” Dru pointed out, “they usually only put the good stuff in the obituary. They don’t mention that you had chronic road rage or you were cheating on your wife.”
Cheating. The pieces didn’t so much fall into place as drift into place, the conversation around me morphing into a brand-new theory.
“Ama lied,” I said.
“What?” Rena sounded like she had mental whiplash.
“I said, Ama lied. She said she’d never met Daniel. But when I was in her office, I saw a certificate on the wall that said she’d participated in a workshop called Shot Heard Round the World four years ago. She had to have met Daniel then.”