Fatal Luck

by Dorothy Howell

With supreme effort I managed not to cringe at the mention of Ronald Ashberry’s name. Instead, I used this moment to my full advantage.

  I straightened my shoulders and looked up at Nick.

  “I have to go,” I said. “My boyfriend is on the phone. Ronald. He’s my boyfriend.”

  Nick looked unimpressed, as if I’d found myself a boyfriend simply to spite him.

  I had, sort of, but for an important reason.

  “Don’t keep him waiting because of me,” Nick said.

  “I won’t,” I told him, but didn’t move from the spot.

  A full minute crept past with me staring up at Nick and him staring back to me. I couldn’t seem to break the spell.

  “Have dinner with me tonight,” Nick said.

  “Sure—no!”

  I wasn’t going to get romantically involved with Nick, and he knew why. He also knew what it would take for me to change my position on us dating, and he’d made it clear he wasn’t going to do that.

  “I have to go talk to my boyfriend now,” I informed him, then put my nose in the air and sailed into the office.

  Inside the door, I couldn’t help myself—and I hated myself for it—but I looked back. Nick stood at the door watching me. He gave me a half-grin and walked away—which suited me just fine, I told myself as I forced down the butterflies in my stomach and went back to my desk.

  Only one phone line was blinking and I figured it was Ronald, dutifully holding for me. Ronald and I had been seeing each other for a couple of weeks now, though it seemed much longer. We weren’t official boyfriend-girlfriend. We were simply dating.

  Ronald was early-thirties, good looking, never married, no kids, college educated, and employed in a lucrative field. On paper, he was the perfect boyfriend. Most people would wonder why a catch like Ronald was running around unattached.

  The reason: he was an engineer and a sports fanatic. The dull and boring double whammy.

  All he talked about was his job and sports. He’d told me several times what sort of engineer he was, but I’d never understood what he was talking about. All I knew was that he didn’t have anything to do with trains.

  Ronald loved sports, every kind of sport. He had teams, players’ names, scores and statistics committed to memory stretching back to the original Olympics in Greece, I’m sure, and freely shared that information with anyone who had ears.

  So, you might wonder why I’d gotten myself into a relationship with this person, why I’d stayed, and why I was trying so hard to make it work.

  Two reasons.

  The first was Nick. In my continuing determination to thwart romantic overtures from the one man who refused to do as I wished and divulge information about his high school relationship with my then-best friend, I’d made myself totally unavailable by acquiring a boyfriend.

  The other reason was considerably less complicated.

  Thanksgiving was almost here, which meant that I was staring down the barrel of the single person’s Bermuda Triangle of holidays: Christmas, New Years and Valentine’s Day. Ronald, for all his faults, was good looking, and I intended to walk into every upcoming holiday party on the arm of an attractive man.

  I can be shallow when the situation warrants.

  I picked up the receiver and punched the phone line. I’d asked him to leave a message on my cell phone or send a text message but he refused to do so. He claimed he enjoyed hearing the sound of my voice.

  “Good morning,” he said. “How are you?”

  “It’s a madhouse in here,” I replied, shuffling papers, trying to make busy noises.

  Ronald took several long seconds to digest this.

  Ronald took several long seconds to digest everything.

  “I thought we should set up something for Thursday,” he finally said.

  This took me aback. Thursday wasn’t a traditional date night, so I shouldn’t be expected to hang out with him until the weekend. I was winding up to explain that—in a nice way, of course—when he spoke again.

  “Thursday is our special night, after all,” he said.

  I froze. Our special night? We had a special night? I didn’t remember anything special about any night with Ronald.

  Frantically I flipped my desk calendar ahead, scanning the notations I’d written. Appointments with clients, accounts to follow up on, my friend Jillian’s birthday. But nothing about Ronald.

  “Ah, yeah, Thursday,” I said. “Wow, is it that time already?

  “Two weeks exactly since our first date,” Ronald told me.

  He remembered that stuff? Good grief.

  “I’ll pick you up at your place at seven,” Ronald said.

  Before I could think of a good excuse to get out of it, he said goodbye and hung up. I dropped the phone in the cradle a little annoyed with Ronald, with myself—and with Nick, for some reason—then went back to work.

  Nick stayed in my head. He’d asked me if I was surprised that Jerry had been run down in the alley. Then Janine popped into my thoughts and I remembered her screaming, asking who would deliberately do something like that.

  The notion intrigued me. Obviously, there was something more about Jerry I didn’t know, something so horrible that he’d been killed for it.

  What could it be?

  Chapter 4

  I managed to get through the rest of the day, despite that feeling of heaviness that always hung over me after something awful happened. I wasn’t sure if Jerry Donavan’s death had brought it on, or my upcoming special night with Ronald.

  I decided that a visit to my mom and dad’s place was in order, something that would surely lift my flagging spirits.

  I drove to their house in an older tract in the Bonita foothills, the home where I grew up along with my brother who was now married and living up north. My parents were the greatest in the world, the Mount Rushmore of parents. I could always count on them to be solid and steady. And tonight, I needed solid and steady.

  Nick floated into my mind as I drove and, with some effort, I forced him away. Ronald came next and, with absolutely no effort, I forced him away too.

  That left me with Jerry Donavan. Janine Ferris’s screams echoed in my head. Why would anyone want to kill him? she’d wailed.

  I had no idea.

  I parked at the curb outside my parents’ house and let myself in with my key.

  “Mom? Dad?” I called.

  There was always something calming about coming here. The sameness, I guess. Same furniture, same pictures on the walls, everything always in the same place. No surprises.

  I usually got a gleeful call in return, but tonight the house was quiet. In the kitchen, I found Mom standing at the counter, staring down at a cookbook and a tablet.

  In her fifties, Mom was tall like me, and had her hair colored every month by her hairdresser. Although none of us remembered her original hair color, she looked great.

  But tonight, she looked troubled too. I realized then that she hadn’t returned my phone call from yesterday. Very unlike her.

  “Mom?” I called, dropping my handbag on the counter.

  She looked up, as if I’d startled her.

  “Oh, Dana. Hi, honey,” she said, and gave me a little hug.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Just thinking about my Thanksgiving dinner theme,” she said.

  My mom couldn’t cook a meal or plan a holiday without a theme. She’d done Crock Pot Week, Appetizer Night, Salute to the American Diner, the Fast Food Frenzy, things like that. Christmas last year was themed Christmas in Italy, or as I liked to think of it, the Festival of Carbs.

  I guess she wasn’t having much luck coming up with this year’s Thanksgiving dinner theme because the tablet in front of her was blank. That was totally unlike my mother.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  The garage door had been closed when I drove up so I knew he wasn’t tinkering at his work bench, and I couldn’t hear the television playing in the family room—two of my dad’
s favorite pastimes. I hoped he’d gone to the store for ice cream. Always a favorite and no theme required.

  Tears suddenly sprang up in Mom’s eyes, causing my heart to spring up into my throat. A thousand thoughts—all of them involving death and serious illness—flashed through my mind.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “Your dad is … he’s …”

  “He’s what?” I managed not to scream the words.

  “He’s having an … affair.”

  “What?”

  Tears rolled down Mom’s cheeks. She seemed to age right before my eyes, the heartache and anguish shrinking her, wrinkling her, devastating her.

  “It’s true,” she said. “I found out by accident.”

  “What? How? Tell me,” I said.

  She sniffed, pulled a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her apron and wiped her nose.

  “He told me he was helping his friend fix his car. Leo. You remember Leo? The antique car buff? Your dad’s been going over to Leo’s house night after night, staying for hours,” she said, and gulped down another wave of tears. “Two nights ago I needed some milk so I called him. He didn’t answer his cell phone, so I called the house. Mildred answered. You remember Mildred? Leo’s wife? She said he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there at all. He’s … he’s been lying to me this whole time.”

  Mom burst into tears and I wanted to cry too. But more than that, I wanted this to be a huge misunderstanding.

  “But, Mom, that doesn’t mean he’s having an affair,” I said. “Have you gotten any odd phone calls? Did you find a secret email account Dad’s been using? Something on Facebook?”

  She waved away my words. “There’s money missing from our savings account.”

  I felt as if I’d been stabbed in the chest. My Mount Rushmore parents were solid about everything, especially their finances. One of them would never spend their savings without discussing it.

  “Oh, Mom …”

  We hugged and she cried, and I fought back tears while the notion of my dad having an affair filled my mind. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t be.

  Mom stepped out of our embrace and forced back her tears.

  “I want you to find out for me, Dana,” she said. “I want you to follow your dad, see where he goes, who he’s … with.”

  “No, Mom. I don’t want to do that.”

  “Please, Dana.” The tears started again. “I have to know the truth. I can’t bear staying in this house night after night, wondering where he is and what he’s doing. I need to know for sure. Please, Dana, please do this for me.”

  Jerry Donavan popped into my mind. Investigating a murder suddenly seemed far less complicated and much more welcome.

  ***

  My dad was having an affair? I couldn’t believe it.

  The idea raged in my head as I drove away from my parents’ house heading to my apartment.

  There had to be some simple, logical reason Dad had secretly taken money out of their savings account, lied to Mom about his whereabouts, and spent night after night away from the house. But, honestly, I couldn’t imagine what it would be.

  Lying in wait for my dad to leave home, then tailing him, spying on him, reporting back to Mom wasn’t something I wanted to do. I didn’t want to see where he went, who he met, what they did—if, in fact, the whole thing was true. And I sure as heck didn’t want to be the one to deliver the devastating news to my mom.

  Still, the idea of my dad cheating made me mad. Betraying someone you loved, had spent years with, shared life’s ups and downs with, was the worst, as far as I was concerned. If Dad was really up to something, I wasn’t sure how I’d react when I learned about it.

  I turned onto State Street, silently fuming, imaging how everything about our family would change if this were true. I didn’t like the mental picture.

  And I didn’t like not knowing the truth.

  I could only imagine how Mom must feel, not knowing.

  I turned at the corner, whipped into my apartment complex and pulled into a parking space. For a few minutes I just sat there, thinking.

  No two ways about it, I was going to have to follow my dad and see if he was cheating on my mom.

  I dragged myself out of my car, glad that today was almost over and things couldn’t get any worse.

  And then they did.

  Nick Travis stood on the sidewalk outside my building.

  My heart did its usual little pitter-patter at the sight of him. He looked especially appealing tonight, with his collar open, his tie pulled down, his hair a little mussed. Not at all intimidating—at least, not in a law enforcement sort of way.

  Nick met me as I crossed the parking lot. The security lighting at my apartment complex was awesome so he looked even better up close.

  “Hungry?” he asked, and held up a take-out bag. “Chinese.”

  Delicious scents wafted from the bag, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten dinner and that I was starving. The peanut butter sandwich on week-old bread and last night’s reheated mac and cheese that awaited me in my kitchen seemed positively inedible right now.

  How did Nick know? How did he always know when to show up, what to bring, how to make my life a little better?

  If I wasn’t so hungry I might have been really irked.

  Nick pulled the bag away. “Unless, of course, I’m interrupting your evening with your new boyfriend.”

  Nick could be such a dog sometimes. He was a police detective, so I was confident he’d scanned every car in the parking lot when he’d arrived and determined that there wasn’t a new vehicle here—he’d been to my place enough times to know, plus it was one of the things that made him a good cop.

  Of course, Ronald wasn’t upstairs in my apartment waiting for me, nor was he coming by later tonight. In fact, if I’d seen his car when I pulled up, I might have kept driving.

  A little pang of guilt hit me. I really needed to re-think my involvement with Ronald.

  But there was no way I was going to admit that to Nick.

  “He’s coming by later,” I told him, and glanced at my watch. “I can give you thirty minutes.”

  Nick leaned in. Warmth rolled off of him, and his masculine scent washed over me, freezing me in place.

  “Thirty minutes?” he whispered. “I’ll just be getting started after thirty minutes.”

  Breath went out of me. My knees weakened. A little moan rattled in my throat.

  We stood like that, close, our breath mingling, with me caught in Nick’s gaze like a helpless butterfly in a sticky web.

  Why was I refusing to date Nick? Why was I so determined to keep him at a distance?

  Should I rethink that, too?

  Nick eased closer and rattled the take-out bag.

  “I got extra fortune cookies,” Nick said. “Want to predict how our evening will end?”

  I started to melt. How could I not?

  Then, one stalwart brain cell fired somewhere in the depth of my brain, reminding me of everything and bringing me back to reality.

  I stepped back. Cool air swirled between us.

  “It will end with Ronald and me having a lovely evening, after you leave,” I said. I cut around him, heading for my apartment building, then called, “Hurry up, will you? I’m starving.”

  I dashed up the exterior staircase to my apartment on the second floor. By the time I reached the landing, Nick was behind me. I unlocked the door and we went inside.

  My apartment was terrific, a two-bedroom with a nice-sized living room and a kitchen big enough for a dinette set. I’d struggled to make rent during the months I’d been unemployed or forced to take whatever job I could get. I’d managed to hang on, and I was glad I had.

  A little mewling sound came from the kitchen when I switched on the light. Seven Eleven, my sweet little kitty and the world’s best roommate, appeared, yawning and stretching. She meowed, rushed past me, and wound her furry body around Nick’s ankles.

  “Traitor,” I mum
bled.

  “Go change,” Nick said, and headed into the kitchen.

  It might have annoyed me that he was so at ease in my apartment, but I was hungry and too worn out to mention it.

  In my bedroom I undressed, and because it felt odd standing in my underwear when Nick was just steps away, I threw on sweat pants and a T-shirt, then pulled my hair back in a ponytail. When I came down the hallway I saw Nick’s sport coat and his shoulder holster hanging on the back of one of my dinette chairs. He’d opened a can of food for Seven Eleven and she was lapping it up.

  He’d set the take-out on my living room coffee table, gotten two beers from my fridge, and tuned my television to a basketball game. We filled our plates and settled at opposite ends of my sofa.

  A few minutes passed with Nick watching the game and me watching him while we ate. The food was good and so was the beer. I started to relax.

  Relaxing at home with Nick felt nice.

  We finished eating and took the leftovers and our plates into the kitchen. Nick got another beer from the fridge and passed it to me. I hesitated, but took it. He got one for himself and we went back into the living room.

  “What’s going on in the Bonita branch?” Nick asked, and switched off the television.

  I had the beer bottle almost to my lips, but stopped and said, “Is this some sort of investigative technique? Get a suspect liquored up and question them?”

  “Depends on the suspect,” Nick said. “What’s going on in that office?”

  I took this to mean that Nick was short on suspects in Jerry Donavan’s murder and was fishing for some useful information. I felt, too, that the personnel in Mid-America’s Bonita branch was a good place to start, given that everyone there had known Jerry was meeting me this morning.

  “The office is doing great,” I said. “After Eric took over, it shot up in the standings and has been our district’s highest profit earner, and one of the biggest company-wide. Eric is a Mid-America golden boy.”

  Nick nodded and tipped up his beer.

  “Any leads?” I asked, before he could ask me another question.

  He took his time swallowing the beer, then shook his head.

  “How about surveillance tape?” I asked.