Say You're Sorry (Morgan Dane Book 1)

by Melinda Leigh

  “Morgan?” a woman’s voice asked, the rising pitch projecting anxiety.

  “Yes,” Morgan said.

  “This is Evelyn Palmer, Tessa’s grandmother.”

  Morgan sat up straighter. Tessa was her occasional babysitter.

  “What time did Tessa leave your house?” Mrs. Palmer asked.

  Still groggy, Morgan said, “Tessa wasn’t here tonight.”

  The line went quiet.

  Morgan propped herself on an elbow. “Mrs. Palmer? What happened?”

  “Tessa is gone.”

  “What?” Morgan shifted the phone. She couldn’t have heard that correctly.

  “We had a big fight yesterday, and she left.” Mrs. Palmer’s voice cracked. “She said she was going to spend the night at her friend’s house, but I called Felicity’s mother. Tessa didn’t go to the Webers’ house.”

  She’d lied.

  “So you haven’t seen her since yesterday?” Morgan asked.

  “Yes.” Over the connection, Mrs. Palmer sobbed. “Since Tessa has been babysitting for you every Friday night, I hoped you’d seen her. Then at least we’d know she was all right.”

  “Tessa hasn’t babysat for me for weeks,” Morgan said.

  “So she lied about that too.” Mrs. Palmer went quiet.

  Morgan set her pillow aside and climbed off the bed. Tossing her robe on the bed, she rooted in her dresser drawer for a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “Have you called the police?”

  “We’d thought she’d cool off and come home tonight. But it’s almost midnight and she’s not here.” Mrs. Palmer sniffed. “I’ll call the police now, but I don’t know what they can do. She’s eighteen.”

  “Have you tried to locate her cell phone?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to do that,” Mrs. Palmer said.

  “Do you need help looking for her?” As she offered, Morgan felt under her chair for her canvas sneakers.

  “I don’t know. I keep thinking she’s going to pull into the driveway any second. My husband is driving around now. I’m not allowed to drive at night anymore.”

  Mr. Palmer probably shouldn’t be driving at night either. Tessa’s parents had died in a car accident when she was twelve, and her grandparents had been raising her for the last six years. Unlike Morgan’s robust grandfather, the Palmers were plagued with medical problems.

  “I’m getting dressed.” Morgan found the shoes. “I’ll be at your house in a few minutes.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Relief softened Mrs. Palmer’s tone. “I’m calling the police and her friends.”

  Morgan ended the call, set the phone back in its cradle, and pulled her T-shirt over her head. Picking up her shoes, she left her bedroom barefoot. The phone call had rattled her, and she took a minute to peek into her daughters’ room. In the slant of light from the hall, she could see three dark heads nestled on pillows. The tiny shiver of relief made her feel almost guilty.

  Poor Mrs. Palmer.

  Morgan couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying than having one of her girls missing.

  She went into the kitchen. Footsteps scuffed in the hall.

  Her grandfather came through the doorway, putting one hand on the frame for balance. He wore a navy-blue robe over tailored cotton pajamas. “What’s wrong?”

  “That was Evelyn Palmer. Tessa didn’t come home tonight.” Morgan filled him in on the phone call as she sat down in a chair and slipped her bare feet into her shoes. Her grandfather walked forward, his leather slippers dragging on the tile, one steadying hand sliding along the wall.

  “Where’s your cane?” she asked.

  He scowled. “I don’t need a cane.”

  “That’s not what the doctor says.”

  “My slippers are older than that doctor.” He leaned a shoulder on the wall and crossed his arms, signaling an end to the topic.

  Morgan gave up, for the moment. As much as she hated to admit her grandfather was aging, he absolutely refused to act his age. “Anyway. It doesn’t sound like something Tessa would do.”

  Her grandfather shrugged. “No. It doesn’t. But the best teens can be a handful. You have to raise them with a healthy dose of suspicion.”

  Morgan remembered coming home from parties to his scrutiny. She could still picture him sitting in his leather chair, a book in his lap, his sharp gaze sizing her up over his reading glasses. He had had no qualms about giving her breath a not so subtle sniff. The retired homicide detective had guided three of the four Dane siblings into adulthood after their father had been killed in the line of duty and their mother had moved them from the city to upstate New York when Morgan was in high school. Her mom had had a heart attack a few years later.

  “Her car could have broken down somewhere out of cell range.” Standing, Morgan grabbed her denim jacket from the back of the kitchen chair. “She could have hit a tree or a deer.”

  Her grandfather followed her down the short hall to the foyer. “Let me know what you’re doing, all right?”

  He was living proof that parenting—and grandparenting—was a lifelong commitment.

  “I will. I’m just going to drive over to the Palmers’ house and see if I can help.”

  “You know that one night out isn’t unusual for a teenager,” Grandpa said. “Almost all of them show up within twenty-four hours. Plus, she’s legally an adult. She hasn’t committed a crime.”

  “I know.” But Morgan’s concern wouldn’t ease. Then again, Morgan had lost both her parents and her husband. She often held her loved ones closer than was entirely healthy. But grief had wrapped barbed wire around her heart. The slightest touch made it bleed.

  “Do you want me to call Stella?” Grandpa asked.

  Morgan’s younger sister was a detective with the Scarlet Falls PD.

  “Not yet. She works too much as it is. Let me see what’s going on. Tessa will probably turn up soon, and Mrs. Palmer already called the police. I’m sure the responding officer can handle the call. Like you said, Tessa hasn’t done anything illegal.”

  Just completely out of character.

  “All right. Be careful. I love you,” Grandpa called. “Do you have a flashlight?”

  “I do.” Morgan patted her tote bag and left the house.

  Outside, the darkness loomed. But as she walked down the driveway, motion sensing security lights lit up the front yard like a runway. She glanced up at the camera affixed under the eaves of the house.

  Grandpa had installed it with the security system almost as a joke to catch a neighbor who didn’t clean up after her dog. But now Morgan was glad for the extra surveillance.

  Years ago, none of them had ever dreamed they’d need a security system in Scarlet Falls, let alone in their rural development. But these days, there seemed to be no escaping crime.

  Chapter Four

  Lance Kruger hunkered down in the front seat of his Jeep and stared at the one-story motel across the street. In the center of the long building, the curtains of room twelve were drawn tight. The camera on his passenger seat, complete with telephoto lens, waited.

  His phone vibrated, shimmying across his dashboard. The display read SHARP. His boss.

  Lance answered the call, “Yeah.”

  “Catch them yet?” Former Scarlet Falls detective Lincoln Sharp had retired after putting in his full twenty-five and had spent the last five years as a P.I.

  “Got individual photos of each of them entering the motel room. They haven’t come out yet.” Photos of a lusty good-bye in the parking lot would solidify Mrs. Brown’s claim of adultery.

  “They’re still in there?” Sharp whistled. “Impressive. I wouldn’t expect Brown to have that much stamina.”

  “He probably fell asleep.”

  Sharp snorted.

  “If you can’t sleep, you can always take over tonight’s surveillance.” Lance shifted in the seat, trying to get comfortable.

  “I’m too damned old and creaky to sit in a car all night long,” Sharp said. “Why do you think I
hired you?”

  “You’re fifty-three, not ninety-three, and since when do we take divorce cases?”

  “Family favor.”

  Mrs. Brown lived next door to Sharp’s cousin. Since Mr. Brown had already been reported for sexual harassment, Mrs. Brown was hoping he wouldn’t want the affair with his coworker made public. Full-color glossies would provide excellent leverage when it came time to divide marital assets and settle on alimony.

  But the whole business left Lance with a foul taste in his mouth. “We’re bottom-feeding.”

  “At times.” A teakettle whistled on Sharp’s end of the line. “Let me know if anything goes down. I’ll be up.”

  Sharp ended the call. Lance set down his phone, stared at the motel room door and willed it to open so he could go home. But nothing happened.

  Whatever he’d expected when he left the Scarlet Falls PD three months before, this wasn’t it. Through the fabric of his tactical cargo pants, Lance rubbed the thick scar tissue on his thigh where a bullet had ended his police career. His leg was almost healed. But almost wasn’t good enough. As much as he wanted to be on the force, he would not be responsible for another officer getting hurt because he couldn’t keep up.

  After the first four weeks of unemployed boredom had nearly driven him insane, he’d latched onto Sharp’s offer to join his PI firm like a K-9 on a bite sleeve. For the last two months, he’d been Skywalker to Sharp’s Obi-Wan.

  Lance shifted position, stretching his leg. If he was going to spend this many hours sitting in his vehicle, he was going to have to trade up to a larger model.

  Headlights swept across the pavement, and a familiar Cadillac slid crookedly into a slot in front of the motel room. Lance’s spine jerked straight.

  Was that Mrs. Brown?

  The door of the Cadillac flew open and bounced on its hinges. Mrs. Brown slid from the vehicle and stood on wobbly legs. She staggered toward the door of the motel.

  Oh, shit. Alcohol had never helped anyone make better decisions.

  Lance bolted from his Jeep, but he was too far away to intercept her.

  Mrs. Brown stopped ten feet in front of the door. She dug a handgun out of her purse, leveled it at the door of the motel, and pulled the trigger.

  Boom. The gun jerked in her hand. Wood splintered. Lights turned on in windows across the low building.

  And Lance’s heart did its best impression of a cardiac event. He skidded to a halt as Mrs. Brown fired again. Lance flinched, his body pouring sweat as he remembered last November’s shooting.

  Get it together.

  Now was not the time for a flashback.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket, pressed 911, then gave the operator the address. His brain told him to return to his vehicle and wait for the police to arrive, but he couldn’t do it. This crappy little motel was on the edge of town. Scarlet Falls would have just a few cars out on graveyard patrol shift. Having one nearby was unlikely.

  Mrs. Brown was angry and drunk, a deadly combination. God only knew who she might shoot before the police arrived.

  Lance swallowed the throbbing pulse in his throat and forced himself to move forward.

  “Mrs. Brown!” he called, nearly deafened by the hammering of his own heart. “Please put the gun down.”

  “No,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m going to shoot his pecker off.” She refocused her aim—and her rage—back on the door and yelled, “Leonard, git your ass out here.”

  As if Mr. Brown would come out after she’d announced her intention of blowing a hole in his privates. He was already probably trying to squeeze his beer gut out the bathroom window.

  “Ma’am, you can’t shoot him.” Lance’s pulse echoed in his ears as he eased forward. The gun wasn’t pointed at him, but if she turned . . .

  Mrs. Brown yelled, “Why not? The rat bastard is cheating on me.”

  “I know,” Lance commiserated. “He’s a bastard. That’s why you’re going to divorce him, right?”

  He took another step.

  She paused. Her face tilted as she considered her original revenge plot.

  “If you shoot him, you’ll be arrested.” Sliding another foot forward, Lance held his hands in front of his chest in a nonthreatening posture. “Then where will you be? Jail.”

  The muzzle of the gun dropped a few inches.

  “You want to get even, right?” He eased forward. “Wasn’t that your plan? To make him pay?”

  She nodded, her eyes glistening with moisture. She sniffed. “He didn’t even bother to hide what he was doing. Everyone in town knows what he’s been up to.” Humiliation amplified the distress on her face.

  Lance nodded. “He is an inconsiderate, lying scumbag. That’s why you’re dumping him. Everyone knows you won’t take this sort of behavior from him.” Lance played up her pride. “He’s going to be paying for what he did to you for a long time.”

  Her lips flattened into a bloodless line as she imagined her revenge.

  He jerked a thumb toward his Jeep. “I already have photos of both of them going into the motel. Soon you’ll be able to get him out of your life for good.”

  “But I love him!” she wailed, her face crumpling.

  For Pete’s sake . . .

  How could she possibly still be in love with her cheating, lying, asshat of a husband?

  “Mrs. Brown, lower the gun,” Lance said.

  She complied, the muzzle of the gun pointing toward the blacktop.

  In one swift motion, Lance took the gun from her. She burst into tears. He unloaded the weapon as she sobbed.

  Once the threat was over, Lance took a deep breath. Adrenaline coursed through his veins like a hit of speed. At least as a cop he’d had backup and body armor. As a private investigator, he was on his own in a sea of crazy.

  Speaking of crazy . . .

  With Mrs. Brown disarmed and subdued, Lance waited for the SFPD. Ten minutes later, a sheriff’s deputy arrived instead, which wasn’t uncommon. With a limited number of cars on patrol, the local force relied on the county sheriff for backup.

  Lance handed over Mrs. Brown’s weapon, gave a statement, and was free to go. As soon as he typed up his own report, he would be done with the Browns and their messy divorce. Love made people nuts.

  His phone buzzed with a text from Sharp. STOP AT THE OFFICE.

  Either Sharp had been listening to his police scanner or he’d gotten a call about the incident. He knew everybody in local law enforcement.

  Lance drove to the tree-lined side street in Scarlet Falls where Sharp owned a duplex and lived in the unit above Sharp Investigations. At nearly one a.m., all was quiet in the very small business section of town. Lance parked at the curb and climbed the wooden steps. Sharp’s office occupied what was originally the living room of the converted two-bedroom apartment. Lance had set up camp in the first bedroom with a card table, a single chair, and a laptop. The sole personal item was a wireless speaker. He hooked the camera to the laptop and downloaded his pictures from earlier that evening.

  “You really need to buy a desk.” Lance’s boss stood in the doorway. In worn jeans and a plain gray T-shirt, Sharp was wiry and ridiculously fit for his age. Twenty-five years on the police force had left him with an indelible don’t-fuck-with-me expression.

  “The table works for now.” So far, Lance had refused to commit to a permanent position at Sharp Investigations. He wasn’t ready to give up his dream of getting back on the force. “Next time one of your family members requests an adultery surveillance, you’re on your own.”

  Sharp ignored the comment. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, Mom.” Lance followed his boss into the small kitchen.

  Sharp filled a teapot and put it on the stove. Then he filled one bowl with dog kibble and another with water, opened the back door, and deposited the bowls on the back porch.

  “Still feeding that stray?”

  “She won’t come in.” Sharp spooned tea into a wire basket and dropped it into a
ceramic pot.

  “She?” Lance teased.

  Sharp pretended to be a total hard-ass, but it was a lame act.

  “You’re a sucker for big brown eyes.” Lance led the way into Sharp’s office. Two chairs faced a beat-up desk. A black couch spanned the far wall.

  Sharp carried a teapot in one hand and two mugs in the other. “You’ve had a tough night, so I’ll ignore your smart-assery.”

  Lance eased himself into the straight chair. “You know, most men would offer a friend a glass of whiskey after a traumatic event.”

  Sharp poured green tea into two mugs and set one in front of Lance. “Alcohol is a depressant. That’s the last thing you need right now.”

  Sigh.

  “Now that I can see for myself that you’re not dead, tell me what happened.” Sharp took his place behind the desk.

  Lance filled him in. “Just a typical Friday night.”

  Sharp laughed so hard, he wheezed.

  “It’s not funny,” Lance said.

  “You’re right. It’s not.” But his boss’s voice shook.

  “That was the worst job ever. I don’t know what bothered me more, the flying bullets or the melodrama.” Lance took a few deep breaths. “Not sure where we stand on the case.”

  “Not much you can do when the client loses her frigging mind.” Sharp’s voice sobered. “Seriously, I’m glad she didn’t shoot you.”

  “I don’t know about this PI thing. I still miss being a cop,” Lance said.

  “I know that, and I know why,” Sharp said. “Do you think I don’t remember what day it is?”

  Lance’s throat tightened. Twenty-three years ago, his father had vanished. Sharp had been in charge of the case.

  “I understand the desire to protect and serve. I did it for twenty-five years. But being a PI is better in a lot of ways. You’re your own boss. You make your own decisions. No one can order you to stop investigating a case.” Sharp’s mouth tightened. That was exactly what had happened to him when leads on Lance’s dad’s case went cold. “But if that’s what you really want, then keep working on your recovery.”

  “More crunchy-granola-woowoo crap?”

  “Bash it all you want.” Sharp crossed his arms. “You’re better, and you know it. You were pushing too hard and not letting your body heal. Didn’t your physical therapist give you the go ahead to get on the ice?”