I smile. “Are you sure you want to make a blanket statement like that? For example, since my family is getting together for lunch, to save time I thought I’d go visit them in person instead of calling them individually. Do you really want to go with me to see my family? My mom’s not exactly your biggest fan right now. And my cousin’s sleeping with the guy who arrested you.”
“I have thick skin.”
“I know. And I’m assuming your mother will want to see you now that you’re out of jail. So does this mean I’m not getting out of going to visit your family?”
He chuckles. “Damn right you’re not. And it gets worse from there. The police are releasing the crime scene later this afternoon, so we’re good to go back to my house tonight. When I mentioned that fact to my mother, she got the bright idea of inviting your family over for dinner to eat the leftover party food and discuss wedding plans.”
My jaw drops open. “You’re joking, right?”
“I wish.”
“If we both went and confessed to killing the mayor, do you think they’d put us in jail immediately?”
He shakes his head. “As much as I hate the idea, dinner with our families is still preferable to jail. Trust me on this one.”
I smile apologetically. “Too soon with the jail jokes?”
Running a hand through his hair, he says, “A little.”
“Sorry. So, where are we headed first? Want to get seeing my family over with?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
***
When we get to the Liberty Inn, it’s packed. The local churches must have all just let out. I spot my family across the room and head in their direction, Blake right behind me. I begged him on the drive over here to wait in the car, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I hope my mother won’t cause an uproar.
“Hey, guys, guess who’s out of jail,” I announce.
My dad and brother get up to clap Blake on the back and give him hearty handshakes, but the women at the table are nonplussed. Aunt Susan, I forgive. She’s not doing so well these days; her degenerative disease is beginning to take over her mind as well as her body. Becca probably heard all about how guilty Blake is from her detective boyfriend, Jack, and has been instructed not to fraternize with the enemy. And then there of course is my mother.
“Does this mean you’re innocent, or did you buy your way out of jail, Blake?” she asks. How wrong is it to want to slap your own mother?
Blake doesn’t bat an eye. “I’m innocent. In fact, to show I have no animosity toward the police for wrongly accusing me, I thought I’d do my part to gather some information to help out their investigation.”
“I’m sure they don’t need your help,” Becca says dryly.
“And you’re dragging my daughter along with you again?” cries my mother. “Oh, no. Elizabeth, I won’t stand for it.”
People are starting to stare. I put my head in my hands. This was a monumental mistake, as well as a waste of precious time. For one thing, my family as a whole generally has their heads up their own asses and wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary at the party anyway. There’s no way any of them have any useful information for us.
“Okay, Mom. I’ll just go back and sit at home where it’s safe,” I say, mentally rolling my eyes.
She breathes a sigh of relief. “Good. See that you do.”
She believed that? Whatever.
Blake says, “Before we go, I wanted to ask if any of you noticed the mayor doing anything unusual, maybe arguing with someone last night at the party, or if you saw him go outside.”
Just as I expected, we get a unison shrug from my family. The Harts are not a perceptive bunch.
“Okay, thanks. See you all later.” I hug my brother. “Safe trip, Ryan,” I call on my way to the door, Blake in tow.
Once we’re outside and out of earshot of my family, I begin tentatively, “Are you sure you still want to marry me?”
Chuckling, he says, “If you’re worried I think you’ll turn into your mother someday, don’t be. The two of you couldn’t be more different.”
“How is it you sometimes know exactly what I’m thinking?”
“Your face. You’re not especially good at hiding your true feelings.”
I nod. “True that. Where are we headed now?”
“The mayor’s house.”
I stop dead in my tracks, in the middle of the parking lot. “What?”
He gets a twinkle in his eye and comes over close to me, encircling his arms around my waist. “I thought we might do a little snooping around there. I know how a good B and E turns you on.”
I give him a hard slap on the arm. “Breaking and entering does not turn me on!”
He nuzzles my neck. “Liar. You know you love it.”
Even though we’ve been together quite a while, anytime Blake touches me I get a little lightheaded. “I think it’s you who gets all hot and bothered about breaking into other people’s homes. And I also think going anywhere near the mayor’s house is an extremely terrible idea, given the fact that you were just arrested for the man’s murder!”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun.”
“No! Besides, the police have probably either gone through his place already or have it under surveillance. At best, it’s a wasted trip. At worst, we’re both in jail.”
“I thought you wanted to go to jail to get out of the family dinner tonight.”
“Would you be serious?”
He gives me a kiss, melting my tension away. “I have it on good authority that the mayor’s house isn’t high on the LPD’s list of priorities. We’ll be in and out before they even know it. Come on. It’ll be like old times.”
I can’t deny the thrill that comes from an illegal activity with Blake. Against my better judgment, I concede. “Okay, you talked me into it.”
Blake picks me up off the ground and whirls me around. “Morgan and Hart, back in the saddle again.”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
CHAPTER SIX
“If we were smart, we would have done this at night,” I huff, hurrying to keep up with Blake as he strides down the sidewalk toward the mayor’s house.
Of course the mayor lives in the middle of a busy subdivision, so there’s no cover for us whatsoever. We parked a couple of blocks away, hoping to blend in as neighbors out on a walk rather than the cat burglars we really are. The only saving grace is that the mayor’s house butts up against the back side of the high school football field, so if we can get into his backyard unseen, we shouldn’t have anyone watching us break in through his back door. Lucky for us, the mayor’s backyard isn’t fenced in, so that’s one less hurdle for us. As we approach his house, his neighbor is outside bringing in a load of groceries from her car. We slow our pace to allow her to get into her house, and as soon as she does, we quickly slip between the two houses and into the mayor’s backyard.
I crouch next to the mayor’s outdoor grill, trying to keep myself out of sight, while Blake goes to work on the door. He’s a whiz at picking locks. I laughed at him at first when he’d told me he was taking lock-picking lessons, but it turns out he’s really good at it. An odd skill to have, but sometimes it’s actually helpful. After a moment, he has the lock open, and we slip inside.
“Yuck. His house smells like a sweaty old man,” I complain, quickly pulling up the neck of my sweater to cover my nose.
Blake shrugs. “He was a sweaty old man.”
“Oh, yeah, I suppose he was. Let’s get to work so we can get out of here. What are you looking for, anyway? And you better not try to tell me you only wanted to break in for the hell of it.”
The corner of his mouth pulls up in a smile. “Would I do that?”
I roll my eyes at him in response.
“So I’m thinking maybe he’s got some underhanded dealings going on, and something went sideways, so his partners decided to off him.” Blake always has some kind of off-the-wall crazy conspiracy theory.
He whispers ominously, “And that’s why he made a fatal mistake.”
“I’m still not buying it. You take the upstairs, and I’ll take the downstairs. I am not going in his bedroom.”
He slaps me on the ass on his way to the stairs. “Ooh, I like it when you’re bossy.”
I find a stack of mail in the kitchen and flip through it, but it’s all bills and advertisements. Moving on, I rifle through a couple of kitchen drawers, again with no success. I want to point out here that Blake and I are both wearing thick gloves, so if the crime scene people come here at some point and try to pick up fingerprints, ours won’t be among them. The mayor’s living room is quite neat and tidy for a single older man, the only things of note being a worn paperback Western with a bookmark from the Liberty Public Library and a stack of this week’s Chronicle newspapers.
Based on the slight smoky smell in the house, he’s had a fire in the fireplace recently, so I take out my phone and use my flashlight app to better see the ashes. I grab the poker and sift through the charred pieces, almost giving up until I notice a scrap of mostly unburned paper near the back. Plucking it out of there, I realize it’s a piece of a letter. Ooh, and an interesting one at that. As I’m opening my mouth to call for Blake, the doorbell rings.
I gasp, quickly clamping my hand over my mouth so as not to make any more noise. I knew we were going to get caught! Damn Blake and his ability to talk me into doing stupid things! I hear keys jingling outside and Blake’s footsteps creaking upstairs. With shaking fingers, I shoot him a quick text of “stay there” and jump behind an overstuffed chair in the corner of the room to hide.
The door opens, and a woman’s rather garbled voice calls, “Harold, baby? Are you here?”
Baby? Gross!
She continues, lisping, “It’s Crystal. I’m here for your Sunday nooner special!”
Upon hearing the word “nooner,” I throw up a little in my mouth. I hear the sound of high heels clacking up the wooden stairs, so I send Blake a frantic text of “hide,” hoping he can find a place to stay out of sight.
“Harold?” I hear Crystal shouting overhead, her footsteps roaming over the entire upstairs. “Harold!” I hope Blake has found a good hiding spot, or we’re toast.
After clomping back down the stairs, muttering something under her breath about still charging him for a house call, Crystal takes a walk around the main floor, her footsteps clicking noisily on the tiled kitchen floor, then padding quietly across the carpeted living room. She’s coming right for me! Damn it! She’s going to see me. I’m sure of it. And then Blake and I will go to jail. And then, just like my mother said, I’ll never get married. I hold my breath, curling into the tightest ball I can, willing her to go away. She blows out an angry sigh, then after a few seconds I hear the wonderful sound of her stomping across the wood floor of the front hallway, opening the front door, and slamming it shut.
Overjoyed, I take a moment to breathe deeply and try to stop shaking all over. That was close. I get a “is it safe to come down” text from Blake. I get out from my hiding place and snap a quick photo of the burned letter, placing it neatly on the coffee table where the cops will easily find it when they finally get around to searching the house.
I go to the foot of the stairs and call, “Come on down.”
“Did you find anything?” he asks as he trots down the stairs.
“Blake, we nearly got caught!” I punctuate my sentence by slapping him on the arm.
He smirks at me. “Yes, the B and E experience is always more exciting if you nearly get caught.” He takes a step closer to me, murmuring sexily, “Want to fool around?”
“No! I want to get the hell out of here.”
“You’re too tense.” He runs his hands up my arms. “I could take care of that for you.”
“Would you please be serious?”
Resting his hands on my shoulders, he replies, “Come on. We just found out the mayor has a standing order for a Sunday nooner with Crystal the middle-aged prostitute, and you want me to be serious?”
I let out a snicker in spite of myself. “Well, I guess it is kind of funny when you put it like that. But how do you know she’s middle-aged?”
“I peeked out from my hiding spot in the closet when she was in the mayor’s bedroom.” He shudders. “I think I know why he preferred her services.”
“Why? Is she a hot cougar?”
“Absolutely not.” He grins. “It’s because she has no teeth.”
I think for a moment, and when I realize what he’s getting at, I slap him on the arm again. “Damn it, Blake! That’s disgusting.”
“What? I’m sure her services are in very high demand.”
Shaking my head, I push him toward the back door. “We need to quit wasting time and get out of here.”
“But I didn’t find anyth—”
“I did.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Don’t keep me in suspense, woman! Let me see what you found.”
I’m purposely keeping my find away from Blake until we’re totally out of danger of being caught. I’m not slowing down to chat until we’re safely back in his car and zooming to our next destination.
Keeping up my breakneck powerwalking pace, I snap, “I already told you no, so quit asking!”
I can see his car a block down the street, so it won’t be long, but he won’t let it go. “You’re still edgy, huh?”
“Nearly getting caught breaking and entering does that to me.”
Grinning, he says, “Oh, yeah. It’s been so long I guess I forgot.”
He finally shuts up, and within a couple of minutes we’re at his car. He opens the door for me, which he always does, a gallant gesture most men have all but given up these days. He does as I’d asked, driving a ways before pulling into an empty parking lot and stopping the car.
“Now will you tell me what you found?” I can tell from the vein in his forehead that his patience is wearing thin.
I get out my phone and pull up the picture. I hand the phone to him.
His eyes wide like a kid receiving a new toy, he takes the phone. He reads the text of the letter aloud. “ ‘impossible that you might consider doing the right thing, you arrogant, self-centered bastard. I’ve tried… …many times, only to be cast aside like a piece of garbage. I’M NOT GARBAGE. I’m… …never wanted me around. You were much too busy being a politician. You’re the worst… …dead to me. You’ll never…’ ” He stares at the photo of the charred note for a moment. “Wow. A lot of this is missing, but it’s still a serious find. Good job, sweetheart.” Leaning over to me, he gives me a big, smacking kiss on the lips. “Where was this? It looks burned.”
“In the fireplace. I was sifting through the ashes when Crystal arrived, but I managed to grab that piece. It was the only thing in there that wasn’t burned to a crisp.”
“You’d only burn a letter that you want to see destroyed, usually in a fit of anger. If the rest of the letter was anything like this part, it was a doozy. Whoever wrote it was pissed. Maybe pissed enough to murder the mayor.”
“And it doesn’t sound like it was written by a business associate.”
“Definitely not.” He studies the photo for another moment. “From the style of handwriting, I can’t tell whether it was written by a man or a woman. Anyone could have penned these blocky, printed letters.”
“Well, we know it wasn’t Crystal. She wouldn’t be making house calls after sending a letter like that.”
“Plus, she probably can’t spell ‘politician.’ ”
I chuckle. “That’s not a very nice stereotype, you know.”
“She wouldn’t be servicing old dudes if she had a degree from MIT,” he points out.
“Fair enough. Where are we headed now?”
“The photographer from the party last night. If we’
re lucky, he’ll have a shot of the killer coercing the mayor outside to his doom.”
***
The photographer does not in fact have a shot of the killer coercing the mayor outside to his doom.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Morgan. I ended up leaving the party early because of a stomach bug,” whines Lyle Ford, the photographer Blake’s mother hired. “I spent the entire night with my head in the toilet. Your mother surely wasn’t happy with me last night when I told her I was feeling sick. I left shortly after blinding poor Ms. Hart here with my flash.”
Blake is irritated with this idiot, but he’s keeping his contempt veiled well enough. “At least show us the pictures you took before you left. Maybe something will help.”
Lyle logs onto his computer and pulls up a file of photos from the party. The smiling faces of our friends and families stare back at us as we look at photo after photo, each just as useless as the last. The only shots capturing the mayor are posed ones where he’s playing politician for the camera.
“There’s nothing here…” Blake murmurs.
“No kidding.” When we get to the last photo, I say, “Wait, go back one.”
Lyle goes back to the previous photo.
I point to the far left corner of the shot. “Is that the mayor talking to one of the waitstaff?”
In the background, the mayor is red-faced (not surprising since he was drunk most of the night) and glaring at a server offering him a tray of desserts. The server looks familiar to me, but half his face is cut off.
“He looks more like he’s yelling than talking. He looks pissed,” Blake says.
“Oh!” I exclaim. “That’s the guy Bethany was hitting on at the party. She told me his name, but I’ve forgotten.”
“Looks like we could have our first real suspect,” says Blake.
“Suspect?” squeaks Lyle, his forehead beginning to sweat.
“Yeah, murder suspect,” Blake replies, narrowing his eyes at Lyle. “Can anyone vouch for the fact that you left the party when you said you did?”
“Uh…” he breathes, his eyes darting around. “Yes! I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up some Pepto on the way home.” He hangs his head. “They’ll remember me. I yakked in the cosmetics aisle before I could make it to the restroom.”
My Funny Valentine Page 4