by Jeff Shelby
“I sleep in the nude,” Mack told him, and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. This seemed like way too much information to be sharing with someone he’d just met, let alone his former office manager. “Besides,” he said, turning to look at me, “you have extra bedrooms, don’t you? By the size of this house, I’d think there were at least three or four.”
“I do,” I said, nodding. I didn’t mention the guesthouse that could house additional people...mostly because I wasn’t sure we could get to it in the snowstorm. “And you are more than welcome to stay here.”
Mack yawned. “I’ll probably just do that, then. I’m worn out from white-knuckling it on those roads. A glass of whiskey or something, and I’ll be ready for bed.” He looked at me. “You?”
“Me?” I said blankly. The way he phrased it, it sounded as though he was asking me if I would be ready for bed then, too. With him. A quick glance at Gunnar and the expression on his face told me he had interpreted it the same way.
“Are you worn out?” Mack asked for clarification. He held out a hand, bringing the quilt with him, and motioned to the mess of decorations still littering the couch and table. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”
“Oh. Yeah,” I said, the relief palpable that I’d completely misread his words. Mack had never flirted with me, not once during the entire time we’d worked together, so that was why his words had caught me so completely off-guard. “I need to clean up a bit more, but then I’ll be heading to bed.”
“Guess it’s settled then,” Mack said. A grin spread across his face as he looked at Gunnar. “As long as you’re cool with it.”
A crease appeared in Gunnar’s forehead, something that wasn’t quite a frown. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Mack shrugged. “You tell me.” His tone was casual but his eyes were shrewd as he looked over Gunnar. “You said you’re Rainy’s neighbor, right?”
Gunnar nodded.
“What else are you?”
“Excuse me?” Gunnar said, cocking his head.
Mack wore a knowing smile. “There’s something else,” he murmured. “Something else going on between the two of you. What is it?”
I shot Gunnar a look, but his eyes were on Mack, the semblance of a smile forming on his face. “We’re still figuring that out.”
FOUR
It was the next morning, and Mack was nowhere to be found.
I was in the kitchen, downing my second cup of coffee and waiting for the apple cinnamon muffins I’d mixed up a half hour earlier to finish baking. Their scent filled the kitchen, and the heat from the oven warmed the room, making it the coziest spot in the house. Looking out the window at the bare-branched trees draped in white and the fresh blanket of snow that covered the lawn, all magnificently stark against the back drop of a blue sky, it seemed like a perfect morning indeed. The only thing spoiling the serenity was the incessant hum of an engine outside: Gunnar’s snow blower.
I turned my thoughts back to the man sleeping upstairs in one of my guest bedrooms. I wasn’t too concerned about Mack. He was probably still sleeping. But it was closing in on nine o’clock, and I didn’t know if I should go and wake him up or just let him sleep. He’d been the one to say that he wanted to get back to DC as soon as possible, and I knew that every minute he spent sleeping was one less minute he’d have back home.
As if he could read my mind, Mack appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, scratching his jaw and yawning. In nothing but his boxers. I’d delivered all of his dried clothes before he’d retired for the evening, despite his insistence that he didn’t need them just yet.
I skipped a good morning greeting. “Where are your clothes?”
He glanced down at his attire. “In the bedroom?” He shivered and ran his hands over his arms.
“You shouldn’t walk around naked in other people’s houses,” I said.
He pushed his dark hair back off his face. Without the hair gel slicking it back, it actually looked wavy. “I’m not naked,” he said. “Naked is how I sleep. Besides, I have these on.” He motioned toward his boxers before frowning. “What on earth is that noise?”
“Snow blower,” I said. “Gunnar’s outside clearing his driveway.”
“We got that much snow?”
I nodded. “Are you hungry?”
He sniffed the air. “Yes. And something smells amazing.”
“Muffins,” I told him. “Apple cinnamon.” His eyes lit up and I added, “Which you can have after you come back down here. Dressed.”
Mack broke into a smile and clucked his tongue. “I had no idea you were such a prude.”
“And I had no idea you were such an exhibitionist,” I shot back.
He headed for the coffeemaker but I stepped in front of him, trying not to stare at his tanned chest. I had never been attracted to him—and I wasn’t planning on starting now—but it would be almost impossible to ignore how toned his chest and abs were.
“No coffee, either,” I said, shaking my head. “Clothes first.”
He grunted. “Such a stickler.”
I leaned against the counter, my arm out in front of the coffeemaker, like a rail crossing at a train track. “How do you think I kept that office of yours running so well for all of those years?”
“Good point,” he mumbled. He pivoted on his heel. “Save some of everything for me.”
He was back downstairs five minutes later, dressed in the outfit from the night before. He’d somehow managed to slick down his curls, probably with water, since I was pretty sure I didn’t have any hair products in the guest bathroom.
He filled a mug and settled himself at the kitchen table. There was a basket of steaming muffins in the center, along with a bowl of cut cantaloupe. He reached for a muffin and unpeeled the wrapper just as I was wrestling on my snow boots.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Going out to shovel.”
He frowned. “Why? Sounds like your neighbor is doing your driveway right now. Or a 747 is using it as a landing strip.”
He was. The snow blower had gotten louder and I knew Gunnar had worked his way over to my driveway. But that didn’t mean I was going to let him do all the work by himself. I had a snow shovel and two feet. I could help. And I intended to.
“Are you going to join us?” I asked.
Mack looked up, his mouth full of muffin. He washed it down with some coffee. “What?”
“Are you going to help us shovel?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t planning on it.” When he saw my expression, he added, “I don’t have the clothes for it. Or the shoes.”
“I thought you needed to get back to DC.”
“I do,” he said. He polished off the muffin and grabbed another one.
“So wouldn’t it make sense to help shovel so you can get to your car sooner?”
He thought about this for all of two seconds, and shook his head no. “I could slip and fall out there. Break a leg or something. Then that would really set me back. So I’ll just stay in here and let your studly neighbor take care of the snow removal.”
I just shook my head.
Mack Mercy was a heck of a private investigator, but as a man?
He bordered on impossible.
FIVE
Two hours later, Mack and I were in my car, backing out of the driveway. Wet asphalt greeted us as we made our way toward the road, courtesy of Gunnar’s snow blower and my snow shovel. The sun had worked its magic, too, helping to melt the remaining snow we’d left on the driveway.
“You guys did a good job,” Mack said as he surveyed our handiwork.
That was about as much of a thank you as I was going to get from him.
“So what’s up with the two of you?” he asked as he settled back into his seat.
“What do you mean?”
“You and your neighbor.” Mack grinned. “You got something going on with him?”
I could have told him. I could have casually mentioned the fact that I had not one,
but two men interested in me in the town of Latney, and that I’d spent the better part of the last few months trying to decide who was best suited to me.
But Mack and I had never discussed our personal lives. That was probably why we'd been able to maintain our friendship and our professional relationship for so long. He asked questions, but never in a forceful, prying way. It was just his way. But I had no need to dump my life on him and had no problem ignoring his questions. Sure, he knew the kids, and he was aware of when Charlie and I went through our divorce, but it wasn’t as though I treated him as any sort of confidante.
And I certainly wasn’t about to start now.
“Not really,” I said, trying to keep my tone as neutral and casual as possible.
“Not really?” he repeated. “What does that mean?”
“It means that there’s nothing really going on.”
This was not a false statement. After unearthing Gunnar’s daughter, Jill’s plot to frame me with drugs—in which she accidentally framed her father instead—we’d come to a sort of fork in the road in our relationship. Things had cooled between us previously, back during Thanksgiving, just as things with Declan, the town pastor, had heated up. But now? Both relationships—if that’s what they were—were sort of in limbo, especially with Declan planning a move to Brazil to work on a church mission.
In most instances, I wasn’t a fan of being in limbo.
But at that moment, I was more than okay with it.
Because it meant I didn’t have to make any decisions I wasn’t ready to make.
“Where to?” I asked. I knew I was changing the subject, and abruptly, but I didn’t much care.
Thankfully, Mack took the hint. He pointed toward town. “That way,” he said. “About a half mile or so.”
The main road into town had thankfully been cleared, too, and the short drive was smooth. As we neared what I thought was the half-mile point, I slowed to a crawl.
“Are you sure it was this direction?” I asked. There wasn’t a car anywhere in sight.
Mack was staring out the window. “Yeah, I’m positive.”
“You sure you didn’t come from the other direction?” It made the most sense that he would have come in through Winslow and Latney, especially considering the fact that he’d been driving from Harrisonburg, but I knew some of the country roads crisscrossed, and it wouldn’t have been unheard of for his GPS to route him a different way. I’d had enough crazy adventures with the map app on my phone to know that the algorithms didn’t always find the shortest route.
“I’m positive.” He was still looking out the window, his eyes searching the shoulder of the road, a frown etched on his face.
“How do you know?” I wasn’t trying to be argumentative. “I mean, it was dark out, and with the snow it probably all looked the same...” I scanned the side of the road. “And there aren’t any tire tracks...”
“It snowed most of the night,” he said. “And the road has been plowed, so any tracks have probably been covered up.”
He had a point.
He pointed at the windshield, to a mile marker jutting out from a snow bank. “Mile marker 23,” he said. “This is it, right here. I skidded into the ditch right next to it. Thought I was going to hit it.”
“And you’re sure it was this mile marker?” I asked doubtfully.
“Absolutely,” he said, nodding. “I remember the number. It...it has special significance.”
“Oh?” I asked, my lip curling into a sardonic smile. “Is that how old you tell people you are or something?”
“Ha ha,” he said, not laughing at all. “Close, but not quite.”
Mack was about as close to 23 as I was. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure I was closer. “What is it, then? I know it’s not your birthday.”
“You sure you wanna know?” he asked, squinting at me.
Now I was curious. I nodded.
“Fine.” He expelled a breath. “It’s the number of women I’ve slept with.”
SIX
Mack had definitely given me too much information.
I didn’t respond with anything more than a grunt to that announcement. And, after spending several minutes waiting in the car while Mack canvassed the area he swore he’d left his car, we turned around on the road and headed back to my house.
And Mack had started to make some calls.
I was in the kitchen, stacking the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and contemplating what we might have for lunch. It wasn’t time to eat yet, but I’d only had one muffin for breakfast and I’d burned a lot of calories shoveling snow. I was hungry.
Mack’s voice was audible from the living room, and as much as I didn’t intend to eavesdrop, it was hard not to overhear what he was saying.
“What do you mean, you don’t have a record?” he was asking. “Do you just not keep them?” There was a pause. “Wait, let me get this straight. You are a towing company and you only keep written records? Do you even own a computer?”
I pressed my lips together to keep from chuckling. Welcome to rural Virginia, Mack, where everything you thought you knew about the modern world is simply...wrong.
I was eating a muffin when he stormed into the kitchen, his eyes blazing. “I have never talked to so many incompetent people in my life!”
This was saying a lot, especially from Mack. I’d worked with some of his clients, had fielded calls from some of the people he’d had to contact while working cases. I’d encountered enough incompetence during the years spent working in his office to make Latney look positively perfect.
Well, maybe not perfect, but certainly better than some of the stuff I’d experienced at Capitol Cases.
I was pretty sure he was overreacting, but I just gave him a sympathetic look and waited for him to continue. If I knew Mack, he simply needed to vent.
“The local towing company might have towed it,” he said, his tone scathing. “But the man who answered the phone couldn’t be sure because his guy was out with the truck. And he has all the paperwork.” Mack shook his head in disgust. “How can a business function without a computer these days? Huh?”
“Did you check with VDOT?” I suggested. “They sometimes tow, especially when they have to plow.” I didn’t know if VDOT was responsible for the county roads out here or if that fell to county jurisdictions, but I figured it would be worth a shot.
“I’ve called everyone,” Mack said. He fished a muffin out of the basket and tossed it in the air, then caught it. “VDOT, Bueller County government office. At least they have computerized records. And they did not tow it.”
“Well, that’s good,” I said.
He glared at me. “How is that good?”
“Well, at least you’ve narrowed it down. If no government agency towed it, that must mean the local towing company did, right?”
“Wrong.” He frowned. “It means it was probably stolen.”
“Stolen?” I repeated.
He nodded.
“Um, don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions?”
“How?” he asked. “A local company isn’t going to tow a car without getting reimbursed, especially from the side of the road. Now, if it had been parked illegally in a lot or something, sure, I could see that. But out here in the middle of nowhere? You think they see enough cars on the side of the road that they just haul them all in and hope someone will know where to come pick them up?”
“I think you should probably talk to the towing company—”
“I did. And they don’t have computerized records. All the guy could tell me was that he didn’t hear about any calls to this area.” He tossed the muffin higher this time, and a few crumbs broke off and fell to the floor. “So, the logical conclusion is that the car was stolen.”
I didn’t actually think that was a logical conclusion at all. I thought he was overreacting.
But I didn’t say this.
“It’s a nice car,” he continued. “BMW M3. Top of the line.”
<
br /> It sounded to me like he’d just recited the alphabet, not the name of a luxury car. But I just nodded again and said nothing. Mack was upset and I knew from the years I’d worked with him that the best thing to do was to let his anger ride its course—he would settle down eventually.
“I think we need to call the authorities,” he announced.
That was enough for me to break my silence. “What?!”
“The police,” he clarified. “The sheriff’s office. Whoever it is who is in charge of crime out here.”
“No one is,” I said, picturing Sheriff Lewis. It was the truth.
“Oh, come on,” Mack said, frowning. “You have someone out here. Pretty sure you’ve mentioned him before.”
“Sheriff Lewis?”
He nodded.
I groaned. “Okay, he is like the anti-police,” I explained. Mack’s brow furrowed and I continued. “Seriously. He knows nothing about solving crimes. Less than nothing, actually. You can’t call him.”
“My car was stolen, Rainy.” Mack’s expression was stony. “It’s a seventy thousand dollar car.”
My eyebrows shot to my hairline. “You spent seventy grand on a car?”
He didn’t even have the decency to look at least a little sheepish. Instead, he puffed out his chest and said, “I like cars, okay? And BMWs keep their value.”
I just shook my head. Men and their strange relationships with cars had always baffled me. I wanted a car that could reliably get from Point A to Point B, and that had A/C and a decent stereo. With those requirements met, I was pretty much good with anything.
“Look, maybe it wasn’t towed or stolen,” I said, frantically trying to come up with some plausible reason as to why his car wasn’t where he left it, and thus a way to keep him from calling in the sheriff. “Maybe....maybe a good Samaritan hauled it into town for you.”
He gave me a dubious look. “Why would someone do that?”
“Because someone might have seen your car in the ditch and decided it was better to haul it out than let it be towed or hit by a snowplow.”