Oh yeah. He did ask her to dinner tomorrow. She got up and stretched, blinked her tired eyes a lot, and went to her closet to be sure she had something clean and presentable to wear to dinner with Connor. Then she responded to his text.
I’ll be ready. See you then. LK
She added kissy lips and clicked send.
Got a kiss back.
It made her smile all the way back to the laptop where she resumed going through the photos. She kept marking the ones she wanted to either print or look at on a bigger screen, and it was nearly two-thirty in the morning, when she stretched again, yawned, drank more coffee, and kept going. She rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the clock, but she had found some very interesting pictures from the earliest days of the town and there was something about one of them that she could have sworn had some of the look of at least one person in Raging Ford today.
She made a big note to print out number 245 and set it on her night stand, but she was so intrigued that she went back to the laptop and kept going. She found two more that had features tantalizingly familiar but before she could write down the numbers, her alarm went off, and she realized she’d pulled an all-nighter.
Laura dragged herself into the shower, dressed, grabbed a bite to eat, and for once was grateful she had not sold off all the popcorn from the previous day. She partly stumbled down the stairs, grasping the railing to catch herself and opened the shop.
twenty-two
Connor looked at the rings under Laura’s eyes.
She had been filling his brain with various parts of her theories about what happened to Jessica Wright. They all knew the car had been found and a note, but nothing else. She kept chattering on about the bank’s missing funds and someone at the bank with superior technical skills and that’s the person that the police needed to focus on finding.
“For all you know,” she said, pointing her fork at him, “Jessica set this thing up herself to make it look like suicide. I mean there’s lots of possibilities here. I just wish we could have a decent conversation about the case, but you won’t cooperate. And we can’t even talk about the photographs I have. Some of them are very interesting.”
Connor had finished eating and Laura had barely started. They finally had an evening when he was free to go out for dinner, and what he’d gotten was a listless, exhausted woman who was throwing a lot of idea fragments at him.
“You need to slow down a bit. You’re not making much sense. Concentrate more on your health, sleep, and tax customers.”
She looked up from her plate after noting that she hadn’t made much progress on the meal.
“And who will run the shop for me?”
“I just think you’re doing too much, Laura. Put off the family history stuff until after April 15. You have to stop the late nights. You’re not getting enough sleep.”
She waved away his concern. “I’ll be fine.”
“Were you up all night? How did you make it through the day?”
“Piece of pie…cake…or something. Big red easy button.”
“I’ve never seen you like this. You’re cramming too much into your day.”
“You weren’t there when I was in college and taking care of Rose.”
“But you’re not 20 anymore.”
She made a face and turned back to her food, poked at it some more, got a small bite into her mouth.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” she mumbled.
“You’re tied up with this committee thing, too. Everything’s wearing you out. It’s too much. I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t volunteer. I volunteered—was volunteered and didn’t—don’t—like it, either.”
“Now you sound drunk.”
She frowned at him.
“I don’t want a fight with you, Connor. Now you’re making me mad.”
He signaled to the table server for the check.
“Wait. I ‘m not done eating yet. This is good.”
He asked for a container for the rest of her food, which was most of it. She grumbled on the way to his SUV but stopped when she couldn’t climb into it. He helped her up and put on her seat belt.
By the time he got into his seat, she was fast asleep.
•••
Harry Kovacs was pulling into his drive behind the barber shop just as Connor Fitzpatrick was pulling into Laura’s drive. Kovacs saw the sleeping passenger and walked around the fence to watch. This was better than HBO.
“Finally got her drunk, huh?”
Connor gave him a seething glance as he opened his door.
“This girl is so exhausted—I couldn’t even take her out to dinner without her collapsing on me.”
Harry wandered over to Laura’s side and pulled open her door. Took a sniff.
“Nope. Don’t smell any alcohol. Did you drug her?”
“Yeah,” Connor answered as he went to punch in the code on Laura’s back door. He propped the door open and turned on a few lights, grabbed her bag of food and put it in the kitchenette fridge. Then he came back to get Laura.
“You don’t have to convince me, Connor,” Harry said, stepping aside. “I know the girl takes on the world. Need some help?”
Connor had undone the seatbelt and scooped up Laura whose eyes opened partially.
“Are you my handsome prince?” she mumbled.
“Yes, he is,” Harry answered for Connor. “And you better be nice to him.”
“Okay,” she agreed and her eyes closed.
Connor, carrying Laura, pushed his car lock button after Harry closed the passenger door. Kovacs followed him up to the back door.
“I’ll lock it behind you while you get her settled. Then you can leave when you want…or not.”
Harry noticed that Connor actually looked a little angry.
“I have to work tomorrow. Early. And Harry, I don’t want any stories of my bringing Laura home like this going anywhere, especially not to your brother or his newspaper.”
Kovacs zipped his fingers across his mouth.
Inside, it was a struggle for Fitzpatrick to carry her up the stairs. He’d never noticed how narrow the staircase was before, nor how sharp the turns at the bottom. Making it to the top without bashing her head against the railing was the goal, but she was sound asleep and dead weight. Near the top, he grazed her head a bit on the wall, but she only groaned and never wakened.
Connor carried Laura through the living room and back into her bedroom. The bed was neatly made presumably from the day before yesterday. He laid her gently on one side of the bed, slipped her purse off her shoulder and laid it on the nightstand, pulled off her shoes and tossed them to the floor, and yanked the cover and blankets down next to her, then rolled her over to the open side, and made sure her head was on the pillow. Then he pulled the rest of the blankets down and covered her up to the shoulders, clothes and all.
He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her.
Leaned over and kissed her, put a hand on the honey tresses.
“Alarm,” she mumbled.
“Laura, don’t do this to yourself. I love you too much to watch this. Get some rest.”
He leaned to kiss her cheek again then rose to leave, shutting all the lights out on his way.
Harry was still outside.
At Connor’s surprised look, he spoke.
“In case you needed some help. I knew you weren’t staying. You’re too honorable.”
Connor snorted as he punched in the lock code on the back door.
“That’s almost funny. We had our first fight tonight.”
“You mean your first adult fight.”
“Whatever,” Connor said, unlocking and opening the driver’s side door, climbed in. He put on his seatbelt, started the motor, and lowered the window.
“You know, I do try to watch he
r, as does Beth, but she’s so headstrong sometimes.”
“I appreciate that, Harry. Yeah, she hasn’t changed.”
“Would you want her to, Connor?”
Connor shook his head and backed out of the driveway, waved good night to Harry. On his way home, he wracked his brain with how he could take better care of Laura. He loved her just as she was. But she had no one but him and no clue what she was doing to him by stretching herself so thin. Thank God for Harry and Beth. But she was his responsibility, whether she had figured that out yet or not. There were only a couple of options, both of which were okay with him.
But would Laura agree?
•••
Laura awoke the next day to the sounds of alarms, bells, dings, and knocking. The knocking sounded distant. She stretched and tried to drag her weary body out of bed, looked down and saw that she was fully dressed. Trying for a moment to figure out what was going on, she finally remembered going out to dinner with Connor, and getting into a fight with him. But what had happened? She knew she’d been tired, but was it possible she had drunk too much wine? She didn’t remember drinking wine.
Then she saw the note on her nightstand from the day before…or the night before or sometime in the past. She was supposed to print out picture number 245. Had she done that? Who was in the picture? What time was it anyway? What day was it?
She heard the knocking on the shop’s front door again.
Her phone started to ring; she pulled it from her purse and saw it wasn’t Connor.
“Hi, Jenna.”
That’s when she noticed the time: eleven-thirty. The shop should have been opened at ten.
“Laura, where have you been? I’ve been calling you all morning. I have more tote bags for you.”
“I think I overslept,” she began and struggled to her feet. Then she recalled the fight again. “Jenna, can you come over? I had a fight with Connor last night.”
“On my way, darling. Be there in about 25 minutes. Back door.”
Laura’s hair was still wet from her shower, but she was dressed in fresh clothes when she opened the back door for Jenna. As soon as the door was locked behind her friend, she hugged Jenna and tried to stop the tears.
Jenna guided her into the kitchenette and sat her down at the little table.
“Lord knows, I can’t make coffee like yours, but I can make a decent cup of tea. Okay?”
Laura nodded, wiping the tears away.
Jenna poured them each a cup, put in tea bags, and found the brownies from the fridge, put them all on a dish, and sat down with Laura.
“Tell me about it. It can’t be too awful—you and Connor are so made for each other.”
Laura sniffled as she sipped her tea and took a big bite of one of the brownies. She recalled that Connor liked the butterscotch bits in them and felt even worse that she probably had caused whatever the fight was about. If she could only remember what they had said to each other.
“He took me out for dinner and I had been up all night the night before—” she stopped when she realized she couldn’t share with Jenna why she had been up all night.
“Why were you up all night?”
“Oh, some silly project I was doing. I’m putting together a family album and I got on a roll from some high school pictures of Mom. I got all mushy and stayed up the whole night looking at her pictures and remembering. Cried a little.”
“Is that what you and Connor were fighting about? Your Mom’s pictures?”
“Oh no, I was just too tired from losing sleep, and he said he wanted me to slow down and think of myself and my health more. It made me mad. At least I think that’s what we were fighting about.”
“Oh, baby, you know he’s in love with you. He only wants what’s best for you—we all do.”
“I don’t know why I got mad, but I did.”
As Laura spoke the words, she remembered more of the dinner conversation, recalled Connor asking for the check and her getting upset that she hadn’t finished her meal. She realized she must have fallen asleep at some point, and Connor brought her home. What was it Jenna just said? Something about Connor being in love with her? Wait—didn’t Connor say something like that last night? Had she really heard him say that?
More of their conversation in the restaurant came back to her. It had been a mistake to call Jenna over. Laura couldn’t share any of their conversation with her. It was all about the case and…
“I wasn’t good company. I wasn’t nice, I was tired, and Connor was very understanding, but I wasn’t.”
“I can’t imagine you not being nice, Laura. I’m sure Connor knew you were tired.”
“I have to apologize. I don’t know if he’ll even take my call.”
“So he just brought you home and you fell asleep?”
“Yes, he dropped me off and I went to bed.” The white lie slipped out to protect Connor. “I feel sad, though. I don’t think I even said good-night or thanked him for the dinner.”
“Get yourself together, open the shop. Everything will work out; I know it will. Now those bags I brought? I’ll help you set things up for today, and I’ll stay for an hour or two. Will that help?”
Two hours later after Jenna left, Laura had sufficiently pulled herself together that she could laugh with the children in the shop and handle all the sales. But her heart was heavy, and she remembered very distinctly what Connor had said to her.
And he was right. She would have to put aside the family research until after April 15—at least the part of staying up all night.
twenty-three
When Max and Nicky showed up that evening with the big screen television, Laura’s eyes popped. She had two large white boards upstairs, each behind a folding screen and covered with dark sheets. To others’ eyes, it looked like an artistic accent. All her research on the Rage family and the Munley and Dowell lineages was drawn on the two boards. Only Connor and his father knew about it. Even Harry didn’t.
But a television this big was unlike any other she had seen, except in a store. She had to make a space for the big screen TV on the other side of the room, against Harry and Beth’s common wall. Then they stopped, holding the television upright against the railing at the top of the stairs.
“This is amazing,” Laura commented. “Thank you!”
“Yeah, my brother is upgrading, and he just gave me this one. I don’t need it. You can borrow it as long as you want—years, even. My wife is happy to see it go,” Max said.
Upgrading, Laura thought. How did you upgrade from something this big? Then she noticed the pair was just standing there.
“What are we waiting for?” she asked.
“A TV stand,” Nicky said. “It’s coming.”
Laura heard someone come in downstairs and wondered if she’d forgotten to lock the door behind Connor’s friends. Then she heard the familiar tread of footsteps and her heart leaped. Connor’s head appeared then she saw the rest of him carrying up a TV stand.
He nodded to her and saw the cleared spot against the wall. After depositing the stand, he helped Nicky and Max put the television on it, and the three men began working on the cabling and wires. They showed her how to hook up her laptop whenever she wanted.
Connor let them finish up while he came over to kiss Laura.
“Feeling better today? Get a good night’s sleep?”
She nodded and looked toward Max and Nicky.
“They both signed confidentiality agreements with me, so no worries,” he whispered in her ear.
She opened her mouth to say she was sorry about the other night, but he stopped her, a finger to his lips.
After Max and Nicky had been properly thanked and left, Connor plopped onto Frank Keene’s La-Z-Boy, something he hadn’t done in ages and never would have dared while Laura’s father had been alive and in the vicinity. He invited
her to sit on the end of the couch nearest the lounger.
“I’m sorry, Connor. I was so mean—”
“You weren’t mean, Laura. You were exhausted—no, you were beyond exhausted. I came over not just to see if you were okay and to bring the TV stand, but also to tell you a story.”
“Okay. Want a beer?”
“Maybe one.”
He took a long swig of his favorite brand of chilled brew as if he had looked forward to it all day. When he started talking, Laura sat where she’d been told to sit and listened.
“Now, I’m not talking to you about any open case, but I want to tell you a story, just like you told me a story the other day. Last evening at dinner, I thought you weren’t making any sense with what you were telling me, but some of it did make sense and some of it stuck with me. By the way, do you have a bicycle here with you?”
She shook her head.
“It’s in Maryland.”
“We’ll have to fix that. There’s an annual ‘Bike for the Kids’ county fundraiser that’s happening this coming Sunday. It’s to supplement the school lunches. Shannon probably has one you can borrow, if you want to participate.”
“I shouldn’t. We’re too close to April 15, and I still have several returns to finish, at least two of which are going to be challenging.”
“That means you’ll miss it every year.”
She nodded.
“So what story did you want to tell me?”
He looked reluctant to begin.
“Well, just keep in mind it’s only a story. I remembered what you said about needing really good computer skills—remember your comment? Or maybe you don’t. You were mostly out of it.”
“I have no idea what I said at dinner. I just got mad because we couldn’t discuss the case, or you couldn’t and I wanted to, and I didn’t want to leave because the food was so good.”
“You mentioned for something tricky to happen in a computer system, someone would need really exceptional computer skills.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, let me finish my story. And remember, it’s just a story.”
She waited.
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