“Goodness, Noelle! Did you hear?” Rosie gasps as soon as the door shuts behind me.
“Hear what?”
“Lena! Married. With a baby!” She shakes her head and pushes some stray hair from her face. “Why, I can’t believe it. How did she keep that secret?”
“I don’t quite know,” I say quietly. “Can I get a low-fat vanilla frap and two slices of your cherry pie?”
“Sure thing, sugar.” She busies herself with my order. “I’m so darn confused. And Ryan—that poor boy! How’d he cope with the news?”
“Not well,” I admit. Although “not well” is somewhat of an understatement.
“And the case? He hired you?”
“Hired me, fired me.” I shrug and hand her a twenty.
She clutches a hand to her chest and leans forward. “But you are still investigating?”
I take the box containing my pie and bring my coffee to my mouth, my lips slowly curving at the sides. “Now, Rosie,” I say, heading for the door. “I never outstep my bounds. I’m surely sittin’ by and lettin’ the police finish out the investigation.”
Rosie shakes her head, grinning. “Surely, Noelle. I believe you, sugar.”
With a wink, I push my way outside, the bell over the door tinkling. Back at my car, I nestle my pie box onto the passenger’s seat and deposit my coffee cup in the cup holder in the center console. As I drive home, my mind wanders.
How did Lena keep her other life a secret?
And how does Daniel fit into all of these things?
It crosses my mind that I haven’t spoken to Claire Santiago, the woman whose toyboy he was. Of course, I know that their relationship disintegrated when I informed her husband. She groveled—a.k.a. gave him a ton of blow jobs and participated in his dream of a threesome with a woman from out of town—and their marriage is back on track.
There are some damn weirdos in this town, I tell you.
But, still, if Claire and Daniel had any semblance of a relationship left…
I pull up in my driveway and text Bekah before I get out of the car, telling her to call Claire and see if she saw Daniel before he died. That done, I tuck my phone between my boobs, balance my coffee on top of my pie box, and walk to my house.
I’ve barely opened the door when I get the sense that something is wrong.
I carefully set the box and coffee down on the hall table, looking through the house. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
Silence answers me.
Clearly, I’m working too much right now. I need a day off. If only the murderer could come clean.
Shaking my head, I grab my treat and coffee and take them into my front room. I pull my boots off and remove my gun from its holder around my ankle, setting the bright-pink weapon down on my coffee table.
And I wonder why people underestimate me.
A pink 9mm tucked into six-hundred-dollar cowboy boots.
I have to be the girliest badass in Texas.
The thought brings a smile to my face as I head into my kitchen and grab a fork from the drawer to eat my pie. I’ll also be the biggest girliest badass in Texas if I keep up this cake addiction I have going on, especially if my caseload means I can’t get my ass to the gym.
Mind you, this case has me running around so much that it doesn’t matter.
Ah—the old case. Lena’s murder is no longer my case. Officially. I’m in way too deep to get out. Although using my common sense and stepping away from this investigation like everyone is telling me to will mean I don’t have to see Detective Dreamy.
Detective Dreamy?
Holy shit. I glare at the pie.
“How much damn sugar is Rosie putting in you? I’m freakin’ hallucinating now.”
Or not.
Drake is kinda dreamy. And then, of course, he opens his mouth and ruins the whole thing.
I sigh, digging my fork into the sticky cherry goodness. Typical of most males, though. They’re real pretty till they talk to you.
After one slice of pie, I’m definitely full. I close the box and set the fork down, grabbing the notebook I always keep in the drawer of my coffee table. I unclick my pen, and leaning back on the sofa, I call forward every fact I know about this case.
Two people I know have been murdered, possibly connected via me, possibly not. Both in the same brutal way, both deliberately positioned on property I own. Both once busted for being bits on the side.
One by one, I write down every last piece of information until I have nothing more than what I started with twenty minutes ago.
“Ugh!” I throw the notepad and pen to the floor and drop my head back. I rest my arm over my eyes and take a deep breath.
This is entirely useless. There are so many questions I have yet to answer. Did Lena and Daniel have a relationship past friendship? Did he see more than he should have that night he died—more than just being the guy her dinner was taken from? What’s the real connection between them? Why did Lena lead a second life in Houston? Why didn’t Daniel turn up until a few days after Lena if he was killed the same night? Where were they killed? Why were they killed? What’s the motive for it? Was it truly Ryan Perkins feeling unhappy about their relationship? Was it Penny, wanting to have a life with Ryan but couldn’t see one unless Lena was dead? Was it Lena’s husband, Dr. Gentry, sick of her screwing around with him? Was it one of Lena’s debtors?
But poison… That’s a woman’s weapon. Simple yet deadly and incredibly easy to administer. You can kill someone over weeks or months, even years, or you can have them dead in seconds. You can kill slowly or quickly, painfully or painlessly.
Which pins the head on Penny again.
As her assistant manager, she would have had more than enough chances to kill Lena. But if that were true, why not kill her over time? Get her coffee and poison it? It would be easy to lace a coffee jar with poison and only use that for one person by means of hiding it between cups.
Then there’s Mallory—she’s inheriting the life insurance policy. The substantial one, too. That’s a great motive. A lot of money. Enough for her to step out from beneath her father’s shadow. But again—why a quick-acting poison and not a long one?
Or maybe there’s someone in Dr. Gentry’s life. Someone who’s mad that Lena won’t divorce him and let him be happy despite his protestations that he always hoped she’d go back to him and Melly.
These thoughts whirl aimlessly around my head, one after another, colliding but never separating. They’re almost suffocating in their intensity, their confusing and nonsensical jigsaw-shaped pieces never quite fitting together.
Whatever it is, something in this case just isn’t adding up. Everyone has motive and means—until you bring in Daniel.
Why kill him, too?
Why not let him live?
I ponder these last two questions for an endless amount of time before, finally, I grab my gun, check that my alarm is set, and go to bed.
In my dream, I’ve solved a murder, eaten Gigi’s, and had another serious lapse of judgment with Drake Nash. Several lapses, actually. And one was very, very fucking serious. Sweat and hair-pulling and naked-body-and-orgasm kind of serious.
In reality, there’s a bang from inside my house, and I jolt awake. The hairs on my arms stand on end, shivers cascading across my skin with lightning speed. I grab my gun from the nightstand and hold it in front of me, ready to shoot any fucker who gets in my way.
My heart pounds ferociously as I quietly step off the final stair and look around. The house is deathly silent as I move into the living room. I turn the light on. Empty—if you ignore the mess. DVDs removed from their cases, paper strewn everywhere, and when I move into my office, it’s much the same. The contents of my desk are covering the chair and the floor. Some of the sheets are crumpled, others simply thrown carelessly, and there are files and folders brightly decorating the sea of white.
“Motherfucker!” I whisper, clenching my jaw and walking out of the room.
In the kitchen, moonlight illuminates the scene through the large window over the sink. A chair has been knocked over—that was the bang I heard. Several kitchen drawers are also opened, their contents spilled onto the countertop. Moving into the utility, I see what I was looking for.