A Hot Flash of Homicide

by Dawn Dugle

  I nodded and he dragged me over to the entertainment center. There was a new remote control that hadn't been there this morning. "Is that what I think it is?"

  "This," he picked up the remote. "This is your bug sweeper. You turn it on here, and then walk throughout the house. If it stays green, there are no electronic listening devices. If it goes red, that means there's something listening. The closer you get to it, the more red bars it will show."

  He turned off the jammer and walked me throughout the cottage. The remote stayed green the entire time. "See? No bugs."

  "Okay, what happens if I find something? What do I do with it?"

  Luke took me into the kitchen and opened the cabinet underneath the sink. I now had an extra trash can.

  Some women get jewelry from their lov..boyfr...PERSON. I get a trash can that I suspected was for something other than typical household trash and recycling. I said as much to him.

  "You're very smart, mi amor. This is a bug disposal unit," he opened up the can. "This material that looks like sand inside actually dampens the signal. The metal on the outside of the can is designed to contain the signals, so nothing gets out. It's like a mini Faraday cage."

  "What's a Faraday cage?" I tilted my head to the side and wondered when I had started dating James Bond.

  "It's a container that is built to block electromagnetic fields. If you put a live bug in there, and close the lid, it won't keep sending your information to whomever placed the listening device in the first place."

  "But the bug will still be active."

  "Right. After you do a sweep, if you find something, you'll want to turn on the jammer and put the bug in here. Our team can later trace the transmission back to the source."

  "What do I do when it's in the containment unit? Call Ghostbusters?" I laughed.

  "Something like that," he smiled and handed me a business card that was all black and had a silver phone number printed on one side. "You call this number and tell them your code name and they'll come get the unit."

  "My codename?"

  "Ginger."

  "Damn it, Luke!"

  He grinned, then grabbed me close to him. "You said it was my choice to pick what people called you!"

  "I didn't mean that was going to be forever! I hate being called a ginger!"

  "It's just a code word, mi amor. If you want to change it, we will."

  I pulled back from his embrace. "What does that mean? Me am-or?"

  "Mi amor. It means 'my love.'"

  My heart rate sped up, my ovaries cried out for connection and my already soaking wet panties were starting to chafe. "I think it's about time you showed me how much you appreciate me."

  "Anytime mi amor. Anytime."

  He took my hand and led me into the bedroom where he showed me his appreciation, multiple times.

  Multiple.

  Times.

  I lost count after five.

  ∞∞∞

  Chapter Thirty-One

  SATURDAY

  Luke and I were on a private beach, wearing practically nothing. I was under a cabana, because Oprah knows, my super-sensitive-redhead skin would burn just by thinking about the sun. I was finishing up slathering on the SPF 207, when I looked up to see Luke emerge from the ocean. The God Among Men apparently was Poseidon. Or a mer-man. Or something equally sexy that I couldn't put into words just then.

  Luke's muscles were appropriately oiled down, showcasing his eight-pack abs, strong shoulders, arms thick with ropy muscles and his legs. OMG. The muscles in his legs looked like they were about to pop right out of his skin and I wondered if I put a walnut behind his knee if he could crack it.

  I mean, he probably could. There were a bunch of muscles there and if we were stuck somewhere without a nutcracker, I guess that would do in a pinch. Right? Then I smacked myself in the head. Stupid Wysdom. Why was I worried about walnuts when my lov...boyfr...PERSON looked like a human slip and slide?

  It would probably be a bumpy ride, but totally, totally worth it.

  Back to Luke... who had just walked out of the ocean. His hair was wet and he reached up with his strong hands to slick the hair back from his face. Little droplets of water flew off all around him, catching sunlight and turning into prisms.

  He was walking in slow-motion towards me, Baywatch-style, because that's how I roll. When he finally reached the cabana, a delicious slo-mo walk and muscle shake later, he leaned down to tell me something amazing, probably.

  Then, he balled up his fist and knocked on my forehead.

  I pulled back and stared at him. "What the HELL Luke!?"

  "Open up!" He yelled at me.

  "What?"

  I jerked awake in a puddle of drool. Hey, you'd be drooling too if you'd seen what I had seen in my dream.

  "Open up! Flamingo Cove Police Department. Open the door Wysdom, don't make me break it down!"

  I sat straight up in bed, grabbing for the sheets. Luke was already standing up and putting on pants. He tossed my robe at me. "What in the world is going on?"

  "I have no idea," I hastily tied the robe around my waist and headed toward the front door. I looked out the peephole and could see what looked like the entire police force on my front yard."Shit!"

  I opened the door. "What's going on?"

  Kirk Chamberlain pushed his way in and jammed a piece of paper towards me that I clutched to my chest. "We have a warrant to search your house, Wysdom."

  "Let me see that!" Luke grabbed the paper from me and scanned it. He frowned and shook his head. The warrant was legitimate.

  "What exactly are you looking for?" I demanded.

  Diana had entered with Kirk and some other officers, in essence corralling Luke and me in my living room. I looked around. Tripp was nowhere in sight. This was bad.

  Kirk pulled on latex gloves, then opened up my freezer. He rooted around until he stopped, then pulled out something wrapped in plastic. A very suspicious-looking plastic.

  My stomach dropped out of my body. "What the hell is that?"

  Kirk opened the plastic to reveal a bloody palette knife with a broken tip. "Looks like a murder weapon to me."

  I couldn't wrap my head around what was happening. I felt like I was swimming through pudding when the officers cuffed Luke and took him away. Diana was standing in front of me, saying something that I couldn't hear. She eventually slapped my face to get me to snap out of it.

  "What?" I shook my head and touched my hand to where I'd been slapped.

  "Sergeant Wysdom Ward, you are hereby relieved of duty. You are suspended without pay and I will need your badge and your weapons," Kirk leveled his stare at me.

  "What?" I asked again.

  Diana shook my shoulders. "Wysdom, you're going to be arrested as an accessory after the fact in the murder of Claire Rousseau. Where are your badge and your weapons?"

  I opened the safe and let Kirk remove my guns. Then, I handed over my badge.

  "Get dressed. We're taking you downtown," Kirk turned on his heel and left.

  Diana read me my rights and asked me if I understood. I numbly nodded at her, then she allowed me into my bedroom so I could get dressed. I put on yoga pants, a sports bra, tank top and a black hoodie. I tied my tennis shoes and stood up. "Now what?”

  ∞∞∞

  I was hauled downtown to the police precinct and kept in an interrogation room for hours while Kirk and his team decided what to do with me. They didn't photograph or fingerprint me. They just shoved me into a lesser-used interrogation room without recording devices. I wasn't allowed to call Chief Dad, but I was pretty sure he knew where I was. And he still hadn't shown up.

  That burned worse than any hot flash.

  A lot.

  Just when I thought they had forgotten all about me, the door opened.

  Remember how I was hoping I would be there when Diana's Lady Bad Cop finally came to the surface? Yeah. I really wish I could take that back.

  Diana entered the room and slapped down a folder that
was decidedly not empty. "Wysdom, you are in deep shit, I don't even know where to start. You and your lover Lucio Saber, a.k.a. Luke Nelson, conspired to kill Claire Rousseau..."

  "I don't know if we're going with the term 'lover'..." I started.

  She turned a cold eye to me and I shut up. "You managed to insert yourself into the investigation to lead us away from the real killer from the start. Lucio Saber was mad at Claire for breaking off their affair and he killed her in a fit of passion!"

  I started laughing and honestly didn't know if I was going to be able to stop. This was ridiculous. "There was no affair, Diana! And how have I tried to steer you away from him? I'm the one who helped you discover his real name, which then led you to his stash of weapons!"

  "And conveniently, that investigation has been wrenched out of our hands. Tell me, Wysdom, how did you pull that off? Or is that something that your international arms dealer boyfriend did?"

  "Boyfriend? We really haven't talked about labels..."

  Diana slammed her hand down onto the table, which made me jump. "Focus! He's into some really bad shit, Wys. And if you know what is good for you, you'd confess and work out a deal to testify against him."

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Her bad cop was a thousand times scarier than my brother's, but I had never been on this side of the table before.

  "Have you tracked down Nicole Burns?" I asked.

  "Yes. And she had a legitimate contract with Claire Rousseau."

  I frowned. That was the last lead we had. And if I couldn't come up with a better suspect, I was going to be hard-pressed to get myself or Luke out of jail. "What about Seth Campbell and the mystery woman he was arguing with behind his gallery?"

  "Damn it, Wysdom! We have no evidence against Mr. Campbell."

  "Did you go look at his plastic?"

  "Yes. He allowed us, as a courtesy, to look at his roll of plastic that keeps for drop cloths. The edges didn't match up to any of his samples."

  "That's because he ditched it! I don't know how he learned you were coming to look for it, but he did!" My voice was edging higher and I was getting pissed. "He did it, I just don't know how to prove it."

  "Stop trying to throw suspicion onto someone else!" Diana yelled.

  I sat back and calmed down. I can do that when some Old Douche wasn't telling me to. "I want to talk to my Uncle Dixon."

  "That's highly inappropriate."

  "Let me talk to my dad."

  "He can't come in here and you know it. Neither can your brothers."

  "Then I want a lawyer," I folded my arms across my chest and sat back in the chair. "Bring me a phone so I can make my call.”

  ∞∞∞

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Someone brought me a phone, but it wasn't Diana. It was Captain Larry Silva.

  Damn it. Could this day get any worse?

  I narrowed my eyes. "I told them I am not talking to anyone else until I get my phone call."

  He placed the phone on the table, leaned back and crossed his arms. "Good, because I'm not here to ask you anything. I need to talk to you, and it's best if you listen."

  That got my attention, but I didn't say a word.

  "You've been unfairly kept from succeeding in this department," he started. "And I am part of the problem."

  My jaw dropped to the ground. "Say what now?"

  He held up his hand. "During the Jeffrey Rose investigation, I know you made a mistake. It's a mistake any one of us could make. During my first year as a detective, I trusted a source when she told me about a possible bank robbery. I was excited, because this was the kind of arrest that would make my career. With her sworn affidavit, we had enough for a warrant and raided her boyfriend's house, but he wasn't there.

  "We found the plans for the heist. We found his weapons, but we also found my source's body. You see, she was pissed at him for ignoring her while he planned the bank heist. She wanted all of his attention, and thought that if we interrupted his plans, she'd get her boyfriend back. What she didn't count on was when she told him the police were on the way, he realized the only way she would know that would be if she snitched. He killed her then took off."

  "Did you ever catch him?" I asked.

  "Yes. He and his crew decided to hit another bank, but because they weren't as prepared, they ended up killing a security guard and shooting a five-year-old boy in the face. The boy survived, but suffered so much brain damage that he couldn't live a regular life. After a long standoff, we arrested the bank robber, and his crew. He was still pissed at his girlfriend for turning him in, even though she was dead.

  "If I had done my due diligence, I would have done kept a closer eye on him. Maybe then my source and the security guard would have lived, and that little boy would have lived a long and healthy, normal life. Those maybes keep me up at night and are the stuff of my nightmares."

  I looked down at my hands, but said nothing.

  Silva continued. "We've all made mistakes. We all have things in our past that we kick ourselves for on a daily basis. That's the mark of a great cop, caring about the ramifications of what we do. If you didn't think about them, I'd be worried.

  "Initially, when we turned down your promotion to detective, it was to make sure that you learned how to handle the consequences of when things went wrong. But over time, I realized that we actually did you a disservice. We made you doubt yourself for a mistake from two decades ago."

  I. Was. Furious. "That's it? You just come in here and tell me a police officer cautionary tale and hope that I forgive you and Fairchild for keeping me from being a detective? That's bullshit and you know it!"

  Silva put his hands up. "Fairchild has actually always been rallying for your promotion."

  "Then you and Sweeney blocked me?"

  "Nope. Just me."

  "But I thought..."

  "We don't have to have consensus to block a promotion, Sergeant Ward. If just one of us objects, then the promotion is denied."

  My eyes got wide, my blood pressure spiked, my PMI went to 15 and I stood up, yelling: "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!"

  The only thing that saved Captain Silva from my wrath is that he didn't tell me to calm down. Wise move. What he did say was: "I am very sorry. So sorry. If I could do it over again differently, I would."

  I sat down, shaking my head. I couldn't believe this. All this time I had been blaming Captain Sweeney for blocking my promotion. I knew Fairchild had forgiven me, but I just knew it was Sweeney and Silva who were against me. All this time, it had just been Silva.

  "I know you're going to sort all of this Rousseau stuff out," he said quietly. "And when you do, I'm going to push to promote you to detective, retroactive to the date of the initial request. You'll receive back pay and it will increase your pension."

  I stared at him in disbelief. "Why would you do that?"

  "Because I was wrong. I didn't mean to make you doubt yourself. You're a great cop. You're an even better detective, and it's high time you had the title."

  I was saved from saying anything to him when the phone rang.

  "What's that?" I pointed.

  "Oh yeah, I brought your phone in here. It has been ringing off the hook for the past few hours."

  I looked down at the phone that definitely was not mine. "Where did you get this and how did you know it was mine?"

  "It was charging in the conference room," Silva shrugged. "It had your name on it."

  My heart beat faster. Claire's phone. I looked down at the screen, and saw it was the pharmacy calling her. I swiped open to answer. "Hello?"

  "Mrs. Reddy? This is the Flamingo Cove Pharmacy. We've been trying to get in touch with you about your prescription. It's ready, if you still want it."

  "Refresh my memory, which prescription is that?"

  "The prescription for antibiotics that was called in on the 27th," the woman on the other end of the line said. My stomach started fluttering.

  "Oh yes. The antibiotics. And which doctor c
alled it in?"

  "Dr. Harold Evans," the woman replied. I thanked her and hung up.

  "Who was that?" Silva asked.

  "That was a lead," I responded.

  "Why are you smiling?"

  "Because it's not every day I get to torture an Old Douche for answers," I smiled bigger.

  I didn't have the passcode for Claire's phone, so Silva handed over his. I called Dr. Evans' office and got his answering service. I told them it was a matter of life and death and I needed him to call me back right away at this number.

  It took him four minutes to return the call, which I answered on the first ring.

  "This is Dr. Evans. Is this Wysdom Ward?"

  "Yes it is Doc."

  "How can I help you?" He sounded nervous, like I was going to throat punch him through the phone. I currently didn't know how to do that, but I had to wonder if Luke had some sort of secret-squirrel-spy gadget that could do that for me. Maybe I'd ask him when this was all over. Dr. Old Douche cleared his throat.

  "Ahem, yes. I need to ask you about a patient," I started.

  "Now Ms. Ward..."

  "That's Sergeant Ward, thank you. And before you start reciting the privacy laws, let me tell you - this patient was murdered."

  "Privacy laws still apply here, Sergeant Ward," Dr. Old Douche reminded me of why I gave him the nickname in the first place.

  I took a deep breath. "I understand that, Doc. But here's the thing. I could get a warrant to take a look at Cathy Reddy's medical records. During the time it takes to do all that, her murderer could strike again. I'm not asking for the whole entire thing, I'm just wanting to know why you prescribed antibiotics for her on the day she died."

  Dr. Evans was so quiet, I thought he had hung up on me. I looked at the screen and could see that his call was still connected. I was about to ask if he was still there, when I heard him sigh.

  "She had a bacterial infection."

  My heart started racing. "Would that cause someone to have a fever?"