Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door

by Lucy Score

  “No. Just doused with beer.” She tried shrugging out of his grip, but he wasn’t having it.

  “You were supposed to keep an eye on her,” he growled at Gabe.

  “I kept both eyes on Riley,” Gabe told him. “I also punched many faces defending her honor.”

  “I told you this was a stupid fucking idea,” Nick complained.

  “It was fine until the bar fight,” she shot back.

  “You got in a bar fight while working undercover?”

  “Riley started the bar fight,” Gabe corrected him. “She hit a man in the face with a tray, and I got to throw him in the gutter.”

  Nick let her go and pinched his nose between his fingers before starting to count backward from ten. When he got to one, he shook his head and started over again. “This is why I don’t work with amateurs,” he muttered in the middle of his third countdown.

  “Excuse me!” Riley was offended. “This amateur confirmed there’s illegal gambling happening there and brought you this.” She fished the envelope out of her apron and slapped it to Nick’s chest.

  “What’s this?”

  “The LLC name of Dickie’s silent partner. You’re welcome. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m going to go take a shower and get a few hours of sleep before I have to get up for my real job. So you—” She drilled Nick in the shoulder with her finger. “—can go home and thank me tomorrow.”

  She trudged up the stairs.

  “I hope you’re proud of yourself because that was your last shift,” Nick called after her.

  “Indeed. Riley was fired for starting the altercation,” Gabe told him.

  Riley brought both hands above her shoulders and extended her middle fingers. “You’re welcome,” she sang out.

  31

  5:04 p.m., Tuesday, June 30

  Nick leaned against the fender of his SUV and waited for Riley to walk out the door. Sullivan, Hartfield, Aster, Reynolds, and Tuffley’s offices were crammed into conjoined row homes. The facades clashed. The floor levels didn’t line up. And, judging from the looks on every exiting employee’s face, the environment was a soul-sucking black hole of timecards, micromanagement, and watercooler drama.

  He counted his blessings. Unlike the guy with the mustard stain on his embroidered SHART button-down, Nick had caught an early workout at the gym and then spent the afternoon playing armed security for a lawyer downtown who had pissed off an aggressive interior designer in the same building.

  Behind Mustard Stain, the door opened again, and out stepped Riley. She was wearing what Nick considered to be the office uniform—muted, depressing tones that covered every inch of interesting body real estate.

  She whipped off her mud brown cardigan, revealing a sleeveless, high-necked shirt and lifted her pretty face to the sky like a prisoner enjoying her daily allotment of fresh air. Little did she know, he was here to rescue her.

  Riley spotted him and stutter-stepped.

  He grinned with just a hint of arrogance. He liked having that effect on her. It made up for the unsettling anticipation he felt every time he knew he was going to see her. It was like moths or manly fire-breathing dragons in his gut. They probably would have gotten bigger and floppier had she smiled at him. But she was giving him a cool glare.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said, opening his passenger door for her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Run out of other people to yell at and overreact to?”

  Since another group of hamsters freed from the wheel walked out behind her, he decided to press his luck. He reached for her and tugged her in for a quick, hard kiss.

  A middle-aged man in a lemon yellow short-sleeved dress shirt made kissy noises as he passed them.

  “Hi,” Nick said, drawing back.

  This time, Riley’s glare came from slightly dazed eyes. Damn. He was losing his touch. Her knees should have been quivering. He was about to give it the ol’ college try when she slapped a hand to his chest.

  “What do you want, Nick?” she asked, extricating herself from his grip.

  “I thought I’d take you for coffee.”

  “After you apologize for acting like a child, of course.”

  “Sure. After you apologize for taking unnecessary risks.”

  “I don’t feel like coffee.”

  “What do you feel like?” he asked.

  “Punching you in the face.”

  “Come on, Thorn. Don’t be like that.”

  “Sorry, but once you’ve hit one guy in the face with a tray, you’re filled with blood lust.”

  “Let’s talk about it over coffee,” he suggested, upping the charm and flashing his dimples.

  “Nope.”

  “Come on. I’ll buy, and I’ll pay you for your time.”

  “You do realize you’re being completely transparent, right? You want something from me, and it’s not a coffee date.”

  The whole psychic thing made it a lot harder to charm his way around her defenses.

  “Fine. I’m meeting Jonesy for coffee in fifteen minutes.”

  “Ex-girlfriend Sergeant Jones?” Riley asked, at least looking mildly interested now.

  “I wouldn’t say girlfriend,” he hedged.

  She started to walk away.

  “Okay. Fine,” he said, stepping in front of her to thwart her exit. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. Jonesy and I never had the relationship talk, so you’re welcome to call her an ex-girlfriend even though I wouldn’t and she wouldn’t. I want you to go with me because people tell you things they wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

  She turned and patted him on the face. Hard. It was one step down from a slap. “There. That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

  He grinned. “Is that a yes?”

  “What are you trying to get out of her?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I want to know where Weber’s investigation stands.”

  She fished a pair of sunglasses out of her bag and put them on. “And you think she’ll tell us.”

  “I think she’ll reassure my fiancée that the cops are doing everything they can to catch the killer.”

  “Please.” She snorted. “I can tell you what the cops are doing. Detective Weber’s been following me like I’m a homicidal maniac ready to kill again.”

  “Following you?” Nick’s protective hackles were up. “When? Where?”

  “He followed me the first time I went to your office. I saw him again when I went to yoga, and he was outside the hot dog place when I took my lunch break today.”

  “I’m gonna kick his ass,” he muttered.

  “Yeah. Pretty sure that’s illegal,” she pointed out.

  “He knows you didn’t have anything to do with Dickie’s murder,” Nick snapped.

  “Keep it down, big mouth,” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure none of her co-workers were within eavesdropping range. “He knows that I had prior knowledge.”

  “You’re a psychic, not a murderer.”

  “Will you shut up?” she hissed.

  He took out his phone and stabbed at the screen.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m canceling coffee with Jonesy so I can go kick Weber’s ass.”

  Riley groaned and actually stomped her foot. “No. You’re not. Let’s go get some stupid coffee.”

  “You’re just saying that so I won’t kill Weber.”

  She sighed. “Well, we can’t both be murder suspects, now can we?”

  Nick found a small parking space two blocks from the cafe and stuffed his SUV into it.

  “Wait. Where are we going?” Riley asked, looking stricken in the passenger seat.

  “Little Amps,” he told her.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “You can go beat up Detective Weber.”

  “What? You have a thing against good coffee?”

  “No, smartass. I love this place.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” he asked.

  “The last ti
me I was here, I gave the barista a warning. From her dead great-grandmother.”

  He laughed. “Hang on! You were the mysterious stranger who told the girl at the register to get her lymph nodes checked?”

  She groaned. “You heard about that?”

  “The entire city did. It was all over the news. What’s the problem? You and the dead grandma were right,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah. And now, if I go back in there, I’m the weirdo who talks to dead grandmas. It’s bad enough dealing with it on my own. I don’t need a bunch of people asking me to seek out their dead relatives,” she complained.

  “So you’re not looking to land your own reality TV show?” he teased.

  She growled. Riley Thorn was really fucking cute when she was pissed off.

  “Relax, I’ve got this covered.”

  Two minutes later, they slunk into the cafe with Riley wearing a Santiago Investigations ball cap low over her eyes with her dark hair fed through the back in a tail.

  She relaxed microscopically when she looked behind the register, and Nick guessed the barista she feared wasn’t working.

  Sergeant Mabel Jones was waiting for them at a too-small table in the back of the shop. She looked fresh and relaxed in hot pink workout pants and a t-shirt. She might have been out of uniform, but the way she’d put her back to the corner and eyed the room screamed “cop.”

  “Jonesy,” Nick said, greeting her with a hug.

  “Hey, Nicky. Riley, good to see you.”

  “Hi,” Riley said, taking a seat.

  Nick took the chair between the two women.

  “I still can’t wrap my head around it. Nick ‘The Forehead’ Santiago finally settling down. We had bets around the precinct that it was fake,” Mabel said.

  He closed his hand around Riley’s knee and gave her a not-too-gentle squeeze. “Real deal here,” he insisted.

  “Good for you,” Mabel said, picking up her fancy, frothy beverage.

  “I’ll make the coffee run,” Nick told Riley.

  “Thanks. I’ll take…” She glanced at Mabel and smiled. “The usual.”

  Another reason why he didn’t date. Being single carried with it zero requirements to memorize anyone’s coffee order or shoe size or birthday. If Riley wanted something specific, she should have told him. Now she’d have to learn her lesson.

  Wandering up to the counter, he ordered himself a black coffee and Riley a pink unicorn frappe-something with whipped cream and sprinkles. There was a collection jar next to the register to help with the pink-haired barista’s medical expenses. He dropped a ten in the jar.

  The women were leaning in now, their voices low. It occurred to him the kind of conversation that could be happening between an ex-sex partner and a perceived current one. Mabel burst out laughing and looked his way.

  Dammit.

  His order came up, and Nick hustled the drinks back to the table. He plopped the unicorn concoction down in front of Riley.

  “You’re so funny,” she said, smiling sweetly as she swapped the drinks. She took a smug sip of his black coffee. “Sergeant Jones was just telling me a few stories about when you were a cop.”

  “Oh, great,” he said.

  “I was telling Riley about the time you tripped over a dog during a foot chase, got pissed off, and tackled the suspect in a kiddie pool,” Jones said, clearly enjoying herself. “It popped, and water went everywhere!”

  “Enough about me,” he said. “Jonesy, tell Riley what’s going on with the investigation so she can start sleeping again at night.”

  “I don’t have a lot of information,” Mabel said with guarded sympathy. Just because Nick had once been a cop, it didn’t earn him an open line of communication. “I will say this isn’t throwing any red flags where we have concerns that the killer would come back. It looks like Dickie was the intended victim.”

  “Any motives yet?” Nick pushed. He stroked a hand over Riley’s back. He didn’t know if it was acting or instinct that had her leaning into him, but he kinda liked it.

  “Detective Weber hasn’t been… forthcoming,” Riley added.

  “Can’t say as I blame him,” Jones said, shooting Nick a pointed look.

  “Is that why he’s treating my fiancée like a suspect?” he shot back. He forgot what he was doing and took a sip of unicorn garbage.

  The sugar exploded on his tongue. Was Instant Diabetes a thing?

  “Nicky, you know I can’t comment on that,” Jones said.

  “If Detective Douchebag is spending his time following her around, he’s not looking for the actual killer,” he said.

  Riley put her hand on his knee, and he realized he’d been shaking his leg.

  “I think what Nick is trying to say,” Riley said, giving him a pointed look. “Is that I didn’t have anything to do with this, and if Detective Weber is only looking at me, the real criminal is out there possibly murdering more uncles.”

  He could see Jones softening.

  “Look, Detective Weber is just doing his due diligence. Honestly, homicide is swamped. I’m not saying that the department isn’t concerned that your uncle was killed,” she said. “But we’ve got a heavy caseload right now.”

  Riley nodded but didn’t speak.

  Jones pursed her lips. “If it makes you feel any better, we are pursuing other leads.”

  “Of the illegal gambling kind?” Nick asked, all charm now.

  “I heard you got hired. You’re not going to turn this into some pissing contest, are you, Santiago?” she asked wearily.

  “If I happen to solve the case first, it’s not really a contest, is it?”

  “So where’s the ring?” Jones asked, changing the subject. “Sergeant Fillmore says there’s no ring because you’re lying, and Hooten in the coroner’s office says it’s because you’re a cheap bastard.”

  Nick, in the middle of his second foray into diabetes, sputtered whipped cream all over the table.

  Riley handed him a napkin. “It’s getting sized. He didn’t know what my ring size was and got a band that would fit a linebacker,” she said.

  “That’s so on-brand for Nicky,” Jones agreed.

  “So why do you call him The Forehead?” Riley asked.

  “Okay. No more getting to know each other,” Nick snapped. “I forbid you from speaking to each other.”

  The women were still laughing when a new voice observed, “Isn’t this cozy?”

  Jones’s eyes widened when Detective Dickhead pulled up a chair.

  Fuck.

  “What are you doing, Web? Stalking my fiancée some more?” Nick asked.

  “Maybe,” he said, straightening his stupid suit jacket.

  “If she’s your main suspect, you are way behind, my friend,” Nick scoffed at his ex-partner.

  “I’m not your friend, pal,” Weber snapped. “And my investigation is none of your business.”

  “If you were half the cop you pretend to be, you’d know she’s clean,” Nick snapped. “Looks like I took the pretty face and the brains when I left the force.”

  That point landed squarely in a sore spot, he thought with satisfaction as Weber’s eyes narrowed.

  “Let me remind you again that if you get in my way with this investigation, I’ll have no problem throwing a few charges your way.”

  “I’m not the one in your way, Detective Derp. I’m way ahead of you.”

  “Careful there, Santiago. Be very careful,” Weber warned, his tone steely.

  “Hey, who’s Beth?” Riley piped up, her nose twitching.

  “Oh, shit,” Jones sang under her breath.

  Both Nick and Weber froze. They turned to look at Riley. She was blinking rapidly as if she’d just woken up from a nap. Nick was new to this pretend relationship, but he still recognized the tell. She was getting some message from the beyond. It made his intestines turn to ice.

  “Look at the time,” Jones said, sparing her bare wrist a glance like she was looking at an invisible watch. “I gotta go
very far from here.”

  “We’ll discuss this later, Sergeant,” Weber assured Jones.

  “Oh, I figured,” she said and hauled ass for the door.

  “Look, she wasn’t gossiping about your half-assed investigation,” Nick said. “Jonesy’s a good cop.”

  “What would you know about being a good cop?” Weber sneered.

  Nick wanted to throw his unicorn drink in the man’s face and then follow it up with a nice right hook.

  “I know that following Riley around like she’s some kind of criminal is a complete waste of your fucking time. I know that Frick was running a little action on the side out of his bar. And I know he didn’t keep the nicest company.”

  “Yeah? Like Fat Tony. Did you also know that Frick was up to his bloodshot eyeballs in debt to him?” Weber shot back.

  “Please. Fat Tony doesn’t assassinate debtors,” Nick scoffed. “I’d say you’re losing your edge, but you never had one.”

  “Fuck off, loser.”

  “Make me, shit weasel.”

  Nick didn’t realize they were standing toe-to-toe until Riley shoved her way between them. “Can you both try to remember that you’re adults? With an audience. Everyone is staring,” she hissed.

  The cafe had gone so quiet that they could hear the folksy guitar music twanging from the speakers. Every pair of eyes was glued to them.

  Nick took a mock bow. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you’d like to see more from our improv troop, come on out to Theatre Harrisburg on Tuesdays at noon.”

  There was confused, scattered applause.

  Weber wasn’t amused. “Stay out of my way, Nick. And Ms. Thorn?” He shifted his attention to Riley. “If you step one toe out of line, I will bring you in, and we’ll have a nice long chat,” he said.

  She looked like she was going to barf.

  “You made your point, asshole. You’ve harassed your witness. Move the fuck along.” Nick stayed on his feet and watched the detective leave. Once he was out the door, he sank back in his chair and took a long hit of pink and green sugar. “I fucking hate that guy.”

  “Who’s Fat Tony? Who’s Beth?”

  Nick drummed his fingers on the table and stared at a spot over Riley’s head. “Fat Tony owns the casino. He’s got a history as a biggish bookie. Much bigger fish than Dickie. He’s been known to rough up a guy every now and then, but he’s a businessman at heart. He wouldn’t kill over a debt. He’d find a way to squeeze him dry.”