by Amy Vansant
Please take care of yourself. You’re my precious little girl and you always will be. You have your whole life ahead of you. I hope my insurance payout will help you start your new life. Don’t throw this chance away.
All my love forever,
Grandma
PS: Dump Mark. He’s a terrible person.
Charlotte set down the letter. “Alice killed herself by random draw.”
“I picked the wrong one,” said Mariska, her eyes welling with tears.
Charlotte wrapped her arms around her. “No—you picked the right one. This is what she wanted.”
“Why didn’t she just ask me?”
“Would you have fed her nuts if she asked you to?”
Mariska sniffed. “No.”
“See?”
Mariska pulled a chair out from the dining room table and sat.
“On the phone you said you figured something out. Was this it?”
Charlotte nodded. “Once I thought the letter was left by Alice, it hit me who leaves notes.”
“Suicides.”
“Exactly. Then I started thinking about how her grandmother forbade her to help with the stollen. It occurred to me maybe she didn’t want the girl involved because she knew what could happen. She didn’t want her to feel responsible.”
Mariska scowled. “But it was okay for me to feel responsible?”
“You’re an adult. You’re a friend and not a granddaughter. You can logically understand what happened without everything clouded by youth or guilt over how you may have treated her.”
“I suppose. I don’t feel very logical right now.” Mariska wiped her eyes. “Should we tell Frank?”
Charlotte put her hand on Mariska’s. “Only if we have to. We don’t want to mess up her insurance. If it looks like they’re going to go after Crystal or you, we will. I think they’ve already chalked it up as an accident.”
“But it wasn’t an accident.”
“No. It was a Christmas wish you made come true for Alice. She’d done all she could for Crystal. A little money and the chance to start afresh was the best gift she could give her granddaughter, and you helped her do it.”
“I hope Crystal appreciates it.” Mariska pulled a tissue from her housedress pocket and blew her nose.
Charlotte nodded. “And I hope she breaks up with Mark.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Declan scratched at the tape Charlotte had stuck to his chest to hold the tiny recorder hidden beneath his shirt. It was already pulling at his skin.
“You know this is going to rip all the hair off my chest when we’re done.”
“You’re a swimmer. Aren’t you supposed to shave down?”
He sighed. “Always looking on the positive side. I can’t believe they still tape mics to people like in old FBI movies.”
Charlotte chuckled. “I’m sure they don’t, but this was the best technology I could afford. I bought it from a friend of Tilly’s and he isn’t cheap.”
He looked past her at the Alleycats dance club, where people had lined up to get inside. He hadn’t been to a club in what felt like a million years, and he didn’t like them then. He swallowed.
“I can’t go to a club alone. I’m a guy.”
“Why not? You want to meet girls, right? Isn’t that the point?”
“First of all, girls is sort of the operative word. Most of the people I’m seeing go in there look like they’re twenty.”
“You’re still in your twenties.”
“Barely. And they don’t like to let men in. They want the girls. Not some guy with no friends. I’ll look like some old creeper.”
Charlotte laughed and pulled her polo over her head to reveal a sparkling tank top beneath. “That’s why I’m going in with you.”
Declan felt a wave of relief crash over him. “Whew. Why didn’t you say so?”
“I like watching you sweat. You have no problem marching into the jungle with an AK-47 under your arm but the idea of going into a club alone terrifies you.”
“First off, it was an M16, not an AK.”
“Sorry. That was totally the point. You got me.”
“So why do you need me at all?”
“Because Lyndsey isn’t going to talk to me. She knows I’m a detective working for Mina and even if she didn’t, I’m still some chick. I’m not who she came to meet tonight.”
Declan rolled his eyes. “I don’t think she came to meet me either.”
“She should be so lucky.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “And she’s about to be.”
Declan and Charlotte left the car and headed for the bouncer manning the door. Luckily, what had looked like a line had only been a temporary backup while the burly man checked people’s licenses. Declan had thought it a little odd that any place close to Charity could have a New York-like lineup. Almost as odd as hearing there was a club within a fifty-mile radius at all.
They stepped inside as the throbbing music bounced through their bodies.
“A heebee bajar!” screamed Charlotte.
He leaned close to her. “What?”
“I see her at the bar,” she repeated directly in his ear.
Ah. That makes more sense.
Rimmed with young men and women, the bar glowed with blue under-edge lighting. Declan spotted a woman who looked the most like the girl Charlotte had described to him.
“In the red top?” he screamed back at her.
Charlotte nodded. “I’m going to hide over here,” she said, pointing to the corner. “Go do your magic.”
He grimaced. “I feel like you’re my pimp.”
“You see a gimp?”
“No, I said—nevermind. I’m going.”
Declan made his way through the crowd and squeezed between Lyndsey and another woman who was busy talking to a man on the opposite side of her. Lyndsey seemed alone, using the bar to keep herself propped up more than anything else. He motioned to the bartender.
“Bourbon, neat.”
The bartender poured the caramel-colored liquor into a glass without looking at it and pushed it towards him.
“That’ll be fifteen dollars.”
Yikes. For rail bourbon?
Declan slid a twenty-dollar bill across the bar. “Keep it.”
The bartender nodded once and kept moving.
Declan took a sip, pondering the best way to make Lyndsey notice his presence when, unprompted, she turned to flash him a lopsided smile. Her eyelids didn’t open all the way.
“Your girlfriend drinks bourbon?” she asked.
Subtle.
“It isn’t for my girlfriend. It’s for me.” Declan tried to smile as broadly as possible and then worried his joker’s grin might make him look like a crazy person. He cleared his throat and toned it down a notch.
Lyndsey turned on her barstool to better face him. “What does she drink?”
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have one. I’m Declan.” He held out his hand to shake and she accepted it.
“Lyndsey. You’re here by yourself?”
Think. Why is she alone? Her friends might have left. Try and commiserate.
“I came with buddies but I think they abandoned me.”
Lyndsey grinned, seeming genuinely pleased. “Same thing happened to me. My friend left with a guy who looked like some kind of eighties throwback.”
He chuckled and glanced toward the corner of the room. Charlotte had started dancing with a group of strangers, but her eyes were locked on him. She gave him a thumbs up as if it were part of her dance routine and he laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Lyndsey.
Whoops.
“Nothing. I mean, I was picturing the eighties guy you mentioned. You’re funny.”
The compliment sounded forced to him, but she didn’t seem to mind. She batted her droopy eyelids at him. It was a look he hadn’t seen in a long time, but he knew what it meant.
“You wa
nt to hang out?” he asked. “Maybe get some food? Are you hungry?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m starving. And it’s too loud in here. You want to go?”
He nodded and held out a hand to steady her as she slid off her barstool and landed unsteadily on her heels.
Declan set his half-finished drink on the bar and led Lyndsey through the crowd outside. His ears rang in the relative silence.
“Wow, it was loud in there.” His phone dinged and he pulled it from his pocket. It was a text from Charlotte.
It said, That took all of 2 minutes followed by a smiley face blowing heart kisses. He smiled.
“Who’s that?” asked Lyndsey.
Declan shrugged. “My buddy letting me know he won’t be coming back for me.”
“He scored, huh?” said Lyndsey, fishing in her clutch. She pulled out a lipstick, reapplied, and then pulled out her keys. “I have a car.”
Oh hell no. Getting into a car with Lyndsey would be the most dangerous thing he’d ever done and he’d been in wars.
She wandered towards the parking lot and he followed to the back of a small teal Miata. Declan gaped at it, wondering if he could even fit inside.
She was going to drive that deathtrap home?
“That is a tiny car.”
“Yep. It was my mother’s.”
“Maybe I should drive?” he suggested. “I mean if you don’t mind. I didn’t really have much to drink.”
Lyndsey flashed him an open-mouth smile. “I had a lot to drink.”
No. Really?
“You don’t want to wrap this thing around a tree.”
She held out the keys and he took them.
That was easy.
“Where do you want to go? What’s open?”
She giggled. “My other option was the barn truck and that’s just not sexy,” she said, ignoring his questions, her mind still stuck on her car.
“Barn?”
“That’s where I live. Above a barn. I work with horses.”
“That sounds cool.”
She nodded. “But I won’t be living there much longer.”
“No? Why not?” He helped her into the passenger side and then folded himself into the driver seat, pushing it as far back as it would go, which wasn’t far.
Lyndsey’s head lolled towards him and she grinned dopily.
“Did you ask me something?”
“Why won’t you be living over the barn anymore?”
“Oh. Because I’m rich now.”
“You don’t say. Did you win the lottery?”
“In a way. Come on, let’s go!”
He wanted to encourage her to talk about her inheritance, but she seemed insistent they leave. Hopefully, the breeze created by the convertible would wake her up long enough for him to get more information out of her.
“So where to, m’lady?” he asked, putting the key in the ignition.
She stared at him, the whites of her eyes glowing in the parking lot light. “You’re really handsome.”
“Thank you. You too. I mean pretty.”
She scrunched herself closer to him and he smelled the booze on her breath. Some sort of coconut rum, if he had to guess. She put out her hand and rubbed his chest. His hand jumped off the wheel to block her paw before she felt the tiny recorder taped between his pecs. Between the petting and her coconut rum breath, he felt as if he were being groped by a handsy tropical octopus.
“Oh my god, feel your chest,” she mumbled. “It’s like rock.”
Blocked from reaching the opposite side of him, her hand swept down his stomach to the inside of his thigh.
“Oop.” He jumped and reached to catch her wrist. “Whoa.” He gently eased her back to her side of the car. “You’re going to make it impossible to drive,” he said as friskily as possible. She flopped back and slapped her hand on his knee.
“Take me home, James!” she shouted, raising her other hand before letting it fall to her lap.
“Home? I thought you were hungry. Want to hit a diner?”
She scowled. “There’s no place open now, silly. You like eggs?”
Declan looked at his watch. It was getting close to one a.m. She was probably right.
“Huh? Sure.”
“I’ll make you eggs if you take me home.”
He nodded. “Okay. Deal. Where do you live?”
“You know that big house out on route two-sixteen with all the horse pastures?”
Declan nodded. He did, because Charlotte had prepped him for this very moment. At the time, he hadn’t thought for a second Lyndsey would be asking him home, but now he was glad he’d paid attention.
“Sure. Didn’t someone just die there? It was in the news.”
“Kimber Miller.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Declan pulling from the lot. “Some rich guy. You’re related to him?”
“He was my dad.”
“Really?”
She giggled and nodded in large exaggerated sweeps as he pulled onto the road and headed for her home.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged. “It happens.”
“How did he die?”
Lyndsey sniffed and looked out the passenger window. “He fell and hit his head.”
Something about her tone made it feel as if the conversation had ended, and Declan’s mind raced for a way to keep her talking about Miller’s death.
He heard a heavy breath and glanced over in time to see Lyndsey’s head drop forward. She took another loud inhalation.
Asleep. He wasn’t going to learn much with her in that state.
Declan decided he wasn’t great at covert missions. He preferred to be more direct.
He saw the mansion in the distance and pulled on to the crunchy stone drive.
Did she tell me she lived over the barn? He was starting to get confused between the things Charlotte told him and the things Lyndsey had shared.
I’m pretty sure she told me.
He pulled past the house following a divergent stone path leading from the front parking area toward the back and spotted the barn as he rounded the house. He pulled up to a set of stairs on the side of the barn and parked.
Lyndsey awoke and stared at the barn before turning to him blearily.
“We’re here.”
He nodded.
“Home sweet home.”
He unfolded himself from the Miata and moved to catch her as she struggled to slide from the car. She clung to him like a lapel monkey.
“You are such a gentleman.” Her eyes watered. “You’re so nice to bring me home. Nobody is ever nice to me.”
Oh boy. Here comes the emotional part of our evening.
Declan talked fast to distract her from her tears. “No problem. Where do you live? Upstairs here?”
She nodded. “I’m such a mess.”
“No, no, you’re fine.”
He helped her up the stairs.
“Where are your keys?”
“It’s unlocked.”
He tried the door and found it open. Struggling to get them both through, he picked her up and swept her over the threshold.
She whooped as he lifted her and melted into giggles.
“You’re so strong.”
“You’re just small.”
She beamed as he set her down in a ratty padded chair.
“You want a drink?” she asked, springing back to her feet. She wobbled and he steadied her.
One more drink and she’ll be unconscious. That wouldn’t get her talking. He wanted to tell her what she was doing was dangerous. He had no evil intentions—sure, he wanted to trick her into incriminating herself so she went to prison for murder—but she was lucky he wasn’t a predator. He restrained himself from scolding her like a father-figure. That would kill his chances of extracting what she knew about Miller’s untimely death.
He waved off her drink offer. “Actually, I’m good. Want me to make you something to eat?”
“I was goi
ng to make you eggs.”
“That’s okay. I can make them for you instead.”
She threw her arms around his neck. “You are so handsome.”
She leaned on him, pushing him across the room as he wrestled to keep her upright. He looked behind him to be sure he wasn’t about to trip over anything and realized where they were heading.
Her apartment was one large room. Behind him, her bed sat waiting, strewn with the clothes that hadn’t made the cut for that evening’s outing. She was definitely steering him towards it.
He stood firm to stop her progress and she peeled herself away from him to take the lead. Her hand eased down his arm until she could take his. She pulled him towards the bed.
He kept his feet planted on the floor.
“Let’s talk a bit, huh?” He gave her a playful tug back toward the living room area.
“Talk?”
“Sure. I mean, I just met you and I don’t know anything about you.”
She scowled. “Are you gay?”
“What?”
“I knew you were too good-looking.”
Declan sniffed, trying to decide if pretending he was gay would immediately end the evening or if maybe she’d be willing to spend some time chatting like friends. He judged her expression. She really didn’t seem to like the idea of Gay Declan.
“No, I’m not gay.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Nothing, I—”
“You don’t like me?”
“Of course I do. I’m here aren’t I?” He flashed her what he hoped was his most charming smile.
She melted a little.
There’s a little something. Declan felt as if he needed a moment to collect his thoughts. Maybe he could sneak away and text Charlotte for a little advice on how to get Lyndsey talking.
He noticed Lyndsey was standing in front of a door.
Bathroom.
“Is that your bathroom? Mind if I—”
“No!” Lyndsey fell back against the door and slapped her palms to it like she was about to start climbing it, backwards Spiderman-style.
Whoa.
“It isn’t a bathroom?”
Lyndsey held his gaze, breathing heavily. “It’s broken.”
“Oh.”
She lunged from the wall and grabbed his wrist, pulling him back towards the living area.
