He carried me all the way to the back of my grandmother’s house. I insisted that I could take it from there, but he didn’t listen. Instead, he carried me all the way up the steps of the porch, careful to dodge the potted plants still waiting to be planted and rang the doorbell.
“Oh, my.” Grandma Gertie stumbled back, shocked at seeing her granddaughter in the arms of a detective. Rex happily walked through the door and sniffed at shoes. “Won’t you come in?” She said to the dog.
“Sorry about that, Gertie,” DeLuca said.
“Don’t be sorry. Come on in. What happened?”
DeLuca carried me through the threshold and into the living room. He set me down on the couch with surprising gentleness. Rex jumped on the couch, crunching the stacks of papers I had left earlier. He placed his head in my lap while DeLuca dragged the coffee table closer to put my feet on. “I think you need to teach Lainey about proper footwear while running,” DeLuca said to my grandmother.
She looked at my ankle and gasped at the bulge, then gave me a sly smile. “Oh my. I’ll get you some ice and a wrap.” She came back with an ice pack and a bandage that she handed to DeLuca. “Oh my, look at the time,” she said, suddenly making a show of yawning. She made her way to the stairs and before she climbed them, she gave me a wink and a thumbs up.
DeLuca sat on the coffee table and gently picked up my foot. He rolled the bottom of my jeans up my calf and gently smoothed his hands around my ankle. “I’m guessing it’s just a sprain. You should be fine, but go see a doctor. Just in case.” He picked up the wrap my grandmother had left and began wrapping my ankle.
“Thanks for helping me,” I said, sheepishly.
“That’s what I’m here for.” His voice was oddly gentle and comforting. We sat there in silence and for a moment, DeLuca wrapping my ankle while Rex comforted me on the couch felt like the most natural thing in the world. Get it together, Lainey.
"What’s with all the papers?” he finally asked when he finished wrapping my foot. He held the ice pack to it as he surveyed the room.
“Oh… uh… it’s my investigation hitting a snag,” I confessed. He laughed. It wasn’t his usual head tilted back and mocking me laugh. It was low, raspy and sexy. I hated myself for the heat that flushed through my body. “Bob said that if I follow my gut, the evidence will be there, but I just don’t see it.”
“Well, Bob isn’t a detective, is he?” DeLuca growled.
“What is it about journalists that has your panties in a bunch? I mean, we’re just trying to do our job?”
“Sometimes, that job impedes our investigation,” DeLuca said, his voice at an edge.
“Does this have something to do with your partner being killed?” His face stiffened and his jaw clenched. I didn’t mean to, but I hit a nerve. I prepared myself for a world of yelling about how it wasn’t any of my business. I wasn’t going to fight him this time.
Instead, his shoulders snagged as he huffed out a long exhale. He picked up my foot and gently placed it on the table before moving onto the couch beside Rex. “It’s true, someone murdered my partner, and we never caught the guy. Everyone in Aurora Heights knows that by now. It’s why I came here. Too much murder in the city. When it hit so close to home….” His voice trailed off and something told me there was more to the story about him and his partner. I didn’t press, though. He was already more vulnerable than I expected, and I didn’t want to ruin it. “I had a hunch about the killer. In fact, I knew exactly who it was. The problem was, everything was circumstantial. I couldn’t find any hard evidence. Without concrete proof, there wasn’t much the police could do.”
“And that’s why you can’t follow up on anything I’ve told you about Mayor Lockwood,” I said.
“Exactly.” He pointed at the swarm of papers in the living room as he spoke. “But for the record, I believe you. I thought maybe I could look at the footage from the ice cream shop to see who tampered with your tires but Lottie, the manager, said there wasn’t any.”
“What? Why?”
“Someone took it. Said he needed it to look for something. I’ll give you one guess who that was.”
“Minetta.” The blood drained from my face. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. “So, he’s definitely involved somehow.”
“It looks that way. The other guys on the force are always talking about what a great guy he is, but I don’t buy it. Oh, and it gets worse. I asked Olivia if she got around to running more tests to see what exactly was in that coffee.”
“And?” My heart quickened. DeLuca’s words would only confirm my suspicions.
“He denied her request.” Bingo! “What if Minetta was the one who tampered with the coffee?”
“Nope. Not possible.” I shook my head. If only it were that easy. “I saw him leave right before Lockwood came into the cafe. He’s in on it with someone.”
DeLuca picked up paper from the couch and scanned them. “What angle are you looking at now?”
“The theater construction one. Eli said he heard Lockwood fighting with someone but doesn’t know who. I’m calling all the companies that put in a proposal for the project for any kind of information.”
“Yikes,” he said, putting the paper down. He scanned the rest of the mess in the room. “I don’t envy you. Keep me posted, okay?” He stood from the couch and Rex hopped off to join his human’s side. I watched as he slipped on his fancy running shoes while his dog waited patiently by the door. Something had changed between us; some sort of trust had been built where there was once none. But more than that, I saw DeLuca for someone I didn’t know he could be—nice.
“I will. Hey, DeLuca?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks for helping me out today.”
“It’s Nick. You can just call me Nick,” he said. A faint smile tickled at the corner of his lips. I couldn’t help it but return it.
“Thanks, Nick.”
“And get yourself some decent running shoes.”
Chapter 28
I fell asleep on the couch, tangled among the papers I had already gone through. My foot was in too much pain to hobble up to bed the night before. Besides, I was so comfortable after DeLuca—Nick—had set me down, that I didn’t feel like moving. My grandmother making her way out for her morning walk woke me up.
“Oh, Lainey. I didn’t expect you out here,” she said. She wore her pink track suit with a matching sweatband around her head. She looked like she was in for some serious power walking today. “I thought Nick would have taken you upstairs.” She gave me a theatrical wink.
“No. He just left. Because he’s not interested in me like that,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I saw the way he looked at you,” she said.
“Okay, let me rephrase that. I’m not interested in him like that.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue and I felt like I was protesting just a little too much.
“All right. Oh, I found an old pair of crutches in the back of the closet. Let me get them for you.”
She went upstairs with perfect motion and came back a few moments later with the crutches in hand. I used them to hobble around the house, trying to get myself into clean clothes. I settled back into the pile of papers, sorting them into companies I had already called and those who I still needed to talk to. Luckily, my pile of companies to call was shrinking.
After a morning of unsuccessful phone calls, I shoved the rest of the papers into a backpack and took off for the Cozy Cat Cafe. I was getting cabin fever and needed a change of scenery. What was normally only a ten-minute walk turned into a twenty-minute ordeal. I awkwardly maneuvered the crutches down the street, hobbling past neighbors who all stopped to ask what happened.
“It’s just a sprain,” I said so many times, that I thought about putting a sign on my back and pointing to it whenever someone stopped me.
Finally, I made it to the cafe. Saturday morning saw a rush of tourists down Main Street and I was glad to see the Cozy Cat filling up a little. Dyl
an saw me on the crutches and opened the door so I could stumble through. “What happened?” He asked.
“It’s just a sprain,” I said, automatically. He helped me to a booth where I flung myself down and slipped off my backpack. My breathing was heavy from the labor of walking. “I fell yesterday on the hiking trail behind my house.”
“Are you all right?” Dylan said. He slipped into the booth, taking the seat across from me.
“Yeah, I’m fine. De… Nick helped me get home. I’m fine. I’m still making my way through these building proposals and calling everyone, asking if anyone knew anything about Mayor Lockwood and a fight at the theater.”
“How’s it going?” He asked.
“So far, nothing. You don’t mind if I’m in here working, do you?”
“Of course not. I’ll get you some coffee,” he said and slipped out.
✽✽✽
An hour and a half of phone calls later and I had nothing. No clues. No connection to Brian Lockwood. Nothing. I was ready to give up. I had nothing but a hunch to keep going. But a hunch wasn’t evidence, and I needed to find something soon.
I flipped through the pages of the last proposal on my pile. My heart sank at the name: Trammel Construction. The giant rejection stamp was like a red light—or the end of the line. Poor Jake. This would have been the last proposal he submitted before his company went bankrupt. I felt for him. It probably wasn’t easy watching the business he had built from the ground up go under.
Something nagged at me about proposal staring back—it didn’t feel right. My journalist senses were tingling. Jake was definitely not a fan of Mayor Lockwood, that much was for certain. He made it clear that he thought the world was better off without Lockwood around. Could the denial of his building proposal be motive enough for murder? Knowing Jake, probably.
“Hey, Boggins,” he grunted at me as he sat down at a table beside me. He had what I would consider a rough voice.
“Hey, Jake. On your lunch break?” I asked as casually as I could.
“Yep.” He grunted back.
“Jake, do you mind if I ask you something? You wouldn’t happen to know any construction guys who had an issue with Mayor Lockwood, would you?”
I watched his face freeze and his jaw clench. He opened a plastic container with a salad inside. He pulled out a small packet and drizzled what looked like oil on top of the vegetables. “You need to let this Lockwood thing go. It was an accident, all right? The cops even said so.” The growl in his voice was a threat, but I wasn’t about to back down.
I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to my grandmother. Why couldn’t I see this before? “Is that olive oil you’re putting on that salad?” I asked, just to keep him occupied while I texted.
Me: What did Chief Minetta do before he became a cop?
Grandma: He worked in construction before he joined the force. Why?
Me: Did he ever work for Jake Trammel?
Grandma: Yes for years.
I hit record on my voice recorder app. Something told me I was about to get a confession. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough to use in court, but the cops wouldn’t be able to ignore it.
“No. Peanut oil. At least it gives these horrid vegetables some kind ‘o taste,” he said. He stabbed at the greens in the container then reluctantly shoved them into his mouth. “Don’t think I’ll ever get used to this healthy eating.” The growl in his voice was still there. Then, as if on cue, he seemed to realize what he just said. He swallowed the last of the salad in his mouth as he turned to me, his face drained of color.
Maybe Dylan didn’t watch that coffee as closely as he thought he did. Opening day was hectic. Jake could have slipped peanut oil into Mayor Lockwood’s coffee when his back was turned.
“Peanut oil is an awfully convenient way to kill the man who denied your building proposal. You did it, didn’t you? You blamed him for your business going under, so you slipped the peanut oil into his coffee. And you thought you’d get away with it because you were friends with Chief Minetta. He was in on it, wasn’t he?”
“That building project was supposed to be mine. We had a deal. I gave that man thousands of dollars for his election campaign. He promised me the theater job in return, but the man double crossed me.” He banged his fist onto the table in anger. “I told him I needed the break and he double crossed me by going with some big-city company with more guys on the crew. Said they could do the job faster. He ruined my life.”
Customers at the cafe shuffled out of the place afraid of something that was about to happen. It was just me, Dylan and Fur Ball in the cafe with an angry murderer.
“That’s no reason to kill a man,” I said.
“It is for me. And I would have gotten away with it if you hadn’t started snooping around. I hoped that David gutting your tires would send you a message but no. You’re the most stubborn, relentless little girl I have ever met,” he shouted at me.
He stood and flipped the small table he sat at, sending his salad flying into the air. He lunged at me and I felt his heavy body press me into the booth. I felt cold, rough hands snake around my neck. The next thing I knew, pressure from his squeezing hands constricted me. My lungs burned as I gasped for air, but with every struggled breath I took he squeezed my neck harder and harder. I felt my arms flail as I tried to fight him off, but he had me pinned flat against the booth.
Flashes of black crept into my vision. I could feel myself slipping away, when suddenly his hands let out and I gave a violent, shuddering breath and coughed. Dylan had pulled him off me. I watched him swing at Jake. Jake dodged his punch and hit him in the gut, doubling him over. Somewhere in the distance I heard a loud hiss, probably coming from Fur Ball.
With my strength coming back, I heaved myself onto my feet. Pain shot through me and I fell as I put weight on my injured leg. Jake’s face was red with anger as he came at me again. His big hands reached for my neck, but I grabbed hold of one of my crutches and I swung it at him, hitting him in the face. It stunned him enough for me to climb up, though I was unsteady on one leg. I grabbed a crutch and held onto it like a baseball bat, ready to swing at him again.
But I didn’t need to. The next thing I knew, Jake was falling forward, hitting the ground hard. Above him stood Nate Cruikshank with the other crutch in his hand. He had knocked Jake out cold. “You all right Miss Boggins?” he asked.
“Yes.” My throat was dry, and my voice came out in croaks like a frog’s. But I was all right. “Thank you, Nate.”
“Yeah. Sure,” the teenager shrugged.
Dylan got to his feet and checked to make sure Jake was still alive. “He’s still breathing. We should call the cops.”
“Already did. I called Mr. DeLuca when I saw Jake flip the table over,” Nate said.
“Good thinking,” Dylan patted him on the shoulder.
Within minutes, the doors to the cafe swung open and in ran Nick DeLuca with three other officers behind him. “Lainey, are you all right?” He rushed over and sat me down in a chair.
“Yeah. I’m fine. I found the killer,” I said, pointing at Jake’s heaping body on the ground.
“I found the footage of Minetta slashing your tires in his office this morning. I called the Sheriff’s department, and he confessed to tampering with evidence in Lockwood’s death. He also told us it was Jake who put peanut oil in Lockwood’s coffee,” he said. “Looks like you were right the whole time.”
“I got Jake’s confession, too. It’s on my phone,” I said, pointing to the phone still recording on the table.
“What exactly happened here?” he asked, looking at the mess of salad, overturned tables and chairs strewn around. I told him about the fight and gave him my phone as evidence. Jake came to just as the other police officer lifted him to his feet and cuffed him behind his back. “That was a reckless thing you did, Lainey. But… well… good job.”
Dylan, Nate and I watched them take Jake away in the back of the police car through the window of the cafe. A so
ft purr rose from my feet. Fur Ball was rubbing himself against my sprained ankle as I sat. I picked him up and gave him a scratch. He purred even louder as he settled on my lap.
“Thanks, Lainey,” Dylan said. He pulled up a chair and sat beside me at the table.
“Don’t thank me. Thank Nate. He’s the one who knocked him out and saved us all,” I said.
“Yes. And as a thank you, I’d like to start paying you. As my new assistant. What do you think?”
Nate’s lanky body loomed over us. The teenager gave a half-hearted nod and a small smirk. “Cool,” he said and got to work cleaning up the salad on the floor.
“Thanks for believing me, Lainey. You’re a real friend.” Dylan rested his hand on top of mine on the table. His famous smile flashed across his face and I tried not to melt inside.
“That’s what friends are for,” I said. “Do you mind if I use your phone? Nick took mine as evidence and I need to make a phone call.”
“Sure.” He pulled out his phone and handed it to me, then got up to help Nate clean up the mess in the cafe.
I dialed Bob’s number and when his rough “hello?” came on the line I said, “Bob. It’s Lainey. Boy, do I have a story for you.”
Chapter 29
“Lainey, it’s here.” Grandma’s voice rang from downstairs.
I zipped up my favorite sun dress and pulled the last few strokes of a brush through my hair. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.
“Oh, Lainey it’s wonderful,” I heard her cry.
I made my way down the stairs, where she proudly held up the day’s newspaper. “Your first investigative piece. I’m so proud of you, honey.”
I took the paper in my hands, running my fingers over the front page. The soft paper felt like butter to the touch. The ink smeared a little, but that was okay. I would get more copies from work. A picture of Jake Trammel in handcuffs graced the page with my story below it. The story of my murder investigation.
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