by Lisa Harris
He stood, his face solemn. “Are we gonna find your fingerprints on that can?”
“Not unless someone put them there, which honestly, at this point, I’m starting to think someone out there might do—”
“You realize it’s nearly impossible to plant fingerprints, right, Quinn? You being an attorney and all, I figured you’d know that.” The caustic sarcasm dripping from his words sent a flash of heat through Quinn that drove her frustration to the boiling point as he continued talking. “So if they’re on there—”
“I know you still hold Annie against me, Shane,” she snapped, feeling a rush as she let her anger loose, “and I’ll be forever sorry about that. I’m still crushed about what happened to her, but—”
Shane’s face flushed red. “Hold on a minute. That has nothing to do with this.”
“Really?” she countered, her pitch rising. “Because it seems to me it has everything to do with you refusing to even consider that I might be telling the truth about all this crazy stuff that’s happening to me. You’ve turned your whole department against me and who knows who else in this town—”
“I haven’t turned anyone against you! And my take on this and on you has everything to do with the fact that you have a history as a liar and a drinker and a self-medicator who not six months ago was so hopped-up that you nearly shot someone in a courtroom—”
“Get. Out.” The words seethed from between Quinn’s gritted teeth.
“I’m not—”
“Deputy, I think it’s time that you leave.” Ian’s deep voice boomed from the foyer, where he stood just inside the door, a bulky white plastic bag suspended from his hand, resting against his thigh. “Unless you’re planning on arresting Ms. Bello, it seems to me you’re done here.” Though his tone was calm, his stance was all business—feet spread shoulder-width apart, shoulders back, jaw jutted.
Shane’s gaze flashed from Ian to Quinn and without another word, he marched to the foyer, sidestepped Ian and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
Ian’s eyes widened as he stood his ground. “Um, did I miss something?”
“A lot. How much did you hear?”
“I walked in on you yelling at him for not taking your story seriously.”
Embarrassment surged through her as her shoulders sank. “I was trying so hard to keep my cool.”
“You were pretty fiery.”
“Comes with the red hair, unfortunately,” she said sheepishly.
“Well, from what I heard it sounded like he deserved it. He was out of line. Completely unprofessional. You’re not wrong about him having a personal bias.”
She was about to thank him for stepping in and keeping her from saying something to Shane that she would have regretted, when she noticed the all-too-familiar bag in his hand. Amusement drove one corner of her mouth up. “What’s that?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, looking down at the bag like he had forgotten he was holding it. “I grabbed take-out from a food truck on The Green. Pepe’s? Ever tried it? It’s pretty good.”
A smile split her face. “Sounds perfect.”
Chapter Nineteen
The wind was gentle and cool, blowing off the Gulf and across Quinn’s skin. She and Ian sat at the bronzed dining table on her back porch finishing the last of dinner. Sea gulls squawked contentiously down on the beach, fighting over something in the sand, while a couple walked past them pointing at the birds and laughing.
Ian had opted for chicken burritos with red and green peppers, onions and cheese, chips with guac and tomatillo sauce for dipping, and sopapillas with honey for dessert. She didn’t have the heart to tell him about her regular patronage of Pepe’s, but just as she was polishing off the last bite of burrito, she slipped and mentioned that the dish was one of her favorites and the whole truth came out.
“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything,” he said, leaning back from the table, looking defeated. “I could have gone back out for something else.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is great. There’s a reason why I eat there almost every night.”
“Other than the fact that you’re too lazy to go to the grocery store?” he said wryly, one eyebrow peaking jauntily.
“Lazy’s a strong word,” she said, dipping a chip in the guac then pointing it at him. “It’s more like selective disinclination.”
“Throwing a big word at it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a grown woman who doesn’t seem to be able to feed herself.”
“Are you saying you want me to stop coming into The Shed for my meals?”
He narrowed his eyes playfully. “Um, no. That is absolutely not what I’m saying.”
“Good,” she said, and in return Ian unleashed a brilliant smile that emphasized his pronounced cheekbones.
He tilted his head toward his shoulder, casting a sidelong glance at his phone on the table. “So we’ve actually gone past our twenty-minute moratorium on talking about what just happened. You ready to spill it?”
Before starting dinner, she asked if they could have twenty minutes without talking about Shane or what just happened, or any of it, so she could clear her head. He agreed and they instead engaged in a back and forth about favorite music—hers, Panic! at the Disco, his, U2—favorite movies—hers, the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, his, The Hurt Locker—food—both Mexican, and so on. Then they discussed the seafood festival scheduled in Seaglass Cove for later that month and how crazy things would get with the tourists after that. But he was right, the twenty minutes had long passed and she was ready to give him all the gory details anyway.
She picked up where she left off earlier, explaining Shane’s disappointing reaction to the button at the sheriff’s department and the call that brought them to Annalise. “…And that’s when you showed up in the driveway. Then, after you left to get dinner, Shane launched into me…”
Quinn summarized giving her statement to Shane and the revelations he made about the vodka bottle and the spray can, as well as his not-so-veiled accusations. “And that’s pretty much when I lost it.”
“I wouldn’t say you lost it, exactly.”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly holding it in.” She could tell Ian was fighting the urge to smile.
“And this—Annalise—really thinks you did it?”
“Oh, she definitely thinks I did it. And Shane probably does too after finding that stuff in the trash can.”
“Why would you be stupid enough to dump the evidence in your own trash can?”
She shrugged. “Exactly what I said.” She took a sip of iced tea, set her glass down and ran her finger around it, catching the beads of sweat dripping down the side. “You know, you’ve asked a lot of questions about me, but I realized this morning that I didn’t really ask anything about you last night.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah, hmm,” she echoed. “So was that just me being rude or were you intentionally steering the conversation away from yourself?”
“Oh, definitely you being rude,” he spouted, winking at her as he picked up his own glass, chugged back a piece of ice and chewed it.
The beach took on a different quality as six o’clock approached, a tranquil beauty settling over it as the bold heat of day eased into a mellow warmth. The angle and hue of light also shifted into something softer, accompanied by silver clouds hovering low on the horizon where they met the deep, dark blue. The two shared a quiet moment, both gazing out toward the water, until Quinn glanced sideways at him while his focus was still on the shoreline.
The golden late afternoon rays revealed random blonde strands in his light-brown hair, fairer flecks of grey that were almost blue in his dark irises, and the occasional freckle along his forearms. He could have been anywhere, with anyone and he was choosing to be here with her, even with all the craziness surrounding her.
Why?
“I need to ask you something,” she said, breaking the silence and fidgeting in her seat.
He eyed her quiz
zically. “Okay.”
“After everything I’ve told you—especially after what Shane found in my trash can—you still believe me. Even though I’m basically a stranger. Trouble clearly follows me around, and yet, you’re still here. I don’t get it.”
“Well, first of all, you’re not a stranger. We’ve shared guacamole and that, my friend, means we have now crossed over from mere acquaintances into something altogether different. And second, like I said, I believe in second chances. And third, I also believe you’re not an idiot. And only an idiot would have tossed that junk into her own trash.”
“Even if I was drinking?”
“You aren’t drinking.” He said it like it was a statement of fact, leaving no room whatsoever in his tone for any degree of doubt. She could have hugged him.
“You seem awfully sure.”
“I’m a good judge of character,” he said, his gaze boring into her.
“Okay. Well, then, friend, I want to know more about you.”
“Like what?”
“For starters, how did you end up down here?”
He clasped his hands in his lap. “Like I said, my dad lives in Tallahassee, and so does my brother. So it just made sense to move nearby. Dad wasn’t doing so great and I wanted to be able to help.”
“Where were you before you moved here?”
“Born and bred in Chicago. Dad and Mom moved down here to escape the cold years ago, and then she passed. My brother followed them, but when we had to put Dad in an assisted living facility, it just seemed right for me to make a change.”
“Your dad—I mean, given your age—he has to be kind of young for an assisted living facility, doesn’t he?” Ian couldn’t have been older than his late thirties, and that was pushing it.
“Ahh. Yeah, well, I am just thirty-five but they had me really late. I was a surprise when mom was forty-three. Dad was forty-seven.”
“Oh, wow.”
He laughed. “That was my dad’s reaction, or so I’m told. My brother’s fifty-two. We aren’t that close, but I was kind of hoping that would change once I moved down here.”
“And how did The Little Red Shed come about? I love the pun by the way. Little Red…Wolfe. Funny.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Not everybody gets that. But I liked it—I mean, the place was already painted red so it just sort of named itself.”
“How did you find it?”
“I was driving down the coast checking out the different communities, seeing where I might land, and there it was. Abandoned, in need of a little love, just waiting for someone to make it into something more. I guess, at the time, that sort of spoke to me.”
“Did you have a place like it in Chicago?”
Tension seemed to draw his body taut. “No. I was doing something else.”
“Let me guess,” she said.
He smiled. “Give it your best shot.”
“Okay, but if I get it right on the first try, I get the last sopapilla,” she said, shaking the container that held the last of the deep-fried, donut-like confections powdered with sugar.
He nodded approvingly. “Fair enough.”
She didn’t hesitate. “You were a cop.”
Surprise stretched Ian’s features as he let out an exaggerated whoosh of air. He leaned on the table, his muscled forearms crossed in front of him. “How in the world did you guess that?”
So she had been right. She couldn’t keep the hint of a smug smile from creeping onto her face. “As an attorney I came across a lot of police officers. You learn the tells.”
She nodded toward the front door. “The way you were standing there when you told Shane to leave…there was something about your stance that seemed military-like. And you spoke to him with the kind of confidence that a person has with an equal. I might have guessed you were in the military except you just told me you moved from Chicago, “born and bred,” and it sounded like you’d never left. So cop seemed more likely. And then there’s the way you were asking me questions last night. Like you were conducting an interview. I realized later that during our entire conversation I never asked you anything about yourself. You kept the focus on me, and did it so well that I didn’t even notice. So, my guess…cop.” The wind picked up, blowing a swath of red hair that had fallen out of her ponytail across her face. She brushed it back, tucking it behind her ear.
“Not bad, Detective Bello. Which, by the way, was your only slip-up. I was a cop, but by the time I left the job, it was Detective Wolfe, not Officer Wolfe.”
Quinn snapped her fingers in front of her. “Shucks. Well, it’s close enough—”
“I don’t think so,” Ian said, as their hands shot out for the sopapilla simultaneously. When they each grasped an opposite corner, their eyes flashed to the other’s and with matching grins, they yanked hard on the fried pastry so that it split unevenly, with Quinn taking the larger share.
“Ha!” she barked, then dipped the piece in the plastic ramekin of honey and popped it in her mouth.
“Nicely done, Detective,” he said, then dipped his much smaller piece and ate it.
“So why didn’t you join the force down here once you moved? I imagine one of them would have been thrilled to have someone with your experience.”
The air around them chilled so quickly one would have thought God himself had turned down the thermostat on the beach. Ian pulled his arms in and tapped a finger on the table’s edge. He looked up at her, his expression contemplative, biting his bottom lip. “Would it be awful if I said that I didn’t want to talk about it? I know you poured out your life story to me last night and that it seems a little unfair, but I’m just not ready.”
A tight band contracted around Quinn’s chest. She had clumsily stumbled into territory he was sensitive about. That much was obvious from the sober gaze he now held her with, instead of the bright one from just minutes before.
But why would a question about a job make someone that uncomfortable?
She knew her own reasons for feeling that way about her past, and none of them were good. Which meant Ian’s probably weren’t either. But in seconds she resolved that it didn’t matter. She of all people would not force someone to share details about themselves they didn’t want to revisit. She held up her hands in surrender. “You don’t need to apologize. If anyone understands not wanting to talk about the past, it’s me. You don’t owe me anything. It’s fine. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No,” he said, reaching out to cover her hand with his, sending an electric tingle up her arm, “you’re not prying. There’s nothing wrong with your question. And I know it’s odd, me refusing to answer like that, but honesty’s important to me. I could have just told you I was burned out, or wanted to try something different—”
“But those aren’t the reasons why.”
“They’re part of it, but it would only be half the truth. And I don’t want to start out like that with you.”
Start out with me? Start what?
The prospect of the most likely answer to that question unnerved and energized her. Prompted by an overwhelming urge to deflect, she narrowed her eyes at him, adopting a sly expression. “You’d rather make it really weird and tell me straight up that you’re hiding something?” she asked, her lips curving into a half-smile.
“Exactly,” he said, the sparkle in his eyes from earlier returning as he lifted his hand from hers and started clearing the table.
Clearing up basically consisted of throwing all the take-out containers in the trash and putting the few dishes and glasses they had used into the dishwasher. Quinn slipped a soap pod into the machine and turned it on, swiveling to find Ian leaning against the counter, watching her.
“Thanks for dinner,” he said.
“Um, I think that was you.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” He smiled. “You’re getting it next time.”
“Definitely. I promise.”
He pointed at her Riki unit sitting on the counter. “I’ve got one too. There’s some pretty c
ool things you can do with it.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, who doesn’t want a robot telling them a joke every morning?”
“Um, me?” Quinn replied, her eyebrows raised. “That sounds creepy.”
“There’s other fun stuff. I’ll show you next time.” He drummed the fingers of one hand on the granite countertop. “So what now? What’s your next move in this thing?”
“Well, I can’t just let it go.”
“No. Especially given what Shane found in your trash. Someone is definitely messing with you. You need to know why.”
“What I need is to find out who was lying on my kitchen floor. I’m sure that’s the key to all of this.”
“Well, if you’re open to it, I have an idea.”
She nodded encouragingly. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t think you’re going to get any real help from the sheriff’s department. Not after the display I saw this afternoon,” Ian said.
“No, I suspect at this point they’re more likely to arrest me than help me. I was considering going to see the District Attorney, but he’s tied in so closely with the sheriff’s department, I doubt I’ll get very far with him.”
“What if you went outside the county?”
“Where exactly were you thinking?”
“The Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s headquarters are in Tallahassee. My brother—he’s an attorney too—is pretty good friends with a special agent there. I can ask him to get in touch with her, see if she might be willing to help. Or at least give you some advice.”
A little bubble of hope expanded within Quinn. “Yeah, that sounds great.” But as soon as the words left her, reticence tugged at her heart. “Well…I don’t know, Ian. Talking all this through with you is one thing, but you making calls for me—I don’t know if it’s fair for me to get you involved.”
“I want to help. It’s just a phone call. Maybe she can clear the path for you—or hey, get you a look at a missing persons list. Maybe somebody matches up with your description of the body.”
