Undercover Cook

by Jeannie Watt

  It took Nick a moment to answer. Of course he’d give her suggestions. Just as soon as he looked up some information on the security systems available. Finally he settled on, “I’d be happy to. Maybe we could set up a time?” Before she could answer, he added, “I won’t try to sell you anything.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “Why not?”

  That’s it. Put your foot in it, Nick. “What I meant is, no hard sell. I’ll give you information on what’s out there. If you decide to go with someone else, I’m good with that. The important thing is to get you into a more secure environment.” He shut his mouth before he rambled anymore, or worse yet, put his foot in it again.

  “I appreciate that.” She smiled at him with such sincerity that Nick felt a twinge of guilt. “Maybe Saturday morning?”

  He pretended to consider his schedule. “Yeah. That works. I’ll meet you at your house and take a look?”

  “Great. My brother will undoubtedly be there, too.”

  “Do you live together?”

  “No,” she said drily. “I live with his toys. He has a condo. But he’s my technical advisor.”

  “Great.” This made it a hell of a lot easier to figure out if Eden had anything in her house worth looking at—like, say, a computer. And what kind of toys Justin stored there.

  The only thing that bothered Nick was that this was way too easy. Almost as if someone had planned it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “GETTING MIGHTY cozy with the teacher,” Gabe said as Nick walked with him to the van after they finished their cleanup. Nick carried a cardboard box with six large plastic containers of chili for the guys to take home.

  “Stop now,” he said. Gabe waited while Lenny climbed up into the van. “And by the way, she doesn’t know I’m a detective.”

  “She got something against cops?”

  “Not that I know of. I just want to keep my head down, and, well, she thinks I’m in security.”

  “Working on a case?”

  “I’ll explain later. Okay?”

  “Gotcha.” Gabe obviously wanted to ask questions, but didn’t.

  Nick smiled. “Hey, lessons aren’t so bad.”

  The old man shrugged. “I get to spend some time with you.”

  The reply startled him. “Didn’t we spend time before?”

  “Yeah, but it was kind of boring. You sitting there in my apartment, probably counting the minutes until you could leave.”

  “I was not counting the minutes. You’re the one who didn’t want to do anything.”

  “Because you don’t golf.”

  “You don’t go to baseball games.”

  “Well, now we both cook. You can come over once a week and help me whip up some grub.”

  Nick laughed and so did Gabe, but it turned into a cough. “Are you okay?” Nick asked, patting his back.

  “Fine. Fine. I’d better get into the jitney before Lois has a fit. See you next week if not sooner.” Gabe raised a hand and then got on the bus and took a seat next to Lenny.

  Nick waved to his grandfather. As he lowered his hand he caught sight of Marcus skirting the parking lot toward his car, looking very much like a crab scuttling for cover. The bus pulled away and Nick jogged across the small lot to intercept him. After talking to Eden he had a theory as to why Marcus had had nothing to say to him during lessons.

  “Did you throw a rock through Eden Tremont’s window?”

  Marcus’s expression, which was first stunned and then instantly defensive, more than answered the question.

  “You asshole,” Nick said. “That’s vandalism, you know. Who the hell’s going to pay for that window?”

  “I didn’t throw a rock.” He brushed his dark hair off his forehead with a jerky movement.

  “Yeah. Just like you didn’t want to show Daphne that you could be a procedure-flaunting badass.”

  Marcus tipped his chin up defiantly. “If I had thrown a rock, it would have been to get you access to Eden Tremont’s home and business.” One corner of his mouth twitched. “Which you now apparently have.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard her talking to her brother while Lenny and I were cleaning up.” Nick opened his mouth, but Marcus spoke before he could. “You can now get access to her computers.”

  “And you’ll analyze it.” Even though I called you an asshole.

  “Daphne may not take me seriously, but I do have skills, and I will use them to help you guys find out what happened to Cully.”

  “It may not help your case with Daphne,” Nick said honestly.

  “And then again,” Marcus said, “it may. I’ll take my chances.”

  Marcus got into his car and slammed the door, leaving Nick staring at his profile through the side window.

  “‘GETTING MIGHTY COZY with the teacher?’” Lenny mimicked when Gabe took his usual seat beside him. Gabe felt color creep up his neck and into his face.

  “That was a private conversation.” He hadn’t realized that Lenny’s hearing was better than most of the other guys’. “And he’s getting a lot cozier than your helper is.”

  “Yeah,” Lenny conceded. “I no longer have a horse in this race.”

  “I can’t believe you ever thought you did,” Gabe said on a snort.

  Lenny leaned toward him as the van started to move and said, “But I don’t know that you do, either—not if you keep pushing your grandson that way. You gotta be more subtle. People hate to be shoved into things.”

  “I’m not shoving him,” Gabe snapped. “And there’s a lot more to this than you know.” Maybe he had pushed slightly tonight, but he was getting impatient. It didn’t have to be this woman, but he’d like to have some sign that Nick wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life buried in the job before he, Gabe, croaked. Just an inkling that Nick wasn’t following in Gabe’s ignorant footsteps, because he’d made some huge adjustments that were still haunting him. Ignoring his wife until she left him was one. Not marrying the woman he should have ten years later was another.

  He didn’t want Nick to reach his age and wish that he’d done something beside chase bad guys.

  “It looks like you’re shoving from where I’m standing.”

  Gabe turned in his seat. “You want to see some shoving—”

  “Stop now,” Lois said coolly, making eye contact in the rearview mirror as she drove.

  Gabe held his breath, waiting for her to say something that would make him feel like a schoolkid, but she didn’t, which in turn meant that he wouldn’t have to set the record straight as to who was paying whom for services. Her gaze dropped back to the road.

  Gabe leaned closer to Lenny, who was now staring straight ahead and muttered, “I am not shoving and even if I were, it’s none of your business.”

  ON FRIDAY MORNING Nick cruised down Eden’s street in his pickup truck—an older model diesel he’d bought from his grandfather after his heart attack. The engine made a hell of a racket, so much so that he couldn’t go through the drive-through window at a fast-food joint without turning the engine off in order to be heard—perhaps not the best vehicle he could use to unobtrusively case the neighborhood, but he enjoyed driving it. He only needed to nail down what he’d be dealing with so he could do a buttload of Google searches and collect the proper brochures from the various home security companies he planned on visiting that day. Good thing he was suspended, he thought with grim humor, or he wouldn’t have time to do all this research.

  Eden lived in an older part of town, where the majority of houses were one- or two-story brick, with mature landscapes that provided good cover for anyone looking to break in. But in spite of that, the neighborhood was relatively crime free. According to tax records, there were few rentals, so the population was stable. The meth heads hadn’t moved in. All in all, it wasn’t a place where residents needed to take huge security precautions. Still, robberies, break-ins and assaults could happen anywhere.

  A hedge-lined alley ran between Eden’s property
and the house next door, which would have made it very easy for Marcus to toss the rock through the window.

  The lighting on the alley side of the house was ridiculously inadequate. An antique motion sensor was tacked to the siding and there were no pole lights. In this day and age there was no excuse for poor lighting.

  A wildflower garden dominated the front yard, which was a hell of lot better than shrubbery, but the honeysuckle bushes next to the garage had grown up past the windows. Another concern to be addressed.

  He turned the corner at the end of the block and headed toward Virginia Street, even though he wouldn’t have minded making another pass by the house. The truck was just too noisy for that.

  In twenty days he’d be back on the job, and a whole hell of a lot more vigilant about what he said and did, because he did not want to spend another month sitting on his hands. And before those twenty days were up, he wanted a solid lead that he could take to the lieutenant, or even the captain, about the drug traffic at the Summit and Cully’s disappearance.

  EDEN WAS UP at dawn Saturday morning, her one day free this week. She’d seen Reggie and Rosemary off the night before and had a strong feeling that her sister wouldn’t have left if Eden hadn’t had this security appointment in the works. But she did, and she planned to kill the five hours until Nick showed up doing laundry.

  And she would have, if the washing machine had chosen to cooperate.

  After the second load, the annoying tiny leak in the cold-water hose had become a full-fledged flood—more than duct tape could handle—and she’d had no choice but to turn off the water at the source and drive to the hardware store to purchase a new hose.

  She’d just finished swapping out the hoses when the doorbell rang. Exactly ten o’clock, the time Nick was due to arrive.

  Okay. Points for promptness. Unfortunately, the way the morning was going, Eden would have given more points if he’d been late, or blown off the entire appointment. She wiped her hands down the sides of her jeans as she walked from the kitchen to the living room, and then automatically looked out the peephole before opening the door.

  Instant blood pressure spike. Ian, not Nick, stood on the other side.

  Eden took a step back, her heart pounding a little harder. It might just be another push to get her to listen to him, but after everything that had happened, she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Answer the door, Eden!”

  Oh, yeah. That was a tone that made her want to open it. Especially after the rock and the envelope. “Go away or I’m calling the cops,” she said, loudly enough to be heard through the door.

  “You already did that, didn’t you?”

  Eden pressed a hand against her forehead. Damn. The officer had said he probably wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Ian, but apparently he’d come up with some free time.

  “I didn’t throw a freaking rock through your window and you had no right to tell the cops it was me!” Ian shouted.

  “I didn’t tell them it was you. I told them I’d just broken up with my cheating boyfriend.”

  “And gave them my name.”

  “They asked for it.”

  There was no answer. For a long moment Eden stood staring at the door, wondering if she dare open it. Justin was held up in construction on the Pyramid Highway, but Nick should be here any moment.

  “I’m expecting company,” Eden said shortly.

  “Good for you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to cause trouble, Ian. I was just trying to find out who threw a rock through my window.” And she still wasn’t certain it wasn’t him.

  “Well, you did cause me trouble, because the bloody cop came to my office. My boss is asking questions.”

  Eden pulled the door open, shifting her weight as she locked eyes with Ian, one hand still on the door, blocking his entrance. Oh, he was angry. His jaw was set, his perfectly cut dark blond hair ruffled, as if he hadn’t bothered to comb it that morning.

  “Tell him we did not part on the best of terms after I caught you and Vanessa going at it, so I irrationally accused you of a crime you didn’t commit.” She paused for a moment, studying him. “That’s what you did tell him, didn’t you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “So why are you here now?”

  “So that you understand that if it happens again, I’m pursuing harassment charges.”

  “Pursue away, Ian,” she said, as a truck with a loud diesel engine turned onto her street a block away. It chugged to a stop in front of her house, behind Ian’s Audi.

  “My company is here,” she said when Nick turned off the ignition and opened his door. Ian’s gaze automatically followed hers, and then his lips curled disdainfully.

  “Nice truck. What’s his name? Billy Bob?”

  “Goodbye, Ian.”

  “Remember what I said.”

  “Burned into my memory.”

  Ian turned and stalked to his car, not sparing Nick, who had climbed out of his truck, so much as a glance.

  Nick waited until he got into his car, then appeared to jot down Ian’s license plate number on a small notepad as the lawyer gunned the engine and pulled out onto the street. Even at a distance, Eden could see Nick smirk before he turned and started toward her.

  “Trouble?” he asked when he reached the porch.

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Eden said shortly.

  “Rock thrower?”

  “Not according to him.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Right now I don’t know what to believe,” Eden said as she watched Ian turn onto a side street several blocks down, his tires squealing as he rounded the corner. Ian rarely showed anger, but today he had, and he was taking it out on his car. “I guess my objective at this point is to keep it from happening again. The rock, I mean.”

  “Your brother not here?” Nick asked.

  She turned her attention back to him, debating whether or not to thank him for cutting Ian’s caustic visit short, then decided against it. She hadn’t needed rescuing, but if she had, Nick looked like the guy for the job. He wasn’t gigantic, but tall and sturdy, with broad shoulders and a confident yet vaguely impatient air about him, as if he’d put up with only so much before he sprang into action and took care of a situation.

  “Held up by road construction near the Nugget, but he should arrive anytime now.”

  “I can wait in my truck until he gets here.”

  Eden stepped back, holding the door open. “Come on in.” Right now she felt a whole lot better about Nick than she did about Ian. “I have some coffee on, if you want a cup while I finish mopping up.”

  “Sure,” Nick said, walking past her into the living room, then pausing to take stock as she closed the door. “Cleaning day?” he asked, noting the piles of damp towels in the hallway.

  “Washer explosion day.”

  He frowned at her and Eden noted again how extraordinary his eyes were. They gave her the feeling that there was so much more going on in his head than he let on.

  “A leak in my cold-water laundry hose suddenly got bigger. I was in the middle of fixing it when Ian got here.”

  “You fixed your own washer?” He seemed surprised. Eden didn’t know why.

  “It’s only a hose,” she said with a shrug.

  Nick followed her into the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. “You have a nice place.”

  “Yes. I just redid this room.” And she loved it. It had taken time, since she replaced things as she could afford to—pale cream granite countertops almost two years ago, the oak island after the huge Wilmington wedding last summer and the natural slate tile floor this spring. She’d painted the walls pale green and the woodwork white during her limited free time, and had tiled the backsplash herself.

  “I like it,” he said.

  Eden walked around the island to the coffeepot plugged in next to the fridge. She needed to put some space between them—not because he made her nervous, but because he made her feel aware. Just…aware. In a way s
he couldn’t put her finger on.

  “Have a seat,” she said, a bit embarrassed that her voice sounded a little husky. Making small talk was part of her profession, but right now conversational tidbits weren’t exactly jumping into her brain. Thankfully, he was wearing a gray University of Nevada Reno sweatshirt over worn jeans and a navy blue Wolf Pack ball cap. “Do you follow the Pack?” she asked as she poured him a cup of coffee.

  “I do. How about you?” He took the chair she pointed at.

  “Not too much,” Eden said. She’d gone to culinary school, not the local university.

  “Not a sports fan?” he asked, putting the brochures he was carrying on the table in front of him.

  “I don’t mind the occasional baseball game, but I haven’t been to one since the Silver Socks disbanded.”

  “That’s been a while.” The semipro team had disbanded over a decade ago, and it was only recently that Reno had managed to get a new team, the Aces.

  “I’m thinking I may get some tickets and see how the new team compares to the old.” Eden set two cups of coffee on the table, on opposite sides, and took her seat. Nick pulled the cup toward him and lifted it to his lips. After sipping, he gave his head a small shake.

  “Too strong?” Eden asked.

  “Not even close,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. “You should see the stuff I drink—”

  Five rapid knocks interrupted him and then the front door opened. Nick shot her a questioning look, as if asking if he needed to shift into protection mode.

  “Justin,” Eden said.

  “Your door isn’t locked?”

  “He has a key. He’s just warning me it’s him.”

  “Hey,” her brother called from the other room.

  “In here,” Eden replied as he walked into the kitchen. For the first time in weeks, he didn’t look as if he was going to pass out from exhaustion, and he wasn’t dressed in his usual off-hours uniform of worn jeans and a T-shirt that had seen better days. Instead, he wore new jeans with a web belt and an oxford shirt, tucked in. And his hair was combed. He looked both respectable and somewhat commanding, despite the fact that Nick was at least four inches taller than him and fifteen pounds heavier.