I squealed in surprise when his strong hands gripped my sides beneath my arms and lifted me to sit on the cool, smooth granite countertop. My sleep shirt immediately rose even higher, which left me scrambling to yank it down farther. That had my collar stretching and pulling off one bare shoulder, though. It was a lose-lose.
Brad had his unbuttoned shirt stripped off half a second later, and he slid it over my legs and tucked it around my hips. He’d done it so fast that I hadn’t even had time to embarrass myself with a complete lack of modesty.
But in the process of covering me, he’d completely bared his own arms. What I’d thought had been a regular T-shirt beneath his button-up was actually sleeveless, like what guys often wear at the gym. His arms were layered in so much muscle that all I could do was stare. Brad wasn’t a big guy. He wasn’t bulky, and I’d had no idea that underneath his officer’s uniform that he was built with a physique that was ready to rush into battle to slay some mythical creature of old. And it would have to be a mythical creature, because someone that looked the way Brad looked couldn’t be real.
“Let’s get you fed, put some meat on those bones of yours,” Brad said with a wink, grounding me back in reality. He returned to the kitchen island and finished plating. He’d made steak with a beautiful charred crust and something else.
“Steak and spaghetti?” I asked. I’d never considered the combination before.
Brad looked affronted. “Spaghetti? This isn’t spaghetti. It’s linguine!”
“But isn’t linguini just, you know… fat spaghetti?”
“Oh my God, Berry. You’re killing me.”
He grabbed a bottle of red wine that was sitting to the side and already open, found a couple of cups I’d swiped from the café below, and poured. He brought the plates and the drinks over to where I was and hopped up on the counter. Toeing off his shoes, he spun to face me as he folded his legs Indian-style in front of him.
Taking his lead, I did the same, being careful to keep his shirt in place over my lap. The way we were sitting reminded me of that famous scene from Sixteen Candles when Molly Ringwald was about to get her first kiss from the cutest boy in school. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a kiss in my near future, and the thought made my cheeks heat in a blush and my lips stretch in a shy smile.
Needing to give myself something to do other than stare at the cutest boy in my world, I focused on the food. I cut a piece off of the steak. As soon as I put it in my mouth, my eyes popped wide.
“Mmmm!” It had so much flavor! There was a richness to it that made it magically better than any steak I’d ever made. “How did you do this?”
“It’s butter basted with garlic, rosemary, and thyme… plus some pink salt to top it,” Brad said. He said it like it was nothing, but all it took was one look at him to know that he was enjoying wowing me with his cooking prowess. His satisfied grin had broadened to show some of his perfect pearly whites.
I shifted my attention away from the steak and took a bite of the linguine next. It was as amazing as the steak but completely in its own way. It looked simple enough with bits of fresh green spotting it and some kind of coating, but other than that, I couldn’t see how he’d managed to pack so much flavor into a bunch of noodles that didn’t even have any sauce on them.
“And this?” I asked around a second bite, throwing demure out the window in favor of voracious enjoyment.
“Linguine, fresh chopped parsley, butter, olive oil, garlic, and parmesan.”
I shook my head as I stuffed yet another bite into my mouth before I’d even fully swallowed the previous one. How was it that a cop could cook this way? “Why aren’t you a chef?” I asked. “This is ridiculous. Someone who looks like you isn’t supposed to be able to cook this good.”
My eyes flew wide when I realized what I’d said, and I stopped chewing. It was such a sexist thing for me to say!
I stared at Brad in fear, mortified that he’d be insulted by my unthinking words. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed. It was unfettered, and I was relieved he wasn’t upset about what I’d said, but it did nothing to answer the one question that stood out loudest in my mind.
“Brad,” I said after his laughter had faded away, “why are you here?”
The laughter left Brad’s luminous eyes, leaving them more gray than blue. “My sister’s in trouble, Berry. I need your help.”
7
This was a turn of events that I hadn’t anticipated.
“What’s wrong? How can I help?” I didn’t have much to offer, but I’d do what I could.
“I need you to investigate Hank’s murder,” Brad said.
My fork came clattering down on my plate as I stared at him. Brad had always been adamantly opposed to my involvement in any of the murder cases that had, sometimes literally, fallen into my lap.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Isn’t Detective Gregson working the case?”
Brad gave a derisive snort. “I don’t trust him, and I’m not just saying that because he likes my sister for the murder of Hank Harrison. He’s new to our police force, so I haven’t known him long, but I’m starting to think he’s got a real bias against women. First, he was determined to arrest you for the murder of that shoe shop guy even when it didn’t make any sense, but now he’s after my sister, Samantha. It’s only been three days since Harrison did a face dive on the sidewalk but Gregson is absolutely, one hundred percent convinced that my sis did it. He’s got blinders on. He’s not even considering anybody else.”
“How do they even know it was a murder? Couldn’t it have been a suicide?”
Brad shifted his feet off the side of the counter and hopped down before retrieving something from the bags he had stashed out of sight on the floor on the other side of the kitchen island. When he got back to me, he handed me a folder.
I balanced my plate of food on my knees and took the file, leaving Brad free to resettle himself into his original position.
“That’s what they know so far,” Brad said. “It contains the preliminary report from the coroner listing Harrison’s death as most likely murder. They believe it was poison. The toxicology report hasn’t gotten back yet, though, so they aren’t yet sure which kind. What they do know is that Hank had a lot of internal bleeding.”
“But wouldn’t he? He fell off a building.”
“The bleeding wasn’t consistent with what would have been sustained from the fall’s impact. The coroner suspects that Hank was dead before he ever reached the pavement.”
Well, that was a game changer…
I fingered through the pages of the report. It might as well have been written in Greek. At just a glance, what I was looking at wasn’t making a whole lot of sense to me.
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why aren’t you clearing Samantha’s name?”
Brad’s expression darkened. “I’ve been banned from having anything to do with the case.”
I looked down at the file I held in my hands and then back at Brad.
“I stole it. Went in late and made a photocopy.”
“What happens if you get caught for having done it?”
Brad shrugged. “Maybe suspended, maybe fired? Don’t know. Don’t care.”
“But if you don’t care what happens to you, then why not investigate the case regardless of them telling you to stay away from it?”
“Because if they know I’m doing that, I’ll get suspended for sure. But this way, with you investigating Harrison’s murder, I can be your inside man. I can keep you up to date with the latest findings.”
I fingered through the pages of the report again and shook my head.
Brad blew out a sigh. “Sorry, Berry. I shouldn’t have put you in this position.” He reached for the file.
I yanked it away from his fingers and clutched it to my chest. “What are you doing?”
“You shook your head no.”
“No, I shook my head wondering what in the world I was getting myself in
to again. Of course I’ll help!”
“Really?”
It was my turn to laugh. “Really, Brad. Think about it. What are the odds that I would have stayed out of investigating this murder case anyway?” I posed that question even though I’d been feeling quite proud of myself for doing just that only earlier in the day.
“Great! But… you gotta do it right this time.”
“Huh?” It was time to divide my attention between Brad and the dinner he’d made. It was too good to ignore forever, so I went to work slicing off another bite of the steak.
“The investigation. You’ve got to do it right this time. No bungling around.”
I paused with my loaded fork halfway up to my mouth. “Excuse me?” Together, Zoey and I had solved four murders. No, we weren’t professionals, but maybe that was working in our favor. We didn’t get hung up on process. We simply followed our noses.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Brad said, “for a couple of amateurs, you two have gotten really lucky. But with my help, this investigation’s going to go a lot smoother. A lot more organized. We’re going to do it the right way.”
“If by lucky you mean repeatedly almost killed, okay…” Maybe I had rubbed him wrong with my verbal faux pas a little earlier, but he was well on his way to ticking me off. “What makes you think that your sister’s innocent?” I asked. It was a jab of a question, but I went there anyway.
“Because she is.” Brad was now cutting into his steak. The muscles of his arm were bunching as he sawed the knife back and forth across the meat, and I was sure he was through it and on his way to cutting through the plate as well. Policeman extraordinaire Brad Calderos had a blind spot when it came to his sister. That made him an unreliable witness. I wasn’t going to be able to trust a word that came out of his mouth.
But the problem went further than that, I realized. If Brad had a blind spot to his sister’s possible guilt in Hank Harrison’s murder, then he might also have a possible bias against whoever got labeled as a suspect. He might believe they did it without the necessary evidence to back it up. That would mean that Brad was not only unreliable about his sister, but his opinion or viewpoint was also not to be trusted when it came to the potential guilt or innocence of someone else.
I suddenly understood why he had gotten officially banned at work from having anything to do with the investigation.
“Brad,” I said, “I’m going to do my best to find out who killed Hank Harrison. I’m going to need your help. You’re going to be invaluable. I’m going to need you to be my eyes and ears at work to let me know what’s said, what’s learned, and what the toxicology report says when it comes in.”
“Got you covered. All the way.”
“But you can’t be directly involved in the investigation of Hank Harrison’s murder.”
Brad gave me a stony glare, and his face flushed to a hot pink. “What?”
“Do you love your sister?” I asked.
“Of course!”
“Did she kill Hank Harrison?”
“No!”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s my sister!”
“Okay, okay. So she didn’t kill Hank. Got any proof?”
“No…”
“She have an alibi?”
“No…”
“Did she have a reason to want Hank dead?”
He paused. “Maybe…”
I let the silence drag out between us. We were in a staring match of unyielding wills when Sage jumped up onto the counter next to us. Still yet, my gaze remained locked with Brad’s, until I saw Sage start to nose my food out of the corner of my eye.
“Nooo!” I shouted. “My spaghetti!”
Brad fell over backward on the counter with a groan. “Linguine, Berry. Linguine!” The room got quiet again except for Sage’s purr as I stroked her arching back. “Okay, Berry. You win. I’ll stay out of the investigation.”
8
“So did Brad stay for coffee this morning?” Zoey asked after I told her about Brad’s very late-night visit. Her forearms were crossed as she leaned in on the same café table where I’d sat with Dan, and one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows was arched. A mischievous twinkle lit her eyes.
“No,” I said pointedly, “but he did come back in for coffee this morning. He was a perfect gentleman.” It was not a fact that I was entirely happy about last night, but it was one that came as a relief as I met the dawning of a new day. I didn’t need the complication of getting involved with a man in that way. I was still too new to putting my life back together. And if I were being honest with myself, I liked being a vote of one in a party of one. There was no one to veto my ideas. No one with which to gain consensus before taking action.
But there was also no one to help navigate uncertain waters.
It was a heavy tradeoff.
“I can’t believe he wants you to investigate,” she said.
“Us… wants us to investigate.” It’s not what Brad had said, but I was sure that he understood that Zoey and I were a package deal. And given that he considered Zoey a criminal who simply hadn’t been caught yet and the fact that he and I were sort of dating, it made sense that he had broken into my apartment in the middle of the night and not Zoey’s.
I suppressed the urge to shudder. I pitied anyone who decided to break into Zoey’s place. I’d never noticed anything particularly unusual about her apartment, but my imagination ran wild with the hotbed of traps she probably had set in place to ward against such an event.
Spikes shooting out of the ceiling…
Electrified door knobs…
Bubonic plague-laden darts…
“Tell me again, how did he get in?” Zoey asked.
She’d already asked me once, and I’d done my best to brush the question off. The truth was too embarrassing. “He has a key,” I mumbled.
“He has a key… And how is it that he has a key?” She had her hair pulled back in a thick braid today, and she wagged its fuzzy tip at me.
“I don’t know.”
The tip of her braid flared upward like the needle of a lie detector. “You don’t know… Are you sure?”
I glared at her, but Zoey’s grin only grew with lips painted a color that seemed a mashup of pink, black and purple. “I guess Sarah gave it to him.”
“Sarah… But you’re not Sarah.”
“I know that!”
“So why don’t you ask for your key back?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t feel like it.”
Up went the tip of her hair. I was going to chop the thing off.
“I didn’t want to be rude.” The darn tip was pointing all the way up toward the ceiling.
I scowled. “Okay, I did ask for it back.” I’d demanded he give it back after the first time he’d broken in. Of course, Zoey had broken into my apartment, too. I’d opened my eyes in the middle of a bath to find her sitting next to the tub. I didn’t have a clue how she’d done it. Unlike Brad, she didn’t have a key.
“And, did he give it back?”
“No.” I slouched in a pout and crossed my arms over my chest. “He refused.”
Zoey threw her head back in a laugh and then slid down in her own chair, mimicking my position. Her laughter had faded, but the twinkle in her eyes remained. “So where do we start?”
It was my turn to grin and arch an eyebrow at Zoey. “As if…” I knew Zoey couldn’t stay away from a mystery. There was no way she hadn’t already started looking into Hank’s final hours.
Zoey’s smile turned toothy. “Yeah, I’ve got some footage,” she admitted. “We’ll get to that. First, I want to know what that saucy sultan of love told you. Why the big turnabout? Why does he want you investigating this case? He’d normally be threatening to throw me in jail about now in hopes that it kept you from investigating.”
I sat forward and put my arms on the table. It was conspiracy theory time. “The cops—other cops besides Brad—think that Brad’s sister killed Hank.”
/> Zoey sat forward, her interest obviously piqued. “How?”
“Poison.” There was more to it than that, and I wanted to make sure I was getting it right. “Hang on. I’ll be back.”
I hot-footed it into the kitchen and checked in with Jonathan—my sous chef and all-around kitchen do-it-all—to see if he needed anything. He waved me off, so I grabbed a notebook I’d stashed in an out of the way corner, and then hurried back out to the dining room floor. I sat back down across from Zoey and flipped through the notebook’s pages.
“A notebook? That’s new.” Zoey said.
“Yeah, Brad told me everything the cops had figured out so far, and he made me write it all down.” I was quickly appreciating that he had. “Here it is. They don’t know for sure what killed Hank, but they suspect it was poison. The coroner believes that he was dead before he hit the sidewalk, and they found a lot of internal bleeding that didn’t match up with his injuries from the fall.” I looked up from my notes, grimacing. “Brad showed me a picture of Hank’s body. He had bruises everywhere! His arms, his chest, his stomach and the sides of his thighs. Big, swollen bruises. He looked like he’d been beaten to death.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If he looked like he was beaten to death, what makes them think he was poisoned instead of repeatedly clubbed before being thrown off the roof?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s what the coroner thinks. They haven’t gotten the toxicology report back. Brad’s going to try to find out what it says when it comes in.”
“Okay, so poison,” Zoey said. “In a drink or in food?”
“I don’t know, but he did already have a coffee in his hand when he got here. Could be that it was poisoned.”
“Poison’s a woman’s way of killing.”
The next words I wanted to say sat full and heavy in my mouth. I didn’t want to give them voice, but there was no hiding from the truth. “Brad’s sister is a woman.”
A Berry Home Catastrophe Page 4
