I Think I Love You

by Stephanie Bond

CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS

  Pete used his tongue to direct the toothpick toward Mitchell. “Where are you staying, Cooke?”

  “At the Russell Motel.”

  “See any woman hanging around who looks like this?”

  Mitchell glanced at the photo and wiped away a smile with his hand. “No, thank goodness.”

  “Well, if you do, contact the sheriff’s office at once.”

  “Will do.”

  Pete refolded the fax and tucked it into his pocket. “Regina, I suggested to Justine that she stay close to home until this Crane woman is found. Your Uncle Lawrence offered one of his security guards to watch the house at night, but I told him it wasn’t necessary—we’ll patrol.”

  She looked at Mitchell. “Cissy’s brother, he’s a U.S. representative, running for the Senate.” She was glad to impart that at least one person in her warped family was accomplished.

  “Lawrence Gilbert is your uncle?”

  She nodded with pride, then looked back to Pete. “Uncle Lawrence is in town?” He rarely returned to Monroeville—and who could blame him, with all the bad memories? She hadn’t seen him in four, maybe five years.

  “Yeah, he’s back to testify at the Bracken hearing next week.”

  She remembered the unread newspaper at the bottom of her purse, and unease plucked at her. “What kind of hearing?”

  “The scumbag wants a new trial—claims he’s innocent and that there was some kind of police conspiracy to convict him.”

  Her stomach plunged.

  “What was the crime?” Mitchell asked.

  “Murder,” Regina offered. “The man murdered Uncle Lawrence’s wife, my Aunt Lyla. He’s served twenty years of a life sentence with no parole.”

  Mitchell whistled low. “Twenty years? He’s either guilty as hell or patient as hell.”

  Pete scoffed. “He’s guilty as hell. My dad conducted that investigation. I hear Bracken has some new hotshot lawyer who’s looking for publicity. Just wasting the taxpayers’ money, if you ask me.”

  “Right,” Regina said with a nervous laugh.

  “Well, guess I’d better be going,” Pete said, jerking his thumb toward the door.

  “It’s nice to see you, Pete,” she said, and meant it.

  “I’m not married,” he blurted.

  Mitchell coughed.

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “Well, me and Tobi Evans, we gave it a stab for a couple of years, but that’s over. Tobi lives in Florida now, selling real estate. We didn’t have any kids, but I’m not sterile or anything like that.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Nope, never did.”

  Pete frowned. “Never did, huh?”

  She knew that look. “None of us girls are married.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I remember Justine wigging out and chopping up that cabinet at her wedding when Dean ran off with Mica.” Pete kept laughing.

  Mitchell raised one dark eyebrow, Regina ignored him. “Yeah—she wigged out, all right.”

  “Mica looks hot,” Pete said, rambling now.

  “Yeah,” Regina said, nodding.

  “So Mrs. Woods tells me you write books in Boston.”

  “Well, actually, I edit books.”

  He smiled. “You always were a smart one.”

  “Still am,” she assured him with a smile.

  He laughed at her joke and pointed his toothpick at her. “We need to go out sometime.”

  She looked at Mitchell. “Don’t wait on me if you need to get back to work.”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m enjoying this… break. Take all the time you need.”

  She looked back to Pete. “Why don’t you call me this week?”

  He grinned. “I will.” Pete said good-bye and lost his hat when he walked through the door.

  Regina waited until the door closed before she turned around.

  Mitchell was nodding, mouth pursed.

  “Don’t say a word,” she said.

  He lifted his hands. “I don’t have words for what I just witnessed.”

  She headed back toward the storeroom. “Do you have an Internet connection on your laptop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I borrow it for a few minutes to look up something?”

  “Sure—if you tell me what’s going on with your sister and this faceless shooter.”

  She talked as she walked. Sam trotted alongside. “Long story short, Justine had an affair with a married man. His wife found out and went to Justine’s office with a gun. Someone else was wounded instead, and they still haven’t found the woman.”

  He caught up to her at the door of the storeroom. “Wow, you Metcalf girls have bad taste in men.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Mica’s guy knocks her around—”

  “Whoa—why would you jump to that conclusion?”

  “I could be wrong, but she does have a black eye.”

  “Justine gave her that black eye, remember?”

  “No, she had that black eye when she arrived.”

  Regina squinted. “Are you certain?”

  He nodded, then gave her a sheepish smile. “I noticed, um, everything.”

  She smirked, then said, “I’ll bet Dean did give her that black eye—that would explain why she showed up out of the blue.”

  “See? Bad taste in men. And Justine got involved with a married man—bad taste.”

  She crossed her arms. “I still don’t see what that has to do with my taste in men.”

  “What about Dudley Do-Right back there?”

  “I was sixteen—that was… a long time ago.”

  “And you don’t find me irresistible, so that definitely throws your taste into question.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You were going to get me onto the Internet.”

  He sat down in front of his laptop and within a few keystrokes, was on-line. “This portable wi-fi connection is slow, but go for it.”

  With nervous hands, Regina went to the site for her e-mail provider, then entered her log-on and password to access her e-mail. No response from the seller of the letter opener to her request for more information. Deciding not to read anything into the lack of response, she went onto the auction site.

  “I’ve bought and sold a few things through this site,” he said, looking over her shoulder.

  The pages were slow to load, but eventually she made her way into the auction for the carved ivory letter opener. Someone had topped her bid by a buck a mere ten minutes before the auction had ended, but she didn’t mind. She clicked on the “see similar items” button and scanned the listings, which were pretty much the same as when she’d browsed two nights ago… except the listing for the Russian sterling-and-gold letter opener was gone. She performed a few searches using different criteria, but the listing didn’t come up.

  She breathed into steepled hands—don’t panic. “How can I find an item that’s been pulled?”

  “If the auction has ended, this particular site keeps the data out there for sixty days. That’s in case the sale falls through and they have to repost the listing. But you’ll need the item number to look up an archived listing.”

  Which she didn’t have. “What if the item was pulled early, before an auction could begin, or before the auction was scheduled to end?”

  He shrugged. “The buyer has the right to pull the listing at any time before the electronic gavel comes down. But this site doesn’t keep historical data on items that aren’t sold.”

  She groaned.

  “It must have been something important.”

  “Maybe. I honestly don’t know.”

  He hummed. “Well, if you remember the name of the seller, you might see if they have another item for sale and contact them that way.”

  She shook her head. “I checked last week, and the seller was only offering this one item. And there was no history for the seller.”

  “That’s odd.”

&nbs
p; “I e-mailed the seller, but they didn’t respond. In fact, I think my questions might have precipitated the item being pulled.”

  “Do you have reason to believe the item was stolen?”

  She hesitated. “Maybe. Then again, maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was.”

  “But you’re thinking that the listing being pulled is pretty coincidental.”

  “Yes.” Not to mention the coincidence that the letter opener was being sold at the same time the man convicted of her aunt’s murder was lobbying for a new hearing.

  He scratched his temple. “I don’t guess you want to tell me what this thing is?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “You could always let the authorities know. Maybe they could track down the person through their e-mail account.”

  “I can’t do that either.”

  He sat back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and studied her so scrupulously, she needn’t have bothered getting dressed this morning. “And I was starting to think you were the only one in your family without secrets.”

  Chapter 13

  DO develop a system for keeping your lies straight.

  Justine slung her bag over her shoulder as she walked down the stairs, gratified at the weight of the weapon inside. Lando had called her again this morning while she was in bed—hm, later she might have to analyze his timing—to tell her the female gasoline thief had turned out not to be Lisa Crane, but they hadn’t yet found the woman. So she wasn’t taking chances, even if she was only taking a walk with Regina. After all, Lando had reminded her to take care of herself.

  In truth, she’d never felt so alive. Her anticipation at seeing Dean again after all these years made her alternately giddy and malevolent. Despite their obvious problems, she and Dean had always shared an incredible chemistry. She paused at the mirror in the entryway to check her appearance—hair, skin, clothes. Casual and sexy. A slow smile curved her mouth—not bad for thirty-seven.

  Then she grinned—who was she kidding? She wasn’t bad for twenty-seven.

  She closed the door behind her and skipped down the steps into the sunshine—then stopped dead. In the side yard, beneath the shade of the oak tree, Mica watched her from the hammock, looking lean and fit in shorts and tennis shoes. So far they had managed not to be together alone, and Justine rather wanted to keep it that way.

  Justine pursed her mouth. “Have you seen Regina? We’re supposed to go for a walk.” She’d almost said no for fear of missing Dean in case he arrived early, but Regina had assured her that they’d be back before noon and Mica had plans, so she’d be gone, too. Perfect.

  Mica stood and it took that ridiculous hair of hers a minute to catch up. “I’m supposed to go for a walk with Regina.”

  “Good,” Regina said from the porch, hefting a backpack. “You’re both here. Ready to go?”

  The setup hit Justine, and she shook her head. “Oh, no—I’m not going if she’s going.”

  Mica headed toward the house. “Yeah, Regina, this was not a good idea.”

  Justine worked her mouth back and forth—why was it that she and Mica could always agree when it came to disagreeing with Regina?

  “Stop,” Regina said. “Both of you. For a couple of hours, you two are going to set aside your differences, because we need to talk about something serious.”

  Justine crossed her arms. “Cissy is not going to change her mind about leaving John, and I don’t blame her. If he cared about her, he wouldn’t have cheated.”

  “Well, I don’t care what Mom thinks,” Mica said. “Daddy would never cheat on her.”

  “You always take Dad’s side.”

  “And you always take Mom’s.”

  Justine wondered how Mica would look with her other eye blackened.

  “Time-out!” Regina shouted, then walked down to stand between them. “This isn’t about Mom and Dad, all right?” she said in a lowered voice. “I begged us off from going to church with Mom because we need to talk about Aunt Lyla’s murder.”

  Okay, now she had their attention.

  “So,” Regina said, looking back and forth, “let’s take a walk.”

  They took off in a direction away from the shop, through gentle woods along a footpath that they’d once worn to the dirt but was now overgrown so badly, the path sometimes disappeared. The sky was July blue beautiful, with big lazy white clouds. The temperature hovered near ninety, and Justine’s shirt was already sticky, the backs of her knees moist. Their lush surroundings provided a background of ticking, clicking insects and birds that seemed to rise and fall in conducted rhythm. She walked on the right, Regina in the middle, and the traitor on the other side. They were silent for a good ten minutes. Finally she couldn’t stand the suspense.

  “So what’s this all about?”

  Regina pushed up her glasses. “Pete Shadowen stopped by the shop to see me yesterday.”

  “He still has a thing for you,” Justine teased.

  “So does that Mitchell guy,” Mica said.

  Regina rolled her eyes, but her cheeks turned a decided pink. She had no idea how lovely she was, Justine realized. Naturally blond, dainty features, unbelievable skin, and great eyes if she would stop hiding behind those spectacles.

  A hank of hair had escaped from her low ponytail, and Regina tucked it behind her ear. “Pete mentioned that Uncle Lawrence is in town because the man convicted of Lyla’s murder is lobbying for a new trial.”

  Justine scoffed. “After this long? On what grounds?”

  “According to Pete and a report in the newspaper, on the grounds of a conspiracy theory.”

  “Conspiracy?” Mica asked.

  “The newspaper said that Bracken claims he’s a scapegoat, that the police were pressured to make an arrest because Uncle Lawrence was mayor at the time. Pete said Bracken has a new gung-ho attorney.”

  Justine frowned. “So how does this affect us?”

  “I think we should go to the police and tell them what we saw that day.”

  She stopped and clasped Regina’s arm. “Are you crazy? We can’t say it was or it wasn’t Bracken.” She’d decided that the impression that the murderer seemed familiar was a manifestation of her replaying the scene in her mind a thousand times over the years. “We’d open a can of worms for nothing.”

  “But we can offer other corroboration, like the approximate time of death.”

  Mica grabbed Regina’s other arm. “But the man is guilty. He killed her because he was pissed off when Aunt Lyla fired him.”

  “If she fired him, then why was she with him at Lovers’ Lane?”

  “One last fling,” Justine said. “Anger can be a powerful aphrodisiac.”

  Regina looked down to where they both held her. “Are you going to pull me in two?”

  They released her, and Regina resumed walking. They followed.

  “There’s something else,” she said.

  Justine didn’t like the sound of Regina’s voice. “What?”

  “The murder weapon was never found.”

  “That’s impossible,” Mica said. “I remember you saying the letter opener was lying on the seat.”

  “It was,” Regina said. “So why wouldn’t the police have found it?”

  Justine shrugged. “Maybe Bracken came back and removed it.”

  “Or maybe the person who found her body and reported it to the police took it—wasn’t it a hunter?”

  “Two squirrel hunters,” Justine added.

  Regina stopped walking. “I think I saw the letter opener last week listed on an on-line auction house.”

  After she explained the strange circumstances, Justine waved off her suspicions. “But you don’t know that it was the same letter opener.”

  “That’s right,” Mica said. “If we came forward, we could create enough doubt to get Bracken off—you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  “I would if he’s innocent.”

  Justine turned around to face Regina. “Who els
e could have done it?”

  “That’s for the police to figure out, isn’t it?”

  Mica joined her to face Regina. “Don’t you think poor Uncle Lawrence has been through enough?”

  “I believe Uncle Lawrence would want to know that the right man is in prison.” Regina frowned. “And you can’t tell me that keeping this secret all these years hasn’t weighed on your mind. Wouldn’t it be a relief to get it out in the open?”

  “No,” Justine and Mica chorused. Justine glared at Mica, who glared back.

  “Don’t forget we have our own lives to think about,” Justine added. “I don’t want to get dragged down into a scandal.”

  Regina lifted her eyebrow. “Since when?”

  Justine sighed. “All right, I’ll be honest. This shooting thing has put me on shaky ground with Cocoon. I simply can’t afford to be associated with a murder investigation, too.”

  “It wouldn’t look good to my sponsors, either,” Mica said. “I could lose contracts.”

  “But we didn’t murder her!” Regina said.

  “We could still be brought up on charges,” she reminded Regina. “Leaving the scene, not reporting the crime.”

  “But we were children.”

  “I was seventeen,” Justine said. “They might look at me differently than you and Mica. No—going to the police is not an option. We all have too much to lose and nothing to gain.”

  Regina clenched her teeth and a little vein popped out in her temple. “What about doing what’s right and being able to sleep at night?”

  “I sleep fine; don’t you, Mica?”

  Mica nodded. “Fine.”

  “It’s settled then,” Justine said. “Nobody talks to the police. And they have no reason to come to us, since nobody knows we were there that day.” She angled her head. “Nobody knows—right?”

  “I haven’t told a soul,” Regina murmured.

  Justine surveyed Mica’s high color with narrowed eyes. “How about you, Benedict Arnold?”

  Chapter 14

  DON’T make yourself a target for potshots.

  Mica swallowed under Justine’s stare. A hot, guilty flush crept up her neck, but she covered it with her hand. Her sister already didn’t think much of her, so she wasn’t about to admit her indiscretion. From Justine’s perspective, revealing their secret would be bad enough, but revealing it to Dean….