For Love of Money

by Cathy Perkins

  From a purely selfish perspective, having him—anyone—in the house would be good. Someone to talk to. Someone to keep the images of Marcy’s body away.

  He tossed the tape back onto the pile. It rolled across the floor, gathering dust and cat hair. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “I should head out. Check on the restaurant. I still have to open it tonight.”

  Oh, since he wasn’t getting any, it was time to bail? Nice.

  She retrieved the tape and brushed at the debris. Thanks a bunch. “Your family can handle the restaurant if you’re upset about Marcy.”

  “My mother knows Mrs. Ramirez.” He gave a small shrug. “She’ll worry.”

  About Marcy, Mrs. Ramirez, or Alex? Not that it mattered—Alex’s mother micromanaged both his life and his restaurant. “She’ll have heard about Marcy. She’ll want to know you’re okay,” she said, giving him an out.

  “She gets bossy when she’s worried. If she runs off any more staff, I’ll have to start recruiting my cousins to work as busboys.”

  The irritating brittz of the doorbell—another item on her long list of Things To Replace—interrupted.

  “You expecting anybody?” Alex asked.

  “I hope it isn’t a reporter.” Shaking her head, she crossed the room. “If my mom heard about this…”

  She pushed the curtain aside, peeked through the long sidelight window and rocked back half a step.

  No reporter.

  No mother.

  JC Dimitrak stood on her doorstep.

  She didn’t know why she was surprised. She’d known he’d show up eventually, but now? This soon?

  He dipped his head in greeting. Even tired and grim-faced, he still looked better than sex on a stick.

  Where did that come from? She scrambled to pull her thoughts together and opened the door.

  Wait a minute, her inner teenager shrieked. I’m not ready.

  “May I come in?”

  “What are you doing here? I mean, at my house?”

  “Remember the ‘Can we do this later?’ part?”

  Stepping back, she widened the opening. JC wore the same dark slacks and heavy coat he’d had on at the game management area. He unbuttoned his overcoat, revealing the huge pistol clamped to his belt beside his badge. This man—this stranger, she reminded herself, because she didn’t know him anymore—was definitely a leader. He had a commanding presence, backed by more than a hint of sex appeal.

  He’d always had it.

  Only now he was armed. And undoubtedly dangerous.

  “I take it this is an official visit,” she said.

  He ignored the observation, and instead gave her yoga pants, T-shirt, and wet hair a slow inspection. The twitch of his eyebrow and assessing glance told her he knew she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  Alex moved into the foyer. “Why are you here?”

  JC glanced at Alex. Sex assumptions hung like a cartoon balloon over his head. For a moment, something that might’ve been anger or jealousy tightened his face. Then it vanished. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  She said, “No” at the same time Alex said, “Yes.”

  “Glad we cleared that up.” JC’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I need to get your statement, Holly. Before you take off again.”

  She propped her fist on her hip. “You know, the way I remember things, you walked out.”

  “Don’t go there, Holly. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  “I know everything that matters.”

  Alex stepped up. “We’ve both done everything we can to cooperate, but quit hiding behind your badge. If you have a problem with Holly, you should bow out of the investigation.”

  JC gave him a cool examination. “I need to talk to each of you. Alone. We can do that at the station, if you’d prefer.”

  “No way. I’m not going to the police station without a lawyer,” Alex said.

  “You can leave.”

  Wow. She really hadn’t thought the day could get any worse. “Guys. Break.” She jammed her fingers into a time-out “T.”

  “Maybe I should call Phil Brewer.” Alex folded his arms across his chest in the universal male posturing position.

  She rejected his choice with, “Phil does corporate work.”

  Alex glared at the detective. “He’d still know how to make this guy quit harassing you.”

  JC didn’t say a word, but behind his stiff face he seemed to be enjoying stirring the pot.

  “Stop. He isn’t harassing me.” Weirding her out, yes. Harassing, no. She knew what that felt like. Right now, JC might be doing the über-cop routine, but if the tension got any hotter, they could roast marshmallows. And nobody was going to sing “Kumbaya.”

  “Alex.” She touched his arm, finally moving his attention off the detective. “I’m tired. I’d rather get this over with. Go on to the restaurant. I’ll be okay.”

  For one long moment, she was afraid he was going to push the issue.

  With a sharp snort of irritation, he turned, strode across the room, and grabbed his jacket. Thrusting his arms into the sleeves, he headed for the door. He made a move like he intended to kiss her.

  She froze. The oh-God-not-in-front-of-my-mother cringe warred with the in-your-face-JC snub.

  And from the half-smile on JC’s face, he’d caught her hesitation, even if Alex didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’ll call you in a little while.” To make sure JC’s gone, bristled from his scowl. Alex brushed his lips across hers and vanished through the front door.

  Alrighty.

  JC Dimitrak.

  She drew in a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”

  The detective crossed the foyer. His hard soles rapped against the bare subfloor. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

  Silently counting to ten, she decided to interpret the comment as a compliment, although he clearly hadn’t intended it that way. “I’m working on it. The guy who used to own the house opened up the interior. I don’t know what they were thinking back in the 70s, but the original house completely ignored the view, which is, of course, its best feature. It had those narrow, clerestory windows that kinda remind me of bunker openings.”

  She stared at the living room’s new, oversized panes and forced her mouth to close. Babbling wasn’t going to keep them from talking about Marcy.

  Talking about Marcy’s dead body would make her murder so much more real.

  “What’d he do? Get in over his head?”

  Holly turned around. “The guy who owned it? Yeah. The bank foreclosed.”

  JC gestured at the buckets and supplies. “Painting?”

  She wasn’t sure what to make of his tone or the question. Was he jumping to conclusions? Assuming she was a cold-hearted bitch for planning to paint today, the day she’d found a friend’s body?

  Well, she already knew where he stood on the bitch-meter, but he could’ve at least asked when she set out the paint instead of figuring she was going to break out the roller today. “The carpet installer’s scheduled for next week. He recommended I paint before he replaces the rug.”

  They both glanced at the hideous shag carpet.

  “Good idea.” A grin tugged at JC’s mouth.

  She bit her lip to keep from smiling—the shag was truly awful—but the tension in the room dropped by ten degrees anyway.

  He looked at her, studying her expression. “Actually, I’m impressed you took on the project.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I thought you said you’d never live in Richland again.”

  “You heard what you wanted to hear.” One of the reasons they’d broken up was he’d wanted a stay-at-home wife, stuck behind a picket fence. She’d had no interest in playing the Stepford Wife role. Any chance they’d had of creating any kind of home crashed and burned when she came home from college after one of their arguments—about her being in Seattle and her plans to stay there after graduation—and found him with another woman.
r />   But here she was, in Richland.

  With a house.

  An empty house.

  Whatever.

  “The house is an investment. Most of my friends think I’m nuts for renovating it myself.”

  His lips tightened around a smile.

  If she didn’t know him, she’d have missed it. One of the things he’d loved about her—said he’d loved—was her tendency to throw herself into projects other people thought were crazy. She always pulled them off, though.

  “The place is butt-ugly on the outside, but you have to admit the view is stunning.” Keep him focused on the externals.

  JC didn’t need to know she loved the ugly little house. Everything about the house and the renovation was tangible. Did she fix the water heater or not? Get the room painted or not? There were none of the murky gray areas like there were in the rest of her life, where maybe she succeeded—or maybe she didn’t.

  He moved past her to the window, then turned and leaned against the wall. “I heard you were back.”

  She gave him an and-your-point-is? look. What had he expected? That she’d call him? Show up on his cheating, black-hearted doorstep?

  “Why’d you move back to Richland?”

  She wasn’t going to tell him her father had suffered a midlife brain fart and taken off with his yoga instructor, or that she’d made a deal with her mother to bail out the family accounting business, a decision she regretted on practically a daily basis. And at a deeper level, his question pissed her off because he knew damn well exactly why she was there. She’d seen the cop pow-wow information exchange out at Big Flats, where the deputies had brought JC up to speed. He was digging for personal information.

  She crossed her arms and ignored the way her body heated up just because he was in the room. Stupid body. If it heated up, it was because she was mad. Period. “You know why I moved. And if you were really interested, it would take you about two seconds to find out when I changed the address on my driver’s license from Seattle to Richland.”

  He smiled and two dimples appeared.

  She caught her breath. Oh, man. How could she have forgotten about his dimples?

  It didn’t matter how many times she told herself they were just a simple indentation of flesh. Dimples made serious, grown-up men look like they still had a mischievous little boy inside. The kind who sledded down the forbidden steepest slopes, dyed the dog green for St. Patty’s Day, or knew how to be especially devilish in bed.

  And she personally knew every one of them applied to JC.

  In spite of her irritation, she smiled at him and his grin widened. His shoulders relaxed and his eyes grew a shade warmer. “You never could pass up a chance to jerk my chain.”

  “You set yourself up often enough.”

  Why was he making nice? She did the mental head-slap. What was she thinking? JC stood for “Just Cool” as often as it did “Just Crazy.”

  “Is this your loosen-up-the-idiot routine, so I’ll say something stupid like I killed Marcy?”

  His face immediately closed off, but before he could make another comment, she pulled on the composed shell she used at the negotiating table. “Look. At least for tonight, let’s declare a truce. You quit taking jabs at me and I won’t take any swipes at you. I’ll tell you everything I know about Marcy.”

  He pushed away from the wall and nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

  “If we’re going to talk about her, I need coffee.” She headed toward the kitchen.

  JC followed her into the large area beyond the vacant living room. “Nice.”

  There was no snark in his tone this time.

  She surveyed the renovated space with pride. A tile-topped peninsula—she’d set every one of those suckers—separated the kitchen from the dining area. Cherry cabinets lined the interior walls and surrounded the Bosch appliances. City lights sparkled through the oversized windows at night, but right now she could see eighty miles to the Blue Mountains.

  “Have a seat.” She pulled out coffee and filled the machine. “With all that activity at Big Flats, I’m surprised you’re here. Shouldn’t you be following leads or something?”

  From the safety of distance, she gave him a closer examination. His hair was shorter. No big surprise there, he was a policeman. His face was tanned; apparently he still spent time outdoors. The lines at the corners of his eyes were new. He’d filled out, not that he’d been a wimp when she knew him. She checked out the broad chest and shoulders tapering to slim hips and remembered why hormones had fried her brain when she was in college.

  Good thing she was too smart for that now.

  All his assets still didn’t outweigh the big ol’ blot in his liability column, a.k.a. infidelity.

  He dropped his coat on a counter stool, but claimed the chair at the head of the table. “You looked like you were nearly out on your feet earlier, so I let you go home.” A lazy smile, the kind that used to set her heart racing, warmed his expression. “You still look good, though.”

  “Hmm.” Telling her pulse and her traitorous hormones to go take another cold shower, she gave her ratty yoga pants and T-shirt an appraising glance. She didn’t have to see her hair to know it had already dried in the desert air without benefit of blow-dryer, styling gel, or flatiron. “What do you want, JC?”

  He laughed.

  It was the belly-deep, I’m-an-idiot-and-you-called-me-on-it combined with I-don’t-take-myself-too-seriously chuckle she remembered. One of the protective barriers holding in her anger and hurt creaked a little, as though it were rusty and maybe she didn’t need it anymore.

  No, no, no. He was not getting under her skin.

  The coffee machine made steamy brewing noises behind her. Deliberately turning her back on him and his smile, she picked up his coat and headed toward the closet. As she draped the garment over a wooden hanger, her nose caught floral perfume wafting from the wool. Definitely not JC’s cologne.

  Her stomach knotted. She should’ve known there’d be a woman in his life.

  Anger knifed through any remaining illusions. She knew better than to trust anything he said or did. And what did he think he was doing, giving her that c’mon look?

  She slapped the hanger onto the closet rod. He wasn’t wearing a ring. Was he still married to what’s-her-face? Like being married stopped anybody. Look at Dad. If he fell off the rails, why should she expect JC to be different?

  She already knew JC wasn’t different.

  She returned to the kitchen and slammed around a few coffee mugs. She wasn’t sure if she was mad at her father, JC, or herself for still being even the tiniest little bit attracted to him.

  Damn him.

  He had a notepad open on the table. “I have some questions.”

  “Well, we can keep this short and I’ll get started painting. Here are all the answers.” She ticked them off on her fingers as she spoke. “I thought we were going hiking. I had no idea it was opening weekend for pheasant hunting. I had no idea Marcy’s body was in that swampy area. And no, I didn’t kill her. Would you like your coffee in a to-go cup?”

  All business now, he leveled a stare at her she figured was supposed to be intimidating, but the assorted investment bankers, venture capitalists, and arrogant attorneys she’d dealt with in Seattle had made her immune to that kind of nonsense. JC was an amateur compared to them.

  “Don’t be a bitch, Holly. It doesn’t suit you.”

  She pressed her hands onto the counter and managed to keep her expression neutral. She wished she could control the warmth climbing her cheeks. She’d known those dimpled “come on” signals were just a crappy ploy. Nobody turned it off and on like that if it was real. “Dammit JC, quit jerking me around. I’ll do whatever I can to help you find Marcy’s killer, but I don’t know what I can say that’ll make any difference.”

  “You knew Ms. Ramirez. What can you tell me about her? What was she like?”

  Holly pulled in a deep breath. Do it for Marcy.

  “So th
e body is definitely Marcy’s?”

  He nodded, but didn’t elaborate.

  “Damn. I’d hoped…” The tiny spark of hope she’d harbored vanished and left the world a little darker.

  With a sigh, she leaned against the counter and thought about the woman who’d become her friend. “Marcy works—worked—across the hall at Stevens Ventures. She was fun, outgoing. We did lunch, happy hour at Bookwalter, that kind of thing. We had different backgrounds, but we just clicked, you know?”

  The coffeemaker sputtered behind her.

  “I liked her. I wish I’d gotten a chance to know her better.” She stared at the floor before raising her gaze to meet his. “I can’t believe she’s dead. Who would want to kill her? Why?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Do you know who Ms. Ramirez was dating?”

  “I wish I could be more help, but I don’t know much about her personal life.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  “We are…were. She never talked about a boyfriend. I think she was seeing someone, but like I said… ” Holly lifted a shoulder.

  “Do you know anybody who’d want to hurt her?”

  “I can’t think of anybody. She was so…nice.” Holly chewed her lower lip, frustrated with her explanation. “I’m not doing a very good job telling you about her. What she was like, as a person. Marcy…loved pretty clothes. And she loved to dance. You should’ve seen her. She could move like the music came from inside her, and if she was dancing with somebody—”

  “She dance with anybody in particular?”

  Holly blinked. The memory of the dance floor where she’d admired Marcy’s footwork vanished, and she returned to a grim-faced cop who wanted to know if one of her friends had killed the woman. No way was she going to say Alex and Marcy should’ve auditioned for that dance show together. Alex had been her date when they went dancing, not Marcy’s. “Nobody in particular.”

  “So no known enemies?”

  “Not that I know of.” She removed a spoon from a drawer. “Do you think this was a random violence thing? You know, wrong time, wrong place?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “How’d she end up out at the Snake River?”