by Rae Davies
I smiled back. Fake as hell, of course.
“Now if we can just locate my husband’s grandmother’s watch,” she added.
With my win ripped from me, I wasn’t in much of a mood for more of her subtle and not-so-subtle accusations. Peter, however, cut me off before I could reply with exactly what I was thinking.
“You don’t know who has it?” he asked, looking surprised. “I was sure you did.”
“How would I know?” she asked, indignant.
He shrugged. “I thought your husband told you.”
“Arthur?” She glanced over her shoulder at Sir Arthur, who, on hearing his name and apparently figuring out what we were discussing, had turned redder than any herring she might have planted.
When she turned back, her gaze locked onto me. “It was you.”
I glanced at Peter, wondering why our crazy hostess thought Sir Arthur knowing pinned the guilt onto me.
“Lucy didn’t take your watch,” Peter explained, patient as always. “But I bet she also knows who did.”
Mrs. Peabody, who had been following the conversation with rapt attention, perked up even more. “Tell us!” she ordered.
In fact, everyone in the room seemed to have stopped what they were doing and were now watching me.
It was, I realized, my second chance. Except Peter was wrong. I didn’t have any idea who had stolen Lady York’s watch.
I looked over the expectant faces, and then it hit me. I did know, and after two seconds of thinking about it, I knew why the person, or persons, had taken the watch too.
I cleared my throat and took my spot, back in the limelight.
“The mistake you made, Lady York, wasn’t with who stole your watch, but who in fact I am. You see, I am exactly what I said that I was, a crime reporter turned antiques dealer originally from the Missouri Ozarks with no previous ties to Montana or anyone from this fair state.”
For the first time that weekend, Lady York’s expression of extreme confidence wavered.
I knew then that my guess was correct, both as to who had taken the watch and why Lady York had been so fixated on me.
“I’m not sure why you thought I was someone I’m not. Maybe because of our last-minute reservation? My age also hits within the target range... And maybe my hair made you think I was younger?” She had reacted to it more visibly than most people did, I realized. I tilted my head to the side as if considering. In truth, I was just milking the moment. I deserved it, and she owed it to me.
“I have to admit, I was confused at first too. Not so much by who took your watch. I wasn’t even sure it had been stolen, but with why I suddenly seemed to be getting so much attention as a potential suspect in the murder game. Now I realize that was part of the cover up. The true thief must have realized that you had confused me with her, and she wanted to keep the focus on me as much as she could. So she rigged Mandrake’s cards to cast doubt on me. The poem was a double dig, putting more doubt on me and calling you out for what she thought of you marrying her father.”
The ladies in the room, with the exception of Lady York and the thief herself, gasped. The men responded too, but with more variety, ranging from open mouths to uneasy frowns.
Feeling just like a star sleuth, I pulled in a breath. “And now, I will name the thief!”
“No need.” Miss Claythorne pushed Mandrake out of her path and moved within a few feet of her father’s new wife. “I took the watch, but I didn’t steal it. It’s mine. It wasn’t ever my father’s, not really. It was my mother’s. She would have wanted me to have it.” She looked at Lady York, challenging.
Our hostess lifted one brow and looked at her husband.
He dropped his gaze.
Frowning, Lady York looked back at Miss Claythorne. “You can’t expect me to take your word on who you are.”
“You don’t need to take my word. Just read the papers my attorney sent my father, the ones you intercepted.”
“I would never–”
“We know you did. You signed for them.”
Lady York glanced at the door. If she was hoping for a rescue, none came.
“After my private investigator found my father, I tried calling, but after her meeting with him, you must have found out and intercepted all of my efforts. I realized if I wanted to meet him myself, I’d have to give up on being invited and just show up. I researched some more.
“That’s how I found out about you and your past; it’s also how I found out about your mystery weekends.”
“So the poem?” I asked.
Miss Claythorne shrugged. “Cheap shot, but I was mad. I knew she’d intercepted the papers and my calls. Knowing that she was doing whatever she could to keep him from meeting with me...when I saw her wearing my mother’s watch, I snapped.”
“How’d you know it was your mother’s?” I asked.
She pulled out an old photo. Sir Arthur was in it with a dark-haired woman. The woman was wearing the watch.
“My private investigator got this. It was the first time I’d seen either of my parents.”
Miss Brent, or Michelle, as Mandrake had called her, looked just like her mother. Sir Arthur had to have known who she was as soon as she walked into the house.
She looked at her father, her eyes sad. He cast his gaze to the ground.
An awkward silence fell over the group after that. I felt a bit like a character in Ten Little Indians, trapped in a house with people I didn’t particularly like or trust. Except Peter, of course, and Kiska, and Mrs. Peabody.
She was the one who saved the day, herding everyone out of the living room and into the dining room where she and her husband took over, setting up the TV and a marathon of movies. They also raided the kitchen, bringing in popcorn and soda and expensive-looking hand-dipped chocolates that I’m sure weren’t meant for us.
I grabbed three of the gourmet bonbons and popped them one by one into my mouth. Peter made do with popcorn, eating it at a frustratingly slow speed of one piece at a time.
“What do you think is going to happen?” I asked him.
“With the watch?”
I nodded.
“Not much, I’d guess, unless the daughter refuses to give it back and Arthur and Lady York want to press charges.”
“He won’t.” The guilt I’d seen on Sir Arthur’s face assured me of that.
“Then she’ll probably get to keep it.” He ate some more popcorn, completely uninterested in anything past the possible legal outcomes.
“What about their relationship?” I prompted.
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I widened my eyes. “Will they have one? Do you think they’ll be father and daughter? And what about Lady York and Sir Arthur? How can he forgive her for destroying the papers? Why do you think she did that, anyway?”
I had a ton more questions, but Peter just closed his eyes, picked his cowboy hat off the floor and placed it over his face.
This was why a man could never replace having a best friend. Rhonda would never have taken a nap at a time like this.
“The money.” Mrs. Peabody squeezed past Peter and then me to take the chair on my right. “This place...” She motioned with a straw to the room around us. “...wasn’t in Sir Arthur’s family. It was in his first wife’s. With her daughter turning up, there’s an heir who isn’t his current wife.” Looking pleased with herself she took a sip of whatever was in her cup.
“Oh...”
She lowered her glass. “If this had been an Agatha Christie story, the daughter wouldn’t have been the one doing the crime.” She lifted an eyebrow.
I nodded.
“In fact, you’re lucky this was all make-believe. You could have been victim number one.”
I nodded again.
“You never know though...” She looked around.
My boyfriend grunted, telling me he wasn’t asleep and he didn’t appreciate the direction our conjecture was going.
“Do you think they’ll keep havin
g the weekends?” I asked.
“Depends on whether the marriage makes it through this, but I hope they do. I wouldn’t mind seeing what happens next.”
“I did have fun...”
Peter grunted again and then dozed off, leaving Mrs. Peabody and I to gossip at leisure.
o0o
An hour later, the movies were still playing, but I was stuffed with chocolate and gossiped out. I woke Peter and he, Kiska, and I headed to our cabin.
There, I fell back onto the bed and luxuriated in my success.
He sat down beside me. “I agreed to Minnesota,” he said.
I rolled over and looked up at him. “So?”
“So... isn’t that enough?”
“Enough for what?”
“To prove...” Suddenly uncomfortable, he glanced around the room.
My interest peaked, I sat up. “To prove what?”
He mumbled something and got off the bed. He walked to the closet and pulled something out of his duffel.
When he walked back, my entire body froze.
In his hand was a box. A tiny innocuous white box. Not the kind with a hinge on one side, but still...
He bent on one knee. “I never thought I’d do this again.”
I glanced around, afraid for a moment that he’d been shot and was in the process of collapsing in front of me.
He raised a brow and cleared his throat.
Not shot.
Still holding The Box.
I cleared my throat. I was ready. I thought.
He lifted the lid.
“Lucy?”
“What?” I realized suddenly that somehow my eyes had closed.
“Are you going to look?”
Oh, yeah... look. That’s what people did in such situations. Except I couldn’t. I loved Peter. I really did, but The Box and what would be inside. That was huge and I was... me. I had my house and my dog and my shop, and I just wasn’t sure I was ready to give any of that up and become someone else.
And that’s what would happen, right? That’s what always happened. People got... I couldn’t think of the word... and had... another mental bleep... and grew up and became mature.
I so wasn’t ready for mature.
“Lucy...” he prompted.
I had to tell him.
I opened my eyes. “Peter, I don’t—” My gaze fell on the open box.
Inside was not what I’d expected.
Inside was a... key.
I picked it up and turned it over. A key. Just a key. No secret messages inscribed on it. No ring tucked under it. Just a... “It’s a key,” I muttered.
“Yes, I didn’t... you didn’t...” He glanced around, looking more panicked than I’d ever seen him. Not that I’d seen him panicked before, but he definitely was now.
He dropped the empty box on the floor and moved to sit beside me on the bed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. It was Valentine’s and I wanted to make a gesture, but I didn’t mean to lead you to think—”
He was stuttering. It was kind of nice.
“You know how I feel about you...” more rambling...
I blinked innocently. “Do I?”
“Of course.”
“And how is that?”
“Uh... I...”
“What?” He hadn’t given me a ring. He hadn’t dropped the life-changing question that for a moment I had thought he was going to, and honestly, I was relieved. But there was absolutely no reason to let him know that, at least not yet.
“I... love you.”
He looked like a little boy when he said it. All insecure and uncertain.
I grinned. “You do?”
Suspicion crept into his eyes. “Yes.”
“And what’s this?” I held up the key between my thumb and index finger.
“The key to my house. I wanted you to know that there were no secrets between us, that my house is your house, that you can come and go when you like, that you don’t have to wait for me to not be busy with a case, because no case is as important as...”
I raised my eyebrows.
Suspicion glimmered in his gaze, but he finished the sentence anyway. “You. Nothing is as important as you... except Jeremy, of course.”
Okay, he’d had to add his son. I understood that.
“And maybe Alphie and Kiska... then there’s She—”
Adding his ex-wife to the list was too much. I socked him in the chest, knocking him back onto the bed.
He grabbed me by the arms and rolled us over, laughing.
“Not funny,” I objected.
“You playing with me wasn’t either,” he defended.
Okay, maybe, but still. I twisted my lips to the side.
He laughed again and pulled me closer. “So, what do you say? Do you accept my offer?”
The key was pressed in my hand. I wasn’t letting it go.
“Of what?” I asked. A girl needed clarity.
“Of...” He seemed a bit lost.
“I have my own house,” I said.
“I know.” He nodded into my hair.
“And I love it.”
“I know that too.”
“But it might be nice to have a few things at your house too, if you didn’t mind.”
“A toothbrush,” he suggested.
“Maybe a change of clothes?” I added.
“Or two.”
“And then there’s Kiska. He’ll need a bed.”
“Of course. I’m sure when Alphie visits he won’t mind, and I know Jeremy won’t either.”
“And then, maybe, eventually...” I let the rest trail off. I really couldn’t see leaving my house in the mountains anytime soon, but I wasn’t sure Peter could give up his place either.
“Yeah, maybe, eventually,” he agreed, pulling me closer again.
We lay there for a half an hour, wallowing in our new commitment that would have seemed too slight to even acknowledge to most people, but to Peter and me? It was huge. Not call-my-mother huge, but still...
“Peter?”
“Yes?”
“I love you too.”
And I did and I always would, and someday, just maybe, he and Kiska and I would be ready for more, but for now knowing we both felt the same was enough. I grasped the key tight in my hand and wondered just how many crocks I could fit along the back wall of his living room.
Minnesota, here I come.
-o0o-
Author’s Note
This story is for all of you who wrote to me and asked for MORE Peter and Lucy. I hope this gave you more insight into their relationship and the touch more romance you were craving. I know I enjoyed writing it and playing with one of my original loves… Agatha Christie.
If you enjoyed Lucy and the Valentine Verdict, please consider leaving an online review. They really do make a difference.
If you would like to be informed of new books in the series, please sign up for my newsletter. I promise that you won't be inundated with mail.
And don’t forget to check out the next book in the Dusty Deals Mystery Series, Loose Lips!
Thanks again,
Rae
Author Bio
Rae Davies is the USA Today Best-selling Author of the Dusty Deals Mystery Series.
She also, under the name Lori Devoti, writes in numerous other genres including paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and young adult fiction.
Rae/Lori is a past winner of the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award and a member of Novelists Inc., a prestigious group for professional writers. She lives near Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and children as well as two dogs. She teaches the craft and business of writing through the University of Wisconsin's Continuing Studies program, both in person and online, and blogs about writing at www.HowToWriteShop.com.
Like Lucy, Rae/Lori loves antiques, Montana and malamutes. (Although don't tell her husky or aussie/pug mix that last part.)
How to Find Me
Website: http://RaeDavies.com
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Email: [email protected]
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/raedaviesauthor/
For dark paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels, visit Rae’s other persona, Lori Devoti.
Website: http://www.LoriDevoti.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoriDevotiAuthor
Email: [email protected]
Books by Rae Davies
Mysteries
Loose Screw
Cut Loose
Loosey Goosey
Let Loose
Lucy and the Valentine Verdict (a Dusty Deals Novella)
Loose Lips
Box Sets
Loose & Lethal: Box Set of Books 1 – 3 Dusty Deals Mystery Series
Romances
Love is All Around
Love is All You Need
