by Misty Simon
I didn’t feel right stopping in to see Ben without at least checking in with his favorite uncle, Harlow, who owned the paper. I knocked on his door before swinging it open—to find him with a girl on his desk where his computer should be. Long blonde hair streamed down her back and nearly hit the table. Her head was thrown back, and since I couldn’t see all of Harlow, but I could tell he was sitting down, I didn’t want to know where his hands were.
“Uh, sorry. I’ll come back.”
Harlow sighed. “No, Ivy, it’s fine.” He got up and walked around the desk with no apparent issue, so maybe I had been assuming more was going on than had really been happening. However, when he went in for a hug, I sidestepped him. Just because he didn’t have a hard-on didn’t mean his hands hadn’t been places that meant he should wash them before he touched me.
“Good to see you, Harlow.”
“And you.” He tucked his hands behind his back and leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. He was the kids’ godfather and a major part of our lives. I just wished he’d find a good woman to settle down with and stop dating these bimbos, but who was I to tell someone what to do with their love life?
“Want to introduce me to your friend?”
The woman in question finally tipped her head forward and swiveled around on the desk to sit in a lotus position with her flowing pants draped around her. Ah, now I knew who she was, the yoga instructor from Main Street. Not everyone had been thrilled to have a new-age thing come into our sleepy, backwards town, but her studio had been hopping, from what I could tell. I wished I knew why, when some people still made it a point to tell me they only came to the Masked Shoppe in honor of Gertie, my aunt who had died over eight years ago.
“Chloe meet Ivy. Ivy, Chloe.”
I didn’t know where her hands had been either, so I just smiled. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too. I heard you’re the one who found my uncle dead. Thank you for taking care of him, even if there was nothing much that could be done.” She looked away and then back, ethereal in her flowing white top and oversized pants. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see angel wings sprout out of her back and fly her away into the sky.
And then I realized what she had said. Mac was her uncle. This told me two things. One, no wonder her yoga studio had done well. She might have come into town and seemed new to me, but she had the family to make her an instant resident. And two, I now had an idea on what to do next to get things moving.
“Okay, well, I should go see Ben and find out what he’s doing for lunch. See you, Harlow. Chloe, it was nice meeting you, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said. Her tone of voice held no grieving, and I felt my eyebrows rising. Perhaps here was someone I should also be looking at more closely. But then a tear slid down her perfect cheek. Harlow handed her a tissue as he motioned for me to leave his office. I pulled the door closed behind me and remained out there for a moment listening to her sob.
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t someone to watch. That sounded authentic. Maybe she just was more reserved and didn’t go around blubbering on everyone.
I knew there were people like that out there. I just hadn’t met many of them who could hold it together so well when a relative had just died. It wasn’t my place to judge. I still couldn’t help but put her name into my own mental list. It was getting crowded up there, but I had to try to keep it all straight.
Chapter Nine
“We need to get into Mac’s house.” I entered Ben’s office with these words to find him bent over his computer, hunting and pecking letters on the keyboard. I’d been trying for years to get him to take a typing class, but he refused. And sometimes he was actually faster than I was at typing with his two-finger method, so who was I to make him learn QWERTY?
He held up one of his fingers, and I barely resisted the urge to nibble on it.
His tongue poked out of the side of his mouth as he continued typing. I wandered around his office, touching things and looking at pictures of us as a family and the girls’ school pictures. We had made some pretty adorable children, if I did say so myself, and they were the joy of my life.
In truth, I don’t know that I ever thought I’d be more than a fantastic aunt to the Bouquet’s kids. That was what I called my sisters Rose, Magnolia, and Daisy. I had several nephews and nieces and would have been happy to spoil them from afar. Even when I started dating Ben, I never really thought about kids. But then it happened, and really, I’ve never been happier. They made me laugh, they made me cry, they made me sigh, and they made me scream, but at the end of the day they made my life so much better.
I hoped they were busily having fun with their grandparents. Actually, I was very happy they weren’t here for this murder. They might hear about it when they got back to town, but I hoped it would be solved long before then. For their sake and for the sake of my alone time with Ben.
That is, if there even was a murder. I had two places on my list that I wanted to visit, and Ben was still typing away. I decided to do something about that. Surely it was lunchtime now.
I plunked myself down in his lap, then had to hold on for dear life as his chair went dipping backward.
We almost ended up doing the horizontal mambo fully clothed and without intending to.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked after he’d righted his chair and made sure my shirt was no longer twisted up around my neck.
“There’s nothing to owe. I love you. I wanted to come see you. So I’m here.”
“And Harlow just shot me an instant message stating that if you have any plans to approach his girlfriend about her uncle that you might want to wait a few days because she’s distraught, and distraught gets him no action.”
“He’s a hound dog. Isn’t he in his fifties now? Shouldn’t he be slowing down on the beauties and starting to work on that lifelong partner thing?”
He hugged me tight, nearly sending my boobs spilling out of the top of my shirt. From his leer, I gathered that had been his intention. He kissed the top of one and had me shivering. But I didn’t want to get sidetracked, so I jumped off his lap and went prowling through the office again.
I felt Ben’s eyes track me around the room and turned to find him smiling at me.
“I do love you.”
“And I love you,” I responded.
“And I love that you’re concerned, but Harlow had what he thought was a lifelong partner about ten years ago. It ended badly. I don’t know that he’ll ever really try that again. But I’m sure he’d be happy to know you worry about him.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you dare tell him I worry about him. I’d never be able to get him out of our kitchen if he thought I had a soft spot for the confirmed bachelor.”
Ben snickered because he knew it was true. Harlow seemed to always date people who had no idea what to do with anything that didn’t involve shoes, a mirror, or a bed, or all three.
I’d tried to give several of the last handful the benefit of the doubt, but I was wrong every time, and though this one obviously knew how to make her chi flow, I highly doubted there was much more to her than that. Not that I would tell Harlow that. I learned after Biffy or Buffy or Dotty not to interfere.
“I’m not here to talk about Harlow. I think we have two possible ways to get this investigation started.” I cringed at that word since I really wasn’t qualified to investigate. Then again, when all those murders were happening years ago, I and my group of peeps were the ones who handed the solution and the perp to the cops. So maybe I wasn’t that bad at this after all.
Ben zeroed in on me and sat back in his chair with his listening face on. I adored that one and all his other expressions, but this one made me a little giddy.
“Let me hear what you’ve got.”
“Okay.” I paced in front of his desk. “One, I think we need to figure out where those wasps came from. Even if it was an accident, there were no wasps in that shed. So either Mac
was running from the swarm and got caught in the shed with them and then they all flew out after they stung him, or—”
“Let me interrupt you for a minute.”
I stopped pacing. “Go ahead.”
“That’s an interesting theory about the wasps, but what about the stake in his chest?”
“Hmm, he could have been flailing around and accidentally fell onto it?”
He sent me a doubtful look. “That’s a lot of coincidence.”
“I’m not saying they all make sense.” I bristled because I wasn’t the professional here, he was. I was just trying to help.
“Don’t get all huffy. I’m just working through it with you.”
Settling myself down was effortless. Nearly, anyway. “Okay, so let’s say that the stake got lodged in his chest from flailing around. We need to find that nest at Myrt’s, and we need to find out where the stakes were kept, and if it’s possible.”
“Sounds like a good start. So what’s your next possibility?”
“Honestly, I like that one best because then it’s not a murder, and I can go on about my life and the rest of my vacation. Then you can ravish me instead of having to find clues to something that has nothing to do with us.”
He smiled. “I like that one too, sweets, but it might not be the whole story, and so what’s your next theory?”
“That someone deliberately set those wasps on him, staked him, and made it look like an accident in Myrt’s shed to throw off suspicion. After all, someone tied his hands with his tie, which is hardly accidental, and I don’t think Myrt did that, either.”
“That one I think is a little closer. So how do we find out how to get evidence of what would’ve prompted someone to set up the whole thing and make it look like Myrt did it?”
Have I mentioned that I love this man of mine? I love being treated like an equal and valued for my opinion.
“And by the way, I find it super hot that we’re talking about this instead of what the kids should have for lunch or whether or not I remembered to buy laundry detergent when you sent me to the store.”
I literally burst out in laughter. “I guess we’re going to have to do more to keep our marriage lively, then, because it can’t always be a dead person that brings the magic to the forefront. I think the law would frown on that.”
He came around the desk. “I didn’t mean it had to be a dead person, just that I like talking to you about this kind of stuff and bouncing ideas. Lately I sometimes think we’ve gotten so caught up in our own worlds that we don’t always bounce off each other.”
“Oh, come on, now, cowboy, I think we bounce plenty often.” I squeezed him in his man parts. He squeaked. Okay, my grip might have been a tiny bit harder than I meant.
“Sorry, sorry.”
Ben cleared his throat. “Not a problem, but I’m serious, Ivy. I want you to think again about maybe getting your PI license. I know you don’t have a lot to do with my business, but it could come in handy, and I’d love to be a team with you.”
Lordy, would we be able to work together that often? Plus, I had the Shoppe and the kids and…and…and… But he looked so hopeful, and I really did enjoy solving things with him. Maybe we could expand the Shoppe building and put in an office.
That was a topic for another day, though. Right now I had to acknowledge that we did sometimes lose track of each other, and we could improve on that. “There will be more bouncing of the information kind. I promise. I get what you’re saying, and I’m happy to work on it.”
He hugged me, and we got back to business.
“So what should we do first? Myrt’s or Mac’s?” he asked.
“I’m thinking we should find out if Rukey is on the day shift today and make a decision that way. We could explain away being at Myrt’s, since she lives across the street, but we’d have a harder time explaining what we were doing at Mac’s. I don’t want you back in jail again for trespassing.”
“I’ll put in a call, you clear your schedule, and let’s get this rolling.”
“I love when you talk rolling,” I said with a wink.
“I love when you roll.”
And I’ll leave you there, since it was about another ten minutes before we actually made any phone calls or any progress moving forward.
****
We showed up at Mac’s house from around back. He lived out almost in the country, on a shady lane near the outskirts of town, and we were pretty sure we would be safe. His house was surrounded in back and on one side by trees, acres and acres of trees, since he was at the end of the road.
This was all good stuff, because we were not planning on breaking and entering so much as opening and perusing. Harlow had managed to secure us a key from the girlfriend under some pretense of helping in some vague way. His only condition was that we get the first scoop on the murder, if in fact that was what it was. His newspaper was seeing a steady drop in reader interest, and if he could get some juice going again, maybe subscriptions would pick up.
We parked around at the back of the house in case anyone happened to come by. Mac had a big carriage house, so we parked close to the trees away from the road, then sat for a moment just to make sure no one else came along. God knows Rukey could have been hiding behind some bush or tree just waiting for us.
After about five minutes, Ben nodded at me, and we exited the car. We got the key to work and slipped in the back door. I had no idea what we might be looking for but hoped I would recognize it when I saw it.
We searched high and low, keeping tabs on each other to make sure everything was okay, but I swear to you, the entire house was clean as a whistle and as bland as vanilla. Everything was beige or light blue, from carpets to furniture to drapes. Nothing was out of place, and everything seemed to have a place. The man was unnatural. He didn’t even have a junk drawer. Everyone has a junk drawer. Am I right?
Ben motioned me to follow him out of the house. We were nearly to the back door when we heard someone pull up out front.
Shit. Shit. Shit!
We needed a cover story, and we needed it fast, no matter who was out there. I looked to Ben. He had the same deer-in-the-headlights look that was probably fixed on my face. This sucked, especially since we hadn’t found anything to make this possible arrest worthwhile.
Maybe we could make a run for it, and no one would be the wiser. I cocked my head toward the back door. Ben nodded, and we quietly made our way outside. I hadn’t heard any more movement. Maybe it was just someone who hadn’t realized this was a dead end and then turned around, or was sitting at the end of the road trying to get their GPS to work out here to get them back on track. Good luck with that. It might be eight years since I had moved here, but the cell reception wasn’t any more reliable than it had been when I arrived.
As softly as possible, I closed the door behind Ben, then tiptoed toward the car. Just in case. Rounding the corner of the carriage house, I nearly jumped for joy because we were almost there and hadn’t been caught for our perusing.
Of course that meant Debbie was standing with her arms crossed, leaning against the driver’s side of my car, with a frown on her face.
Well, crap.
Chapter Ten
How were we going to get out of this one? At least she hadn’t seen us coming out of the house. Hopefully. We could simply say we were looking around the property to make sure the judge’s things were secure. That would be a neighborly thing to do.
If I didn’t live over two miles away…
I opened my mouth to give the story, but Debbie put her hand in the air like the traffic cop she used to be.
“I don’t want to hear it. Whatever it is you have to say, I absolutely do not want to hear it. In fact, I’m going to pretend you were not here and you did not break into a dead man’s house.”
“We didn’t break in—” I started.
“I said I didn’t want to hear it, and I don’t. Just tell me you didn’t take anything out of the house.”
�
��Nothing,” Ben said behind me. “Carol asked us to come by and make sure the house was secure. So we did. All tightly locked up.”
“And Carol asked you to do that?” Bartley asked with skepticism heavily coloring her voice.
“Yes, Mac’s niece.” Ben gave her his toothy smile, the charming one that would have made me forget to put on panties.
Debbie just stared at him. “I think you mean Chloe, and if you don’t get out of here within the next two minutes I am totally hauling both of your asses to jail, where I’ll let Rukey straighten you out. That should give him something to be happy about, anyway.”
I made a mad dash for the car, then waited while Debbie took a full minute to stare me down as she continued to lean against the driver’s door. My two minutes were running out. I almost hip-checked her out of the way, but she moved right as I was about to get my hip swing on. Probably better that way.
Ben and I jumped into the car at the same time, saying nothing. I cranked the engine, and though I wanted to spit gravel getting out of the area, I took it slow. Bartley would probably ticket me for the pure pleasure of it right now. I did not want to incite her. (Good word, and I’d enjoy it after I got at least two streets away from the mess of that bit of investigation.)
Ben blew out a breath as he grabbed my hand. “I have got to be more careful. My PI license could be on the line with this, and Jared could get fired. I hate to put it all on you, but I think I might have to.”
While I was one part elated that he trusted me to figure this one out, I was also eight parts terrified because it had been six years since I’d done anything like this. And this one felt like a heck of a lot more than anything I’d dealt with before.
“I’ll still do all the computer work if there’s anything to find, but I think you’re going to have to tap Bella if you need to do any more sneaking.”
I pulled over to the side of the road to assimilate that information in my mind. No way was he saying that. The man who had wanted in on every single other death we’d ever solved and often told me to stay put so that he could take the risks?
