Blazing Summer (Darling Investigations Book 2)

by Denise Grover Swank

  Even if he seemed like an ass, I decided to make an effort to get along with him. If I wanted to make it as a real PI in this town, it would be smart to be in all the officers’ good graces.

  “So . . . ,” I said, “I hear you joined the police force just last week, Officer Sterling.”

  He studied my license. “Yep.” He glanced up. “Your license says you weigh one hundred and ten pounds. You look closer to one twenty-five. Do you typically lie on government paperwork?”

  “What?” I asked in shock. I’d barely weighed one hundred and thirteen after eating Meemaw’s and Maybelline’s cooking, and I’d worked my ass off the last month to lose it all.

  “I’m going to need you to step outside the vehicle.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “I need to look through your truck.”

  “Why?”

  “I know for a fact that you were in April Jean Thornberry’s trailer yesterday. And the damn thing was set on fire in the middle of the night. I plan to see if I can find any evidence.”

  My mouth dropped open. “I’m a suspect? Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind?”

  Officer Sterling shot me a glare that assured me he didn’t appreciate my evaluation of his mental health. “If you don’t have anything to hide, then why not let me look?”

  “By that logic, I suppose you’ll let me go through your things too?” I said, my voice shaking with anger.

  “Of course not.” Then he hooked his thumbs on his waistband and gave me a smart-ass grin. “Just doin’ my job, ma’am.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re on a witch hunt.”

  He started to open the door with the outside handle, but I quickly locked it.

  “You need to unlock the door, ma’am,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “For the last time, I’m not a ma’am!”

  “Is there a problem here, Officer Sterling?” Luke said from across the street.

  I pushed out a sigh of relief as he strode toward us.

  “I need to search this perp’s truck.”

  “Perp?” I said in disbelief.

  Luke stopped next to the officer, wearing a nonchalant look, but I knew him well enough to realize that the squint of his left eye meant he was pissed. “Why?”

  “She’s refusing to cooperate with an officer.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She was double-parked on Main Street, and when I saw her license, I realized she perjured herself.”

  Luke’s eyebrows shot up. “And how did she do that?”

  “She lied about her weight.”

  “And that’s grounds to search her truck?” Luke asked in a dry tone.

  Officer Sterling reached inside my window, blindly feeling for the “Unlock” button.

  I tried to shove his hand away, but he grabbed my hand and jerked it behind my back, forcing my chest down toward the wheel. I released a cry of pain and shock, and the next instant I was free, and Luke had the asshole shoved up against my truck.

  “You lookin’ to bring a lawsuit on this town, Sterling?” Luke asked, his face shockingly calm as he pinned the officer over the hood. “Because if you think a woman fudging her weight on her driver’s license is grounds to search her car, you better line up the entire female population in town. But the capstone on that lawsuit, which Ms. Butler is sure to win, is your abuse of power, which, I might add, has been captured on film for the judge and jury to see.”

  Sure enough, Bill was in front of the truck with his camera, and Tony was at the back bumper. Added to the fact I was still wearing my mike—Chuck was sure to have captured the sound—we had plenty of evidence to file a lawsuit.

  I unlocked the door and got out, shaking out my arm.

  “Would you like to file a complaint, Ms. Butler?” Luke asked in a cool tone.

  I tried to reason this through. Elijah Sterling had to know that I was dating Luke . . . and yet he’d approached me anyway. What was his end game? But then, I was sure he hadn’t planned on Luke showing up so quickly. He’d asked me to pull over after the bogus double-parking claim—and then he’d immediately demanded to search the truck.

  Oh, my God. He really had intended to plant evidence to incriminate Dixie or me.

  I tried not to freak out, but Luke became more alert when he saw the change in my demeanor. “Summer?”

  Calm down. “I want him to stay the hell away from me.”

  “Do you want to file a report?” Luke repeated.

  “Can I think about it?” I needed to weigh the pros and cons.

  “Yeah, but the sooner you do so, the better.”

  I nodded.

  Luke released Officer Sterling, who shimmied and backed up as if Luke had the plague. Officer Sterling stepped back onto the sidewalk and glanced at Bill. Rage covered his face when he realized the camera was still pointed at him, and he lunged for it.

  “Get that thing the hell out of my face!”

  Luke jumped between the two men, shoving Elijah back. “He has every right to film this. It’s his constitutional right, something you obviously need a refresher course on. Get your ass over to the station right now.” Luke turned to me, his jaw clenched. “And I need you to come and file that complaint.” It wasn’t a request.

  I glanced at the time on my phone. “Will this take long? I have an appointment with an alligator in forty-five minutes.”

  Luke’s eyes widened slightly. “Do I want to know?”

  “No.”

  He blinked. “Okay. Then I need you to come by today. Amber will have the form ready even if I’m not in.”

  “Okay.” I suspected Luke needed my complaint to get Mayor Sterling’s son off the force, and if that was true, then I’d be more than happy to oblige. The man was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. But now I was completely freaked out. If Elijah Sterling had been trying to plant false evidence, this whole mess definitely involved Trent.

  Why did they have it out for Dixie and our family?

  Elijah Sterling got in his police cruiser and headed toward the station while Luke watched him leave. As soon as he was sure Elijah was gone, his expression turned grave.

  “Summer, I need to talk to you. Without cameras, please.”

  I nodded and made a shooing motion toward Bill. I turned my back to Luke and said, “Can you turn off my mike?”

  He turned it off, then put his hands on my shoulders and turned me back to face him, his expression serious. He made sure Bill and Tony were both around the corner before he said, “What happened with Elijah?”

  “It was pretty much like he said. I stopped the truck in front of the office to let the guys off with their equipment. There was a parked car next to me, but the truck’s engine was on, and I was still in the driver’s seat, ready to take off. I swear, I hadn’t been there more than ten seconds. I wasn’t even blocking traffic. At least not until Officer Eager Beaver demanded my license and registration.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I drove around the corner, parked just like he told me to, and handed him my paperwork. Then he accused me of lying about my weight on my license and demanded to search my truck, which I refused.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t leave anything out? Lyin’ about your weight isn’t grounds to search a vehicle. Did you give him cause to suspect something else?”

  I jerked out of his hold and took a step backward. “What on earth do you think I did?”

  He pushed out a breath. “I don’t know, Summer, I’m just trying to make sense of it is all.” He gave me a dark look. “But the next time an officer of the law asks you to do something, you need to do it, no matter how outraged you might be.”

  “Are you serious? You think I should have just let him search my truck without cause?”

  “If he’s insistent, yes.” When he saw the shock on my face, he said, “This could have gotten even more out of hand. You could have ended up shot.” The fear in his eyes led me to believe he thought it an actual possibility. “Not to m
ention, you could have ended up with resisting-arrest charges. Just cooperate next time, and we’ll sort out the facts later.”

  “Oh, my God!” I said in horror. “You’re serious! You have a lunatic in your department, and your solution is to tell me to obey him if there’s a next time.” And, one way or the other, I suspected there would be. Elijah Sterling’s brand of brazen wasn’t quiet.

  “You know I don’t want him on my force!” he shouted. “You know I’m stuck with him, which is why I want you to file a report.”

  “I know,” I said, losing some of my anger. “I’m sorry.”

  He hauled me to his chest and held me close. “When he manhandled you . . .” His arms tightened. “Please be more careful. I know you didn’t do anything wrong, but defying him wouldn’t have done you any good. If I hadn’t shown up . . .” He shuddered.

  “But thank God you did.” I glanced up at him and grinned. “This is one time I’m grateful to have you save me.”

  He grinned too. “You’re gonna be nothin’ but trouble, aren’t you?”

  I gave him a saucy look. “I suspect I will, but you’ll love every minute of it.”

  He gave me a lingering kiss, then lifted his head. “Dinner tonight? At my place. No guests. No cameras. Just you and me.”

  The smoldering look in his eyes set me on fire, but the mere thought of fire doused it. I was keeping a secret from him—a big whopper of one. “I might have to work late.”

  “You came up with a big case?” he asked in surprise. “Last night on our walk, you said you hadn’t found one yet.”

  “Well, I had the eight a.m. call time at the train station this morning, and . . .” I let my voice trial off to insinuate that I’d found something. But I hated this. I didn’t want to keep secrets from him. I wanted to share everything. Maybe I could test the waters without giving Dixie away. “Say, Luke, if you found out I had done something illegal in the course of an investigation, would you arrest me?”

  His eyes shuttered his emotions. “Have you done anything illegal?”

  I made a short scan of everything I’d done last season. “I don’t think so.” Although some were morally suspect.

  “Are you planning on doing something illegal?”

  “In the spirit of truthfulness, I don’t know. This big case has potential, but it’s going to be tricky getting the information I need.”

  He frowned. “Are you planning on doin’ something dangerous?”

  I batted my eyelashes. “Of course not.”

  His frown deepened. “That’s a yes.”

  I realized I’d been too vague. I had to throw him a bone to test the waters. “Okay, let’s say I broke in somewhere to get important information I needed. Would you arrest me?”

  He squirmed. “Are you plannin’ on breakin’ in somewhere?” He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know the answer to that.”

  “What if I got caught?”

  “If the owner wanted to press charges, I would have no choice, Summer. You have to know that,” he pleaded.

  I gave him a soft smile. The takeaway was if I was doing something illegal, he didn’t want to know, but if presented with the evidence, he would have to do his job. That was no less than what I’d expected, and it confirmed my decision to keep what I knew about Dixie from him. I reached up on my tiptoes and gave him a soft kiss, then smiled up at him. “You’re a good and honorable man, Luke Montgomery, and I’m damn lucky to have you.”

  He gave me a wary look. “Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there?”

  “No buts, but . . .” I grinned. “I think to be safe, I need to keep some parts of my job from you.” When he started to protest, I added, “Just like you keep some parts of your job from me. As you should. I have no business knowing everything.” I didn’t add that he had no business knowing everything about mine either.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yeah.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him another kiss, this time with more heat.

  His hands dug into my waist. “Dinner. Tonight,” he said in a tight voice.

  “Yes.”

  When he kissed me again, I knew we were done going slow, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I’d wanted to.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Luke dropped his hands and took a step back. “You make me forget myself.” But the expression on his face made me think he wasn’t entirely happy about that. “We can touch base about the time later.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He started to cross the street, then turned around and took a few steps back toward me, stopping at the end of my bumper. “I had a purpose for coming to see you.”

  “What?”

  “April Jean’s trailer burned down last night, and it’s lookin’ like it was arson. With the fire yesterday and Dixie . . . I just thought you should hear it from me and maybe let Dixie know so she’s not caught off guard.”

  “Thanks, Luke.” Then I gave him a sly look. “You could have called or texted with that information.”

  He grinned. “But then I wouldn’t have been able to see your sexy legs.”

  I flushed, and his grin spread before he headed back toward the police station. I took a few seconds to admire the way his pants clung to his nicely shaped butt.

  “Earth to Summer,” Bill said behind me, and I jumped.

  “If you’re done checking out the police chief, maybe you could come in and tell us what just happened.”

  I cringed. “Yeah. Sure.”

  When I walked into the office, I couldn’t help but smile at how normal it looked. No sign of Connor anywhere.

  Bill followed behind me and shut the door. “We talked to some of Connor’s crew. Lauren never intended for us to run our office out of the train depot.”

  My jaw dropped. “What?”

  “She’s pissed that you didn’t play her game. She was hoping you’d pitch a fit this morning so she could film you storming out of the office. They were going to have Connor give a couch interview implying you kicked him out for no reason. They’re planning a competing agency.”

  “It would coincide with the video they leaked yesterday,” Tony said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Dixie said. “Why didn’t she set up the big fight in this office? Why would she move us there?”

  “It’s Lauren,” Tony said. “Who can figure her out?”

  “No,” I said. “I bet it was because there isn’t enough room to film it here, especially not with the two crews.”

  “She’s right,” Chuck said. “They never would have gotten clean shots.”

  “Back to more important issues,” Bill said, turning to me. “What just happened with the new police officer? I mean, I saw what happened—I got it on film—but I still have no idea why.”

  I sat behind my desk and told them what I’d told Luke, then filled them in on my version of Officer Sterling pinning my arm behind me.

  “Luke’s right,” Tony said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  I turned to Dixie. “I want to tell them about what happened last night. I still want to use this for our big investigation. Especially after what just happened with Elijah Sterling.”

  Dixie’s face lost color.

  “They won’t judge you, Dix,” I said. “They’ll want to help you, especially after I tell you Luke’s theory about his new position.”

  “Summer’s right. Whatever it is, we want to help you,” Bill said.

  She shot him a guilty look. Although she and Bill weren’t really a couple, there was still something between them. Or there had been. “You might not say that after you find out what I did.”

  “We’ll still help,” Chuck said.

  “Especially if we get an awesome case out of it,” Tony said. He shrugged in response to the dirty looks the other two gave him. “What? You’re both thinking it.”

  Dixie gave me a long look, then turned to face them. “I need to start with the fire that kil
led my parents.”

  She told them about the argument she’d had with her mother that afternoon—her mama wanted her to clean the barn, but Dixie only wanted to hang out with Trent Dunbar. So she snuck out the back and met him at the overseer’s cabin, and they partied with the Xanax and vodka provided by Trent’s older brother. She blacked out, but when she came to in a field, she reeked of gasoline, and the barn was on fire. Hence her arrest and incarceration in juvie.

  “And what about Trent?” Bill asked. “What happened to him?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “He supplied the drugs,” Tony said. “That should have made him partially responsible.”

  “There’s a couple of things you should know,” I said. “Trent Dunbar is the only living child of Roger Dunbar, the owner of Dunbar Lumber, the biggest employer in the county. The Dunbar boys practically got away with murder.”

  Dixie shot me a glare.

  “And Officer Elijah Sterling—Mayor Sterling’s son—was hired just last week. The same week Trent came back to town. Rumor has it that Trent’s back in Sweet Briar because he got in trouble with the law in Birmingham too many times, and his daddy ran out of favors. Luke said his arm was twisted to hire Mayor Sterling’s son. Elijah Sterling was good friends with Trent and Troy Dunbar.”

  “Wait,” Bill said. “Are you insinuating that Mayor Sterling hired his son to help smooth things over for Trent?”

  I pinned my gaze on Dixie. “We need to keep this between the five of us, but that’s Luke’s theory.”

  Dixie looked down at her desk.

  “Something happened to Dixie last night. She went to a party, and then she blacked out. She texted me around two this morning, and I found her on the beach at the lake.” I glanced up at Bill. “Where I was attacked in April.”

  He nodded slightly, and his eyes hardened.

  “Dixie was incoherent and could barely walk to my truck.” I paused, giving her an opportunity to stop me, but she remained silent. “And she smelled like smoke. She still doesn’t remember anything. I made her pee in a jar this morning, and Teddy knows someone who’s going to test it for date-rape drugs.”