Ten Brides for Ten Hot Guys

by Donna Fasano

  “None of this is your fault.”

  “Harold and I hired him because he was family. Harold’s second cousin’s son.” She pursed her lips, anger and regret flashing in her eyes. “He’d managed a restaurant before. We should have checked up on him more. But nobody ever complained. We had no idea. Believe me, he would have been fired if we did. We never knew how hard he’s been on you girls.”

  Luanne took a big swallow of her tea. “Are you hiring a new manager?” Not that it mattered to her now. As a person charged with murder and out on bail, no way could they employ her. She’d been generously put on paid leave.

  Mildred shook her head. “We’re listing the motel for sale. We’ve been thinking about it for a while now. This thing with Earl… Harold’s heart can’t take this kind of stress. The thought of having to find another manager, worry about getting a bad egg again who might not do right by the employees...we don’t have the energy to be involved on a daily basis anymore. If this tragedy taught us anything, it’s that we’re not cut out to be absentee owners.”

  Luanne’s heart sank when she thought about her friends losing their jobs from one day to the next.

  “I feel bad about letting you girls go.” Mildred drew her mug closer. “We’ll call in everyone tomorrow to officially announce that we’re not taking any new reservations and canceling everything beyond this month. Everybody will get severance checks. The place never worked with a huge profit, but we can swing a month’s wages. Hopefully that’s enough time for all of you to find other work. And there’ll be unemployment benefits.”

  She reached across the table and patted Luanne’s hand. “I’m sorry, honey.”

  Brushing her worries aside, Luanne forced a smile. “You’re doing something few people would do for their employees. We’re grateful. And I’m so grateful for the bail.”

  Mildred sighed. “Don’t you worry about all the police nonsense. I told that detective, anyone who’s working hard and raising two kids she loves isn’t going to lose her head like that, even if Earl was a jerk. The maids who’re short on temper get weeded out on the job fast.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Some guests would try a saint’s patience. A woman who can smile through that year after year is clearly not easily provoked.” She glanced at the twins. “And a mother, I know you’re not their mother, but you are… A mother who loves her kids wouldn’t do anything that would separate her from them. A mother would put up with demons from hell. I know you didn’t do it.”

  The vote of confidence felt so nice, it brought tears to Luanne’s eyes all over again.

  Mildred flashed an encouraging smile. “That detective will figure it out. And when the motel sells, hopefully fast, maybe you’ll all be rehired.”

  Luanne nodded, even if she wasn’t exactly riding a wave of optimism at the moment.

  Mildred glanced down for a second. “I’m embarrassed to say this, but it’s a relief to pass on the place. We won’t have to worry about taxes or whether the bookings make a profit. Or about Greg, Harold’s son.”

  She sipped from her mug. “We each have a child from previous marriages. When my daughter got married, Harold and I were finally in a financial situation where we could help. We bought them a house and paid for it outright so they wouldn’t have to carry a mortgage. They had plenty of monthly payments with their student loans and car loans. And Suzy was pregnant with her first.”

  She sipped her tea, then set the mug down. “Since we gave her all that money, we promised Greg that he’d get an equal share once we sold the motel. He’s a good boy, never brings it up, but his car shop over in Jersey hasn’t done well since the recession. We know he could use the money. Now we can help him out.” Her mouth turned down. “We’re so sorry about how this will affect you all.”

  Luanne shook her head. She didn’t want Mildred to feel guilty. “The motel is your business. You don’t need to explain your decisions to anyone.”

  Mildred sighed. “I just wish this all hadn’t ended so badly.”

  Luanne nodded. So did she. Dear Lord, she did.

  Mildred stayed for another five minutes, just long enough to finish her tea. After she left, Luanne fed the girls a snack, played some alphabet games with them—she wanted them to be ready for preschool—then she set them up with their dolls and horses while she did laundry in the hallway-closet laundry room.

  Mildred’s words played in her head, over and over. “I know you didn’t do it.”

  Could that be true? So okay, she’d fantasized about maybe running some nasty guest’s feet over with the vacuum cleaner, but she’d never done it. She hadn’t hit the trucker with her spray bottle. She’d thought about it but kept her cool. She had excellent impulse control, in fact. She was very conscientious and dependable.

  She’d thought about scaring Earl in the alley, enjoyed fantasizing about him covered in garbage like a pig. He had behaved like a pig. But it didn’t mean she would act on those thoughts. And she’d never thought about running him over. Never.

  Yet, according to all evidence, she had.

  But what if she hadn’t?

  She’d heard the news about Earl Saturday morning, seen the damage to the car, and her semifunctioning mind made the most obvious connection. But her brain was finally out of that horrible fog and back to full speed again. At first, stunned, she’d simply accepted the blame. She was used to having her mother blame everything on her, and she always accepted the blame to keep the peace.

  She drew a deep breath. She was so done with that. She wasn’t a bad person. Time to stand up for herself and start fighting back.

  She really didn’t think she’d killed Earl. Not that she could come up with another explanation for the blood on the Mustang. Yet.

  Maybe Gregory could tell her what happened when they left the bar. Unfortunately, she had no idea how to reach him. Why didn’t she get his number? No new numbers on her cell phone. She’d checked.

  Of course, if she could make herself remember, she wouldn’t need Gregory. But her brain kept drawing a blank on that night, she thought as she loaded the dishwasher.

  Definitely as if… But it didn’t seem possible. How would someone even get pills like that in Broslin?

  She didn’t know much about roofies, just what she’d heard on TV about men who put drugs into a woman’s drink to knock them out so they could have sex. A shudder ran down her spine.

  She didn’t remember Gregory touching her drink. But could she be positive that she hadn’t looked away, not even for a second?

  Except, she hadn’t had sex Friday night. She would have known the next morning. She hadn’t had sex in over a year. She would have been sore. And she’d woken up in her own bed, which meant she’d driven herself home. Gregory wouldn’t have known where she lived.

  Why would Gregory drug her if he didn’t have sex with her?

  Maybe he’d roofied her, but she’d kept it together enough to get into her own car instead of his, and she’d driven away. Maybe, in that altered state, she’d driven by the alley, saw Earl, and gone for it.

  The hell of the thing was, in her mind’s eye, she could clearly see Earl staring into the headlights of the car, panic on his face. But did she see it because she’d fantasized about it earlier that night, or because, under the influence, she’d run him over?

  She turned on the washer and walked back into the kitchen, dark thoughts zooming around and around in her mind like Evel Knievel in the Dome of Death.

  If she could track down Gregory, if he would confess to giving her a roofie, her charges might be reduced from murder to involuntary manslaughter. Not that even the lesser charge didn’t make her head swim and her heart race. If she could prove that she’d been drugged out of her mind… She might even get probation and not serve any time at all. Maybe the twins wouldn’t be taken away from her.

  She hung on to that hope with both hands.

  She drank a glass of water to calm herself, then went to Mia and Daisy, sat on the floor with them, drew the
m onto her lap, and kissed them, hugged them. “I love you, chipmunks.”

  “I love you too.” Mia immediately threw her little arms around her, all enthusiasm.

  Daisy just quietly nestled against her but radiated unconditional love as only four-year-olds could.

  “Are you sickie?” Daisy asked after a minute. Because she was the quiet one, mostly observing from the sidelines, she tended to notice a lot of things other kids her age didn’t.

  “Of course not.” Luanne kissed the top of her head, the silky hair that smelled like baby shampoo. She should have known that Daisy would pick up on the tension.

  Daisy put her arms around Luanne too. “Are you going to go to heaven like Mommy?”

  Luanne’s heart just about stopped. Did the girls worry that she’d leave them too? She hugged them against her chest. “No way. Not ever. Sisters together forever. It might not look like that to you, but I’m pretty young. I’m practically a spring chicken.”

  Mia giggled.

  Luanne kissed the top of her head too. “I’m sticking around until we’re all old women.”

  “Will we be older by then than you are?” Mia asked. The girls didn’t have a firm grasp on time.

  “No,” Luanne told her. “But the age difference will seem much smaller. We’ll probably look like triplets.”

  Both of the girls looked up at her, eyes wide with amazed disbelief. But they had ear-to-ear smiles. They clearly liked the thought.

  And Luanne swore to do whatever she had to so she’d be able to stay with them. They were her sisters, her flesh and blood. They were not going to be taken by the government and given to complete strangers.

  After lunch, once they were down for their nap, she called Finnegan’s and asked for Tayron.

  “I heard about the arrest,” was the first thing he said. “How are you holding up?”

  She cut straight to the chase. “I don’t think I did it.”

  A small pause. “You don’t think?”

  “I don’t remember anything after you brought me that second drink. Was there a third?”

  “No. You left. Didn’t say bye either.”

  “Left with Gregory?”

  “I don’t know. I was serving drinks at the other end. I looked back, and you were both gone. If that little jerk dropped a pill in your glass, I’m going to seriously kick myself in the ass. I usually keep an eye on things like that.”

  “You can’t watch every drink you serve, the entire night.”

  “I can try. We’ve never had problems here. When I tended bar in the city, sure. But not in Broslin.”

  “You didn’t catch his last name, did you?”

  “I barely caught the first.”

  She rubbed her eyebrow. “Ever see him before?”

  “Not before and not since. I asked around. Nothing so far. I’ll keep asking.”

  “Thanks, Tayron.”

  “No problem. You hang in there.”

  “Yeah.” Hanging in there was preferable to hanging somewhere else. Pennsylvania had the death penalty. Did they still execute people by hanging in this day and age?

  She shut down that line of thought. She was not going to obsess over worst-case scenarios. She was going to do whatever it took to make sure this didn’t end badly.

  ~*~

  Catching a ride with Jackie, Luanne took the twins to the motel for the meeting with the owners the next day. Job loss and legal expenses looming large in her future, she could no longer afford a babysitter.

  Mildred and Harold were great. They gave their employees the news straight, apologized that they weren’t keeping the motel, offered to help any way they could, including glowing references. Then they handed out checks, a full month’s wages rounded up to $1,200 for the maids, the most money the majority of them had ever had in one sum.

  An even bigger windfall came from Jackie, whose boyfriend was away in the army. She offered his truck to Luanne until the police released the Mustang. That put tears into Luanne’s eyes. Not a single person treated her like a criminal. The staff stood one hundred percent behind her.

  She stayed a bit, asked the others if they knew a guy called Gregory, and described him. Nobody remembered a guest by that name, but so many people passed through the motel, it would have been a miracle if anyone had recognized him based on her description.

  It’d been a wild thought anyway, thinking that maybe Gregory had lied at the bar, maybe he’d seen her before, at the motel, had recognized her at the bar and specifically targeted her for the roofie. She was desperate, coming up with desperate theories.

  Luanne and the twins went home with Jackie, accepted the Ford pickup with gratitude, and drove straight to the police station. They nearly bumped into Susan Merritt, Chase’s mother. As Luanne was walking in with the twins, Susan was heading out, perfectly put together from her nude leather pumps to her peach, summer silk suit.

  She greeted Luanne, asked her how she was doing, nothing but sympathy in her eyes. Broslin was a small town. Everybody knew about the arrest.

  “Could be worse,” Luanne told her. If Mildred hadn’t paid her bail, she’d be in jail.

  Chase, two steps behind his mother, flashed a wide smile at the twins. “Hey, ya, tootsies. Robbed any more candy stores lately? Because if you did, I want some of the loot.”

  Mia giggled. Daisy did too, but one beat behind her sister.

  Susan flashed an unfathomable look at Chase, then at Luanne, her gaze settling on the girls. “Who wants to check out the vending machines?”

  “Me!” Mia squealed with excitement. Daisy simply lifted both hands in the air.

  Chase shot Luanne a questioning look.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll return them in a bit,” Susan said and walked the twins to the break room in the back.

  “Should we go into the interview room?” Chase asked, looking strong and sure as always, dark dress pants, white shirt, blue-patterned tie that matched his eyes.

  He probably thought she’d come to confess.

  Luanne shook her head. “I’m here to ask a favor. Is there any way I could talk to a sketch artist about Gregory? The man I had a drink with at the bar. I’d really like to find him. My memories of the evening are still pretty hazy. Maybe he could fill in some gaps.”

  Chase considered her. “It’s your lucky day. We have the guy out from West Chester PD in the conference room right now with Harper and a robbery victim. They should be done in a minute. How are you holding up?”

  “I’m okay. I’m not the type to lose it and kill someone,” she said with tremendous relief.

  Nobody knew her better than she knew herself. She wasn’t a killer, not unless she was cornered and acted in self-defense. Or if all her abilities had been impaired, a theory she wasn’t ready to share with Chase yet, until she had actual proof. First, she wanted to find Gregory, somehow force him into admitting the roofie.

  Chase watched her. “Everybody has their breaking point.”

  “I wasn’t there yet with Earl.”

  He nodded. “Come sit by my desk for a second.”

  He walked her back, pulled a chair over, his desk piled high with files. He waited for her to sit, watching her. “Your car hit the victim. That looks pretty bad.”

  She nodded. She knew how it all looked. Honestly, things looked so bad that at first even she’d believed she was guilty. But she knew better now. In her heart of hearts, she knew she wasn’t a killer. She just had to prove it.

  He leaned back in his chair. “Have you found a good lawyer yet?”

  She shook her head. “I’m staying with the public defender.” The severance check from the motel wasn’t enough to hire an attorney.

  He hesitated for a moment. “So I have a second cousin who’s a criminal defense lawyer.”

  Of course he did. “Who has second cousins? I don’t even have first.” She tried to lighten the mood between them, because he was looking at her in a way that she didn’t know what to do with. “Frankly, that just
feels like bragging.”

  A ridiculously hot smile turned up the corners of his lips. He tugged open his desk drawer and pulled out a business card, handed it to her. “Just in case. He could cut you a deal on the fee.”

  Even as she thanked him, the conference room door opened, three men coming out, Harper Finnegan in the lead.

  Chase rose. “All right. Let’s see about a picture.”

  The process didn’t take as long as she’d thought, and by the end she had a pretty good likeness of Gregory. She could only hope it would help her find him. Gregory had to know something. She had no other lead. Zilch.

  “Do you need a ride home?” Chase asked once the artist left. He’d been in and out of the conference room, doing his job while keeping an eye on her.

  Maybe he was observing her for clues, hoping she’d slip up and say something incriminating. But his attention didn’t feel like a setup. She could swear he actually cared. About her. She wasn’t sure what to do with that conclusion.

  “I have a car,” Luanne told him. “A loaner.”

  Interest glinted in his deep-blue eyes. “From?”

  “Jackie.” She headed toward the break room for the twins.

  His phone rang, so he didn’t follow her, just sent her on her way with a wave.

  The twins were munching on pretzels and singing songs from Cinderella, Susan joining right in. Luanne watched them from the doorway for a minute without interrupting, thinking how different Chase’s childhood must have been from hers.

  Then she shook off her old longings for a big, happy family. She had the girls. And she would keep the girls. She was not going to prison.

  She thanked Susan for her help, then headed home with Mia and Daisy.

  Things to do, people to see. For one, she wanted to give a copy of the sketch to Tayron so he could show it around at Finnegan’s. She was going to take a copy to the motel too. Maybe seeing the face would trigger a memory the guy’s name hadn’t.

  She had a month until her trial to track down Gregory.