The Summer of Us: A Romance Anthology

by AJ Matthews

  “Yesterday...”

  She listened and leaned into him and slipped her arms around him when he finished.

  And it was all wrong. He put the guitar aside, took her arms from him and stood.

  “So beautiful. Everything about you I learned was right,” she said. “You were painted as an exciting man by my uncle, but I did my homework on you also. I went far beyond what Jean Luc told me. I know why you choose to sing this song about lost love.” She paused until he returned his attention to her. “I found out about Elena.” She studied his face for a few beats.

  He gave nothing away. None of the churning in his gut showed on his face or in his body, not even one drop of perspiration popped. He’d been steeling himself for many years against this assault weapon.

  “I found out about her betrayal,” Angelique continued in her musical voice. “About how you left the Chicago police department after losing her. I know you must feel bitter. Whether or not Elena had been a bad cop and whether or not you’d been a bad cop—I don’t judge either of you.”

  Hearing that left a bitter taste in his mouth and he turned from her as she went to him and attempted a kiss. He said, “Don’t talk about Elena.” He meant he didn’t want to hear anymore from Angelique, that she knew nothing and had no right to talk about his private world. But he knew she’d take it to mean that he didn’t want to think about bad times.

  “We’re here now. Let’s make the most of it,” she said. She took his hand and skimmed it along her rib cage, placing it on her small taut breast, so that it cupped the tender curve.

  “It’s late in the day.” He moved away from her.

  “You have somewhere to go? We have a date tonight.”

  “What about your accomplice?”

  She sighed. “I’ve dismissed him.” She turned her face away from him.

  A chill hit his gut. “Dismissed him?” In three words, she’d not only confirmed that she’d had an accomplice, but she implied that she got rid of him. Dane wasn’t often taken by surprise, but this was one of those bad surprises—the kind that made him rethink everything and dread what he would find.

  “Yes. Dismissed. He’s gone. Enough said.” She pushed away from him, still not meeting his eyes, pulling her dress off as she walked to the bathroom. “Let’s get ready. I have a plan.”

  Once she was in the bathroom, Dane looked around for her phone. Once he found it, he checked it and didn’t like what he saw in her text history, but it didn’t surprise him. He put her phone back exactly where he’d found it, then he quietly left the room. Schooling his voice against the bubbling dread, he called Cap.

  “Look for a missing middle-aged, fat, bald man. I believe he’d been registered here at the inn. Using the name Baylor Bellarine. Presumed dead.”

  “Dead?” Are you sure? Murder is a big leap—”

  “No. I’m not sure—we’ll see what the evidence says. It could have been self-defense.” He took a breath and spoke from his gut. “She’s in over her head. She’s working with someone else—besides Bellarine—I’ll explain when I do more checking. I think she trusts me—thinks she’s seducing me—she may be counting on my help to stay out of prison.”

  “Watch your back,” Cap said. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Dane ended the call and wrote a note to tell Angelique that he’d be back later to pick her up.

  He needed to confirm that their fat, middle-aged man and Bellarine were one and the same. Pronto. He left the room behind with one backward glance at the guitar and one spiral of regret through his gut to his chest. The pain settled between his shoulder blades and he felt the searing sting as he pulled the door closed behind him.

  The words to the song Yesterday haunted him as he walked to his car and he thought of Shana. The song was wrong. Love was never an easy game to play.

  What the hell was it that he had with Shana? Was it a commitment? He knew there was no explicit commitment, but he wasn’t too much of an idiot to know that it felt like one. Even when they pushed each other away, some kind of hold kept them in each other’s orbit—and not just as partners.

  Whatever it was—it was messing him up—coloring his ability to read people. He never should have started with her, never should have let it get physical no matter how much he wanted it. He knew it was bad for him—for both of them.

  And it made his job too damn difficult.

  He got into his Jag, wishing it were the Jeep. He wanted to find and search the dead man’s room, but he’d have to do it later when Angelique wasn’t so close by. Or maybe have Shana do it. He drove to Cap’s office at State Police Headquarters. He hoped to hell Shana wasn’t there.

  Chapter Seven

  Shana strolled into Cap’s office without knocking. She realized she should have called, but his company soothed her. He was on the phone, but he gave her a welcoming smile and gestured for her to sit, so she did as he hung up.

  Before he said anything she jumped in.

  “I need to make a decision about Dane by summer’s end. My ma and brothers are coming for a visit and—” She couldn’t continue. She didn’t need to. Cap rose from his chair and came around to her. She stood and stepped into his arms. He was warm and she shivered at the contrast to the ice-cold air. He’d finally gotten the AC fixed.

  “You’ll figure it out,” he said over her head. She gave him a squeeze and backed up.

  “The problem is that it’s not up to me—”

  “Yes it is. He’ll—”

  “No he won’t. He’ll fight it. If I throw myself into it, if I go all in—he’ll fight it or he’ll take advantage of it.”

  Cap frowned. “What makes you so sure? He’s had relationships before. He knows how to—”

  “That’s the problem, Cap. He’s too afraid to do it again. Especially with me.”

  “Because you’re too good for him.”

  She laughed. It sounded bitter. It felt bitter.

  “On the other hand,” she said, “he won’t let me go.”

  “On that you can sure as hell defeat him.” Cap’s mouth was flat and grim and determined. She smiled at him.

  “All I need to do is pull the trigger.”

  “So to speak.”

  “You’ll be there for him.” She whispered the words, sounding desperate she knew, but she was desperate. He was with Angelique that moment. He’d felt no compunction about seducing the young woman. And for what?

  Because she’d said it was okay?

  Cap sighed. They both knew it would be a hard thing all the way around.

  “Then that’s my decision, isn’t it?” she paused and let the searing sweep of pain settle in her chest. She took a few breaths to make sure she still could with the constriction so tight. “I wonder if we could still work—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Cap said. “If you decide to leave Dane, you go with your ma and brothers and get as far away from here as possible.”

  She was about to tell him she had no intentions of going back to Sydney when his phone rang. He leaned over his desk and answered it. She took more deep breaths and squeezed her eyes shut. Everything in her screamed at the thought of leaving Dane, rebelling in waves of bile in her gut as if the notion were poisonous.

  Had she decided to leave Dane?

  How much of their relationship’s dysfunction was her own fault? Why hadn’t she told him what she really felt about him seducing Angelique—or rather allowing her to seduce him? Why hadn’t she screamed don’t you dare or I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill her—because that’s what her insides had screamed at her?

  She turned to the door. Every nerve in her wanted to run through it and find him and shake him to make him understand. But first she had to come to an understanding with herself.

  Cap said, “That was one of my men over at State Beach. We have a lead—want to come?”

  She cleared her head as best she could. Returning to business mode, she turned to Cap. He smiled at her and she felt her spirits buoyed
by his easygoing manner. The complete lack of stress or conflict between them refreshed her, calmed her jittering insides enough for her to function. She felt her mind easing back to the rational world. To the case and their client and the fee.

  “What do you have? Did you find the accomplice?”

  “Yes.”

  They talked and walked toward the front door of the building that had become like a second home to her.

  “Did he have the jewels? Is he going to give up Angelique Dubois?” She hoped to hell the answer was yes to that. She’d love to hang a grand larceny conviction around Angelique’s delicate little neck.

  “Not exactly.” Cap stopped when they stepped outside the building and into the sauna of late day heat and heavy still air. If her relationship with Dane weren’t already killing her with the hot and cold antics between them, this heat wave would surely do it.

  “What?” she sighed and fanned her face.

  “Let’s get in the air-conditioned cruiser and on our way I’ll fill you in.”

  She didn’t argue with that, but she did realize that Cap was stalling. That wasn’t a good sign. “Dane’s—”

  “Fine,” he said as he opened her door. Cap was polite to a fault. She slid in and he followed and fired up the AC. After a minute they were on their way to State Beach and she couldn’t stand his silence. She prompted.

  “What the hell is this about, Cap?”

  “Her accomplice is dead.”

  Boom. Her hand went to her chest as if she could stop her heart from jumping through, or stop it from stopping altogether.

  “No—” And what about Dane? Was he in danger after all?

  “It’s either murder or possibly self-defense.”

  “What does he know?” Her heart sped up more now and no amount of AC could keep her from sweating.

  “He doesn’t know anything. I’m—we’re going to check out the body and the scene and then call him.” She didn’t ask where he was, why he couldn’t check it out himself. The thought pinched her mind shut and she forced herself to stay in the moment.

  They got to the scene and two staties with a handful of local police had the area surrounded, along with a horde of flies. No buzzards overhead—yet. The body was fresh.

  One of the state police officers greeted them and filled them in.

  “No identification. No wallet. But he does have a gun that had recently been fired. Looks like it was fired by him. There was a struggle of some kind. He has bruises. But I’d bet the cause of death was the stab to his chest.”

  They stepped closer and Shana shut her mouth tight and tried not to breathe. She smelled the blood and decay hastened by the steamy weather. The body didn’t look as bad as some she’d seen during her time on the beat in Sydney.

  “Is this the man you spotted at the party last night?”

  She examined his face. It was him. The Portuguese speaking man. She noted that the stab was expertly placed. Then she looked closer at his face—there was something odd about him.

  “Yes—but have the medical examiner do me a favor and check inside his mouth. Look at his left cheek—it’s unnaturally large, like he has a walnut in his mouth.” Or something. She had an idea of what.

  The medical examiner arrived a minute later and they had their answer.

  “I’ll be damned—congratulations, Shana. Your client will be thrilled,” Cap said.

  She checked the small pile of jewels held on a tray by the ME and accounted for every single piece of jewelry that had been in the Gable’s safe.

  “It’s too easy, Cap. We’re missing something.”

  He nodded. “Looks that way—like what about the jewels from the other three parties?”

  “And what about Angelique? What’s going on with her? If she was in a fight with this guy, why and how did the jewels end up in his mouth?”

  “We’ll need to figure out who he is.”

  Cap took out his phone and placed a call. She knew he was calling Dane and couldn’t help the tightening of every muscle in her body in anticipation of him, of even hearing his voice from Cap’s phone, and especially the anticipation of seeing him again later. It was damn unhealthy. To be so compelled and repelled by a man at the same time couldn’t be good.

  But how much of that was Dane—and how much of it was her—and her own fear?

  Cap said into the phone, “Meet us at my office.”

  Dane stood in the door. He hadn’t had a chance to shower after he left Angelique’s bed. He was too well aware of her lingering aroma and didn’t want to share it with either Shana or Cap. But especially not Shana.

  “Thank the lord you got the air conditioning fixed,” he said.

  Shana sat in her usual chair in front of Cap’s desk. She didn’t look at him. She busied herself looking through the ME’s file. He was sure she’d already memorized every word.

  Cap said, “You figure Angelique was framing this guy—Baylor Bellarine?”

  “You sure that’s his real name and not an alias?” Shana said.

  “According to Interpol,” Cap said. “That’s his only name. And his job is international jewel thief.”

  Dane straightened from leaning against the doorjamb and took a step inside the room, but no further. “She wasn’t framing him. I did some checking myself.” He paused a beat and waited for Shana to look at him. When she did, he noticed her nostrils flare. Otherwise her face was inscrutable. Damn.

  He walked all the way inside and sat down next to her in the chair facing Cap.

  “What the hell, Dane? You wearing perfume now?” Cap smiled and waved his hand.

  Dane hesitated a beat and then said, “It’s French.” He noticed Shana’s almost imperceptible flinch from the periphery of his vision. “I did my own checking and it looks like Angelique lied to us about who she is—”

  “No kidding.” Shana said.

  “She’s an investigator for an insurance company. For the Gables’ insurance company to be exact—and the same company who insures everyone in the neighborhood. Seems they all know the same agent who works with Lloyd’s of London.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Cap said. “Why would she lie to us about that?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “Are you sure?” Shana said. She sounded disappointed and he reached out a hand and patted her knee—more to test the waters than to comfort her. She didn’t flinch or pull away or bat his hand away. She didn’t react at all except to scowl at him. She gave him that gorgeous Shana the Beautiful scowl. He winked at her. She rolled her eyes.

  “I’m sure, girlie. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “So we have our thief and he’s dead. Now all we need to do is find the rest of the jewels.”

  “Why? They don’t belong to your client.” Cap said. “That’s my job—and I suspect it’s Angelique’s job as well.”

  “Which once again begs the question about why the jewels were found in his mouth.” Shana said “I know you need them for evidence in the murder case, but can we bring the jewels to the Gables to confirm they’re the missing ones?”

  “Sure,” Cap said. “I’ll go with you.” He turned to Dane. “I’ll also need to bring Angelique in for questioning on the murder of Mr. Bellarine. Maybe she’ll know something about the missing jewels from the other three thefts.”

  Dane thought about it. He knew there was something wrong with all the pieces to the puzzle. They didn’t quite all fit together. His phone buzzed—it was his friend Acer. “I have to take this call—it’s important to the case.” He stepped to the side and listened. Cap and Shana watched him and waited in silence.

  After he finished his call, he came back to them and said, “I have a better plan.”

  “Yes?” Shana prompted. He dreaded sharing the intel with her.

  “Angelique may be working as an insurance investigator, theoretically on the right side of the law, but I had a bad feeling about her. While you two were at State Beach after I found out about Angelique’s real identity, I als
o did some checking into the provenance of the missing jewelry. Most of it was unremarkable—except for one piece. This piece—owned by a neighbor of the Gables—the second house to be robbed—had been obtained from an estate sale in France twenty years ago.

  “It had belonged to the Ruse family for several generations and was last owned by Angelique’s maternal grandmother, Marguerite Ruse.” He stopped and gauged their reaction—mostly Shana’s reaction. She nodded and scowled.

  “And Acer tracked Bellarine’s bank account. The money came from Rio—the name on the account is Gabriele Tavares. “ He paused to let Cap and Shana take this in. The air was still.

  “Should we be thanking Angelique for killing him then?” Shana said quietly.

  “No—there’s more. I called Jean Luc and we had another chat. I asked him if Angelique had any friends by the name of Gabriele Tavares.”

  “Don’t tell me—“

  “They went to private school together.”

  “Interesting,” Cap said. “Things make more sense now. Angelique is working with her old friend Gabriele to carry out a revenge plot.”

  “Jean Luc insists that Angelique doesn’t know how crazy Gabriele is—they hadn’t seen each other for a while.”

  Shana lifted her chin and said, “And what do you say? You think she’s innocent?”

  “No. I think she’s trying to set me up. And I think she murdered Bellarine. I had a chance to check her phone before she disposed of it.”

  “And?”

  “She communicated with someone—it must have been Gabriele. She said she killed Bellarine—the hired assassin. She said she’d agree to set me up and see me thrown in jail, but that was all. That would be enough punishment for my partner because she—“

  “I get the picture,” Shana said. She put a hand up as if to stop him. She knew what he was going to say. That she was hopelessly in love with him. He’d wanted to say it. To test the truth. But not with Cap in the room.