Crazy in Love

by Lani Diane Rich

  She listened as her father ruffled through his notes, and then said the name in unison with him: “Gordon Chase.”

  Her father paused. “Has he contacted you already?”

  She thought on this for a moment. “His name has . . . come up.”

  She decided to leave it at that. If she started talking about embezzlement, suspected murder, and poisoning by berry, Dad would pull Freya out of Tucson in a heartbeat. And then likely put Flynn in a treatment program. What was it Freya had said? Only tell people what they need to know?

  Good advice, she thought, then realized her father was still talking.

  “. . . three meetings in New York on Tuesday, then . . .”

  She sat up straighter. “Three meetings? In New York? Dad, shouldn’t you be . . . I don’t know. Slowing down a bit? Can’t that wait for Freya to come back?”

  There was a long silence. “Why should I slow down?”

  Flynn sighed. “Dad. Freya told me. About the angina.”

  “What angina?”

  “Your angina.”

  “I don’t know what Freya told you, but I don’t have angina. I’m fine, Flynn. You must have misheard her.”

  Flynn snorted. “Well, there’s only one other thing that sounds like angina, and I know you don’t have that.”

  Crickets. Good God, what did it take to break that man?

  “Dad,” she said, more seriously. “Freya said—”

  “I don’t know what Freya told you, Flynn, but I assure you, I’m fine. I had a full checkup in August and my doctor gave me a clean bill of health. I can have him fax over an official statement if you’d like.”

  “No,” Flynn said slowly. “That’s not necessary.”

  I might need a good lawyer for when I kill Freya, though.

  He cleared his throat. “Can we get back to business?”

  Flynn threw one hand up in the air, but kept the frustration out of her voice. “You bet.”

  “Good. I should have a decision on a buyer by the end of next week, so you won’t have to be there much longer.”

  A buyer. The words struck a surprisingly uncomfortable chord in her gut.

  “Dad? Have you thought at all about maybe keeping the place? It’s really beautiful, and the people are amazing. The chef makes this incredible pumpkin—”

  “Don’t get attached, Flynn. It’s the first rule.”

  She rolled her eyes. Stupid men and their stupid rules. “But it turns a profit. Okay, not a big profit, but not losing money is a good thing, right? And what if some big chain buys it and replaces the rose garden with a waterslide? Or fires everyone and then no one will know which room George Washington slept in? What if they put onion blossoms on the menu? Have you thought about that?”

  There was a long silence, then, “I want the numbers by tomorrow morning, Flynn.”

  She released a heavy sigh. “Okay. You’ll have them.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

  Click. She made a face at her phone and tossed it down on the bed. Her father was a good man, she knew. He was fair and moral and hygienically irreproachable. The only niggle she had about him was that he didn’t seem to possess a soul, or at least not one anyone could see.

  His heart, though, was fine. Apparently. Flynn picked up the phone again and thought about dialing her sister and demanding an explanation, but rejected the idea. She didn’t have the energy to confront Freya right now. Right now, she had bigger things on her mind.

  Like waterslides and onion blossoms.

  She sighed and looked around; when, exactly, had this place gotten under her skin? She should hate it, what with all the nature and nothing within walking distance and the cottage that was quite literally making her insane. But the rose garden had charmed her, and the rooms were gorgeous, and then there was the bartender . . .

  Tucker.

  She sucked in a breath and a flash of panic ran through her as she remembered the events of the previous night.

  “Oh, God,” she said, dropping her face into her hands. Had she really thrown herself at the bartender?

  Yes. Yes, she had. It had been late. She had been drinking. And he had those warm brown eyes that made her go all gooey inside. The eyes were really at fault. If he just hadn’t looked at her that way . . .

  Oh, God.

  She’d called him Jake.

  She’d kissed him.

  She’d told him about the Renaissance Faire prostitute thing.

  “Ugh,” she groaned. And now she was going to have to work with him on this Chase thing, which at first had seemed fun and exciting and oddly necessary, but now didn’t really seem to stand up to the humiliation of facing him again.

  “You are a big bottle of stupid,” she said, leaning over and picking up the Jameson’s and glasses from the floor. “No more stupid for me.”

  She had just finished rinsing out the glasses when there was a knock on the door. Her back stiffened.

  Tucker. He was the only one who knew she was here. She peeked in the mirror, touching her hair briefly before deciding not to bother. She needed a full rehaul, and there just wasn’t time.

  “Just a minute!” She squeezed a dollop of toothpaste on her finger, swished it around her mouth, and rinsed. She walked across the room and pulled the door open, ready to launch into a big speech about how she’d been so drunk the night before she couldn’t remember a thing when she heard a high voice say, “Oh!”

  It was Annabelle. Flynn relaxed and smiled. “Hey, Annabelle.”

  “Um.” Annabelle stepped back, glanced at the door, and then looked back at Flynn, confusion on her face. “This is 213.”

  “Yep.”

  “But that’s . . . that’s Jake’s room. I mean, the room I gave to Jake for any bar patrons that couldn’t drive home. But Jake wasn’t working last night. How . . . ?” Annabelle stopped talking and her eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “No!” Flynn put one hand on Annabelle’s arm. “No, it’s not like that. He just . . .” She scrambled internally, wanting to say something, anything, to take that heartbroken look off sweet Annabelle’s face. “Because of the door. Last night. He kicked it down. It’s broken. The lock, I mean. So Jake brought me here and then”—skipping three or four hours—“he left.”

  She sounded guilty as hell even to her own ears, but Annabelle didn’t seem to catch it. She smiled brightly and nodded. “Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry. I’ll have Herman fix that for you today.”

  Flynn released a breath, and the tension drained from her shoulders. How could Jake not see how Annabelle felt about him? Was he really that clueless?

  Well. He was a man.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Annabelle said. “It’s just that one of the housekeeping staff said she saw the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and I was all, ‘No, I don’t think we have a guest there, that’s Jake’s room, and he wasn’t working last night,’ and so I came in to check just in case and when I saw you here . . .” Annabelle stopped and lowered her eyes. “I’ll have Herman fix that lock.”

  “Thank you,” Flynn said. She was about to shut the door when she suddenly remembered the conversation with her father. She poked her head out into the hall.

  “Annabelle?”

  Annabelle turned around. “Yes?”

  “Please don’t tell anyone I had to ask you this, but what’s a quarter?”

  Annabelle blinked. “What do you mean? Like, the money?”

  Flynn smiled. “I don’t think so. My father called. He wants all the financials for the third quarter. Whatever that means.”

  Annabelle nodded. “Yeah. The third quarter just ended last Friday.”

  Oh. So it was a calendar thing. Gotcha. “Okay. Well, can you get some reports together for me? Profit and loss or . . . whatever?”

  She smiled. She knew she probably sounded like an idiot, but she trusted Annabelle to pretend that wasn’t the case.

  Annabelle’s face, however, was unusually stiff. “Um. Sure. It
might take a few days.”

  Flynn sighed, leaned against the doorjamb, and gave Annabelle a comrades-in-pain expression. “He wants it tomorrow morning. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No.” Annabelle’s voice was unusually high, even for her. “No. No. I can . . .” She pulled on a bright smile. “Sure. I can do that.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be down in the office in a little bit.”

  Annabelle gave a little wave and disappeared into the stairwell. Flynn stared down the empty hallway for a long moment, her mind traipsing back to the night before with Tucker. A smile spread across her face and she shook it away, going inside to get changed and start her day.

  It promised to be a long one.

  Jake lay sprawled across his couch, one arm resting on his forehead, and stared at the ceiling. He’d been in that position for most of the morning. Then all of the afternoon. Now, his shift was going to start in an hour, and still he hadn’t come to any conclusions, except that the water stain on his ceiling looked a little like Vladimir Putin.

  He glanced at his watch again. Five minutes after five. It was still possible he’d receive the perfect stroke of brilliance on exactly how to convince Flynn that she didn’t want to help him on this Gordon Chase thing. So far, all he had was that investigations involved long, boring nights of sitting in cars drinking stale coffee. They required you to sift through other people’s trash.

  They got you in the path of guys like Gordon Chase.

  Which, when it came down to it, was the real reason he didn’t want Flynn involved. He didn’t want her getting hurt, and he damn sure didn’t want to be the reason she got hurt. But the truth was the hardest to defend, because it was based on emotion, not logic. So . . .

  Focus on the trash.

  He released a breath. He couldn’t blame his stupidity on the booze; he’d had less than half a glass of Jameson’s over the course of three hours. Still, he’d managed to make a promise he really didn’t want to keep, and it had bugged him all night. He’d slept fitfully, his brain unable to process her into a dream, but still unwilling to release her. Why had he told her she could help him investigate Chase? Anything that really needed doing, he could do himself, and for more reasons than one she’d be best off staying as far away from it as possible. What had he been thinking?

  Of course, he knew that was just it; he hadn’t been thinking. He’d been looking at her plaintive eyes, that wild hair grazing the creamy expanse of her neck, and he couldn’t find it within himself to deny her anything she wanted. If she’d asked for the head of a unicorn, he’d have gone out looking for an ax.

  Well, today he was going to have to tell her no. Although maybe it was better done over the phone. Over the phone, it would be easier. No eyes, no hair, no flowery shampoo smell to worm its way into his head and make him stupid.

  As if on cue, his phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID: Goodhouse Arms. He raised his eyes Godward.

  “I would have gotten to it,” he grumbled, then picked up the phone and hit the talk button.

  “Yeah,” he said gruffly, trying to sound as though he wasn’t excited to hear her voice. It was more work than he’d expected.

  “Jake? Turn on your TV.”

  He released a breath as a mix of relief and disappointment flowed through him. “Mercy?”

  “Channel Four. Right now. Turn it on!”

  “Okay. Jesus. Just a minute.” He threw his legs over the side of the bed and hitched up his boxers as he padded out into his living room. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, crapola. It’s gone. Well, they’ll run it again. Turn it on anyway.”

  He grabbed the remote and pointed it at the television. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “The news,” she hissed into the phone, as though she was trying not to be heard by anyone else. “It’s my saucier!”

  He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the images. Some woman in a suit behind a desk, talking. Nothing too interesting there.

  “Merce, whatever’s going on, can it wait until I get in to . . . ?” He trailed off as the screen cut to images of the Hudson River, and what looked like a team pulling a body out of the water.

  “There it is!” Mercy said, right as the video cut to a dented silver pan with what looked like a bungee cord knotted around the handle.

  “. . . weighted down with bricks and what looks to be some sort of pan, possibly the murder weapon. Authorities ask that anyone with any . . .”

  Mercy’s voice toppled over the anchor’s. “Pan! It’s not a pan. It’s an All-Clad copper core saucier, you brainless wench. And it’s mine!”

  “Wait a minute, Merce. How could you possibly know it’s yours?”

  “How many people in this area do you think use All-Clad copper core sauciers?”

  “If I knew what you were talking about, I’d venture a guess.”

  “Ohhhh,” she groaned. “It’s dented! Do you know how much those things cost? It was one thing when I thought someone had stolen it to sell on the black market—”

  He wandered into the kitchen. “There’s a black market for sauciers? In Shiny?”

  Mercy released an aggravated sigh. “I tried to get you to look into it. But oh noooooo. You’re too good to investigate my missing, three-hundred-dollar saucier.”

  He snorted. “You paid three hundred dollars for a pan?”

  “It’s not a pan, goddamnit! It’s an All-Clad copper core saucier, and that’s not the point. Someone killed someone with my saucier!”

  Jake grabbed a mug from the cabinet and filled it with water. “All right. Calm down. Are you sure it’s yours?”

  There was the sound of careful breathing for a few moments, followed by a long sigh, and when Mercy returned, her voice was calm. “Factor it, Jake. It’s a three-hundred dollar saucier, exactly like the one that went missing. What are the chances that it’s not mine? Besides, I just know. I felt it, as soon as I saw it.”

  Jake had learned a long time ago not to argue with women’s intuition. Not only did it piss the woman in question off, which never worked in his favor, the plain fact was that more often than not she was right. He put the mug in the microwave and reached for the instant coffee.

  “Okay. So it’s yours. When did it go missing?”

  “Last spring. Remember? I told you about it, and you ignored me.”

  “I remember the radishes.”

  Mercy released a harsh sigh of frustration. “This was before that. Although I did bring it up again on the night with the radishes and you ignored me—again. God, Jake. Do you ever listen to me?”

  Jake decided that was a question best left unanswered. “Look. Call the police and tell them it’s yours. Tell them when it went missing, as many details as you can remember.”

  “But, Jake . . .” There was a long pause. “It was taken from my kitchen. My kitchen. No one has access except employees, and sometimes friends or whatever, but it’s not Main Street.” Her voice lowered into a whisper. “What if someone here is a murderer?”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions, Mercy. I mean, it’s possible that someone stole it, sold it, and then it got into the hands of the murderer. Someone at the Arms is a thief, but not necessarily a murderer.” Even as he said the words, something niggled at the back of his brain. If he included Esther’s death, then that made two potentially suspicious expirations linked with the Arms. It was a little too coincidental for comfort, but there was no need to say that to Mercy. She was freaked out enough as it was.

  He pulled the mug out of the microwave while Mercy rattled on about the saucier and how it had always been her favorite, letting it slide that there had been a person on the business end of that pan who probably felt less affection for it. He pretended to listen, adding an encouraging, “Mmm-hmmm,” here and there while his mind wandered over the new terrain. It wasn’t until the anchor returned to the hot story, rerunning the footage, that something in the background of the saucier shot caught his attention.
<
br />   It was a plastic evidence bag, which held a flask. Jake grabbed his remote and rewound live TV, thanking God and his cable company for TiVo. He paused the video on the frame and released a breath.

  The flask had something shiny around the cap. Something that looked a lot like rhinestones. He quickly calculated the facts.

  The saucier went missing last spring. So did Elaine Placie. As for rhinestone flasks, he could only remember ever seeing one, and it had belonged to Elaine. Not to mention that women like Elaine Placie had a tendency toward making enemies . . .

  “Crap,” he muttered.

  “Jake? Are you listening to me?” Mercy hissed through the phone.

  “Gotta go,” he said, and disconnected the call. He tossed the handset on the couch and stared at the screen, his mind oddly calmed as it processed the new information.

  Elaine Placie hadn’t skipped town, after all. Although someone had put a fair amount of elbow grease into making it seem that way. And Jake had a strong feeling he knew exactly who.

  He headed for the shower. He wanted to be calm, clean, and in control when he told Flynn that there was no way in hell he was letting her get within a country mile of Gordon Chase.

  Also, if he got caught breaking into Chase’s office that night, he figured the least he could do for his mother was to look well groomed in his mug shot. It’s those small touches that mean so much.

  “Flynn? You in there?” Jake stepped back as he heard some movement inside the cottage and looked around. The porch was cleared of the rocker from the day before, and two brand new locks gleamed at him against the freshly replaced and painted doorjamb. Unfortunately, he didn’t hear either of them turn before Flynn opened the door.

  “You know, locks are much more effective if you actually lock . . .”

  He trailed off at the sight of her. Flynn smiled, tilting her head as she attached a long, dangling silver earring to her right earlobe. It matched the silver necklace that decorated the space between her breasts, a space that was bared to bursting because the little black dress she was wearing was big on the little part.