Blind Dates Can Be Murder (31 page)

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “Viveca isn’t in. Can someone else help you?”

Lettie’s mind raced.

“Did she go into early labor or something?” Lettie asked, trying to sound like she was joking.

“No,” the voice replied somberly. “Last night she was hit by a car.”

“That’s it,” Jo said out loud to herself, pointing to an entry in her notebook.

She was in her office, poring over her daily schedule, studying in particular the telephone log. The chief had given her the time and day of Frank Malone’s phone call, but she couldn’t remember what he was talking about until she found it in the notebook.

All she had written was
4:20p
—
Phone
—
Fan request for indiv. help, denied
.

Jo remembered the phone call. And as she closed her eyes and forced herself to go back, she couldn’t believe she had been so stupid. Frank Malone’s voice was very distinctive. How could she not have recognized it when he came walking into the restaurant on Friday night? Probably, the situation was just incongruous enough that it wouldn’t have crossed her mind.

The day he called on the phone two weeks ago, she had been at her desk working on her column. Though she didn’t list her business phone number in the newspaper or on the website, fans still tracked her down from time to time through directory assistance. On that particular day, the man had said that he was calling to see if she could answer a household hints question for him. He had a terrible dye stain he wanted to get out, no matter what it took.

Calls like that weren’t particularly unusual, but Jo had bristled at it nevertheless. Didn’t people understand that her column was nationwide? If she took phone calls from every desperate soul who had a household issue, she’d be on the phone twenty-four hours a day.

She kindly but firmly told the caller that if he would send in his question through the regular channels, she would try to answer it, but that she made a policy of never answering over the phone. And then she had hung up on him. Maybe he had been so mad that he pulled the whole restaurant switchout in order to get revenge.

On the other hand, maybe he was just being persistent in trying to get an answer to his question about dye.

Jo stood and began pacing she felt that the truth of this matter was very close at hand. She wanted to call Danny and use him as a sounding board, but that wasn’t right. The phone rang just as she had decided to call the chief and tell him what she remembered.

It was Danny.

“Hey,” she said, her pulse surging.

“Hey,” he replied. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m staying at my mom’s. I didn’t want you to worry.”

Jo ran a hand through her hair and exhaled slowly.

“I
was
worried,” she replied. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. That’s why I called.”

The phone line crackled between them.

“So what was the verdict? Sprain or break?”

“Broken in two places. I’ll be getting a cast in a day or so, once the swelling goes down.”

“Oh, Danny. Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, but the pills help. And my mom’s great. You know.”

“Listen, Danny—”

“Jo, before you say anything,” he interrupted, “for six months, you’ve been trying to figure out why you have made such bad decisions with love. Now here’s the biggest decision of all, and you don’t know what to think.”

“That’s true,” she whispered.

“Well, I just want to say…take your time, okay? Pray about it. Don’t stop being my friend just because you know how I feel. I’m no different than I was this time yesterday or the day before. Well, except for my foot. And maybe my hair.”

Jo chuckled.

“I’m still me,” he continued. “You’re still you. And we’re still the best of friends.”

Jo knew it wasn’t quite that simple. Still, he was giving her permission to take more time to decide how she really felt. And that was a good thing.

“If we’re really friends, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Jo. You can ask me anything.”

She needed a quick shower, she wanted to load some things into her car, and she had to run by the photo place to pick up her pictures of Peter’s house. But she had to be with Danny.

“Would you mind very much if I came over in about an hour? It’s time to do some brainstorming about the Frank Malone situation. I could use your help.”

Hands shaking, Lettie dialed the number for Mickey.

It was one thing to steal people’s identities, and it was quite another to send a henchman to run down a pregnant woman just to get her out of the way so that Lettie could be hired to steal some data.

Lettie didn’t know what she was going to say to Mickey once she got him on the phone, but after she got through to Swingers, it didn’t matter anyway. The girl who answered said that Mickey was out.

“Fine. I’ll try later.”

A sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, Lettie drove on to her new job, feeling certain that she’d had all she could take. As she found a spot in the parking lot and turned off the car, she decided that this was it: She would spend exactly one day on the job, get the info Mickey wanted on Jo Tulip, and tonight she’d head back to Moore City. She’d give Mickey what she had, get the money that was coming to her, and drive to the airport.

“Everyone has their limits,” as her sister used to say, and Lettie had just reached hers.

When Jo arrived, Danny was dressed and sitting out back on a reclining chair, his foot propped up with more ice on it. He had told her it was okay to bring Chewie along, and the dog bounded through the house and into the backyard excitedly. Danny was waiting with a dollop of cream cheese, one of Chewie’s favorite snacks. He’d had his mother put it on a paper plate, but after Chewie ate the cream cheese, before they could stop him, he wolfed down the paper plate as well.

“Sorry about that,” Danny told Jo. “Will it cause a problem?”

She set about hooking Chewie to his extended leash because there was no fence.

“Nah. With Chewie, my motto is ‘This too shall pass.’”

They laughed easily, but as their laughter faded, so did their ease. Suddenly, Jo seemed extremely uncomfortable, and that made Danny sad.

Why can’t she see that we are perfect together?

“So you wanted to brainstorm,” he said instead. “Go for it. My brain is engaged and ready to produce.”

Actually, that wasn’t quite true. Thanks to the pain pills, his brain was fuzzy around the edges and feeling quite dull. But he would try his best.

“Okay,” she said, standing so that she could pace. Danny had to force himself not to smile. He loved to see Jo when she was working at a problem or a question. Her whole being focused on the issue at hand.

Walking back and forth on the patio, she explained what she had learned from the chief, that there had been a phone call from Frank Malone’s house to her business line two weeks ago, and then she described the call itself in detail.

“The common denominator here,” Jo said, “is the household hint question. Both on the phone and at the restaurant, Frank Malone talked about a dye stain that simply would not come out.”

“Give me the conversation,” Danny told her. “What exactly did he say?”

“Not much on the phone because I cut him off pretty quickly. But on the date, we talked for a while about it. He said that his sister was a big fan and that she had gotten a pinkish-purple dye stain on one of her favorite dresses.”

“Pinkish-purple dye?”

“That’s what he said. He said she’d been trying to get the dye out for a while, but that she had been unsuccessful and did I have any suggestions. I was so bored at that point that I spent several minutes explaining different things he could try.”

“What happened after that?”

“What do you mean what happened after that? He fell to the ground in a gasping heap.”

“Got it.”

Jo grabbed a fat stick from the yard, sat down on the patio, and began playing with Chewie. Danny’s mom came out to the patio with a tray of cookies and lemonade.

“What am I missing here?” Jo demanded, concentrating on Chewie. “What do you think of when you think of a pinkish-purple dye?”

“I think of bank robberies,” Danny’s mother said. “You know, those purple dye packs that burst and ruin all the money?”

Jo turned, her eyes wide. Danny, too, sat up quickly.

“Mrs. Watkins,” Jo said, “I think you may be on to something.”

Chuck walked off the bus in Moore City and into the first bar he could find. The dark room was almost empty and smelled of sour mash and peanuts. Chuck sat at the long wooden bar and ordered a single glass of the best Scotch in the house.

Once Chuck had the drink in front of him, he nursed it slowly, savoring every drop. It burned like fire going down, but it made a nice warm pit in his stomach. He even sloshed it around in his mouth a bit, numbing his tongue, wishing to hold on to the feeling for as long as possible. All too soon, the numbness would give way to a bad taste in his mouth, and the buzz would fade into a headache.

After his last sip, Chuck caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the bar, and he was startled by his appearance. Out of the context of the prison, he realized that he stuck out like a sore thumb. He sported the standard prison haircut, and the clothes were like a flashing neon sign: Just out! Just out! He would have to do something about all of that as quickly as possible.