Blind Dates Can Be Murder (32 page)

He tossed a five onto the counter, which the bartender took and slipped into the drawer without giving him any bills in return.

“How about a little of my change back?” Chuck demanded. “I ain’t that big of a tipper.”

“What change? It’s five bucks.”

“Five bucks?” Chuck said, knowing the guy was cheating him, that it should have been only three. Before he could do anything about it, however, a group of people came into the bar and fed past him toward the tables.

The last man in the group bumped Chuck’s shoulder, and that was all it took. Before the guy knew what hit him, Chuck had him in a headlock, his arm twisted behind his back. With his heartbeat roaring loudly inside his brain, it took a moment for Chuck to calm down and remember that he was on the outside now. Outside, people got more slack, more space.

“I said, let him go,” the bartender repeated, a wooden baseball bat clenched in his hands.

Chuck released the guy and stepped back.

“Sorry, man,” Chuck said. “No offense.”

Then he walked out of the bar and down the street until he found a barber shop.

“Try ‘bank robbery Pennsylvania,’” Jo directed.

She and Danny were at his mother’s computer, using the Internet to search the possibility that there was unrecovered cash out there, cash from a bank robbery where dye packs had been ignited.

So far they hadn’t come up with any specific thefts, but they had found some interesting information. According to what they were reading on the web, more and more banks were using dye packs to protect themselves from theft. Apparently, the money packs looked perfectly normal, but when they were removed from the vault or building, a magnetic sensor forced the packs to explode, dousing the money and the thief with a vivid, permanent dye, usually pink or purple in color.

Jo’s theory was that Frank Malone had robbed a bank that had dye packs. Somehow, he had gotten away with the money, but he couldn’t use it because it was permanently stained. Desperate to find a way to get the stains out, he had tried to get help from household hints expert Jo Tulip—first by calling on the phone, and when that didn’t work, by arranging the situation so that he could sit across from her face-to-face and have her explain. His actions seemed extreme, but if he had tried every other avenue for getting out the stains, all to no avail, he would have been desperate. The kind of guy who robbed banks and was closely associated with the mob probably didn’t think twice about clobbering some guy and throwing him in the trunk in order to take his place on a date.

“Let me call the chief and bring him up to speed,” Jo said when she saw that their search brought back too many hits to be useful. “You keep trying to narrow it down.”

Jo went to retrieve her cell from her purse, but as she walked past Chewie, she noticed that he posture was hunched and he was chewing on something.

“Whatcha got, boy?” Jo asked, leaning down. Mrs. Watkins had said it was okay for Chewie to come inside the house, but Jo didn’t want to push it. She figured it would be just her luck if he had gotten hold of a box of tissues or something. Chewie loved to tear up tissues.

He fought Jo for what was in his mouth, but finally she got him to open up and spit it out. What was left was black and rectangular, with wires and circuits hanging down.

“Uh, Danny?” Jo said, holding it up to him. “What was this?”

Danny glanced her way and then did a double take.

“That was the remote control for the television,” he said, laughing.

“Oh, Chewie!” Jo scolded. “Bad dog! No!”

Jo apologized profusely to Danny, but he assured her that it had been a universal remote and not the original one that had come with the television.

“I think my mom got it at a discount store,” he said. “It shouldn’t be hard to replace.”

Still mortified, Jo kept one hand on Chewie’s collar as she retrieved her purse from the couch, got out her cell, and dialed the police station. Focus. She needed to focus.

Once she had Chief Cooper on the phone, she explained what she remembered about the telephone call and what she and Danny and his mother had since deduced about the dye packs.

“Danny and I have been online, searching for unsolved bank robberies in Pennsylvania, but so far there’s just too much data to be useful.”

“Don’t waste your time,” the chief said. “We’ve got that information on our end. I’ll put someone on it. In the meantime, I got word back from the lab in Moore City. Once we ruled out your prints, we were left with two others. One has no match. The other came up in the computer.”

“What are you saying?”

“That it looks like two people searched your house. One of them has a police record, one does not.”

“Do you have a name for the one who does?”

“Yeah, they’re sending over the info. If you want to drop by the station in an hour or so, we should have it by then. You can take a look at the mug shot, see if you recognize him.”

“Was it the same guy you showed me before?”

“No. Someone different.”

Jo glanced at Danny, who was still working at the computer. She hadn’t told him about the break-in because she hadn’t wanted to worry him. Considering his current physical state, she knew that knowledge would do nothing but make him feel agitated and helpless.

“Chief,” she said softly, leading Chewie through the door to the patio, where Danny couldn’t hear, “if our theory about the dye is correct, then why would someone have searched my house? What on earth were they looking for?”

“I wish I knew, Jo,” he replied. “I wish I knew.”

After the haircut, Chuck got directions to a Goodwill store. There, he picked out a different shirt and a leather jacket, one that looked less uniform. He left the prison jacket in the dressing room, paid for his items, and walked to the front door of the store. He simply stood there for a moment, waiting, until he realized that he could go on through without a pass or being on a roster.

He was free now. He had to get used to that.

Outside, he looked around and considered his options. The Scotch had made him feel a little nauseous, and he realized he needed to have lunch. With the image of a steak still looming in his mind, he wasn’t content with eating in some dive. He wanted a decent meal.

With purpose in his step, Chuck walked to the nearest bus stop and caught the uptown. By the time he got off, he was just a block from a decent steak house and he was famished. He went to the restaurant and placed his order and dug in the moment it came. When the waitress stopped to refill his coffee, she hesitated, looking at his plate.

“Wow, you sure are hungry,” she said, eyes wide.

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and checked her out. She was cute enough, if he ignored the bulges at her waist and at the tops of her thighs. Nothing wrong with a little meat.

“I’m hungry for a lot of things,” he said, giving her his best up-and-down gaze. “What time do you get off?”

She met his eyes, considering. Then she leaned forward and lowered her voice.

“I might be interested, except for one thing,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t date ex-cons.”

He blinked, confused. How did she know? He’d gotten his hair cut and bought the new clothes. He wasn’t sporting any prison tattoos.

“You’re cutting your meat with the side of your spoon,” she explained. Then, with a laugh, she turned and walked away.

Chuck looked down, mortified to see that he’d been eating the way they did in prison.

He had forgotten he could use a knife.

18

O
nce Lettie had been given a full behind-the-scenes tour of the Dates&Mates facility, she was introduced to the boss, an attractive, fortyish woman named Tasha Green.

“Lettie,” Ms. Green said. “Welcome to Dates&Mates. I’m so glad you were able to start right away. We didn’t expect to have such a sudden opening.”

Lettie nodded, looking down at the floor. Only she knew the true cause for that sudden opening.

“Anyway,” Ms. Green said, “this will be your desk. Viveca is my assistant, so you’ll be stepping right in where she left off.”

Lettie had to ask the question, even though she didn’t want to know the answer.

“Is she…how…how bad is she hurt?”

“From what I understand, she’s been put on full bed rest, but she and the baby are both fine.”

Lettie heaved a private sigh of relief.

“Anyway, I’ve had several people going through her work this morning, and though there are a few open-ended matters, it looks like she was wrapping things up pretty well for her maternity leave. She has a file on her computer that describes a lot of the procedures you’ll need to know to use the system. You can start by looking through that file. Then you can familiarize yourself with the computer, maybe scroll through the client profiles a little bit to get a feel for what we’re about.”

“Yes, ma’am. That sounds fine.”

“Why don’t you settle in, and then we will touch base in about an hour. I have a meeting, but then I’d like to go over some things with you, some projects that I think you can handle right off the bat. Sound good?”

“Sounds fine.”

Lettie sat at the desk, which was positioned in a recessed area near the door to Ms. Green’s office. It was set up so that Lettie’s back was to the wall, which couldn’t have been more perfect for her data-stealing purposes. Unless someone came and stood directly beside her, they wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing on the screen.

“Ms. Green, how about the telephone?” Lettie asked. “How should I handle your calls?”

“Unless it’s urgent, just take a message. I usually return calls right after lunch and again at the end of the day.”

“Okay.”

Ms. Green walked to the doorway and then turned back.

“Oh, and Lettie?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please, call me Tasha. We’re not all that formal around here.”

“Jo, you’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?” Mrs. Watkins asked.

After her conversation with the chief, Jo and Danny had given up on the computer and relocated back outside on the patio. Jo wanted to keep an eye on Chewie, who was back on his extended leash. Currently, he was napping in the sunshine. Obviously, he wasn’t tormented by guilt over the incident with the remote control.

“Sure,” Jo replied, fixing the cushions under Danny’s foot. “Thank you.”