Blind Dates Can Be Murder (51 page)

“Tooth whiteners?” Danny asked. “For what, like nicotine stains? Coffee?”

“I guess,” Jo replied. “They didn’t really elaborate.”

“Did he…did he ask you out again?”

“He called later,” she replied. “I told him no, that my love life was already complicated enough.”

Smiling, Danny pulled right in front of the station so that Jo could jump out and run inside. She mounted the steps as he went to park the car, and she was glad to see Lettie and the chief waiting for her in the entranceway. Before they could even speak, her cell phone rang again. It had been ten minutes exactly.

“Let me talk to my wife,” Chuck said.

Wordlessly, Jo passed the phone. Her eyes wide, Lettie took it and whispered hello.

“Yeah,” Lettie said softly. “Yeah. Okay.”

She handed the phone back to Jo.

“He said you and me are supposed to go out the front door of the police station, turn right and walk four blocks, turn left and go one block. No cops.”

Jo thought for a moment about where that would put them.

“Dates&Mates,” she gasped. “He’s planted a bomb in Dates&Mates!”

“I’m on it,” the chief said, reaching for his phone. “If we can evacuate out the back, we just might save this situation.”

“He said we have to go
now
,” Lettie told them.

“The bomb squad is ready to move into place,” the chief said. “Trust me. Walk slowly, and by the time you get there, they’ll have it covered.”

“All right,” Jo said. “Let’s go.”

She opened the door and walked out of the station with Lettie, down the steps, and to the right. As they went up the sidewalk, Danny joined them from the parking lot, moving awkwardly on his crutches to keep up with them.

“You have to go back, Danny,” Jo said. “Chuck called and told us where to go, but he only wants us.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’d let you march into this alone.”

“Lives may depend on it,” Jo pleaded, stopping for a moment and putting her hands against his chest. “Stop. Please. We have to go by ourselves.”

“Jo—”

“Danny, please. Go back to the station and help the chief. Please.”

Chuck knew that the bomb squad would be moving into place. He sat in full view on a bus stop bench, across the street and half a block down from Dates&Mates, hands in his pockets. Soon, two women appeared coming up the street. He recognized Jo, but it took a moment to realize that the woman with her was Lettie.

Lettie?

She didn’t look like herself. After three years apart, she had changed more than he would ever have imagined. She was older now, no longer childlike. She had short red hair and she wore a business outfit, like anyone else you’d see in an office. Where were her floaty dresses, her long, plain hair? Where was his little Lettie?

“You look like a hooker,” he said as they approached. “Is that why you dyed your hair red? You’re a hooker now?”

If there had been any spark of love or longing in Lettie’s eyes when she saw him, the spark died out at that moment. In its place was the blank, cardboard look she usually took on just before he hit her.

“Freeze! Police!” a voice called over a megaphone. “Put your hands up!”

Chuck glanced around to see snipers poised with guns on the roofs of all the nearby buildings. He had to give it to stupid little Mulberry Glen. They were certainly equipped for a crisis.

Instead of putting his hands up, he pulled one out of his pocket and held it out in front of him.

“I have a detonator,” he told Jo calmly, showing her that he was holding a small black device the size and shape of a fat, stubby pen. “If they don’t pull back, I’m going to press this button. Now both of you take your wires off and get into that car.”

“I’m not wearing a wire,” Lettie said.

“Just get in, then.”

He gestured toward the car that was sitting at the curb, its engine softly purring.

“Jo, you take the wheel. Lettie, you sit up front.”

Once Jo had stripped off her wire and the two women were in the car, Chuck picked up the tiny microphone from the ground and spoke into it.

“Do not attempt to follow us or do anything that will cause us any problems. This detonator has a five-mile range. If I spot any activity, I will set the bomb off. Oh, and by the way. The bomb you really need to worry about isn’t this one. This one’s just a warm-up for the real one, which is somewhere else entirely. Somewhere even more populated.”

From his pocket, he pulled out his other hand, revealing a second detonator. Slowly, he pressed the button. Down the block, an explosion—smaller than the one at Jo’s house, but powerful nonetheless—rocked Dates&Mates, shooting glass out into the street, followed by dark billows of smoke.

Chuck climbed into the backseat behind the two shaken women, glad that he had thought to steal a four-door.

“Drive,” he commanded.

Then he sat back and relaxed as they went, looking around to make sure they weren’t being followed.

“I knew something like this was going to happen!” Danny yelled, slamming his fist on the chief’s desk.

They were getting minute-by-minute updates from the squad, who had managed to get Dates&Mates fully evacuated out the back door before the explosion went off. This bomb hadn’t started a fire like the last one, thankfully, and soon they could begin digging through the rubble to find the explosive device. In the meantime, poor Jo and Lettie were careening down the road away from town with a madman—and the cops were powerless to stop or track them.

There was a flurry of activity surrounding this turn of events, but most of it seemed so futile that Danny was filled with frustration. His foot was throbbing, so he sat in a nearby chair and propped it up. He was sitting there, eyes closed, trying to think of a solution, when he heard someone talking about nicotine.

“What?” Danny asked, opening his eyes. “What did you just say?”

A nearby deputy turned, holding up a piece of paper.

“I said we got the toxicology report back on Mickey Paglino. He’s suffering from nicotine poisoning. It’s a pretty common poison, though usually it’s faster-acting and more fatal than what’s happening to him.”

Nicotine poisoning. Danny got the attention of the chief and told him about Brock Dentyne and his lab experiments with tooth whiteners.

If anyone could secure enough nicotine to put a man in a coma, Danny said, it just might be him.

Jo wasn’t sure where they were going. She turned at the commands he issued as he consulted the map open on his lap. The route seemed familiar, though she wasn’t sure why. Except for his driving instructions, the car was silent—but the tension was thick. Jo kept glancing at Lettie, who seemed almost to be in shock, her eyes staring forward without emotion.

Jo felt guilty for bringing Lettie into this, but it was all she had been able to think of that moment. The chief had given Lettie the option of going or not going, and she had readily agreed, saying only, “He’s got to be stopped somehow.”

At one point Jo thought they might be heading to Frank Malone’s farm. But then they passed it by. Finally, when Chuck told her to slow for a right turn, she gasped in recognition.

They were at Candle Road, the winding, upward drive that would lead them to Peter Trumble’s house.

“Danny? Danny Watkins? Wow, I hardly recognized you, you look so different.”

Danny looked up to see a cute policewoman. Immediately he recognized her as Monica O’Connell.

“Monica, hi,” he said. “How are you?”

He remembered Jo’s comments about how Monica would like him if he cleaned himself up, and then he realized that he had done just that. She was obviously intrigued, her eyes scanning him like a piece of meat.

“Listen, do you think there’s a computer around here I could use to go online?” he asked, knowing he might as well take advantage of her interest to get what he needed.

“Sure. You can borrow mine. Come on.”

Using his crutches, he hobbled after her toward her desk, answering her questions about his injury as they went. Leaning in a little too close, she got the computer up and running and online, and then she stood with one hand on his shoulder, asking what he needed to look up.

“I’m investigating a man who might be the murderer,” he said as he typed into Google. “Name of Brock Dentyne. I need to know everything there is to know about him.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” she asked, moving another chair next to him and pulling the keyboard toward herself. “We’ve got access to lots of databases. If he’s in there, we’ll find him.”