Bubblegum Blonde (7 page)

I fell from the fence and cringed as the sidewalk rushed up to meet my face but was surprised when I was jerked to a sudden stop. The belt loop of my pants had caught onto one of the iron spikes I'd been sitting between. Before I could panic, a loud rip sounded, and a waft of fresh air blasted against my bare skin. I landed on the sidewalk with an audible thump.

Chancing a quick glance back, I spotted the entire back of my jeans and a scrap of my panties hanging from the top of the fence. Uncaring that I was now bare-assed, I grabbed my gun that had fallen to the ground, bolted to my feet, and sprinted toward my car. I yanked the door open, slid inside, and hightailed it out of the neighborhood before the cops came or, worse yet, someone saw my recently gym-deprived bottom flapping in the breeze.

I made the drive back to the office in less than fifteen minutes, which had to be a world record, but I was too freaked-out by my narrow escape to appreciate it.

My heart rate was almost back to normal as I came to a screeching halt beside the curb outside the office.

I killed the ignition, hopped out of the car, and ran through the glass door. Mandy and Kelly stared at me, both with wide-eyed expressions. I dove straight into my office and slammed the door behind me.

I pressed my back against the cool wood. Then and only then did I release the breath I'd been holding. The reality of how close I'd actually come to getting caught filled my mind.

Less than a minute later, it felt like the Incredible Hulk flung my door open. I slammed onto the floor, might've rolled a couple of times (thanks a lot Chips Ahoy!), and then came to a stop at the edge of my desk. I looked up at Kelly's stunned expression and flopped back onto the floor with a weary sigh.

"Crap! I'm sorry!" Kelly giggled then covered her grin with one hand.

"Are you all right?" Mandy asked with genuine concern from where she peeked over Kelly's shoulder.

"Do I look all right?"

"Considering the fact that you just ran through the office with your butt hanging out of what's left of your jeans? No." Kelly smirked.

Mandy hurried from the room.

It didn't escape my notice that she left out the part where I was lying in a heap on the floor because she'd just beat me down with my office door.

"Do you want to tell us what happened?"

As much as I wanted to forget what had just happened, I knew they would never let it go, and I needed to share the maybe-evidence I'd found with them.

Seeing no way around hiding the humiliating ordeal, I sat up slowly and hugged my knees into my chest. Mandy reappeared and held out a pair of black yoga pants and a cup of coffee.

"I had a spare pair in my bag. I was going to take a class after work." She smiled.

There were times when I didn't know how I'd survive without Mandy.

"Thanks," I said and took the offered items. Despite the fact that she was younger than Kelly and I, Mandy was like the mother hen of the office, always looking out for us, and for that I was eternally grateful. I just wasn't the maternal, take-care-of-others type. I loved my friends and was able to keep my cat alive, but let's face it—I could barely make instant coffee.

"Change pants, and then you can tell us what happened," Mandy said.

I didn't bother running to the restroom to change. Over the years we'd seen each other in the most compromising situations. Seeing my bum wasn't going to embarrass me any further or surprise them in the least. I shimmied out of what was left of my jeans and underwear, slipped on the yoga pants, and stood.

I made my way around my desk and flopped down into my comfy desk chair while Mandy and Kelly made themselves at home in the chairs across from my desk.

I took a deep breath and proceeded to spill the entire story, frozen chicken, rotund maid, and all. Needless to say, by the time I reached the end of the tale, they were both in uncontrollable fits of laughter.

"Only you, Barb," Kelly said between giggles. "I can see you hanging from that fence by the seat of your pants."

"I'm glad you think it's funny," I grumbled. "I almost got caught."

"But you didn't." She grinned.

"This time," I said.

"Did you find anything at all that could be of use?" Mandy asked.

I nodded. "Maybe. I was only in the house long enough to search the master bedroom, but I found something that might lead us in the direction of the real killer or at least in the direction of an affair." I reached beside me, pulled the receipts out of my discarded jeans pockets, and laid them out on the desk.

Both ladies leaned forward and picked up two slips of paper each.

"I thought Jason said he wasn't screwing the boss's wife." Kelly frowned.

"That's what he said," I answered, "but this certainly makes it look like he was lying, and if he's lying about this, I can't help but wonder what else he's lying about. I'm going to call him in. This case may be more trouble than it's worth if he's hiding more information from us. Or," I said as an afterthought, "she was having an affair with more than one man. Jason's fingerprints were found in her bedroom. If they were meeting up at her home, then why would they be sneaking out to Trinity Grove?"

"That's a good question," Mandy agreed. "It doesn't make sense."

Detective Black's warning to be careful flitted through my mind.

"Do you think he would go through the trouble of hiring you if he was really guilty?" Mandy asked. "I mean, what would the point be?"

"Detective Black seems to think that Jason hired us in an attempt to throw them off of his trail. He thinks that Jason is guilty but trying to make it look like he's innocent by hiring us. A
why-hire-a-private-investigator-if-he's-guilty
type of thing." I bit my bottom lip and shook my head. "Assuming Jason and Lydia were in fact having an affair, why would he lie to us about their relationship? He knew we'd figure it out when we started digging into the case." I tapped my desk. "I can see his reason for lying to the cops. I mean, they already have evidence against him, and adding the confirmation of an affair with the victim into the mix just adds fuel to the fire. But why lie to us when we're being paid to find the truth? I just don't get it."

"Me either," Kelly said quietly as she looked through the receipts. "Are you going to call him back in and ask him about all of this?"

"Not yet." I shook my head. "It's pretty much a lock that he and Lydia were sleeping together. I want to poke around some more and see what else I can find before I call Jason back in. If he's lying about the affair, then there's no telling what else he might be lying about." I tapped the pen against the desk. "Have you found anything interesting, Mandy?"

Mandy wiggled the green straw around in her cup. "No," she shook her head, "and digging into someone as popular and as powerful as Robert Hatchett, I fully expected to find something illegal, but he's as clean as a whistle." She shrugged. "If he's doing anything he isn't supposed to be, it's completely in cash and off the books."

"What about Lydia?" I asked, popping a piece of gum into my mouth. "Did you happen to find out anything on her?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All of their accounts were shared, and she didn't work. I did find some things out about her childhood though. Apparently she had a pretty rocky start. Alcoholic parents—and she was in and out of foster homes, which I guess would explain the nature of her charities."

"Had Lydia ever been in any kind of legal trouble?"

"Not that I could find," Mandy continued. "And again, I'm kind of surprised. Robert and Lydia dealt with so many powerful men and women, I thought surely over the years one of them would have become disgruntled over something, and some kind of complaint or something would come up, even if it was false, but I couldn't find anything."

"No out of the ordinary transactions that we can find, no employee complaints, and yet, someone kills the wife. Why?"

The three of us sat there staring off into space completely lost in our own thoughts.

"Am I interrupting something?" A deep voice yanked us back to reality.

"Geez! What's wrong with you sneaking up on people like that?" Kelly jumped up and blocked my desk from the man currently filling my office doorway.

I had the fleeting thought that my doorway had never looked better.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said. The hint of an amused smile curved his full lips.

I raked all of the receipts off the desktop and into the top drawer, then slammed it shut.

 "Detective Black. What can I help you with?" I asked as I stood and instantly wanted to kick myself for how breathless my voice came out.

"Detective Black?" Mandy asked and raised her eyebrows in my direction.

I nodded in response. She immediately got my drift and smiled.

He was the last person I wanted to deal with at the moment, but there he was all swagger and charm staring at me with those enormous green eyes and rocking a body that could make a nun question her vows. If he was here, he knew I was up to something. He was too good a cop not to.

All I could do now was try my best to play it cool, and if all else failed, I could fall back on the good ol' deny, deny, deny, strategy.

He stepped around Kelly, who was doing her best to keep him from seeing me clear my desk, and crossed his arms over his chest.

 "I have some calls to make," Mandy said and hurried from the room.

"You and I need to talk," he said to me. His deep voice rumbled off my office walls, and I suppressed a shiver. He was intimidating and sexy with his muscular build, chiseled jaw, shaggy black-as-night hair, and imposing stance. He was walking, talking temptation on a stick.

"Should I stay?" Kelly asked glancing between the cop and me.

"No, it's fine."

What could Kelly do? It wasn't like the detective was there to hurt me. Arrest me maybe but not hurt me.

She gave Detective Black one last frown and left the room.

Once the door closed behind her, I retook my seat and waved him to the chairs opposite me.

"What could you possibly need to talk to me about?" I asked.

"I think you know why I'm here."

"Umm, no." I shook my head.

Detective Black tilted his head back just a bit, lowered his eyelids a fraction, and glared at me.

I folded my arms over my chest and waited for him to say something. The tension between us was so thick I wondered if I would choke on it.

Finally he stepped forward and tossed something onto my desk, then took a seat in one of my office chairs.

I reached out and poked at the item he'd tossed down.

"What's this?" I asked in a voice I hoped sounded innocent but was afraid fell absurdly short.

"You don't know?" he asked succinctly.

I stared at the butt of my jeans splayed on my desk before me. I wanted to hide in a heap under my desk. Instead, I took a deep breath and shook my head.

I picked up the seat of my jeans and scrunched my nose. "Nope. Well," I corrected myself quickly, "it looks like part of someone's pants, but why would I know anything about them?"

He eyed me up and down. A chill slid the length of my spine. He was on to me. He knew exactly what I'd been up to. The scrap of my jeans and the fact that he was in my office was solid proof of that. From the expression on his face, he wasn't buying my innocent act at all, and who could blame him? I was falling disgustingly short in the acting-innocent department.

He knew I'd broken into Hatchett's place and was just baiting me along until I slipped up and spilled the beans.

That freaking maid.

Little did he know, I was as stubborn as they come.

"Weren't you wearing jeans earlier at the station?" He crossed his arms across his chest.

"I don't know, was I?" I pretended to have forgotten.

He cocked a brow at me like he wasn't buying a single word I said.

"And even if I was," I continued, "is it against the law for a woman to slip into some yoga pants on occasion?"

"It is if slipping into them comes after breaking into Robert Hatchett's place."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, yes, you do." He smiled and leaned forward placing his elbows on his knees. "As a matter of fact, I have proof that you broke into his house."

"And what proof might that be?"

"I made a trip out to the Hatchett residence to ask a few more questions this afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I saw you running to your car then speeding away."

It took everything I had in me to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. Not only had the maid busted me but I'd been so wrapped up in my quick getaway that I'd completely missed a police officer watching from the sidelines? Why was I surprised that he'd caught me? He was a detective after all. Seeing me in the station had put me on his radar. All I could do now was deny, deny, deny and hope he let it go.

I pursed my lips and shook my head. "Sorry, you must've seen someone who looked a lot like me."

"And I suppose this someone drives the same car you do too?"

I nodded.

The vein in his neck looked like it was about to explode as he clenched his jaw, and for a moment I wondered if I'd gone too far.

 "Let's cut the crap, Barb." The smile left his face. "I know all about your little fling with Jason King. I know that you were engaged." He leaned back in the chair. "I know he came to you early this morning to ask for your help, and I know that you broke into Hatchett's house a little more than an hour ago. What I don't know"—he scrubbed a finger along his chin and jaw—"is why on Earth you would jeopardize your life trying to help some lying scumbag like Jason King? He killed Lydia Hatchett, and it's only a matter of time before I prove it."

"How did you know Jason came by here? Have you been following my client?"

He smiled at me, displaying his perfectly even, white teeth.

"No, I wasn't following him, but after I saw you at the station this morning, I did a little more digging into his background. I did a little digging into yours as well." He pointed at me quickly. "That's when I discovered that the two of you used to be an item."