Don't Mess With Texas (5 page)

“Is this connected to the murder case you crashed?” Austin asked seriously.

“Yeah.”

“Not the victim?” Tyler glanced back at the computer with sympathy.

“Nope. Her ex’s body was found in her trunk.”

“Did she do it?” Tyler asked.

“Not sure.” Dallas mentally flinched when he remembered how he’d condemned her. “Did you get the address to Venny’s?”

“Yeah, it’s 2234 Walters Street. But you better put on a tie. It’s upscale.”

“I don’t think I’ll be dining.” Something clattered at Dallas’s feet. He looked down to where Bud had dropped his food bowl. “Is food all you think about, boy?”

“It wouldn’t be if you let him get a little,” Austin kidded.

“As soon as he proves he knows how to use a condom, I’ll let him do that.” Dallas started out.

“You need company?” Tyler asked.

Dallas looked back. “Nah. But could you walk and feed Bud? I might be late.”

“Oh, speaking of Bud.” The humor from Tyler’s voice faded. “I forgot to tell you, you got some papers from Serena’s lawyer.”

“Shit!” Dallas spun around, walked into the office and snatched the envelope from Tyler’s hand. He ripped it open and read the first few lines. “She’s fucking doing it. Can you
fucking
believe she’s actually doing it? Joint custody, my ass!”

Tyler leaned back in his chair. “It’s you she wants, not the dog.”

“You shouldn’t have given her a taste of the good stuff,” Austin said, smiling.

“It was revenge sex,” Tyler piped in. “I wouldn’t mind having a shot at revenge sex with Lisa. Screw her hard then tell her to go screw herself.”

“It was a damn mistake.” One Dallas sorely regretted, too. He’d just gotten the apartment finished and had a few guys over for a poker game to christen the place. The guys had left, and Dallas was finishing off the last beer—two past his limit. When Serena showed up claiming she wanted to check on Bud, he’d been just drunk enough to let her come in. Just drunk and horny enough not to fight off her advances. Though he clearly recalled telling her, “
If we do this, it doesn’t mean a thing
.”

He’d no more than rolled off her when he remembered the ring on her finger and realized he’d been wrong. It had meant something. It meant if Serena was capable of sleeping with him while she wore Bill’s engagement ring, then maybe she’d been capable of sleeping with Bill, her boss for the past five years, when she’d worn his wedding ring.

When he’d confronted her about it, she’d admitted they’d had a one-time fling but, of course, she assured him that it hadn’t meant anything at the time.

Right.

He’d been pissed. And not even because she’d cheated.
But because not once during his marriage—and damn if he hadn’t turned down some nice-looking ass—had he cheated on Serena. And why? Because he’d been a friggin’ idiot.

Dallas stared at the papers. He started to crumble them in his fist when the lawyers’ names at the bottom of the stationery caught his eye.

Jack Leon
. That’s why the name had been familiar. The dead guy in Nikki Hunt’s trunk was part of the hotshot law firm Serena had used to get her divorce and was now using in a custody battle for Dallas’s dog.

With his mind back on the murder, he tossed the papers on Tyler’s desk. “Do me another favor. Do a search on Jack Leon, the lawyer, and call me. And don’t forget to feed Bud.”

“What is it you aren’t supposed to think about?”

Nikki glanced up as Detective Anthony O’Connor strolled into her little curtained area. She almost thought it was the guy she’d used as a barf bag. But nope, just the head honcho cop who’d accused her of killing Jack.

Not that she was too worried. She was innocent. Only the guilty worried, right?

“Sorry,” Nikki said. “I talk to myself a lot.” The nausea pulled at her stomach and she pulled the pink tub closer and looked at the bag of fluid hanging to her left. The doctor said the meds in the IV would “
eventually
” calm her stomach.

“Maybe you can tell me what ‘yourself’ is saying about what happened tonight.”

There it was again—the accusation in his tone that was mirrored in his expression. His eyes tightened, his
right eyebrow arched slightly, and he pressed his lips together in a thin line. If he was trying to intimidate her, he could give himself a high five. His disapproving glare was downright daunting. Had they taught him that look in the police academy?

Maybe I should be worried
. “You really don’t think I did this, do you?” Her stomach roiled again. She eyed her IV. “Eventually” couldn’t arrive soon enough.

“Did you do it?”

“No.” She sat up and squared her shoulders, trying to come off as a person with strong character. Of course, that was hard to do when you wore a backless hospital gown and held a Pepto-Bismol–colored, hospital-regulation barf tub in your lap.

His arched brow said he didn’t believe her.

What could she say to convince him? Or maybe she shouldn’t say anything. She considered asking for a lawyer, but decided to just puke instead.

Or she should say, she decided to go through the motions of puking.

When the dry heaves passed, he handed her a damp cloth. She raised her eyes to his dark brown gaze, hoping the suspicion had vanished. Nope. Obviously, the detective could be nice to people he considered murderers.

“Why would I put him in my trunk?” she blurted out and used the cloth to wipe her face in case she had any residual drool from her newly acquired pastime.

His gaze grew colder. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Why don’t you leave the room for a minute?” The nurse, a full-figured African-American woman, walked into the room. “I need to get some blood.” The nurse shot the detective a cutting look and he left.

Nikki looked at the nurse. “I didn’t kill my ex.”

“Honey, the way I see it, if your ex was anywhere near as bad as mine, or as rude as that cop was to me when he brought you in here, you did the world a favor.”

Watching the blood fill the vial, Nikki remembered Jack’s shirt and fought another wave of nausea.

When the nurse left, Nikki leaned back and closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she heard someone clear his throat. She opened her eyes and was hit again by the accusation in the detective’s eyes.

“I think you were about to explain how your ex-husband’s body got into your trunk.”

“No, I wasn’t about to explain that. Because I didn’t put Jack in my trunk. I didn’t shoot him. I don’t own a gun. Don’t even know how to shoot one.” She looked at her hands. “Shouldn’t you be doing one of those powder tests on my hands?”

He cocked his head to the side and studied her. Hard. He looked as if he was about to say something profound, something important. She held her breath and waited.

And waited.

When he didn’t speak, she dropped back against the pillow. Who knew puking took so much energy?

He pulled a notepad from his pocket, jotted something down, and then raised his eyes again. “You know the grocery store cashier said you were talking to her about killing your ex?”

“I wasn’t talking to her, I was talking to myself. She just assumed I was speaking to her. I mutter when I’m upset.”

“Were you upset enough to kill him?”

“He stuck me with the bill at Venny’s. Do you know how expensive that is? So, yeah, I was furious. Furious enough to say I wanted to kill him, but… but I’m not a killer. I even use catch-and-release mouse traps.”

The crinkle in his brow confused her. Did he believe her or not?

He scratched his head. “What do you do when you catch them? Put them in your trunk?”

She blinked. “No. I take them outside and let them go.”

“Oh.” He continued to look at her. “Don’t they just come back inside?”

She recalled Nana and Ellen asking her the same thing. “Probably, but my point is I don’t kill them. Because I’m not a killer.”

He didn’t seem impressed. Obviously, using live traps wasn’t considered evidence. Glancing back at his pad, he asked, “What were you and your ex arguing about at the restaurant?”

“We weren’t arguing. He wasn’t thrilled when I used my fingers to fish out the shrimp in his gumbo, but we didn’t argue.”

“Then why did he leave and stick you with the bill?”

“I don’t know. He was on the phone when I got there. He left, then came back and told me he was in some kind of trouble. I asked what was going on, but his phone rang again and he said he had to take it. He asked me to order and walked away.”

“She’s telling the truth,” a deep, male voice said from directly behind Detective O’Connor.

Nikki had to lean a good five inches to the right to look at the face of her much-needed, much-appreciated, supporter. Not that looks mattered. If she wasn’t in desperate
need of a breath mint, she would have kissed him. She really needed someone in her corner right now.

The moment her gaze met his blue eyes, her focus shifted downward to the dusty blue T-shirt stretched across his wide chest. Thank goodness he’d changed his shirt.

Detective O’Connor swung around and faced the newcomer. “Why are you here?”

“I just got back from Venny’s Restaurant, spoke to the waiter.” His blue-eyed gaze met hers again and he nodded.

“Damn it, Dallas,” the detective said. “You’re not a cop.”

Not a cop. Dallas
. Taking in the information, she watched the two men face each other.

Dallas stuffed both his hands into his jeans and frowned. “But I am a PI.”

So not-a-cop Dallas was a PI
. What was a private investigator doing here?

“This isn’t your problem,” Detective O’Connor insisted. “Don’t you even start messing with my case.”

“You mean helping, right? Because I just gave your boys the heads up on the real crime scene in back of the restaurant. I’m betting Ms. Hunt was parked back there.” Dallas looked at her. “Right?”

Nikki nodded.

“Blood?” Detective O’Connor asked.

“Yup. There was also a set of keys, which I pointed out to your guys. I’ll bet you’ll find they belong to her ex. And if my hunch is right, you’ll find he had a key to her car.”

Both men looked at her to confirm. “He used to have one,” she said, trying to understand what this meant. “You think he was stealing my car?”

“Not necessarily,” Dallas said. “But it would explain how he got inside your trunk.”

“Fine,” Detective O’Connor snapped. “So you’ve managed to show up my men by getting to the restaurant first.”

“Actually, they were there first. They just didn’t check the parking lot in the back.”

“Just get the hell away from my case.” Detective O’Connor’s grimace deepened.

The intimidating scowl didn’t seem to affect Dallas. “Just trying to get to the truth.”

“We’ll get to the truth,” the detective said.

“Oh, like the system doesn’t make mistakes.” Now, Dallas looked mad.

Detective O’Connor didn’t back down. “This isn’t the system, it’s me. I don’t make mistakes.”

Ignoring the last statement, Dallas looked back at her. He seemed to focus on the Pepto-Bismol–pink tub in her lap. “Considering what else I found in the parking lot, it appears as if the vic was also sick. I’m thinking someone slipped something into their dinner.”

“Someone poisoned me?” Nikki asked.

“She’s not your client,” the detective snapped, ignoring Nikki.

Dallas glanced at her. “She could be.”

“Someone poisoned me?” she repeated.

Her question remained unanswered while the two men continued arguing. While she hated to be a pest, her question seemed kind of important. Didn’t the doctors and nurses need to know if she’d been poisoned?

“Are you trying to piss me off?” Detective O’Connor demanded.

“No. I’m trying to help Ms. Hunt,” Dallas said.

“Hey,” Ms. Hunt said, her mind still on the possibility of being poisoned. “Was I—”

“You don’t even know her,” Detective O’Connor accused.

The PI smiled at her. “We bonded.”

“Did someone really poison me?” she repeated again.

“Was that before or after she puked on you?” Detective O’Connor asked and the PI looked back at him.

“I think it was during.” Dallas turned his grin toward her again.

“Bonded my ass. She puked on you. Next you’ll tell me you consider that your retainer.”

Dallas shifted his attention back to the cop. “Hey, that works.”

“I asked a question.” Nikki’s stomach cramped and she put a hand on her middle. She felt sick, but how sick? What kind of poison had she ingested? Was it lethal? Was she bleeding to death on the inside while these two stood by arguing about God only knew what?

A cell phone rang. Detective O’Connor grabbed the phone from his belt loop, scowled at the PI then took the call. “Hello. You’re breaking up. We have a bad…” He paused. “I know, Dallas just informed me. Get CSU down there. Hey… you’re fading out again. Let me call you back.” Detective O’Connor pointed a finger at Dallas and said, “Don’t do this to me.” Then he walked out of the curtained cubicle.