Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) (28 page)

“Our wacko from earlier?”

“Yep. Went right up to Tutein with his story. Tutein asked me about it. I told him the guy was crazy and that there were no skeletons, but Tutein stuck him in the back of his unmarked to give him a ride to town.”

So much for not telling the authorities. The white eyes staring at me from Tutein’s car must have belonged to him. At least Nick had a chance to explain our side of the story to Tutein. I looked up from rinsing dishes at Nick, who had finished eating and was texting someone.

“Who’s that?”

Nick looked at me with blank eyes. “Huh?”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Oh. The head of security for Petro-Mex. You know how I’ve tried to get their business for a year? Well, I called him as soon as I saw the dead guy’s Petro-Mex uniform. He retained me to help them determine the cause of death. They don’t trust the police. Tutein already informed them that it’s an open and shut suicide. But Petro-Mex says it can’t be.”

This was a lot to take in. Alarm bells rang in my head, far away but getting louder. “Why?”

“He just got married. No one believes he was the type to kill himself, and especially not now. Supposedly his co-workers think he was stupid happy.”

“Why does Petro-Mex even care? I mean, isn’t this a family matter?” I had started the process of drying and putting away the dishes now, and realized that in my consternation, I had dried the same plate three times.

“They don’t make much of a distinction between family and company, really.”

Ah, right. The cult. I held out my hand for his dishes, but Nick stood up and took them to the sink himself. And washed them. It was nice of him to help, finally. When he was done, he pulled a chain attached to his belt loop and flipped out the gold pocket watch we found hidden in the walls of Annalise. I’d had it repaired for him as a “Congrats, Dad” present when I learned I was carrying the twins. It still read “My Treasures” on the front as it had when we first discovered it, but now it held pictures of the three kids and me, instead of the family of Annalise’s previous owner.

“Ten o’clock,” he said.

I was beat. “Wanna finish this conversation in bed?”

“Sure.” He followed me to our bedroom, saying, “I think this is going to be a big one for us. It would be nice to have more on-island clients.”

Nick worked almost exclusively for stateside clients. But he also primarily did computer-forensics-type investigator jobs. Not potential murders.

“I don’t know, Nick. I’ve got a bad vibe about this one. You’re the only you I’ve got. I’d like to keep you safe and sound.”

“Worrywart.”

But that was the funny thing—I wasn’t. I rarely worried about Nick. Now, I felt uneasy. It felt like this investigation would make every day a Day of the Dead until it was over. We were so isolated out here. We relied on each other. I couldn’t lose Nick, and I hated this foreboding.

The words blurted out of my mouth. “Nick, don’t take this job. Please. My sixth sense is talking to me.” I held out my hand and he took it. “I can’t explain it, but I’m scared.”

He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, I have to take it. I need you to support me on this. If it goes sideways, I’ll drop it. OK?”

I stared off into the distance, fighting the dread inside me. It seemed I had no choice. But I knew. I knew something was off with this investigation. Or did I? I could be making something out of nothing. My sixth sense wasn’t
always
right. But why take the chance? I didn’t want another dead man at our house. Especially not this one.

I realized what needed to happen. I would have to be the one who kept him safe, that’s all, and I knew how to do that.

“When do we start?” I asked.

Once upon a time, Nick and I had worked together at the Dallas law firm of Hailey & Hart. Later, and up until the twins were born, we had partnered at his private investigation company, Stingray, when I wasn’t working for peanuts as the twangy Texas-born half of a singing duo with Ava, my exotic local partner. It made sense for me to volunteer for this case.

“Whoa, cowgirl. There is no ‘we’ on this one. This is a death case—way too dangerous. And you have a lot going on up here, with the babies and all. I’ll get Rashidi to help me if I need it.”

I’d met my friend Rashidi around the time I met Ava, when I first moved to St. Marcos. He was the one who had introduced me to Annalise. Nick had since co-opted him from me, however. I felt heat creep from my collarbone up my neck and ears and over my head until my scalp flamed. I knew I didn’t technically push my brain out when I was in labor with the girls, but some days it felt like Nick treated me that way.

Nick whistled something tuneless as he sat down at the small writing table in our bedroom and jotted notes into a spiral notebook.

“Nick—” I started to say.

His head swiveled around, yanked by the tone of my voice, but my iPhone rang.

Ava. Maybe talking to her would give me time to back away from the ledge. Because I was about to jump off of it and all over my husband.

“Later,” I said to Nick. Did I hear a muffled exhale from him?

“Hi, Ava,” I answered, and I walked into the bathroom for the call.

“Hello, Katie. I got a call for a gig. When you start singing with me again?”

Ava’s question felt sudden, even though I had expected she would ask it at some point.

She continued into the pause I did not fill. “We could make it work, even with the kids—like only book daytime gigs if you want. I still get calls from places wanting afternoon beachside entertainment for the tourists.” Ava’s daughter was only one month younger than my twins.

“Let me ask Nick,” I hedged.

“Then you tell him ‘no’ is not an acceptable answer. Monday night we invited to perform a set at a Yacht Club party. You need to dress nice—none of your bag dresses—and do something with that hair. I’ll swing by Monday afternoon, and we rehearse.”

I feigned nonchalance but a thrill ran through me. I would sing tomorrow night! That beat the heck out of worrying about dead people or how to keep my husband from becoming a dead person himself.

I hung up and went back into the bedroom, where Nick was still working his pencil. I decided to hold off on the news about the Yacht Club until after the christening party. I dressed for bed. I pulled back the covers. I cleared my throat noisily.

When he finally looked at me, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

I sucked oxygen in to displace the space in which my words were hiding, and pushed them out on the exhale. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. At least not completely. But there is one thing I want that is very, very important to me. I need you to say yes to it.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” he asked.

“I want to work with you on the Eddy Monroe case for Petro-Mex.”

He didn’t look happy about it. He kicked the bed frame into line, stalling for time. I kept my face neutral while he wrestled it down inside himself.

He spoke slowly when he got around to answering. “Yes, on one condition.”

“What?”

“That we start with an emergency meeting of all Stingray Investigations personnel assigned to the Dead Guy In The Driveway case.”

I considered his proposal and found it acceptable. “Let the meeting begin,” I said, beckoning with my finger. He swan-dived onto the bed.

Technically, what came next might be called sexual harassment in some companies, but it was the most effective teamwork session of my career. When the ceiling fan came on of its own volition, we met eyes and laughed.

“Thank you, Annalise. I think we’re going to need that,” Nick said.

“She takes good care of us. But I can assure you, she will turn on you like a feral pig if you ever do me wrong.” I know it sounds strange, but my jumbie house was my best friend. We had each other’s back.

He bit the back of my neck and I groaned—in a good way.

“Feral pig? You’ve got Wilburn on the brain and your Texas roots are showing.” He nibbled some more. “I will never do you wrong, but not because I’m scared of some big voyeuristic jumbie house built on a graveyard.”

A picture of Nick toppled over on my bedside table with a firm thwack. One by one, every picture of Nick in our bedroom fell on its face.

“That’s kinda disparaging, honey. And we don’t really know whether she’s built on a graveyard or not. But I think those pictures are what Navy types would call a shot across the bow. An apology would be good before she fires off a real cannonball.”

“I’ll consider myself warned. My sincerest apologies, Annalise. Although you are a big jumbie and a voyeur, I mean that in only the most respectful and complimentary way. I’ll withhold judgment on the graveyard part.”

My house fell silent. Nick gave his full attention to the nape of my neck and the heat between us grew from a sizzle to bonfire.

I smiled again, and let myself go.

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The best-looking man in the River Oaks Barnes and Noble had his hand on my thigh, and with the weight of hundreds of eyes on us, I snaked my hand under the table, laced our fingers, and slid mine up and down the length of his, enjoying the contrast of rough against soft. My index finger bumped into the warm band on his ring finger, and I let it stay there, worrying it in semicircles, first one way and then the other.

A Barbie-doll lookalike in form-fitting hot pink strutted into the spot vacated moments before by a tittering fifty-something woman. The bleach blonde brandished a plastic glass of champagne in one hand and held out a copy of our book, 
My Pace or Yours? Triathlon Training for Couples
, in the other. Without letting go of my leg, Adrian took it from her and opened it to the title page, where a yellow sticky bore her name.

“Hi, Rhonda. I’m Adrian, and this is my wife, co-author, and editor, Michele.” He scribbled his signature and scooted the book over to me.

“I know that, silly.” Her little-girl drawl burrowed under my skin like a chigger.

I released Adrian’s fingers to sign, then held the book back out to the woman. “Hello, Rhonda. Nice to meet you.”

“I loved your talk, Adrian,” she said, ignoring me. I bristled. We had opened that night with a reading and Q&A. The book gets a little steamy at times, which is easier to write than to read aloud, so Adrian read those parts. “It’s wonderful to see you again.”

He studied her, eyes narrowed a fraction. “Thanks. Have we met?”

Maybe he didn’t remember her, but I was sure I had seen her recently. She didn’t exactly blend in here with Khaled Hosseini on her left and John Irving on her right. I set the book on the table and fought the urge to chew a fingernail. I was well trained by my mother, the one woman in Texas who could give Ms. Manners a run for her money, and Southern Women Do Not Bite Their Nails.

A slim man with a strained, too-cheerful smile stepped forward. He held up $3500 worth of Minolta. “Miss, around here for your photo.”

Rhonda swooped around the edge of the table and leaned over Adrian with her hand on the back of his neck, gripping the slice of shoulder that showed above his round-necked shirt.

The photographer held up his hand. “Look this way, please.” Adrian and I dutifully swung our faces in his direction and smiled. The flash blinded me for a few seconds, but as my vision cleared I got an eyeful of expensive cleavage. Rhonda Dale remained draped over my husband.

She dropped her voice, but I was six inches from Adrian and could hear her and smell her. I live with a teenage girl, and I’d recognize Urban Outfitters’ roll-on Skank perfume anywhere. “Of course we’ve 
met
,Adrian, and I’ll never forget it.”

Where hot pink was before, I now saw red. Time to assert matrimonial authority. “Rhonda?” She glanced at me, barely, and her mouth tightened. I inclined my head toward the double-door exit and smiled as big as I could.

Rhonda released Adrian’s shoulder, leaving crimson fingerprints behind, and took one step back. She bit her lip. She ran her fingers through one side of her bleached hair. She shifted her weight, cocked her right hip, and reached into the white pleather bag slung over her shoulder. I tensed. This woman tripped my switch.

“You’ll be wanting this, Adrian.” She flipped a pink business card onto the table. If Adrian were a rock star, she’d have thrown her panties and bra instead. The card sucked less. A little, anyway. She turned and walked, hips slinging and champagne sloshing, toward the ubiquitous Barnes and Noble Café and the aroma of Starbucks coffee. I could hear her heels clicking across the floor even after she disappeared from view.

Adrian turned to me and shrugged his eyebrows.

I drew mine together in return. “What just happened here?”

“No comprendo.” He drew circles with an index finger beside his temple. “La señorita está loca en la cabeza.” He took a sip of his Kona coffee—cup number six of the day, no doubt—a nod to his quest for the triathlon world championships in Hawaii.

My eyebrows lifted. “Was that even Spanish?” I reached for his hand under the dark green tablecloth again and squeezed hard enough to do minor damage. I whispered sotto voce so the next customer in line couldn’t hear, “If you promise not to talk in that horrible accent, you’ll get a nice reward later.”

He shot me a grin. “Maybe you can show me what’s under that necklace, Itzpa.” Sometimes he used my papa’s nickname for me, which was short for Itzpapalotl, a clawed butterfly with knife-tipped wings, and an Aztec goddess of war. Usually he just called me Butterfly.

I reached up to the locket suspended from a long gold chain around my neck. Adrian had given me the brilliant enameled monarch at our second “wedding,” the secret B&B family affair he threw in La Grange on our first anniversary to make up for the original quickie at city hall without our kids. When we were pronounced “still man and wife,” Adrian put the locket around my neck and told me I was his butterfly. I’d stashed a picture of us taken on that perfect day in the locket and had never changed it since.

I scrutinized it. “This old thing?” I dropped it and stretched my shoulders, catlike. Or rather, like a cat would. There is no feline quality to my short frame. At best I am probably a Pomeranian; at worst, a Pekingese.

He laughed and mouthed, “Thanks a lot, baby,” and held his hand out toward the customer at the front of the line.

I signed the next few books on autopilot, trying not to grind my teeth over Miss Boob Job In Hot Pink strutting her stuff for my husband. I could take the Rhonda Dales of the world in stride, mostly. I’d known ever since I was assigned to edit his column for 
Multisport Magazine
 that Adrian attracted groupies. His following, and the fact that we were working together, were the reasons I’d resisted him at first. He tricked me into going out with him, though—research over a cup of Kona, my ass—and I melted like a butterscotch chip into a warm, sweet cookie.

Soon after, Adrian coaxed me to “just try” triathlon, something I had never aspired to do. Never, meaning no effing way, ever. Swim, then bike, then run? I didn’t think so. I’d rather curl up with a novel, when I had any free time at all as the single parent of a tween. Still, I was that butterscotch chip, and it turned out that I was made for triathlon, like I was made for Adrian. It spoke to the parts of me that like rigor and suffering. I signed up for one, and then another, until here we were at Barnes and Noble, at our book launch.

“I’m Connor Dunn,” a man’s voice said. Something about it made me flinch and brought me back with a bumpy reentry. A certain pitch. A heaviness of import. My gaze lifted to his face and I read the creases around his eyes like rings on a tree: forty-five-ish. Dark hair, freckled, light skin. Toned, as was to be expected at a triathlon book launch. Pressed Dockers and a collared shirt: earnestly conservative. No champagne cup.

Connor Dunn was still speaking to Adrian. “We haven’t met in person, but—”

My husband interrupted him, brightening. “Sure, I know who you are.” Adrian turned to me. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Michele. Michele, this is Connor Dunn.”

“A name I know well from Adrian’s column,” he said to me. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Eva Longoria?”

I nodded. “Nearsighted people.” Eva Longoria doesn’t have the butt I got from the short, curvy Mexican women on my dad’s side. My blonde, Caucasian mother has no butt, but her genes passed me by in the looks department.

Adrian shook his head. “Not a chance. You look better à la natural on your worst day.”

“My husband is biased,” I explained to Connor.

He laughed and nodded at Adrian. “Hey, congratulations on your Kona qualification.”

“Thanks. There’s nothing like aging up to give you a boost.” Adrian was playing it cool, but he was over the moon about the Kona Ironman world championships. At forty-five, he had qualified by winning his first race as a forty-five to forty-nine age grouper, at the Longhorn Half Ironman in Austin last fall. “Will Angela be racing?”

“Yes. She qualified in thirty-five to forty.”

“That’s great.” Adrian turned to me. “Connor’s new bride is a tri-beast like us.”

Connor broke in. “I think we saw you guys last weekend at the Goatneck ride in Cleburne. I was going to introduce myself, but things got crazy.”

My skin went cold. A hit-and-run driver had killed one of the cyclists during the race.

Adrian put down his black Sharpie and sighed, sagging like a deflating balloon. “Yeah, that was horrible. Michele and I were one Brahman away from it.”

Connor’s voice and eyebrows went up. “Brahman?”

“Adrian hit a cow. It knocked him off his bike and left him with a flat tire.” I sucked in a quick breath. “I think it slowed us down just enough that we weren’t the ones hit by the car, you know?”

“Yeah, I do. It’s scarier and scarier out there on the road.”

“We were the first ones to get to him after he was hit.” Adrian’s voice grew raspy. “I ended up doing CPR on him while Michele called 911.”

It was a surreal picture: Adrian and the fallen cyclist were mirror images of each other, one upright and one prone, both covered in blood. They were dressed alike and had similar blue bikes. It freaked me out, big time. I couldn’t keep their images from returning to me over and over.

Adrian continued. “This guy had been riding maybe a quarter mile behind the leaders—he passed us when I hit the cow—and then this car just came out of nowhere off a little dirt road and smashed into him.”

“You saw it happen?” Connor leaned in, his voice a mix of dread and morbid curiosity.

I started to speak but realized both of my hands were over my mouth. I pressed my palms together and lowered them. “We heard it.”

“Oh my God,” Connor breathed.

It was a sound I would know anywhere. Adrian had hit a car head-on two years ago. I still don’t understand how he walked away from the wreck—his bike didn’t—and I will never, ever forget the sound. A thud, a wrenching of metal, a thump, then a crack as rider and bike hit the road separately. Groans. And in Adrian’s case, the squealing of brakes as the driver came to a stop. Not that time, though. Not that time. That time there was silence, except for Adrian screaming “Rider down, rider down” at the top of his lungs.

I forced myself to keep talking, to expunge the rest of the memory. “We saw the car driving away. White, a small sedan, like a Taurus or a Camry or something.” I shook my head. “We couldn’t get the license plate number, though, and we didn’t see the driver, so we were practically no help at all to the police.”

Just then, our publicist put a manicured brown hand on the table in front of Adrian. It startled me. I had forgotten we were in a bookstore, that there were other people around—worse, in line watching us, listening to us, waiting for us. Scarlett—that was both her name and her nail color—said, “Only thirty minutes to go, and you’ve still got a line out the door. I hate to break in, but we need to keep it moving.” She’d coached us on this earlier. The line must move no matter what. A moving line means book sales.

We nodded, and she backed away with her smile pointed toward the queue, a “Nothing wrong here, folks, nothing to see” smile.

To Connor, Adrian said, “Sorry, man.”

Connor pulled at his collar. “Absolutely. I understand. Um, I’m going to hang around and do some shopping. Could you spare five minutes when you’re done? I have something I need to talk to you about. It’s the reason I came, actually.”

There. That was what I’d heard in his voice. A purpose for his presence, and a threat to our plans for the evening. A post-signing tête-à-tête wasn’t on the schedule. My throat tightened. “Wound so tight, she springs when I touch her,” my ex-husband Robert had said about me. Well, not tonight. I breathed in and held it. I would not be rigid. I would roll with it and everything would be okay. I exhaled.

“Sure. I’ll meet you in the café when we’re done.”

Bam. I saw spots in front of my eyes. My internal tension meter was only about a 6 out of 10. Really, it’s no big deal, I told myself. Just five or ten minutes. We probably wouldn’t even be late for the eight thirty reservation at Oxheart I’d made two months before. My fingernail ended up in my mouth, but I snatched it away before I could bite it. This wasn’t exactly unprecedented. Adrian was a constant challenge to my need for order on his best days, just as I was to his need for flexibility. I called these opposing traits our growth opportunities when I was feeling Zen.

“Perfect. Michele, a pleasure.” Connor extended his hand to me.

I shook it, and his touch jarred my nerves. We posed for the obligatory picture and he walked off toward the biographies. Nice guy, even if he was a plan-buster and a bringer of bad memories, but something else was wrong with him. I could feel it. “Do you know what he wants to talk to you about?”

“No idea.” Adrian pursed his lips for just a moment. Then his expression shifted. Big smile, maybe a little less big than before, but big enough. He greeted the next person. “Sorry about the wait. I hope you’re having a good time.”

***

Half an hour later, we bid goodbye to our last customer and stood up.

“Congratulations. You did it.” Scarlett beamed so wide the store lights reflected off her perfect white teeth. “This was a very, very successful event. The manager is thrilled. I’ll have you guys on the TV interview circuit within a week.” She rubbed her cherry-tipped hands together. “You’re so perfect for this, it hurts.”

“Thanks, Scarlett.” I nestled into the crook of Adrian’s arm as he slipped it around me.

“I’ll say goodnight now and go close out with the manager. You kids have a fun anniversary.”

“We will. Thanks again.”

As she walked away, I heard her muttering, “Gorgeous, just gorgeous,” to herself.

I lifted my face toward my husband. “I’m so glad to get the first one over with. Now we can relax and have some fun. You’re meeting that stalker fan guy in the café first, though, right?”

“Yes, but Connor’s a friend. I’ve corresponded with him more than a year. He’s all right.”