There's Something About Marty (A Working Stiffs Mystery Book 3) (10 page)

Great.

Her eyes fixed on me, Lucille leaned over the table like a snake poised to strike. “So, the two of you had a lunch date.”

“It wasn’t a date.”

She smiled conspiratorially. “Uh-huh.”

“It was more like a business meeting.” At least that’s what I had intended.

“From what Millie said about the way he was looking at you, it’s more like he wanted to get down to business,” she said, chortling at her own joke.

“Hardly.”

“Oh, you can deny it all you want, but she’s not the only one who’s noticed how he looks at you.”

“Probably because he has a bit of a crush on my mother, and with the right makeup,” and bad lighting, “he sees a little of Marietta in me.”

Lucille smirked. “Doll, when he’s looking at you I really don’t think he sees your mother.”

Since I was the one with the bad hair and the extra thirty pounds, I didn’t take Lucille’s opinion as a positive.

“Order up!” Duke barked in our direction.

“Yeah, yeah, hold your donkeys.” Lucille pointed an index finger at me. “Don’t go anywhere. I want details about this lunch.”

“Trust me, the details are going to be very boring.”

“Uh-huh. I may not be able to tell that you’re lying, but I know you’re holding out on me.”

“I’m not holding out on you.” Much. “And I have nothing else to say on the subject.”

Lucille frowned. “You and Steve are hanging around one another too much,” she muttered, squeaking away. “He gave me the same
no comment
answer ten minutes ago.”

“What?!” I followed her through the kitchen door and locked gazes with the detective sipping a cup of coffee at the counter.

I pasted a smile on my face as I slipped onto the barstool next to him. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” His tone was cool, his eyes assessing.

“I’m surprised to see you here this late in the afternoon. Did you get a sudden craving for bad coffee?”

“I was looking for you.”

“Yeah? Looks like you found me.”

He glanced down at my white apron. “What’s with the apron? Duke putting you to work?”

“It’s payback for a couple of lunches I had earlier this week.”

A humorless smile pulled at the corners of his lips. “Payback can be a bitch, can’t it? Especially when it comes to lunches.”

I had a sinking feeling that it was going to be, and soon. “I know you were chatting with Lucille earlier, so would you like to hear why I had lunch with Kyle Cardinale?”

“Only if you’d like to tell me.”

Not especially.

As if on cue Lucille ambled over to refill Steve’s cup. “Get you anything else, hon?”

“No thanks,” he said, his gaze fixed on me.

I waited for her to leave, but instead she lingered with a sudden compulsion to refill the sugar dispensers at the counter.

“Come with me.” I picked up Steve’s coffee cup and led him into the kitchen to find some privacy.

Duke frowned as we passed. “This ain’t a meeting room, you know.”

“We won’t be long. I just need to talk to Steve for a minute in private.”

“And I need cake,” Duke said, calling after me. “Is that going to happen anytime soon?”

“Yes!” Sheesh, I could only handle one minor crisis at a time.

Setting down Steve’s coffee on the worktable, I pulled out a wooden stool for him to sit on. “Okay, I can explain.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “You don’t have to.”

“But I don’t want you to have the wrong idea.”

“Then what’s the right idea?”

“You know how we were talking about Phyllis Bozeman slipping something poisonous into the salsa she bought for Marty McCutcheon?”

“I know how
you
were talking about it.”

“I figured Kyle would be a good person to ask about what symptoms he might see in a poisoning victim.”

“Uh-huh.”

Steve could read micro-expressions almost as well as I could, so I knew I’d best not stray far from the truth. “And when I contacted him he suggested that we talk over lunch.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And that’s it. He pretty much confirmed what he’d told me before about Marty’s cause of death, and then I…” I hesitated telling him anything about going to the hospital since that hadn’t been my finest hour.

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “What’d you do?”

“I sort of ran into Phyllis.”

“I bet you did.”

“The good news is that I’m sure that she didn’t poison Marty.”

Steve exhaled. “Please tell me that you’re going to leave the woman alone now.”

I nodded.

“Anything else that you’d like to tell me?”

“Just this.” I leaned over and kissed him. “Oh, and I told Rox about us.”

“About time.”

“She’s pissed that I didn’t say anything sooner.”

He shook his head. “Why do you women make everything so complicated?”

“Some things are complicated,” I said with more volume than I’d intended. “Relationships for example. They can get complicated fast.”

“You’ve been friends forever. I’m sure you’ll smooth it over with her.”

I wasn’t referring to my relationship with Rox. “Right.”

“When are you getting out of here?”

“In a couple of hours. Why?”

“I thought I should make good on that date I owe you.”

“Yeah, because if you don’t, payback’s a bitch.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“It so happens that I bought something sexy that you haven’t seen yet.”

Steve rose to his feet, a glint of carnal interest in his eyes. “Pick you up at seven? We could go into Port Townsend to some place along the waterfront if you want.”

Ordinarily, I’d jump at the opportunity, but I had no desire to dine at another Port Townsend waterfront restaurant this weekend. “How about if I come over and make dinner? I can probably finagle some cake out of Duke for dessert.”

“Yum.” Steve pressed his lips to mine, gently at first, then he deepened the kiss.

“Mmmm, yum,” I said when we came up for air.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing back there? Break it up!” Duke pointed at me with his spatula. “You, get busy baking. And you,” he said glaring at Steve. “Out!”

Lucille burst through the kitchen door. “What? What’d I miss?”

“This.” I linked my arms around Steve’s neck to pull him to me and kissed him long and hard.

“What the hell!” Lucille exclaimed. “I thought…”

I turned to her. “You thought wrong.”

Five hours later, I was leaning against Steve’s white-tiled kitchen counter and sneaking a peek at my cell phone while he loaded his dishwasher.

My phone displayed the same lack of activity as the last ten times I had checked. No missed calls. No texts. No nothing since I’d outed myself to the two gossip queens of Port Merritt.

Weird.

Totally and unpredictably weird, but maybe Steve had been right all along. Aside from Rox, who had the right to be a little ticked at me for holding out on her, maybe nobody especially cared that Steve and I were officially
friends with benefits
.

Considering how popular a dance partner he had been on Tango Tuesdays at the Senior Center, I found this non-development a little perplexing. But we weren’t cheating on any spouses, neither one of us made enough money to make us gold digger-worthy, and no shotgun wedding was on the docket.

Maybe my
big reveal
hadn’t been so big after all, and Lucille’s cronies wouldn’t grill me like a cheese panini the next time I stepped into Duke’s.

This was a good thing—a very good thing. But given the bevy of dishy rumors I heard on almost a daily basis, the only way I could see my news stalling on the gossip launch pad was if the hotter rocket of a story about Marty McCutcheon and the inheritance his bride would be coming into was still soaring.

Based on what I’d heard this afternoon, I couldn’t help but wonder about the part Bob Hallahan played in that story.

“You expecting a call?” Steve asked. “You keep looking at your phone.”

“No, I was just…. Never mind.” I slipped my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. “You haven’t heard any rumors about Victoria McCutcheon and Bob Hallahan, have you?”

He shot me a glance. “Haven’t exactly had my ear to the rumor mill grindstone.”

“She was seen at his house this week.”

“Could be for any number of reasons.”

“Uh-huh.” Considering the woman’s husband died a couple of days later, whatever that reason had been, it seemed a little suspect. “She was also referred to as his lady friend.”

“By?”

“Estelle. She lives across the street from Bob.”

Steve smirked. “The same woman who likes to tease your grandmother about the younger man she’s been seeing. Or maybe she referred to me as a young buck. I can’t remember.”

“I’m sure that’s not what she called you. But really, I don’t think Bob Hallahan is feeding Marty McCutcheon’s wife pot roast a couple times a week.”

“She’s been seen there more than once?”

“I guess. Enough for Estelle to make the assumption that there’s a relationship.”

He furrowed his brow. “Don’t know what to say about that. If anything were going on that they wanted to keep quiet, I’d expect them to be more discreet.”

“Yeah.” But Steve and I hadn’t exactly been pillars of discretion each time I joined him in his bed the past month. Then again, I didn’t have a husband to worry about.

“Don’t make too much out of this. You should know by now that witnesses can jump to all sorts of incorrect conclusions about what they think they’ve seen.”

“I know. It’s just curious. Possibly not just to me since Darlene McCutcheon was at Bob’s house yesterday—the same day she asked me to deliver something to Estelle because she didn’t plan on coming into town.”

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm, what?” I asked.

“Her plans must have changed for some reason.”

“Don’t you think that’s strange though? Both of Marty’s wives visiting the guy who is supposed to be his best friend? And both of them there the week that he died.”

Steve gave his shoulder a little shrug. “Like you said, it’s curious.”

But could it be an indicator of anything significant to this unofficial case?

“Unless you think you need to pursue this with Frankie,” he said as if reading my mind, “and I wouldn’t unless you’ve got some fact to go along with this gossip, I’d recommend that you not share this with anyone else.”

I nodded my agreement, but that didn’t make Bob Hallahan’s sudden popularity with the McCutcheon women seem any less strange.

His lips curled slightly at the corners. “Anything else that we need to talk about?”

I knew I couldn’t talk to him about how it had gone with Rox without him rolling his eyes, and there was absolutely nothing I wanted to add to what I’d already told him about Kyle Cardinale.  “Nope.”

“Then I think we should move on to the next phase of our date,” he said, pressing the
start
button on his dishwasher.

My pulse quickened as if he’d pressed my
start
button. “Okay, then!” He’d barely touched me for days, so as long as part two of this date included his hands on me I was all for it.

Reaching into his refrigerator, Steve pulled out two beers.  He then cocked his head, and I followed him to the living room where an area rug separated a chocolate brown leather sectional from an overstuffed chair left over from his mother.

I sank into the sectional next to him and set the beer bottle he’d offered me on the cherry wood end table to my left to assume a comfortable make-out position. Unfortunately, I may have assumed too much because instead of reaching for me, he reached for his remote control.

“Hey,” he said as his flat screen flickered to life in time for us to watch a baseball fly into the upper deck of Safeco Field. “The Mariners just pulled ahead of the Angels, three-two.”

“Good for them.”

“It’s one of the last games of the year. I thought we could make this a dinner and a movie night, but since it’s early…”

I had no choice but to take the bait. “You want to watch the game.”

“Do you mind?”

I shook my head. “Remember what we talked about earlier though.”

He looked at me with a quizzical expression.

“There could be payback.”

“Bring it on,” Steve said, his eyes dark as bittersweet chocolate.

I reached for him in invitation and he closed his mouth over mine, playfully kissing me. Leaning into me, the kiss deepened, his hand cupping my breast. But at the crack of the bat, Steve glanced back over his shoulder. “Run!”

“He’s going to have to hurry if he wants to get to third base,” said the announcer.

I poked Steve’s chest. “Don’t let that give you any ideas.”

He grinned at me. “It’s way too late for that, Chow Mein.”

∗ ∗ ∗

It was almost eleven in the morning by the time I brought Gram home from church and had turned down the hill toward my favorite latte stand. Reverend Fleming’s sermon on the power of forgiveness had inspired several nods of the head amongst the congregation and an occasional
amen
. Unfortunately, it hadn’t given me any bright ideas on how to get Rox to forgive me for holding out on her, so I decided I’d better order an extra double shot mocha latte as a bribe.

Ten minutes later, she opened her front door and eyeballed the paper cups warming my hands. “One of those had better be for me.”

“It is if you’ll let me in.”

Rox took a cup from me and sniffed it as she shut the door behind me. “Mocha?”

“I know,” I said, taking a seat on her parents’ old pea-green sofa that she’d covered with a crocheted bedspread. “Chocolate in coffee is more my thing, but I figured the occasion called for something mood-altering.”

She nodded as she sat in the swivel rocker across from me. “Not a bad call.”

Watching her sip her drink, I searched for the right words to remove the awkwardness hanging over us like a storm cloud. “I’m sorry,” I said, coming up empty.

Wincing, she stared down at the paper cup in her hands for several silent seconds. “Just help me understand this.” She finally looked up, her jaw set as if it had been chiseled from stone. “I never thought there was anything I couldn’t talk to you about, but now I find out—”

“No, it wasn’t like that.” I set my coffee down on the scratched maple table separating us. “It’s hard to explain.”

Rox squeezed out a fake smile. “Try.”

How could I get her to understand something I barely understood myself? “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this. You know how people can be.”

She puckered.

“I’m not referring to you.”

“Then why couldn’t you tell me?”

“Maybe I was afraid you’d remind me why I said I’d never cross that line with Steve, and I wasn’t ready to hear it.”

Her gaze softened. “Are you ready now?”

“Heck, no. Honestly though, there’s nothing that you could tell me that I haven’t already told myself a hundred times before. But go ahead. Let me have it.”

“It’s a little late now, but are you sure?”

I hadn’t been sure of anything since that moment in the parking lot when Steve first kissed me.

Rox slowly shook her head. “There’s no going back from this.”

“That’s what I told him, that it would change everything.”

“Has it?”

“Not entirely, but if this doesn’t end well—”

“Why are you talking about endings already?” Rox asked, punching out every word as if I’d suddenly become hard of hearing.

“Because in my experience relationships don’t always end well, and instead of fighting over the bedroom set that I picked out a year from now, I don’t want to be fighting over you and Eddie!”

She blew out a sigh. “Okay, you have a point. I can see how this has the potential to get ugly.”

I reached for my coffee. “Thank you.”

We sipped our drinks during what felt like an uneasy truce, and then I felt her staring at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You and Steve…together. It may take me a little while to wrap my brain around this.”

I was quite sure Rox wouldn’t be the only one in town to feel that way. “But when we’re with you and Eddie it shouldn’t seem much different from the way it’s always been. Steve and I are just
more than friends
now.”

“I can’t tell you how weird that sounds coming from you after all these years, especially after what I witnessed two nights ago.”

“That was a mistake that won’t be happening again, and I told Kyle as much when I had…”

Rox had a wary look in her eyes. “Had what?”

I cringed. “Lunch with him yesterday. It was to talk to him about something I’m working on, but—”

“Jeez, Louise! Your life really has become complicated these last few weeks.”

“Tell me about it. But I really,
really
want to uncomplicate it, especially between you and me. So, are we okay?”

She smiled begrudgingly. “We’re fine. Just tell me, who knows about the two of you? I don’t want to say anything to the wrong person.”

“Obviously, Donna knows. Other than that, I told Lucille when I was at Duke’s yesterday.” I pulled my phone from my tote bag. “It’s weird though—almost like a
calm before the storm
thing. I served them up a juicy story on a silver platter, and not one of our friends has texted me to confirm it.”

“That is weird. Maybe the news hasn’t made the rounds yet.”

“Maybe,” I said, checking my phone. “Or maybe I spoke too soon. Looks like I have a text.”

“Who’s it from?” Rox asked as I opened the message.

“Criminy!” I could feel the blood draining from my face with each word I read. “You’re coming now?!”

“Who? Who’s coming?”

“I’ll fill you in later.” I grabbed my tote. “Right now, I need to get home.”

Because a storm was about to blow in, and her name was Marietta.