Wedding Day of Murder (14 page)

Detective
Arroyo.
Jason would now be stuck between her and his work, a place she had
never wanted him to be. “I’ve put him in a terrible position,” she said.

“You did no such thing. Besides,
Jason is a grown man fully capable of taking care of himself. If he’s running
interference for you, it’s because he wants to, not because he has to.”

“It’s possible that you may be a
bit biased in my favor,” she said.

“Always,” he agreed. “However, in
this case I’m also correct. Jason will tell you the same thing. It’s his job to
figure out this murder. An added layer of motivation can only speed things
along.”

“Why was the man doing a story about
me?” she asked.

“That’s the question on everyone’s
mind.”

“What did Mom tell him?”

“Some family stories,” Mr.
Middleton said, dropping his eyes to his coffee.

“I can only imagine what those
were,” Lacy said. “A litany of my failures along with a heavy dose of how I
have never lived up to my potential. If only I would stand up straighter, eat
more spinach, read fewer books and basically do everything opposite of the way
I’ve always done it, then maybe I could pull my life together and be more like
Riley, or so Mom believes.”

“Your mom is,” he paused, trying to
find the right way to frame it, “well, she’s a pill.”

Lacy laughed and winced. “Grandpa,
you don’t mean that. I thought you were on board with giving her time and space
to get adjusted to your relationship.”

“Yes, when it was just that, I was.
I can handle the criticisms she throws my way, but I’m getting tired of seeing
her trample you and Lucinda. I’m tired of tiptoeing around her bad mood and
delicate sensibilities.”

“Are you saying that you’re ready
to tell her she’s adopted?”

“Between you and me and this stale
coffee, I would do it in a heartbeat. It would throw her into a tailspin for
sure, but she would get over it. And then we could all stop pussyfooting around
the issue. But it’s harder for Lucinda. She’s the one who kept the secret for
so long; she’s the one your mother is going to be mad at.”

“What a mess,” Lacy said.

“Take a lesson, young lady: honesty
is always the best policy. By coming clean in the beginning, you avoid so much
heartache. I wish I had been adamant about telling Frannie when she was a
little girl, at least that she was adopted. But things were different then.
Adoption wasn’t as accepted as it is now. It was a stigma, especially in small
towns like ours. Especially with a mother like Barbara.”

“I understand,” Lacy said. She
clasped his hand and gave it a squeeze.

“That’s because you are a woman of
compassion and grace. Your mother could take a lesson or two. Don’t tell her I
said so.”

“I could shout it from the rooftops;
she still wouldn’t pay attention to me,” Lacy said dryly.

“You are loved, young lady, and
don’t you forget it,” Mr. Middleton said.

“This seems like a good time for me
to arrive home and chime in my agreement,” Jason said. Lacy turned to him with
a smile. Today the ever-present flutters that erupted whenever she saw him were
so powerful that they left her breathless. She stood, beaming. It felt like she
hadn’t seem in weeks instead of days.

“I guess that’s my cue,” Mr.
Middleton said. He stood and dumped the remainder of his coffee in the sink.
“It would seem that Lacy’s back in her right mind now.”

“I’ll bring her back tonight,”
Jason promised.

Mr. Middleton nodded and eased past
them to the door. Jason watched him go, his back to Lacy.
 
“What does it say about me that your
grandpa liked me better when you were out of your head?” When he turned back to
Lacy, her hands were on her hips, and she was pinning him with a look. “What
did I do?”

“You put a bell on me,” Lacy said.

“It was a very small bell,” he
said. He advanced on her. His tie was askew—a testament to what had
probably been a very bad day, but there was none of that in his smile. She
could no longer keep up the pretense of indignation. When he was close enough,
she reached for him and kissed him. And almost immediately regretted the
action.

“Ouch. Stupid teeth.”

“My poor baby,” he said. He gently
cupped her face and made his inspection. “The swelling has gone down a lot.”

“I was swollen?”

He choked back a laugh. “Just a
bit. It was both sad and cute, like dating a confused chipmunk.”

“Super,” she said. “I can only hope
that someone, somewhere has pictures.”

He tipped her face up and kissed
the tender spot on her jaw. “What are the chances I could convince you to keep
wearing the bell?” he whispered.

“Not good,” she whispered.

“Too bad. It was a handy way to
keep track of you.”

“Do you want something to eat?
Grandma sent pudding. There are bananas in it. That’s almost like a fruit
salad,” she said.

“Except not at all,” he said.
“Where do you get your nutritional information?”

“The backs of cereal boxes. Why?”

“Stop asking questions, Jason,” he
reminded himself. “At this point, even pudding sounds good. I’m hungry. Sit,
I’ll get it. You’re recuperating.” He tried to push her into a chair, but she
refused.

“But you had a bad day. You sit,
and I’ll get it.” She pushed him into a chair, and he let her.

“How did you know I had a bad day?”

“Your tie. You tug on it when
you’re trying not to punch someone.”

He waited to respond until after he
ate the pudding. It was like drinking a can of sweetened condensed milk with
the occasional banana thrown in for texture, but at this point he didn’t care.
He was tired and hungry and his brain hurt from too much thinking. He pushed
the bowl away. Lacy tugged it close and scraped up whatever he had missed.

“Mm, sweetened condensed milk,” she
said.

He dropped his head to his hands
and rubbed his eyes, laughing. Sometimes he didn’t think it was possible for
them to be any more opposite than they already were, but something always came
up to prove him wrong.

“Jason, what is it?” she asked and
shoved the now clean bowl away. Her hand rested gently on his bicep. He tugged
her into his lap and held her close, pressing his face to her neck. “I did a
bad thing.”

Lacy’s heart plummeted, sure at
first that he had cheated on her. After her kneejerk reaction, she decided that
wasn’t the case. He had spent the last few days proving his devotion. Her
insecurity was unwarranted. “I don’t believe that,” she said. She sifted her
fingers soothingly through his hair.

“No, it was bad,” he argued.

“What happened?” She couldn’t
imagine what he might say. Jason was such a stickler for rules that once when he
accidentally tossed a gum wrapper out the window, he turned around and spent an
hour searching for it in the tall grass by the side of the road. He was the
image of integrity.

“I broke into Michael’s shop, and
then when he caught me, I tried to beat him up.”

Was she still hallucinating?
Because that sounded more like a dream than reality. Jason would never, could
never break the law. But he looked so miserable; she knew it must be true.
“Jason, why?”

“I thought he kidnapped you.”

“Michael would never,” she began,
but he interrupted.

“Lacy, I ran him through the
system, okay? I found out about the arrest in Minnesota. I saw that he had
stalked a woman, a woman who was killed, and I panicked. You were gone, and he
looked suspicious, and all the evidence pointed to him. But it wasn’t enough to
pick him up. I wanted to know, I wanted the proof before I went after him. I
wanted to find you. And then when I saw him, I just got so mad. It was like
with Josh all over again. I hadn’t been there, hadn’t watched you close enough,
and you were gone. I was so angry, I just...I lost it. If he tells anyone, if
he files a complaint, my career is over.”

“He won’t,” Lacy said.

“You don’t know that,” Jason said.
“He would be justified.”

“He won’t because I’ll ask him not
to,” Lacy said.

“No,” he said, so vehemently that
she jumped. “I messed up, and I’m not going to make it worse by sending my
girlfriend to fight my battles.”

“You wouldn’t be sending me. I
would go voluntarily. You were under duress.”

“No,” he said again, and now he was
becoming truly angry. “Promise me that you won’t.”

“Jason…”

“Lacy, this is not a conversation
that is open for discussion. Promise me.”

“I promise,” she agreed, but only
because she saw a better solution. “Why don’t you go talk to him? Michael is
not unreasonable. He’s is a nice guy, a good guy. He’ll be fair.”

“Michael is a,” he started but then
stopped. He didn’t have the heart to disillusion her about what Michael was.
“Maybe I will. At the very least, I guess I owe him an apology for trying to
beat him into unconsciousness.”

“You keep saying that you tried.
Why didn’t you succeed?”

For some reason, it was harder to
admit to her that he had lost the fight than that he had started it in the
first place. “Someone apparently taught him how to fight at some point,” he
mumbled after a minute of sullen silence. Jason hadn’t fought often, but when
it happened, he always won. Losing was humiliating.

“Maybe he boxed for money, like
Wolverine,” she suggested.

“I thought Wolverine was some sort
of superhero. Why would he box?”

“Oh, Jason, you’re such a non-geek.
I weep for you, I really do.”

He laughed and she felt some of the
tension drain out of him. They sat in comfortable silence for a while. “I
should probably go,” Lacy said. “I have to face my mother at some point.”

He held her tighter. “Why do I
always have to give you back?”

“One would assume you would be
relieved to see the end of me after all the trouble I’ve put you through the
last few days.”

“One would be grossly mistaken. You
think I’m joking about relocating to a desert island, but if I could convince
you, I would do it. You and me with no distractions is my Nirvana.”

“My family is driving you crazy,”
she said.

“No. A little. Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’ve come to realize over the last
few days that it’s not them, it’s me. I mean, don’t get me wrong—they’re
nuts. But so is everyone’s family. The thing about being a family of one for so
long is that I don’t know how to be in a real family anymore. This is my issue,
and I’ll work on it.”

“My mom will go back home soon and
things will stop feeling so cloistered.”

“Lacy, don’t apologize. This is not
your problem. I have issues. Most of the time they’re easy to ignore, but
something happens, and they come back to haunt me again. Things will settle
down and I’ll stop being crazy.”

“I like you crazy. We match for
once. You’re always a little crazy, as proved by the fact that you have Mr.
Clean on speed dial, but you’re good at covering that up. Outsiders don’t know
until they delve deep. It would behoove me if you wore your crazy a little more
proudly.”

“I can’t compete crazy with a woman
who says behoove,” he said.

“You could try,” she said.

“I will try,” he said. “But you
will always be king of the forest.” He pressed his face to her neck to stifle
his laughter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she
asked.

“Never mind,” he said, but she was
uncomfortable with his falsely innocent tone.

He drove her home, but they sat in
his car for a long time, talking and holding hands. Lacy was amazed to think she
had once believed that all that was between them was chemical attraction. There
was that, and it was sometimes overwhelming, but they were good
friends—the best. She had come to depend on Jason in a way that she had
only ever depended on a few people—maybe more because she had shown him
more vulnerability. They had only been dating a few months, and yet her level
of trust in him had already exceeded that of Robert, a man she had dated for
years and been engaged to. With Robert, she had always had to be “on,” to
strive for perfection. Jason seemed to be most attracted to the parts of her
that were flawed. She hadn’t quite worked out why, but she was learning to let
it go.

He walked her to the door and gave
her a gentle, lingering kiss goodnight. “When was the last time I actually
walked you to the door? We’re always going in twenty million directions. This
is nice, like a real date.”

“Let’s do it more often, without
the dental surgery and disappearances,” she said.

“Speaking of which, you forgot this
at my place.” He pulled the cat collar out of his pocket and shoved it into her
hands.

“I’m not wearing that,” she said.

“A guy can dream. Think of it as a
memento of your adventure. Plus it will save me the temptation of getting a
cat.”

“You are so not a cat person,” she
said.

“You think I’m a dog man?”

“No, you’re the guy who shampooed
his carpet because he arrested someone who owned a rat,” she said.

“He didn’t just own a rat. He let
it run free in his house. Rats carry the plague. Preventative measures were
appropriate.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad
news, but dogs and cats carry germs, too,” she said.

“I know, but last year you said you
wanted a kitten but your grandma is allergic. For you, I would live with
germs.”

“And shedding,” she said. “And a
litter box. And food that drops crumbs. And a water bowl that…”

He placed his palm lightly over her
lips. “Stop it or I’m going to have to go home and bleach things.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not kind to tease
the mentally ill.”

“Cleaning is not an illness. Not
cleaning is an illness.”

“I slept on your sheets,” she
reminded him. “Are you going to be able to sleep on those without washing
them?”