Blind Dates Can Be Murder (23 page)

Jo reached into her purse for a tissue and blew her nose.

“Good news,” she said. “Like what?”

“Like, a major, major professional accomplishment,” he said. “I’ve been about to explode wanting to tell you since yesterday morning.”

That seemed to startle her. Jo glanced at him and then back at the road.

“Did you get a job with
National Geographic?
”

“No, and stop trying to guess,” he told her, wagging a finger at her. “You’ve got to calm down and trust me. As soon as we get to that waterfall, all will be revealed.”

“But Danny—”

“No buts, Jo. Trust me on this, okay? You are my best friend. Tiffany is just a coworker, and I’ve really, truly never met anyone in this town named Monica.”

Jo nodded. She seemed to be willing to take him at his word. He settled back in his seat a bit, finally flipping on the radio for some music and then turning around to scratch Chewie behind the ears. The quiet between him and Jo now was a peaceful one, not an awkward one. Soon, they were back to normal, chatting about the drive, laughing at each other’s jokes.

They were another half hour down the road when he recalled Jo’s description of that “cute little cop” who had the hots for him. Now that he thought about it, he did vaguely remember a gal from last fall, when he and Jo were involved in Edna Pratt’s murder, who was on the police force.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “Monica O’Connell. Is she, like, button nose, short brown hair, cute figure?”

Jo nodded.

“Okay, I do remember her. She was on the scene at the Pratt murder.”

“Yeah. She remembers you too. Says you need a little more spit and polish.”

“Right, right, that one. She likes Marines.”

Danny chuckled, remembering how the chief had tried to set the two of them up.

“And what did she say about me? Like the peeling on a potato?”

“That’s what she said.”

Danny nodded, looking out the window.

“That’s funny,” he said. “Instead of a stud, she thinks I’m a spud.”

Lettie didn’t say much during the meal, but everyone else was so talkative she didn’t have to. Mostly she sat there and ate her pasta and listened to the conversation swirl around her. When someone asked her a direct question, she answered it, but otherwise she kept her thoughts to herself.

She really liked Marie. She had already known she was funny and friendly and high energy, but she soon came to realize she had a naturally affirming quality about her. She was always saying things like “Oh, you’re so funny” or “You’re so good at that.” People seemed light up around her under the glow of her praise.

It warmed Lettie’s heart to hear that Marie helped out with her little sister’s Girl Scout troop. She talked a lot about running the current cookie drive, how profitable it was for the Scouts, but how hard it was to resist snacking on the boxes of cookies that were still stacked in her living room. All Lettie could think of was how lucky she would have been if, as a child, she’d had someone positive and fun like Marie in her life. As it was, Lettie had often heard how rotten she was, but never anything good. Never.

When the meal was finished and they returned to the church, Marie surprised Lettie by suggesting a get-together later in the week.

“Tuesday night is half-price popcorn at the movies,” Marie said. “The girls usually all go. Want to join us?”

Lettie’s face turned bright red. A night at the movies? As though she was a normal person? As though her life ever included things like half-price popcorn night?

Her knee-jerk response was no, but as she looked at Marie’s smiling face and thought about it, she couldn’t push the word from her lips.

“M-maybe,” she managed to say. “I’ll have to play it by ear.”

“Okay. Let’s trade phone numbers, just in case. Where do you live, by the way? Are you in an apartment or a house?”

Marie was digging through her purse for pen and paper as Lettie struggled to respond. She couldn’t say “hotel,” so she finally avoided the question by saying, “I’m not really settled in yet. But I can give you my cell phone number.”

“Oh, sure,” Marie replied, scribbling down her number and handing it over.

Lettie took the number and then jotted hers down for Marie, as if trading phone numbers with friendly strangers was something she did every day.

“All right. I’ll give you a call this week. Tuesday night, remember, if you can keep it open.”

“Will do. Thanks. And thanks for lunch.”

“No prob!” Marie said as she turned to go. “My pleasure.”

She walked to her car, a shiny lime green VW Bug, and climbed inside. Lettie watched her go, and then she continued around to the other side of the church to her old sedan.

The parking lot was nearly deserted by this point, the pretty white church closed up for the afternoon. Lettie dug in her purse for her keys, but as she passed by the only other car in the parking lot besides hers, the driver’s door swung open with a loud creak, and a man climbed out.

He was tall, 6'5" at least, and a good 250 or 300 pounds of pure muscle. He wore a sleeveless shirt despite the cool morning, and his arms were mottled with tattoos from wrists to shoulders.

“You Lettie?” he asked in a deep, gravelly voice.

Heart racing, she took a step back.

“Yeah, why?”

“Mickey sent me. He’s been trying to reach you all morning. We got a job to do.”

Jo loved the Poconos. They weren’t dramatic like the Smokys or the Adirondacks, but they were pretty nonetheless, rolling hills dotted with cute little houses and romantic restaurants and unusual hotels. As they drove toward her grandmother’s country home, Jo called Danny’s attention to various roadside attractions.

“Look at the bathtub in that hotel,” she said, pointing to the billboard that showed a couple sitting in bubbles in the middle of a gigantic champagne glass.

“I’ve heard of that,” Danny said. “Look, they even have to climb up a ladder to get into it.”

He was enjoying the ride, and Jo was feeling about a million times better now than she had when they started. The only one not really happy was Chewie, who was getting tired of being cooped up in the car for so long.

It was so peaceful there that Jo couldn’t help feeling as if, by slipping out of town, she had slipped away from her problems as well. She was still disturbed by all that had happened Friday night, but she just didn’t think there was anything else she could do. She would simply have to trust that Chief Cooper was on top of things.

“I was trying to remember how long it’s been since I saw your grandmother,” Danny said. “Years and years. I gotta admit, I’m a little intimidated.”

“She can be kind of scary, but you’re not a little boy anymore. And she’s gotten so old and frail, I don’t think it’ll be like you remember.”

“I hope not.”

Grandmother Bosworth was a formidable old lady whose life revolved around the family company, Bosworth Industries. The corporation had been started by Jo’s great-grandfather years ago, and every family member held shares. Four times a year, prior to each stockholders’ meeting, Jo traveled to her grandmother’s house to sign over her proxy. Jo couldn’t care less about the company or its goings-on herself, so she was happy to give her grandmother the power to vote her shares.

Other than those quarterly visits, Jo only saw her grandmother on the occasional holiday. While the old woman wasn’t exactly ashamed of Jo and her household hint notoriety, she wasn’t proud of it, either. Over the years she had chosen to distance herself. Jo had always been so close to her other grandmother—her father’s mother—that she had never really felt the void of this relationship. Now that the grandmother she loved was dead, though, the whole thing seemed so poignant and wasteful. Grandmother Bosworth would probably pass away without really knowing her granddaughter or the joy that a close relationship with her could have brought.

“So what should I do and not do around her?” Danny asked. “I don’t want to step on any land mines.”

“Be frank. Be honest. She hates yes-men, and she can spot a phony a mile away.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

“Otherwise, we’ll probably have tea, I’ll sign the papers, and then we’ll be out of there. I just hope she hasn’t heard about the whole mess at Tenderloin Town, because then I’ll have to explain something I don’t even understand myself.”

Lettie’s hands were shaking as she pulled all the way into Jo Tulip’s driveway and turned off the car.

“Are you sure I have to—”

She couldn’t even finish her question before the tattooed man who called himself “Tank” was out of the car and at Jo Tulip’s back door. Trembling from head to toe, Lettie climbed from the car and followed him. He worked quickly, rattling his picks in the locks until he got them to snap into place. Grinning, he twisted the doorknob and swung the door open.

“W-why do I have to be here?” Lettie demanded in a sharp whisper.

“I told you. If anybody sees us, you’re the one who has to come up with a cover. Besides, this might take a while. I need your help.”

“What if she comes home and catches us?”

“You said she’d be gone all afternoon.”

“But she was just talking. I don’t know for sure—”

Again, he walked away as she was speaking. With a sinking heart she followed him down the hall and into a bedroom. As she hovered in the doorway, he went to town, tearing open closets and drawers and rummaging through everything as quickly as possible. Though he wasn’t breaking anything, he wasn’t being neat about it either.

“She’ll know we’ve been here,” Lettie said.

“So?”

He ripped the covers off the bed and then pulled out a switchblade and popped it out, as if to cut into the mattress.

“Wait!” Lettie cried.

“What?”

He paused, knife in the air.

“You’re not wearing gloves. You’ll leave fingerprints.”

“So?”

“Remember, this girl is working closely with the local police. If you tear her house up, they’ll trace your prints and come looking for you. If you have a police record of any kind, they’ll know who you are.”

He lowered his hand. Obviously, he had a record—and he knew she was right.

“I’ll search, you clean,” he barked.

Knowing she had no choice, Lettie did as he said, following along in his wake and straightening everything he went through. If the house hadn’t been so perfectly neat and organized to begin with, she might not have had to try so hard. But with everything in exact order before he got to it, Lettie knew she had to put it all back just so.