Blind Dates Can Be Murder (6 page)

“Still, even with him dead, this isn’t over,” Jo added after he released her. “I mean, we’re left with an awful lot of questions. Was he a stalker? If so, how did he find me? If not, what did he want?”

Danny thought for a moment.

“You know, there’s a good chance he tracked you down through Dates&Mates,” Danny said. “You need to alert the chief to that fact.”

“Oh, great,” she replied. “My class starts there in the morning.”

Danny knew that not only was Jo a Dates&Mates client, she was also going to be an instructor for their Saturday morning “community enrichment” series, which offered classes on a variety of topics of interest to singles. Jo was scheduled to teach a four-week course about housekeeping, the first session of which was to start at nine in the morning.

“Considering all that’s happened tonight,” Danny said, “maybe you should postpone.”

Jo nodded, but before she could reply, the restaurant manager, who was talking to the chief, pointed in their direction.

“That woman had a knife and a straw!” he cried, still looking incongruous in full Western gear, including chaps. “She said she was going to do an emergency tracheotomy!”

Danny groaned.

“Please don’t tell me he’s talking about you,” he said.

She shrugged.

“I don’t think I really would have done it,” she admitted sheepishly. “But I was desperate. The guy was choking to death. Somebody had to do something.”

“Jo, has anyone ever told you that you might be a little
too
resourceful sometimes?”

“Hey, can I help it if I have a solution for every situation?”

“Yeah,” Danny said, shaking his head, “but some solutions make a little more sense than others.”

A half hour later, the chief had just told Jo that she was free to go when the Channel 6 news van pulled into the parking lot.

“Oh, no,” Chief Cooper said, watching. “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

Jo knew that he was referring to an incident last fall, when an elderly neighbor of Jo’s was murdered and Jo and Danny were involved in investigating her death. When that case was solved, the media had come out in full force and made a big deal out of it—especially because Jo Tulip, by virtue of her national newspaper column, was what some folks would consider a minor celebrity. Now it looked as if they were at it again.

“Guess I’d better head ’em off at the pass,” the chief said. “Nothing I hate more than having to fend off your paparazzi.”

“Oh, yeah, like that’s something that happens every day.”

The chief turned to go.

“Chief, wait,” Jo added, grabbing his arm. “Do me a favor, please. If you have to tell them what happened, don’t call it a computer date or a matchmaking service. Just say blind date. That sounds a lot better.”

He pursed his lips tightly and paused a beat.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Jo watched him amble toward the news van, wondering why the whole situation was so uncomfortable for her. After all, she had made no secret online about the Dates&Mates connection.

On the other hand, she realized, it was one thing to blog her activities to the anonymous outside world, and it was quite another to be interviewed on camera in her hometown, admitting in front of all of her friends and neighbors that she had signed up for a dating service.

The chief spoke with the reporter for a few minutes and then turned toward Jo and waved her over. Obviously, the persistent Suzie Chin wasn’t giving up without an interview. Jo gritted her teeth, smoothed her hair, and walked toward the reporter, hoping she wouldn’t come across on TV as an idiot. Of course, she had signed up with a dating service in the first place for publicity—but this kind of publicity she could do without!

“Jo Tulip,” Ms. Chin said, thrusting a microphone into her face. “Are you okay? It sounds as though what happened to you tonight was quite scary.”

“It was very scary,” Jo replied, “but I’m glad we got my—” she glanced over at Brock, who was watching from the sidelines in amusement, “my real date out of the trunk before he suffocated.”

“Of course. And you think the man who came into the restaurant posing as your date was some sort of stalker?”

The questions went along in that vein for a while, with Jo answering as best she could. Thankfully, the dating service angle never came up. In the end, Jo was comfortable with how the interview had gone—or at least as comfortable as she could be, considering all that had happened. When they were finished, she thanked the reporter and then watched as she and her cameraman walked toward Frank Malone’s car to get some footage of the scene of the crime.

“Oh, Miss Tulip,” the reporter said, turning back toward her. “Can I ask you one more question, off the record?”

“Uh, sure,” Jo said, dreading the worst.

The woman stepped closer and lowered her voice.

“My toddler drew on the walls with a crayon this morning,” she said. “Can you tell me how to get it off?”

Lettie slid the empty suitcase into the closet and shut the door, weary to the bone. The drive home had taken four hours at the end of an already long workday. She was ready to collapse onto the bed and fall into a deep sleep.

First things first, though. She slipped on her favorite nightgown, brushed her teeth at the rusty sink in the corner, and then checked the shade to make sure it was tightly drawn. She had double-locked the door after she had unloaded the car. Now she reached for a deluxe boxed set of
The Chronicles of Narnia
and climbed onto the bed, ignoring the squeak of the springs.

When she wasn’t out on the road, Lettie lived in a one-room apartment over a garage behind a big old house that had long ago been divided into other apartments. She hated the musty smell and the rickety furniture and the noisy neighbors, but she hadn’t wanted to spend a penny more than necessary on housing once Chuck went to jail. Instead, almost everything she made went right into
Narnia
—the Bank of Narnia, that is.

Turning the case of books on its side, Lettie pressed the corner and released the faux front, which gave her access to the large cavity inside. Bought at a yard sale where the owner touted it as “the perfect hiding place for a child’s treasures,” Lettie had filled it with so much cash that it was almost bursting at the seams. She dumped that cash out onto the bed now and sorted it—mostly twenties and tens—into piles of a hundred dollars each. As she did, she thought about her sister, Melissa, and their childhood dream of escaping to another country far away, a safe place where they would live their lives out in peace together.

This was the money that was funding that dream.

For the past three years, Lettie had been funneling the cash she earned to Melissa, who had managed to escape from her own bad situation and make her way down to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Communication was risky at best, but their plan was clear: Lettie was making as much money as she could while she could and sending it on ahead periodically. Melissa was getting that money in the mail and using it to support herself, build up some savings, and buy a small house for the two of them.

Lettie counted the piles, glad to see that since her last mailing she had earned another seven thousand dollars. She wasn’t sure what the new discs would net her, but business in Jersey had been brisk. She had a feeling that once Mickey settled up with her tomorrow, she’d make about three thousand more, which would bring her to almost ten thousand. Good thing too. Chuck’s prison sentence was up in three weeks, which meant that Lettie had come to the end of the gravy train. Just one more job, and then it would be time to make her own escape.

At least she was ready. She had her passport, and she had studied the flight times so often that she practically had them memorized. Her plan was to get away the same way Melissa had, by taking the train to Toronto and then to flying to Belize. From there she would go by boat to Honduras. Not that Chuck was smart enough to follow that much of a trail, but a little zigging and zagging would be worth it for her future peace of mind.

Lettie would pay cash for her travel, bringing along the rest when she went. For now, she carefully placed the stacks of bills back into the box, closed the front, and returned it to the shelf. The room was stuffy, so she raised the shade a few inches and cracked the window. In the distance, the whistle of a train sang out loud and long, and Lettie allowed herself a small smile. It was the music of travel, of escape.

Danny took a break once Jo finished her interview, going to stand beside her and perhaps offer some more comfort about the whole situation. Unfortunately, Mr. Perfect Date decided to choose that same moment to approach Jo as well.

“I didn’t realize you were a newspaper columnist,” Brock said, smiling despite the bag of ice he was still holding to his head. “I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be,” Jo replied. “My grandmother’s the one who started the column. I just keep it going.”

Danny was trying to think of a way to break up their conversation when Brock pointed toward the crowd that had gathered at the police tape line.

“Oh, my,” Brock said. “Is that woman bleeding?”

Danny looked to see what he was talking about. It took only a moment to spot an older woman with a splash of red across her chest.

“Wow,” Danny said, startled by the sight.

“No, that’s red wine,” Jo said. “It actually happened when all of…this…happened. She got startled and spilled her glass.”

“That’s too bad,” Brock replied. “I hope she knows to use white wine to get that out.” He turned his attention back to Jo. “Anyway, listen, before we go, I was just wondering if we might try this again. Tomorrow night, perhaps? I really would like to get to know you better. I think if I hadn’t been bonked on the head and shoved into a trunk, it would have turned out to be lovely night all the way around.”

“Excuse me, but what did you just say?” Jo asked.

Danny swallowed hard, willing the man not to repeat himself.

“I said I’d like to try this again, tomorrow night.”

“Before that. About white wine.”

Brock hesitated a moment, thinking back.

Don’t say it
, Danny thought fervently.

“I said I hope that lady over there knows that the best way to get out red wine is by rinsing it with white wine.”

Danny wanted to weep—or just throw in the towel completely. How could he ever compete with that?

“I would have suggested covering the stain with salt and then flushing it with club soda or water,” Jo said, giving her rapt attention to the man in front of her.