Blind Dates Can Be Murder (8 page)

The story didn’t get much screen time, just a minute or so. In the clip they put up the picture from Frank Malone’s license next to a picture of Brock Dentyne, calling Malone a stalker who had abducted Dentyne outside of a Mulberry Glen restaurant in order to assume his identity.

“This was apparently done in an attempt to get closer to household hint maven and Mulberry Glen resident Jo Tulip. During the date, Malone suffered an asthma attack. In the aftermath, Ms. Tulip discovered the abducted Dentyne in the trunk of Malone’s car.”

Jo’s face appeared next, above the caption “Jo Tulip of Tips from Tulip.” The interview footage had been edited down to one sentence:

“It was very scary,” the on-screen Jo said, “but I’m just glad we got my…real…date out of the trunk before he suffocated.”

Jo threw a pillow at the screen, embarrassed at her own words and image. The phone began ringing, but she waited until Ms. Chin finished speaking before answering. “Malone later died at the hospital, from complications of asthma.”

The story ended there, and Jo couldn’t help thinking they had done a pretty good job with what had been a very confusing situation.

“Hello?” she said, catching the phone on about the fifth ring.

“You have
got
to be kidding me!”

The voice was that of Marie, who was one of her best friends. Jo braced herself for the interrogation that was sure to follow. They talked for a while, with Marie forcing Jo to describe the entire evening in excruciating detail. After almost half an hour, Jo pleaded exhaustion and called it a night. She still had to write the next day’s blog entry for her website.

“We’ll be together tomorrow night,” Jo reminded her. “We can talk more then.”

“Hey, girl, at least there’s a bright spot in all of this,” Marie said.

“What’s that?”

“The real Brock Dentyne? He’s hot.”

“You think so?” Jo asked, smiling. Even without the dimples showing, his photo on TV had looked good.

“Hotter than hot,” Marie affirmed. “Honey, he’s so hot, he makes three-alarm chili look like ice cream.”

4

J
o reached Dates&Mates at 8:00
AM
, a full hour before the class she was scheduled to teach was to begin. She and the police chief had an appointment with the director to discuss what had happened on Jo’s date the night before. Jo wasn’t sure what their conversation might accomplish—or even if she would end up teaching the class once they were finished—but she had come prepared with her lecture and her visual aids, just in case.

The chief showed up just as Jo was getting out of her car, and the two of them walked into the building together, where they were greeted at the door by Tasha Green. Ms. Green led them into her office, offered them coffee and Danish, and listened to their account of what had happened with grave concern. Jo had met the woman only once before, when she had approached her about teaching the class, but she had liked her then, and she grew more impressed with her now. Rather than backpedal and defend the company and insist they were absolutely blameless in the situation, Ms. Green offered to go through the confidentiality protocol that Dates&Mates followed in an attempt to identify any security breaches.

Carefully, Ms. Green described to the chief how their clients paid for the dating service, completed an exhaustive questionnaire, got matched by the computer based on the answers to that questionnaire, and were given the necessary information to meet in a safe and public place.

“Once our matchmaker arranges the date, helps the two of you choose the location, and makes the reservation at the restaurant, we step out of the process until the two-week follow-up call. At that point, we determine if you want to attempt more matches or if you’re happy with the one we’ve already found for you.”

The chief cleared his throat, glancing at Jo before speaking.

“And approximately how many people here would you say are privy to the information about that first date?”

“Technically, only one,” Ms. Green replied. “The matchmaker who set up the date. The files are secure—I’ll show you in a minute the intricate computer system that protects our clients’ data—but I will say that we do share cubicles here. So I suppose while only one person handles that information directly, several others could easily overhear it, if they were listening. But it’s certainly not given out to the general public.”

The chief asked for an employee roster, a need Ms. Green seemed to have anticipated. As she handed over the single-page printout, her eyes met the chief’s, and Jo could swear she detected a spark of interest between them.

Jo was surprised at first, and then she had to stifle a smile. How cute! As the chief went down the list and asked Ms. Green questions about the employees, Jo considered the possibility of Tasha Green and Harvey Cooper as a couple.

Ms. Green was an attractive woman with an angled haircut, a smart outfit, and no wedding ring. The chief, though a good ten years older than her and a bit paunchy, wasn’t exactly bad-looking. His deep voice, calm demeanor, and obvious control of the situation were appealing. And Jo happened to know that he was divorced. His wife was rumored to have run off with the town’s court clerk many years before.

“Would any of the employees be available to speak with right now?” the chief asked.

Ms. Green buzzed the first person on the list and then directed the chief to the cubicle at the end of the hall. He thanked her and headed off, leaving her and Jo alone.

“This is a fun line of work,” Jo said, making conversation. “Do you ever do any matchmaking for yourself?”

Judging by the woman’s bright blush, Jo knew she had struck a nerve.

“I-I’ve always found more pleasure in arranging matches for other people,” Ms. Green finally said in a halting voice. Then she looked again in the direction the chief had gone and added, “Though, that’s not to say I wouldn’t be interested if the right man came along.”

Danny was just leaving for a photography job when he realized the light was blinking on his answering machine. He paused to play back the messages, all of which were from the day before. Listening to his machine when he arrived home last night had been the furthest thing from his mind.

There was a call yesterday morning from his mother, just to chat, and two from his brother-in-law Ray, first to see if Danny wanted to come over and help him snake a drain, and the second to get the name and number of a good plumber, fast.

The final message was so startling that Danny had to rewind and listen to it three times.

“Hi, Danny, this is Brianna over at Stockmasters. I just wanted to let you know that one of your photos is being optioned by Twentieth Century Fox. They want it for background on a movie poster. I don’t have the exact figure yet, but it’s looking like somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars. Call me if you want more details. Otherwise, we’ll be in touch next week.”

Of course, when he called Stockmasters, they were closed for the weekend. After leaving a return message with Brianna, he hung up the phone and simply sat there, too excited to move a muscle.

A movie poster, with one of his photos.

It wasn’t just the money, though surely ten thousand dollars was the most he’d ever made from a single picture—and his household budget could sorely use it.

More important than that, though, was the exposure. The enormity of what he had managed to accomplish.

The
validation
.

In a moment of pure joy, Danny leapt from his chair and swung a fist into the air.

“Yesssss!” he cried, loudly, his voice echoing in the empty house.

Almost frantically, he grabbed the phone and dialed Jo’s number. She didn’t answer, so he hung up and tried her cell. He got her voice mail, but this wasn’t something he wanted to tell her in a message. He hung up.

Time to go. With a tremendous spring in his step, Danny bounded toward the car. He had to get to work, but he would keep calling Jo until he reached her.

He was halfway to Dates&Mates before he remembered to pray. Steering through town, he spoke out loud to the Lord, praising and thanking Him with vigor. Finally, after a hearty “Amen,” he rolled down the window of his Honda, feeling the wind on his face.

“I did it!” he yelled to a cluster of pedestrians standing on the curb, waiting for the light to change. They all stared back at him as if he were insane.

Danny rolled up the window and inhaled deeply, still stunned at this magnificent blessing. He wondered how he was going to keep from exploding until Monday, when he could learn more about the sale. He had no idea how he was going to get through the mundane tasks of this weekend.

Mostly, he couldn’t wait to hear what Jo would say when he told her.

The chief finished questioning the employees a few minutes before Jo’s class was scheduled to begin, and after he gave a warm but professional farewell to Ms. Green, he walked with Jo to the parking lot.

“So what do you think?” she asked as they went. “Did you learn anything important?”

He shrugged.

“Their system seems pretty cut and dried, Jo. I don’t have any reason to suspect that Frank Malone tracked you down through Dates&Mates.”

“So how did he know, then?” she pressed. “He timed the whole thing to be there when my date arrived, to lure him away and take his place. That absolutely gives me the creeps.”

They reached the chief’s car, and he stood with his hand on the door handle.

“I think it comes down to you or Brock Dentyne. One of you must have told someone the time and place of your date. Are you sure you didn’t talk about it in the grocery store or share it with a group of girlfriends at the beauty parlor or something?”

Jo gasped, her face quickly flushing with heat. No, she hadn’t talked about the time and place of their date in the grocery store, where a few measly people might have overheard. She had put the information on her blog, where millions of people had free access to it at any time.

“I know how he knew!” she cried, feeling like an idiot. She tried to think through her blog entry, to remember what details she had supplied. From what she could recall, there was something on there about her having a blind date at “six o’clock at the local steakhouse.” She had never made any secret of the fact that she lived in Mulberry Glen, Pennsylvania. There was only one steakhouse in town, so for anyone who perused her website carefully, it would have been easy to make an educated guess. “I’m such a fool,” she whispered, and then she went on to describe to the chief what she had done.