Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series (7 page)

“I’ll leave you to your work. For now. But you’ll see me again. I’m sure I’ll think of a lot of follow up questions.”

My lips twitched before I could control it, and I shook my head in defeat. “I figured as much.” Brody Collins was going to be a handful.

His body relaxed and he gave me a satisfied grin. We trudged back up the stairs to the main part of the funeral home and I followed him out the kitchen door.

“What happens to her now?” he asked.

“Her sister will be here this afternoon to arrange for the burial. I can’t embalm her until the paperwork is filled out and I’ve finished the autopsy. And then with luck I won’t have to deal with something like this again. Bloody Mary is a safe place. A good town. Though the people can take getting used to.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing the whole afternoon? What’s one more?”

“Why would an ER doctor give up her career to move back home and serve the dead instead of the living?”

I stiffened and took a step in retreat before I could help myself. “You can ask all the questions you want about my business, but my personal life is my own.”

“You intrigue me, Dr. Graves. I’ve never been one to let curiosity sit idle. Like I said before, you’d make a fascinating character. If my Detective Ambrose isn’t careful you’re the kind of woman he could definitely fall for.”

“Then I hope he doesn’t mind being disappointed. My life really isn’t all that fascinating.”

I could tell by the determined look in his eyes that he’d know everything about me by the time he sat down to dinner. Hell, all he’d have to do is ask a few questions around town to learn most of it. There were still a few things about my life that even the people of Bloody Mary didn’t know, but if anyone could sniff out the truth I was betting it was Brody Collins. Maybe it would be best to let him find out as much as he could. The FBI sure wasn’t very forthcoming with information, though they seemed to thrive on speculation and the seemingly endless amount of questions they had about my parents. Questions that I had no idea what the answers were.

“Have a safe drive back to Richmond. I’m sorry you weren’t able to get any interesting information about the murder.” I started to close the door, but he stopped it with his hand.

“Oh, I’m not driving back to Richmond. You’ve inspired me to stay in Bloody Mary and finish the book right here. I don’t suppose you could recommend a place to stay?”

I mumbled something unladylike under my breath, and knew with his declaration that it was destined for our lives to be tangled together. There was something about him that drew me in, and I wanted his hands on me more than I’d wanted anything else in a long time. I just hoped I could put the pieces back together again once he decided to untangle himself.

I sighed and pointed down the road. “Baker’s Bed and Breakfast is right down the street. It’s the slow season so I’m sure she’s got room for you. Tell Wanda I sent you.”

“I will, thanks.” He paused like he wanted to say something else, but he just tucked my hair behind my ear again and skimmed his knuckles across my cheek. “I’ll see you around, Dr. Graves.”

I didn’t find my voice until his SUV disappeared down the road. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to do in Virginia in the winter. An explosion in the population come September explained what most people were doing with their forced time indoors. But for the rest of us who didn’t have someone to keep us warm on a snowy night—there was poker. And boy did we take it seriously. I didn’t know anyone between the ages of eighteen and ninety-two who didn’t belong to a league. Gambling fueled the souls of the weary and fired the blood of every citizen in town.

And once a year, all the practice paid off. The Knights of Columbus hosted a poker tournament at the Civic Center every New Year’s Eve. The grand prize for the poker champion was ten thousand dollars and a trip to Richmond to compete in the state tournament. I’d never had a chance in hell of claiming the prize, and things weren’t looking too different for me this year. It was no one’s fault but my own. Hollywood had never been in the cards for me, because no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t keep from advertising every thought I possessed across the blank canvas of my face (not a good handicap to have for this particular sport).

But Jack, on the other hand, was a wonder. He’d been the champion for the last two years. No one had a better poker face than Jack. And unlike me, Lady Luck always smiled on him—probably because she was a damned woman and that’s what women did with Jack.

It was his turn to host our weekly addiction, and I decided to get to his place a little early to pump him for news on the murder investigation. I was curious to see what he’d found out at the bank, and I’d bought a six pack of his favorite beer to offer as a bribe so he’d tell me everything he knew. This was a practice that had worked since high school, so I figured there was no need to change things now.

The snow I’d predicted earlier fell in soft, heavy flakes as I walked out my front door, six-pack in hand. I walked around the rotted boards of my porch, and jumped over the three sagging steps that led to the ground just in case today was the day I finally fell through. If I kept my eyes straight ahead, it was easy to ignore the eyesore that sulked behind me like a decrepit old woman, waiting for the right moment to wrap her arms around me and drag me kicking and screaming into the pit of homeowners’ hell—of which I’m sure is an actual place.

By the time I maneuvered the Suburban around the metal cans the trash collectors had tossed in the street, the gentle fat flakes had turned into a vicious bitch of a blizzard. The wind blew with a cutting edge that sliced through the naked trees with a whistle and pushed against the Suburban as if was waging a war against the
Michelin
tire company in general.

I flipped on my windshield wipers and crept along the single lane road, my heart thumping a staccato beat in my chest, and the chili dog I’d eaten for lunch churning in my stomach. It was me against the elements—and I was losing. Thin sheets of ice formed rapidly on the country road, and I cursed when I realized I hadn’t had time to put chains on the tires with all the excitement of the day.

I heaved a sigh of relief as I pulled up in Jack’s driveway. At least I hoped it was Jack’s driveway. I unclenched my cramped fingers from around the steering wheel, and tried to bring some semblance of recognition to the structure in front of me. The lights flashing on and off in quick succession from inside the house was Jack’s way of letting me know I was in the right place.

Jack lived in a two-story log cabin that looked as if it had been carved from the forest of trees surrounding it. A wide porch surrounded the entire house and a chimney of grey stone jutted from the steep roof. It had taken him three years to build it exactly as he wanted, and he’d done most of the work himself. The house described Jack to a tee—masculine, rugged and enduring.

I was more than an hour early, and from the looks of the weather, poker night might be called off completely, but there was no way in hell I was going to turn around and brave the roads just so I could go back to a drafty house and a cold bed. Jack had dependable central heat, food and booze. I couldn’t ask for more.

I sat in my car a few more minutes, hoping there would be a break in the weather long enough that I could get indoors with as little embarrassment as possible. I pushed against the car door until it finally flung open with a gust of wind, and the only thing that kept me in an upright position was the fact that my arm was still caught in the seatbelt. I held tight to the beer as horizontal sleet pelted my face until it tingled with the pinpricks of numbness, and I trudged, one foot in front of the other, to Jack’s front door.

I didn’t bother to knock—neither of us ever did—and I almost wept in relief as heat cocooned my body the moment I stepped inside. Sharp pins stabbed into my skin, and I moaned in pain as feeling came back to my extremities.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked.

“Do I look okay to you?”

“Nope, but I thought it would be polite to ask.” He pulled the cap from my head and rubbed my arms briskly to get the circulation moving. “You know, anyone with half a lick of sense would have stayed home tonight.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to wait until tomorrow to get any information from you. I figure it was worth the risk. And your house is better equipped to ride out the storm. We’re not just friends because you’re pretty.”

“I feel so used,” Jack said. “What am I getting out of this relationship?”

“Just the pleasure of knowing me. I am a doctor, after all.”

“It’s hard to argue with that logic. Come on in the kitchen. I’ll put a pot of coffee on, while we wait to see if the others are as reckless as you are.”

“I’ll ignore that since you’re making me coffee. And I’ll even share the beer I brought.”

“Did you get the sample to Richmond? Sometimes they leave early on Fridays.”

“Oh, I got the sample to the lab. And we’ll have the complete analysis by Monday,” he said with a smile I recognized, though I’d never been on the receiving end of it.

“How, I’m afraid to ask, did you manage to work that minor miracle?”

“Let’s just say that the lab tech was very grateful. She doesn’t mind working weekends at all.”

“You slept with the lab tech?”

“I live for the job. And sometimes I have to make sacrifices.”

“I can’t believe she slept with you after being in your presence for ten minutes. What a ho.”

“God bless them every one. Actually it was more like an hour. We had lunch first.”

“Amazing,” I said. Jack’s powers over the opposite sex never failed to amaze me. I had seen many a woman fall at his feet over the years. It made my heart hurt just a little to think that one of these days Jack would find a woman who would make him do the falling.

“Yes, it was,” he said.

I inhaled the aroma of something sinful when he opened the oven door and had to subtly check my chin for drool. “God Jack, I think I just orgasmed. Why hasn’t some woman snapped you up?”

“God forbid,” he said with a mock shudder.

“Good attitude,” I said. “That way I can keep you all to myself. I’m starving. I don’t think the corn dog did it for me today.”

“It looks like it might be only us tonight with the way things are going outside.”

“Good, more for me.” Jack put a tray of hors d’oeuvres in front of me and I dug in.

“Did Phoebe’s sister make it in this afternoon?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I recognized her after she told me her name. She’d already graduated and left Bloody Mary by the time we’d gotten to high school, but I remembered seeing her around town sometimes when I was younger. She was shaken up pretty badly. They were close, talked a couple of times a week she said. She’s scheduled the funeral for Sunday afternoon. They have a family plot in the old cemetery where their parents are buried.”

Jack came over and put his hands on the back on my shoulders, squeezing lightly. “It’s always harder on the living,” he said. I knew he realized that Fiona’s death had hit me harder than I’d let on. She’d been my friend, even if we hadn’t kept up the rituals friendship entailed as we grew to adulthood.

“Yeah, well, it helps for justice to be served in cases like this. It’ll at least bring a little bit of peace to her sister to know that the crime didn’t go unpunished.”

“That’s all we can do for her,” Jack said. The phone rang and his arm left my shoulder to answer. I felt alone without him at my back, and I realized I didn’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to Jack. He was my rock, and I was his. His line of work left a lot of variables.

The sound of his voice startled me out of my melancholia.

“That was Eddie,” he said as he sat across from me and filled a plate. “He said he was going to stay home with Charlotte and the kids tonight. He doesn’t want to leave them alone in case the storm makes the power go out.”

“I can’t say I blame him.”

Our particular poker league consisted of five smartasses with varying levels of poker ability—me being the worst, Jack being the best, and the other three falling somewhere in between. I was the only woman in our merry band, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In my experience, men were a hell of a lot easier to get along with than women—they judged you to your face and they were generally honest unless you were sleeping together (I’d never slept with any of the guys, so I didn’t have anything to worry about).

Dickey Harlowe, whose real name was something outrageous like Richmond Dexter Harlowe IV, was the hereditary bank president at First National—fifth generation. Banking was what the Harlowes did, even though Dickey had graduated in the top ninetieth percentile of his class from James Madison University and was truly a bum at heart. So mostly Dickey played golf and signed his name to official documents his secretary sent to him—and since he’d been having an affair with his secretary for three years, she usually knew where to find him. The fact that Dickey was married to a plastic surgery addicted piranha didn’t excuse his adulterous behavior, but it certainly added to the sympathy factor. Dickey’s poker skills ran towards the spontaneous with bursts of luck that kept him in the running.