Divorced, Desperate and Dead (Divorced and Desperate Book 5) (13 page)

Turner nodded. He took a minute to collect his thoughts. “We did get some tire impressions at the side of the warehouse you said the Chevy came from. And we got tire tracks at the scene of the hit and run. Let’s just hope they match.”

“Yeah.” Cary shook his head. “But that’s not enough.”

“It’s a start,” Danny said.

“We’ll get him.” Turner repositioned himself in the chair. “Not sure we can get him on the Marc Jones murder, but I think we can get him on killing Tommy.”

An image of Ms. Jones standing in his hospital room filled his head. “That’s not good enough. It’s the Jones murder I want him to go down for.”

“Yeah, but we’ll take what we can get,” Turner said.

He
wouldn’t, Cary thought. He was bringing Ms. Jones some closure or he’d die trying.

Danny reached for the glass of water his sister had served them when they first got there. “Besides, it wasn’t just you or the Jones kid that J.D.’s hurt. You should see the pretty thing Tommy hit with that damn truck. Thank God she came out of it unscathed.”

Cary glanced at his partner. “You met her?”

“Yeah, we went with her when she gave the description of J.D. She’s kind of hot,” Danny said. “In a girl-next-door kind of way. And—”

“You’re thinking with your dick again.” Cary said, not wanting to hear Danny thoughts on Chloe Sanders. Then he had to bite his tongue not to correct his partner. She wasn’t girl-next-door hot. He’d never lived next to anything that pretty or that . . . alluring.

“Do you guys need something else to drink?” Kelly called from the backdoor as her foster dog came running out, growling like a pit bull, even though it could fit in a super-sized fast food drink.

“No, we’re fine.” Cary ran his hand over his face and ignored the dog that scratched at his ankle wanting to be held. When he didn’t pull the dog up into his lap, it started playing tug-o-war with his sock. “Wait,” Cary called back at Kelly. “Can you get your dog back in?”

“He wants to be with you.”

“Just get the thing in please.” He needed to chill, but he still hadn’t gotten over seeing the antique candy striper. Had that been Beatrice Bacon? Or was his mind just playing tricks on him?

His sister called the dog, but the little mutt wouldn’t leave and continued to tug at his pants leg. “Never mind,” Cary called out. “Just leave him.”  He tried ignoring the annoying little piss-ant.

“We’re not going to stop looking for this guy,” Turner said.

Cary nodded. “Have you checked with any of Tommy’s friends? Surely one of them know what Tommy was up to and can enlighten us on who else he told about this.  If we can find out how J.D. knew Tommy was turning him in, or find out who told Tommy about the Jones murder, we’d at least have hearsay to hand to the DA.”

“We went to the Long Shot bar where Tommy used to hang out,” Danny explained. “Talked to a few people and got shit for our trouble. We’re still trying to reach the bartender that might have worked there the nights Tommy hung out.”

“And J.D.’s gang. You can’t get one of them to turn on J.D.?”

“We’ve interviewed at least six fellow members of the Black Bloods,” Turner said. “None of them would talk. Even after Danny threatened their balls.”

Cary’s mind went back to the woman who’d threatened his balls earlier.

His frown deepened and he tried to blame his frustration on the case and its lack of momentum. He knew his friends were good cops and were doing everything in their power, but he couldn’t let this one go. “Didn’t J.D. have a grandmother who lived in South Houston?”

Pooch let out a shrill little bark. Cary relented and reached down to pull the thing onto his lap.

“She died eight months ago,” Danny said. “And his mom is doing ten to twenty in the pen for drugs. Hence the reason his ass landed in foster care.”

“Shit!” Cary said. Pooch raised up on his hind legs and put his paws on the table.

Danny stared at the animal. “What is that?”

Cary frowned. “I don’t have a clue. I think it’s a guinea pig that thinks it’s a dog.” Then he looked back at his two friends. “Damn it, I want to work this case.”

Turner shook his head. “I think we’d have to kill your sister to get you out of here.”

Danny chuckled.  “She told us when we came in that you were probably going to try to talk us into breaking you out of here. Then she warned us that she had a bigger gun than us.”

Cary frowned. “She knows me well.”

Turner leaned forward and petted the dog’s snout. The animal growled at him.

“Damn, she’s a pissy little mutt.”

“She’s a he,” Cary said.

“Well,” Turner continued. “You’re sister’s right. You need to rest. Enjoy the time off. You were shot. Take this time to contemplate life.”

He studied Turner, almost scared he would morph into an elderly old lady in a candy stripe uniform.

“There’s nothing to contemplate. I like my life the way it is.” He knew he was lying.

But the million dollar question was if he planned to do anything about it.

Coward,
he heard the old woman’s voice in his head.
Dying is easy, it’s living that’s hard.

• • •

Thursday afternoon, Chloe sat in her office staring at the computer screen. Amber worked the front and Chloe had actually come in here thinking maybe, just maybe, if she came in here and stared at the computer screen, she might find it in herself to actually start a new book.

But she’d been sitting for more than an hour and the only thing on the screen were two words.
Chapter One.

Wow, that was creative.

Her cell phone rang and she snagged it up.  Anything to take her mind off the fact that she had the creative level of a migraine-stricken slug on Xanax.

“Hello?” she answered without checking the number.

“Chloe?” The deep voice saying her name sent a row of tiny goose bumps down her spine. She envisioned Cary Stevens resting next to her in bed, remembered how it had felt just talking with him . . . and kissing him. Her breath caught.

“Yes,” she said, not realizing how badly she had wanted him to contact her until now.

Chapter Thirteen

“Is this a bad time?” he asked when she didn’t say anything else.

“No, it’s good,” Chloe said, but suddenly something didn’t sound right. And it didn’t feel so good anymore either. “Who is this?”

“Dan Henderson. I told you I’d call you about dinner.”

Yeah, but I was really hoping you were your partner.
“Yes, I’m sorry I . . . didn’t recognize your voice.” That sweet tingling down her spine faded to disappointment.

“You have that many men calling you?” he teased.

“Right,” she teased back, but her heart pounded with the decision she was about to make. Did she agree to dinner with a guy who didn’t make her skin tingle? A man who her best friend had a crush on?

Or did she run home, pull out Bob—her only expected company—set him on her dinner table, and pretend she wasn’t alone? She could throw a frozen dinner into the microwave and pretend she didn’t want more out of life.

“So . . . how about tomorrow night? I know a great little Italian place,” Dan said.

“Italian, huh?” she managed to say.

“Yeah. Their Chicken Marsala and Tiramisu are to die for.”

She’d already died once this week and wasn’t really up to doing that again. Then, glancing up, she stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen and the only two words she’d written in almost a year.

Chapter one.

Wasn’t it time for a new chapter in her life?

“What do you say?” he asked. “Can I pick you up tomorrow around seven?”

• • •

Early Friday afternoon, Cary found himself alone—if you didn’t count a tiny dog and poodle who occasionally snipped at each other—and bored silly.  Kelly had taken Bella out shopping, leaving him to dog sit. Before she left she’d brought her laptop out and suggested he check out Chloe Sanders on Wikipedia.

Ignoring her, Cary made himself comfortable on his sister’s leather sofa, surfing channels, trying to find anything besides Judge Judy to watch. Pooch, pink bows in his hair, had spent several minutes trying to jump onto the sofa before Cary relented and brought the animal up. After trying out a couple of different spots, both on the sofa and on Cary, the creature decided Cary’s chest was the best resting place.

“Hey . . .” he said to Pooch, whose snout rested right at his chin. The dog opened one eye and looked up at him. “You realize I don’t like you, right?”

The dog lifted his snout and commenced to bathe Cary’s face with his tongue.

“Stop, I don’t French kiss on the first date.”  After a second, he glanced back at the animal. “Okay, I do, but not with dogs.”

The dog growled.

“Are you as tired of Judge Judy’s bitching as I am?”

The dog made a groaning sound.

“Not that Judy’s all bad,” he said, staring at the dog as he dropped his head back down. The judge with all her sass had entertained them for a good portion of the morning already, but he’d had enough.

“Time to get up,” he told Pooch.

The dog growled and he sat the animal on the floor. “I let you sleep on me and now you’re gonna growl? And I’m talking to a damn dog!”

He tossed down the remote and grabbed his phone to check his email.

Not that he really expected anything, but boredom made him eager for even a penis enlargement advertisement. Not that he needed one. He stared at the small screen . . . not one new email since he’d checked ten minutes ago.

Leaning back he saw his sister’s laptop on the coffee table. And then he did it. He grabbed the damn thing, went to Wikipedia, and searched for Chloe Sanders.

It told him a lot. An only child. Her father was deceased. Her mother lived in town and used to own a bookstore.

There was only one image of Chloe. Just a headshot, the same one in the back of her books. Not satisfied, he found her website. There were a couple of shots of her signing books. She looked happy in them, too. As if . . . as if she was totally in her element.

He read her blog about going to a butterfly farm, but it was dated more than a year ago. Still wanting more, he Googled her. He found a few pictures of her on vacation in Florida. In one of them, she was wearing a bikini. And she looked good. One of those curvy hourglass bodies with a tiny waist that a man loves to hold on to. The only thing he didn’t like was the guy hanging on to her. Was that the fiancé who’d killed himself? He studied it harder and remembered the guy in the vision he’d had of Chloe’s proposal. Yup, it was him.

“Why would you do that to her?” he asked the picture.

Then he did another Google search and found an interview. In it, she stated that she’d graduated from the University of Houston with a business and English degree. And the date she gave meant they went there at the same time. He recalled her telling him that he looked familiar. Was there a small chance that she’d recognized him from college and not from Room Six?

He hit another link and found her telephone number. Unable to stop himself, he grabbed his phone and saved it in his contact list.

Suddenly, feeling like an Internet stalker, he set the computer back on the coffee table. He stood up, ran his hand through his hair, and spit out a few choice bad words. Then realizing a place he could really get to know Chloe Sanders, and pushing aside feeling like a stalker, he limped down his sister’s hall. He bypassed the extra bedroom where he’d slept last night—who would have guessed he’d miss his hospital bed?—and ignoring the sign on the door that read, ‘No Adults Allowed,’ he went inside Bella’s room.

He’d pay his niece off with a whole damn bag of tooth-decaying bubblegum for breaking the rules.

Standing in the midst of everything pink, he wanted to pretend he didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew.

He found the bookshelf and ran his finger over the names of the authors. Chloe Sanders wasn’t there. Had his sister been lying about Chloe being Bella’s favorite author?

Looking around the room, now even more antsy due to feeling as if he was snooping, he saw the neat stack of books on the kid’s bedside table that were tied in ribbon that matched her bedspread. Okay, so his sister hadn’t been lying.

Dropping down on his niece’s bed, he studied the ribbon, wondering if he untied it, could he put it back exactly as it was? The pretty little bow stared back at him and he accepted his big hands would never be able to fix it.

He told himself to just leave and not touch the damn books. Why did he want to read them anyway? He stood, got almost to the door, when he heard Judge Judy say, “What are you, blind or just stupid? Grow a pair and do what you need to do.” But damn it if Judge Judy didn’t sound a lot like Beatrice Bacon.

He swung back around and untied the ribbon.

Taking up residence on Bella’s princess bed, which happened to be a hell of a lot more comfortable than the bed in the extra bedroom, he propped up his feet, found book one and started reading.

Pooch barked until Cary reached down and brought him up on the bed. The dog curled up between his shoulder and his neck as Cary got lost in the story.  It was definitely a kid’s book.  Amazingly, he found himself caring about the main character, turning the pages, and laughing. He was in awe. In awe of the talent of one beautiful brunette author who slept in angel nightshirts and could hit a man right where he hurt—twice—in a matter of a few minutes.

And one who still looked so damn angelic, that the man would forgive her.

When he finished book one, he grabbed book two. Pooch growled, not liking that he’d shifted.  He growled again when Cary reached for book three. There were five in the series, and he was pissed when he finished the last one. He let the book drop onto his chest, listened to Pooch snore, and stared up at the glittery stars on his niece’s ceiling.

His sister had gone all out to give her daughter a real sanctuary of a room. Oddly, he recalled his mom had done the same for all of them. His room had been done in army green and she’d even painted army men on the walls.