Blind dates can be murde.., p.19
Blind Dates Can Be Murder, page 19
“That’s true,” she whispered.
“Well, I just want to say…take your time, okay? Pray about it. Don’t stop being my friend just because you know how I feel. I’m no different than I was this time yesterday or the day before. Well, except for my foot. And maybe my hair.”
Jo chuckled.
“I’m still me,” he continued. “You’re still you. And we’re still the best of friends.”
Jo knew it wasn’t quite that simple. Still, he was giving her permission to take more time to decide how she really felt. And that was a good thing.
“If we’re really friends, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course, Jo. You can ask me anything.”
She needed a quick shower, she wanted to load some things into her car, and she had to run by the photo place to pick up her pictures of Peter’s house. But she had to be with Danny.
“Would you mind very much if I came over in about an hour? It’s time to do some brainstorming about the Frank Malone situation. I could use your help.”
Hands shaking, Lettie dialed the number for Mickey.
It was one thing to steal people’s identities, and it was quite another to send a henchman to run down a pregnant woman just to get her out of the way so that Lettie could be hired to steal some data.
Lettie didn’t know what she was going to say to Mickey once she got him on the phone, but after she got through to Swingers, it didn’t matter anyway. The girl who answered said that Mickey was out.
“Fine. I’ll try later.”
A sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, Lettie drove on to her new job, feeling certain that she’d had all she could take. As she found a spot in the parking lot and turned off the car, she decided that this was it: She would spend exactly one day on the job, get the info Mickey wanted on Jo Tulip, and tonight she’d head back to Moore City. She’d give Mickey what she had, get the money that was coming to her, and drive to the airport.
“Everyone has their limits,” as her sister used to say, and Lettie had just reached hers.
When Jo arrived, Danny was dressed and sitting out back on a reclining chair, his foot propped up with more ice on it. He had told her it was okay to bring Chewie along, and the dog bounded through the house and into the backyard excitedly. Danny was waiting with a dollop of cream cheese, one of Chewie’s favorite snacks. He’d had his mother put it on a paper plate, but after Chewie ate the cream cheese, before they could stop him, he wolfed down the paper plate as well.
“Sorry about that,” Danny told Jo. “Will it cause a problem?”
She set about hooking Chewie to his extended leash because there was no fence.
“Nah. With Chewie, my motto is ‘This too shall pass.’”
They laughed easily, but as their laughter faded, so did their ease. Suddenly, Jo seemed extremely uncomfortable, and that made Danny sad.
Why can’t she see that we are perfect together?
“So you wanted to brainstorm,” he said instead. “Go for it. My brain is engaged and ready to produce.”
Actually, that wasn’t quite true. Thanks to the pain pills, his brain was fuzzy around the edges and feeling quite dull. But he would try his best.
“Okay,” she said, standing so that she could pace. Danny had to force himself not to smile. He loved to see Jo when she was working at a problem or a question. Her whole being focused on the issue at hand.
Walking back and forth on the patio, she explained what she had learned from the chief, that there had been a phone call from Frank Malone’s house to her business line two weeks ago, and then she described the call itself in detail.
“The common denominator here,” Jo said, “is the household hint question. Both on the phone and at the restaurant, Frank Malone talked about a dye stain that simply would not come out.”
“Give me the conversation,” Danny told her. “What exactly did he say?”
“Not much on the phone because I cut him off pretty quickly. But on the date, we talked for a while about it. He said that his sister was a big fan and that she had gotten a pinkish-purple dye stain on one of her favorite dresses.”
“Pinkish-purple dye?”
“That’s what he said. He said she’d been trying to get the dye out for a while, but that she had been unsuccessful and did I have any suggestions. I was so bored at that point that I spent several minutes explaining different things he could try.”
“What happened after that?”
“What do you mean what happened after that? He fell to the ground in a gasping heap.”
“Got it.”
Jo grabbed a fat stick from the yard, sat down on the patio, and began playing with Chewie. Danny’s mom came out to the patio with a tray of cookies and lemonade.
“What am I missing here?” Jo demanded, concentrating on Chewie. “What do you think of when you think of a pinkish-purple dye?”
“I think of bank robberies,” Danny’s mother said. “You know, those purple dye packs that burst and ruin all the money?”
Jo turned, her eyes wide. Danny, too, sat up quickly.
“Mrs. Watkins,” Jo said, “I think you may be on to something.”
Chuck walked off the bus in Moore City and into the first bar he could find. The dark room was almost empty and smelled of sour mash and peanuts. Chuck sat at the long wooden bar and ordered a single glass of the best Scotch in the house.
Once Chuck had the drink in front of him, he nursed it slowly, savoring every drop. It burned like fire going down, but it made a nice warm pit in his stomach. He even sloshed it around in his mouth a bit, numbing his tongue, wishing to hold on to the feeling for as long as possible. All too soon, the numbness would give way to a bad taste in his mouth, and the buzz would fade into a headache.
After his last sip, Chuck caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the bar, and he was startled by his appearance. Out of the context of the prison, he realized that he stuck out like a sore thumb. He sported the standard prison haircut, and the clothes were like a flashing neon sign: Just out! Just out! He would have to do something about all of that as quickly as possible.
He tossed a five onto the counter, which the bartender took and slipped into the drawer without giving him any bills in return.
“How about a little of my change back?” Chuck demanded. “I ain’t that big of a tipper.”
“What change? It’s five bucks.”
“Five bucks?” Chuck said, knowing the guy was cheating him, that it should have been only three. Before he could do anything about it, however, a group of people came into the bar and fed past him toward the tables.
The last man in the group bumped Chuck’s shoulder, and that was all it took. Before the guy knew what hit him, Chuck had him in a headlock, his arm twisted behind his back. With his heartbeat roaring loudly inside his brain, it took a moment for Chuck to calm down and remember that he was on the outside now. Outside, people got more slack, more space.
“I said, let him go,” the bartender repeated, a wooden baseball bat clenched in his hands.
Chuck released the guy and stepped back.
“Sorry, man,” Chuck said. “No offense.”
Then he walked out of the bar and down the street until he found a barber shop.
“Try ‘bank robbery Pennsylvania,’” Jo directed.
She and Danny were at his mother’s computer, using the Internet to search the possibility that there was unrecovered cash out there, cash from a bank robbery where dye packs had been ignited.
So far they hadn’t come up with any specific thefts, but they had found some interesting information. According to what they were reading on the web, more and more banks were using dye packs to protect themselves from theft. Apparently, the money packs looked perfectly normal, but when they were removed from the vault or building, a magnetic sensor forced the packs to explode, dousing the money and the thief with a vivid, permanent dye, usually pink or purple in color.
Jo’s theory was that Frank Malone had robbed a bank that had dye packs. Somehow, he had gotten away with the money, but he couldn’t use it because it was permanently stained. Desperate to find a way to get the stains out, he had tried to get help from household hints expert Jo Tulip—first by calling on the phone, and when that didn’t work, by arranging the situation so that he could sit across from her face-to-face and have her explain. His actions seemed extreme, but if he had tried every other avenue for getting out the stains, all to no avail, he would have been desperate. The kind of guy who robbed banks and was closely associated with the mob probably didn’t think twice about clobbering some guy and throwing him in the trunk in order to take his place on a date.
“Let me call the chief and bring him up to speed,” Jo said when she saw that their search brought back too many hits to be useful. “You keep trying to narrow it down.”
Jo went to retrieve her cell from her purse, but as she walked past Chewie, she noticed that he posture was hunched and he was chewing on something.
“Whatcha got, boy?” Jo asked, leaning down. Mrs. Watkins had said it was okay for Chewie to come inside the house, but Jo didn’t want to push it. She figured it would be just her luck if he had gotten hold of a box of tissues or something. Chewie loved to tear up tissues.
He fought Jo for what was in his mouth, but finally she got him to open up and spit it out. What was left was black and rectangular, with wires and circuits hanging down.
“Uh, Danny?” Jo said, holding it up to him. “What was this?”
Danny glanced her way and then did a double take.
“That was the remote control for the television,” he said, laughing.
“Oh, Chewie!” Jo scolded. “Bad dog! No!”
Jo apologized profusely to Danny, but he assured her that it had been a universal remote and not the original one that had come with the television.
“I think my mom got it at a discount store,” he said. “It shouldn’t be hard to replace.”
Still mortified, Jo kept one hand on Chewie’s collar as she retrieved her purse from the couch, got out her cell, and dialed the police station. Focus. She needed to focus.
Once she had Chief Cooper on the phone, she explained what she remembered about the telephone call and what she and Danny and his mother had since deduced about the dye packs.
“Danny and I have been online, searching for unsolved bank robberies in Pennsylvania, but so far there’s just too much data to be useful.”
“Don’t waste your time,” the chief said. “We’ve got that information on our end. I’ll put someone on it. In the meantime, I got word back from the lab in Moore City. Once we ruled out your prints, we were left with two others. One has no match. The other came up in the computer.”
“What are you saying?”
“That it looks like two people searched your house. One of them has a police record, one does not.”
“Do you have a name for the one who does?”
“Yeah, they’re sending over the info. If you want to drop by the station in an hour or so, we should have it by then. You can take a look at the mug shot, see if you recognize him.”
“Was it the same guy you showed me before?”
“No. Someone different.”
Jo glanced at Danny, who was still working at the computer. She hadn’t told him about the break-in because she hadn’t wanted to worry him. Considering his current physical state, she knew that knowledge would do nothing but make him feel agitated and helpless.
“Chief,” she said softly, leading Chewie through the door to the patio, where Danny couldn’t hear, “if our theory about the dye is correct, then why would someone have searched my house? What on earth were they looking for?”
“I wish I knew, Jo,” he replied. “I wish I knew.”
After the haircut, Chuck got directions to a Goodwill store. There, he picked out a different shirt and a leather jacket, one that looked less uniform. He left the prison jacket in the dressing room, paid for his items, and walked to the front door of the store. He simply stood there for a moment, waiting, until he realized that he could go on through without a pass or being on a roster.
He was free now. He had to get used to that.
Outside, he looked around and considered his options. The Scotch had made him feel a little nauseous, and he realized he needed to have lunch. With the image of a steak still looming in his mind, he wasn’t content with eating in some dive. He wanted a decent meal.
With purpose in his step, Chuck walked to the nearest bus stop and caught the uptown. By the time he got off, he was just a block from a decent steak house and he was famished. He went to the restaurant and placed his order and dug in the moment it came. When the waitress stopped to refill his coffee, she hesitated, looking at his plate.
“Wow, you sure are hungry,” she said, eyes wide.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and checked her out. She was cute enough, if he ignored the bulges at her waist and at the tops of her thighs. Nothing wrong with a little meat.
“I’m hungry for a lot of things,” he said, giving her his best up-and-down gaze. “What time do you get off?”
She met his eyes, considering. Then she leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“I might be interested, except for one thing,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t date ex-cons.”
He blinked, confused. How did she know? He’d gotten his hair cut and bought the new clothes. He wasn’t sporting any prison tattoos.
“You’re cutting your meat with the side of your spoon,” she explained. Then, with a laugh, she turned and walked away.
Chuck looked down, mortified to see that he’d been eating the way they did in prison.
He had forgotten he could use a knife.
18
Once Lettie had been given a full behind-the-scenes tour of the Dates&Mates facility, she was introduced to the boss, an attractive, fortyish woman named Tasha Green.
“Lettie,” Ms. Green said. “Welcome to Dates&Mates. I’m so glad you were able to start right away. We didn’t expect to have such a sudden opening.”
Lettie nodded, looking down at the floor. Only she knew the true cause for that sudden opening.
“Anyway,” Ms. Green said, “this will be your desk. Viveca is my assistant, so you’ll be stepping right in where she left off.”
Lettie had to ask the question, even though she didn’t want to know the answer.
“Is she…how…how bad is she hurt?”
“From what I understand, she’s been put on full bed rest, but she and the baby are both fine.”
Lettie heaved a private sigh of relief.
“Anyway, I’ve had several people going through her work this morning, and though there are a few open-ended matters, it looks like she was wrapping things up pretty well for her maternity leave. She has a file on her computer that describes a lot of the procedures you’ll need to know to use the system. You can start by looking through that file. Then you can familiarize yourself with the computer, maybe scroll through the client profiles a little bit to get a feel for what we’re about.”
“Yes, ma’am. That sounds fine.”
“Why don’t you settle in, and then we will touch base in about an hour. I have a meeting, but then I’d like to go over some things with you, some projects that I think you can handle right off the bat. Sound good?”
“Sounds fine.”
Lettie sat at the desk, which was positioned in a recessed area near the door to Ms. Green’s office. It was set up so that Lettie’s back was to the wall, which couldn’t have been more perfect for her data-stealing purposes. Unless someone came and stood directly beside her, they wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing on the screen.
“Ms. Green, how about the telephone?” Lettie asked. “How should I handle your calls?”
“Unless it’s urgent, just take a message. I usually return calls right after lunch and again at the end of the day.”
“Okay.”
Ms. Green walked to the doorway and then turned back.
“Oh, and Lettie?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Please, call me Tasha. We’re not all that formal around here.”
“Jo, you’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?” Mrs. Watkins asked.
After her conversation with the chief, Jo and Danny had given up on the computer and relocated back outside on the patio. Jo wanted to keep an eye on Chewie, who was back on his extended leash. Currently, he was napping in the sunshine. Obviously, he wasn’t tormented by guilt over the incident with the remote control.
“Sure,” Jo replied, fixing the cushions under Danny’s foot. “Thank you.”
“We’re having double cheeseburgers and French fries,” Mrs. Watkins said as she went back inside. “Danny’s favorite.”
Jo was wishing she had taken a pass. She glanced at Danny’s face and saw that he was smiling at her.
“What?”
“I know what you’re thinking. Fat. Calories. Starch.”
“I just don’t understand how someone who eats like you do stays in such good shape.”
Danny shrugged.
“Metabolism. Basketball.”
“You realize, don’t you, that you’ll be pretty inactive for a while. Maybe you should rethink your eating until your foot is better.”
“Maybe once I get my cast on and move back home I will,” he said. “Right now, no way would I pass up my mom’s wonderful cooking.”
Jo pinched Danny on the leg and then sat on the chair next to him.
“You are so spoiled,” she teased.
“Spoiled?” he replied. “I prefer to think of it as much-deserved pampering.”
Their eyes met and held. For a moment, the memory of Saturday’s kiss flashed back into Jo’s mind. She looked at Danny’s mouth and wondered if she kissed him again if it would feel the same.
Or even better.
He kept his eyes on her, and slowly he leaned toward her. After a long hesitation, she leaned into him as well.
