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When they pulled into the parking lot at Crossbones, Blake saw no police cars. She put the car in park and let it idle as she leaned back in her seat and gave a little sigh of relief. At least she didn’t have to worry about her sister being there.
Sean glanced from her to the door and back again. “We are actually going to go inside, right?”
“Of course we’re going inside. I just want to wait a few minutes. The other day, Pepper was driving a Camry, and I don’t see her car anywhere. Maybe she’s on break or something.” She glanced over at the man next to her and remembered what her major focus had been before this whole mess had started: her preoccupation—okay, obsession—that he hadn’t kissed her yet.
Those thoughts still hadn’t left her mind. They’d just gotten pushed back a little bit. Her eyes slid over his features as he studied the parking lot, and nerves trembled in her stomach. She’d known him over six months, and he still caused sparks to shoot across her skin. It didn’t help that they were in close quarters or that he smelled of old books and coffee, which was about the biggest aphrodisiac in her wheelhouse.
The dimple in his cheek flashed a second before he turned his head and caught her gaze. Her cheeks heated as she jerked her head away, embarrassed to be caught staring.
But he wasn’t having it. He reached over and cupped her cheek, gently turning her head back to face him. “What’re you thinking, pretty lady?”
She should totally do it. She should just press her lips to his and make the first move, but the freight train of nerves clattering through her body wouldn’t let her do it. “I was just, um...” She glanced down. “Wondering why you came with me,” she finished lamely.
He leaned back, his smile fading a notch as he assessed her. He’d given her the opportunity, and she hadn’t taken it. She knew she would kick herself later. Heck, she was already kicking herself.
“What I’m doing here is caring about you. Worrying about you.”
When she started to open her mouth to protest, he reached up and pressed his fingertips to her lips. “And before you tell me you don’t need a babysitter, trust me, I’m fully aware you can handle yourself. But at the same time, you’ve gotta understand that the thought of you stumbling across dead bodies with killer clowns running around makes me just a tad bit anxious. A lot of people love you, Blake. A lot of people would be really upset if you got hurt. And personally, I feel a little bit better serving as backup in case you stumble across Pennywise and he happens to be feeling a little bit stabby. So you’re just going to have to deal with that.”
She reached up and pulled his fingers away from her mouth, yet she couldn’t help but lick her lips. “I wasn’t going to argue with you. I was just going to say thank you for being here.”
He leaned in, sending a cascade of shivers down her spine as he reached up to tuck a strand of dark-blond hair behind her ear. “Baby, I’m always here for you.” He leaned in a bit more, and her eyes started to drift shut, when Sean’s grasp tightened. “There she is!”
Blake’s eyes shot open. “What! Who?” For a moment, Blake had forgotten where the two of them even were.
Sean gently turned her head in the direction of the door to Crossbones. Pepper had parked her Camry right in front and was swaying her pointy hips as she walked inside.
She looked at Sean. “You ready?”
Disappointment crossed his face, but then he grinned. “Hey, I’m just Robin on this mission. Lead the way, Batman.”
They walked across the lot, and Sean opened the door for her, letting her indeed lead the way.
The lunch crowd at Crossbones didn’t seem too busy, but several booths were filled with patrons—mostly an older crowd from what she could see. A bearded man looked up when she entered and waved from his booth. Cat Schroder. She remembered him from his stop by Mystery Cup. She raised her hand to wave, when she heard a snippy voice at her back.
“Oh lord, it’s you. I should have known that after the cop sister comes the nosy sister.”
Blake turned and came eye to eye with Pepper. Her pinched face narrowed as she stared down her nose, and Blake had the strong urge to tell her that if someone slapped her on the back, her features might stick that way. The woman didn’t look as though she’d settled in for her workday since she still had her bedazzled pink duffel purse slung over her shoulder. Do they even sell Bedazzlers anymore?
Sean slid onto a barstool and patted the one next to him. “Actually, Blake came to return something, and we thought we’d stay for lunch.”
She took the barstool next to Sean as Pepper’s eyes flicked back and forth between them. “Return something? Return what?”
Blake dug the wallet out of her purse. “Whit left his wallet when he was at Buttkick this morning. Orlando asked me to return it. Is he around?”
“My wallet?” Whit stuck his head out from behind the wall of liquor that lined the back of the bar. “Oh, thank God! I was about to call and cancel my credit cards.”
He glanced up at Pepper as he walked out from behind the liquor wall, and his expression became stern. “Miss Wright, good to see you’re back from lunch.” His eyes snapped to the clock, leading Blake to believe that Pepper had taken more than her allotted hour. The young woman’s cheeks turned the same shade of pink as her hair as she stomped behind the bar. The chill in Whit’s attitude surprised Blake. It was a far cry from how friendly the two had been last time she was in.
Whit turned his attention back to Blake as she slid the wallet across the counter to him. “No worries, I didn’t take any of your credit cards. No online shopping or anything.”
Sean winked. “She says that, but if an Amazon order of horror movies and chocolate-covered coffee beans shows up on your statement, you know where to turn.”
Whit laughed as she playfully smacked Sean on the arm.
Pepper, who seemed forever opposed to cracking a smile, rolled her eyes and turned away from them. Blake watched her as Sean and Whit made small talk. She vaguely heard Sean order cheeseburgers for them both as she tried to think of a good way to casually ask, “Were you sleeping with Todd Lang, and oh, by the way, did you murder him and drag his body into an attic?”
Pepper walked over to the edge of the bar and looped her beaded keychain over a hook on a panel next to three other sets of keys before she stuffed her purse in a cubby underneath it. The little area at the edge of the bar seemed like a good hiding place for personal effects, and she wondered if Pepper kept her personal belongings there all the time.
When Pepper turned back her way, she kept her eyes on Whit as she gathered her pink hair up in a ponytail and secured it with an elastic band.
“Is that really a safe place?” Blake asked, interrupting a conversation that she hadn’t been at all paying attention to.
“Huh?” Whit looked at her with a confused expression. “Is what a safe place for what?”
“Oh, sorry.” She gave her head a little shake, trying to remember that people couldn’t see exactly what was going on inside her brain, which was most definitely a good thing. She pointed to the panel behind the bar. “The keys. I noticed a lot of keys hanging there. I was just wondering if that’s where everyone keeps their keys. That just doesn’t seem like a safe place. I mean anyone could grab them, right? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep them in your pocket or purse or something?”
Sean’s eyes followed hers to the panel along the wall, where the sets of keys hung, and Blake wondered if he saw what she did. As soon as Pepper had looped her keys around the hook, Blake’s eyes had zeroed in on the triangular key that she was quite familiar with because it looked just like the one Micah had given her to get into the apartment above Sliced.
“Oh that.” Whit waved it off. “The managers keep their keys there because we all have keys on our key rings to different spots in the building—storage, back doors, cabinets, whatever. It just makes sense to keep the keys there in case someone needs to get into something.”
Alarm bells were going off in Blake’s head. “But doesn’t that seem kind of dangerous? I mean, anyone could come up and snatch the keys.” She could almost smack herself for not realizing that the first time she’d been in to talk to Pepper. But she really wanted to know just how methodical a person Pepper was. If she were the killer, she could throw up the defense that anyone could have gotten to her keys since everyone knew she hung them right by the bar. Heck, she could even claim they’d gone missing, when in reality she could just be covering her skinny behind.
Whit chuckled. “No one’s getting behind the bar unless they’re supposed to be back here.”
Blake could see that the way the bar was set up, it would be difficult for a person to get back there. They would have to lift up a section of the bar to be able to walk through. That wasn’t something that could really be done without someone behind the bar noticing. The place was so busy, with employees coming and going behind the bar, that one person slipping in and out didn’t catch anyone’s attention. Maybe that had been exactly what Pepper was counting on.
The girl sidled up to Whit and crossed her thin arms over her ample breasts. “You don’t owe her an explanation, Whit.” She jerked her chin at Blake. “Why are you so concerned about our keys, anyway?”
“No reason,” she lied. “Just an observation. At the café, everyone is leery about leaving anything personal out front where a customer could get to it. Have any of your keys ever gone missing?”
Pepper ignored the question. “Of course the omnipotent Blake Harper”—she waved her hands around to prove her sarcastic point—“knows how to do everything right.”
“Pepper!” Whit snapped. “What has gotten into you? We’re making conversation. Blake was nice enough to bring my wallet back. What right do you have to be rude to her?”
The pink-haired woman shrank back a bit, still seething. “I’m rude to her because she seems intent on screwing up my life!”
That seemed a bit melodramatic. She’d come down a couple of times to ask some questions, but she wasn’t quite sure how that had ruined Pepper’s life. “Uh, what are you talking about?”
Pepper jabbed a finger at her. “Bad luck surrounds you. Death surrounds you. Because of you, I have to wait another two weeks before I can even get into my new apartment. Apparently, it’s going to take the cleaning service that long to get the smell out. I’m homeless! And it’s your fault!”
Sean put a protective hand on Blake’s arm. “Are you serious right now? Blake didn’t kill anyone. If she hadn’t found the body, you would have found it, and guess what? You still wouldn’t have gotten to move in.”
“He’s right,” Whit agreed. “You can’t blame that on her, Pepper.”
The woman’s furious brown eyes pinged from one of them to the other. “But I can blame her for the rumors that have been started about me. I can tell some of the things you must have been sharing with everyone just from the questions your sister asked me this morning. She actually asked me if I had a clown suit! People think I’m a killer! And not only that, they think I was involved with that slimy Todd Lang because that’s what you’re probably telling everyone!”
“I...” Okay, so that was her theory, but she hadn’t shared it with... Okay, so she’d shared it with a few people. But even if she hadn’t, Pepper was talking loudly enough that the people in the next town were probably getting an earful of the situation. In Blake’s opinion, the louder Pepper’s protests got, the more suspicion around her grew. The lady doth protest too much.
“Okay, I never spread any rumors about you, Pepper.” Blake kept her voice calm. “I never said you were dressed as a clown. As far as Todd Lang...” She bobbled her head. “Well, he did like to date younger women, so... sorry, but that wouldn’t be much of a stretch for anyone to come up with. Are you saying you weren’t involved with him?”
“Oh my God!” Pepper growled, lunging in Blake’s direction. Thank goodness for Whit’s quick reflexes, or Pepper would have come over the bar at her. He had an arm firmly around Pepper’s waist as she continued to seethe. “I’m a black belt, Blake Harper. Come here and let me show you how I take care of nosy busybodies.”
“Uh, Whit.” Sean moved a protective arm around Blake. “Maybe you should box our lunch up to go.”
“Yeah.” He cast a stern look at the woman struggling in his arms. “I think that might be best.”
Whit put his face close to Pepper’s ear, and Blake couldn’t hear what he said, but as pale as Pepper got, it couldn’t have been good. After he finally let her go, Pepper quickly retreated to the back and out of sight, while the other patrons turned back to their own conversations.
Whit proceeded to make small talk with Sean until their lunch was delivered moments later. By then, Blake was more than ready to make a quick exit.
“You okay?” Sean asked as they left the building.
“I’m fine,” she said dejectedly.
Sean stopped and turned to her. “What is it? If it’s Pepper, don’t listen to her. Don’t let her upset you.”
“It’s not that.” Blake blew out a breath and raked a hand through her hair. “I’m just irked that the visit was a total bust. And what about that apartment key hanging in plain sight? Anyone could have figured out a way to grab it, or maybe that’s what Pepper wants everyone to think. I keep trying to narrow things down, and all I end up doing is casting the net wider.”
“Well, come on back to the bookstore. We can discuss it over lunch,” he said, lifting up the sack of food he held. “Double cheeseburgers. I’ll even let you have my pickles.”
Blake grinned and started across the lot to her car. But when she noticed the police car parked next to hers, she stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, sweet holy crapballs.”
Kyle slid out of the passenger seat as Jason climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood next to the car, looking as though he would rather be anywhere else. What on earth are they doing back here if they already questioned Pepper?
Blake stood her ground as her younger sister walked up to stand directly in front of her.
Kyle crossed her arms over her chest and firmed her lips. Her eyes tensed before she finally spoke. “That’s the last straw, Blake Harper. You’re under arrest for obstructing an investigation.”