Chapter Four

Furry Godmother protip: Heavy stitching can ruin a look—and your night.

Jack was on the sidewalk outside the theater, surrounded by local reporters, when I arrived. He looked hot, bothered, and fresh out of patience, an unfortunate trifecta considering I’d come to argue with him. His gaze jumped to mine the minute I joined the fringe of onlookers, and he lifted his chin infinitesimally in acknowledgment. I raised my fingers waist-high in return. His eyes narrowed on the gesture, but he didn’t miss a beat in the delivery of his canned cop statement. “National Pet Pageant MC, Viktor Petrov, fell from the balcony at lunchtime today and was pronounced dead at the scene. An investigation is under way. Yes, I’ve taken point on this. No, there are no further details at this time. Mostly because that is all I am at liberty or willing to share.” He ended with a sweeping glare, and the crowd broke away in muddled complaints.

I hurried in his direction, Penelope swinging contentedly in her carrier at my side.

He caught me by the elbow when I neared and steered me into the shadow of the building. “What are you doing here?” he asked, gaze traveling the length of my new outfit. “I thought you went to work.”

“I did.”

He gave the pleated skirt and camisole top another look. “This is new.” It was hard to tell if he had an opinion on the look or was simply stating facts.

I rolled my shoulders back and cocked a hip, pulling out my inner debutante. “I couldn’t wear clothes doused in cream sauce all day,” I said.

Mom had forced me into every class on poise and grace she could find until I was too old to stay where she left me. I’d hated everything about the lessons at the time, but I’d found more and more use for them lately. Specifically when insecurity was getting the best of me or I needed to hold my ground. Both situations normally involved Jack.

He wiggled his fingers through the front door of Penelope’s carrier and clucked his tongue at her in greeting. She purred in response. “How are you holding up?” he asked, dragging his gaze back to mine.

“Not well,” I admitted, inching my chin higher. “I’ve got plans for a total breakdown later, and I’m thinking of bothering my therapist in Tahiti, but for the moment I’m on a mission from my mother.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She sent me here to crack your head. That’s threatening a police officer, and I feel like you could haul her in for that.”

Jack’s lips twitched. “She’s mad I sent Eva Little to the station.”

I tapped the end of my nose. “I’m here to convince you to release her.”

Jack widened his stance and folded his arms. “How are you planning to do that?”

“Brute strength?” I guessed.

His lips wiggled, probably considering the eight inches and fifty pounds he had on my five-foot-four, size-eight frame, but he tamped the smile down before it could arrive. “No.”

“Please?”

Jack hiked a brow. “I’m disappointed, Crocker. Usually you do better than this.”

“I’m off my game,” I admitted. “It’s been a long day, but we both know Eva didn’t kill Viktor, so why not let her go?”

“Can’t.”

“I just heard you say you’re running point on this investigation. You can do anything you want, and you already know she’s innocent. Don’t make me prove it.”

Jack’s expression turned droll. “First of all, I don’t want you trying to prove anything. You just about get yourself killed every time, and I’ve got no patience for that nonsense right now. Secondly, I have justifiable cause to hold Eva, even if you don’t like it. If nothing else, she might’ve seen something useful for finding Viktor’s killer. So she’s right where she belongs. Down at the station, going over every detail of those final minutes with my team.”

My heart fluttered. “She’s not a suspect? You think she can actually help the case?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” I gave him my best business face. “Stop talking in circles, Jack Oliver. Are you planning to charge her with something or not?”

Jack stiffened. “Eva Little doesn’t strike me as a killer, but she’s a strong lead, and I’ve been doing this long enough to know that killers come in all shapes and sizes, so I’m not ruling anyone out. I’m following the facts.”

“Maybe Viktor fell,” I suggested. “Have you thought about that?”

“Based on Viktor’s height and the height of the balcony railing, he would have had to climb over intentionally or be pushed. Eva was seen having a heated argument with the victim this morning, and she admits to slapping him. Her hair was on his jacket. She was in the balcony.”

“Her hair was probably on his jacket because he was a handsy creep,” I said, “and you already know she was standing close enough to slap him.”

Jack pressed his lips into a thin white line.

I used the break to circle back through my argument and find another approach. “Slapping him for his unwanted advances doesn’t make her a murderer. That wouldn’t even make sense. She didn’t need to be here. She was a committee volunteer, like me, and if he was such an enormous problem that she’d consider killing him, why wouldn’t she have simply stepped down? The whole thing will be over in five days. Besides, women deal with weasels like Viktor all the time. We just chin-up and move on. If we killed every man who ogled, catcalled, or groped us, there’d be a lot fewer men walking around.”

Jack’s brows knitted tight. “People do that to you?”

“Me and every other woman between fourteen and seventy.”

He scanned the horizon, head shaking, jaw locked.

“Hey.” I stroked a hand down his arm, and his attention snapped back to me. I dropped my fingers away. I had more important things I needed to tell him before he had to get back to work inside the theater. “I went to Viktor’s dressing room while you were in the lobby with Eva earlier. I needed the playbook with his detailed daily itinerary so that Mom could get started moving the event to a new venue without losing pace.”

“You removed evidence from the dressing room?”

“Not evidence. Just the playbook, and I locked the door on my way out because I found an envelope with money inside. Thirty-eight thousand dollars,” I said, raising my brows. “All one-hundred-dollar bills, tucked neatly in his top desk drawer.”

Jack cast a glance at the building beside us, brows furrowed. He dipped his head lower, rolling his shoulders in and creating a small space between us that was just our own. “I went to Viktor’s dressing room when you left. The place was trashed. There was no money. My guys went over it piece by piece, tagging everything.”

“What?” I whispered back, working his words through my crowded head. “Someone took the money? How did they know it was there?”

Jack didn’t answer, careful as always not to give me more information than absolutely necessary.

“That kind of money is a stronger motive for murder than what you’re holding Eva on,” I said. “Viktor wouldn’t have told anyone he had money like that laying around his dressing room, so whoever took it is probably the same person who gave it to him. That couldn’t have been Eva, because she was already with you when I left there, which means she was with your people at the time the room was tossed.”

A glimmer of pride flashed in his eyes. “True.”

“Thank you. So, Eva can go home?”

Jack smiled. “No.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no rule that says the money and the murder have to be related. Eva could easily have been involved with Viktor’s death somehow without knowing that money existed.”

I puffed out a sigh. “You think it’s more likely the poor guy was robbed by one criminal and murdered by another in under an hour?”

“Like I told you,” he said, “I’m not ruling anything out. I’m following the facts, and I’m making calls on evidence, not emotion.”

“Heaven forbid you ever act on your emotions,” I grouched.

Jack crossed his arms in a cocky cop pose. “If I acted on my emotions, I’d be in jail.” He dropped the attitude to dig a roll of antacids from his pocket.

“Fine. I’m going home,” I said. “If my mom asks, tell her I was here, but you won’t listen.”

“That’s not—” His phone buzzed on his hip, and he pressed it to his ear, scowling at me as he answered. “Detective Oliver. A what? No. This is a pet pageant.”

I stepped away, lifting a hand in goodbye. Jack needed to get busy finding a killer so poor Eva could go home. “Think about what I said,” I whispered.

“Stay away from Armstrong Park,” he called after me. “People are calling in a bear sighting.”

I turned on my toes and paced backward a few steps, smiling. “I’ll let Chase know.”

Jack lifted his arms like an airplane. “What?”

“It’s not a bear,” I called, putting more space between us. “It’s a massive honey-hued Tibetan mastiff.”

“Of course it is.”

*   *   *

I called my best friend, Scarlet, on my way home. Scarlet and I had met when we were in diapers and our mothers got us together regularly at their coffee dates. We’d been fast friends just as our parents had hoped, but never quite the little ladies of society they’d planned. Scarlet and I had always been more along the lines of double-trouble. Given our steadfast, headstrong maternal origins, I was never sure why anyone had expected differently.

When I’d fled to college, Scarlet had stayed and married the eldest Hawthorne brother, Carter, straight out of high school. They had four babies now, and Scarlet was deeply involved in our district’s policies, community outreach, and social affairs. So it seemed Scarlet had eventually made her mother proud. I, on the other hand, was terminally single, hadn’t produced a single grandchild for my mother, had gained four pounds since moving home last year, and couldn’t bring myself to care about any of it.

“Is this a wine or chocolate situation?” Scarlet asked in lieu of hello.

“Both.” I gave her the day’s rundown, some of which she’d already picked up through the local grapevine, which was how she’d known I was stressed out before asking, and the rest she couldn’t wait for the details on.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Scarlet lived in a proper Garden District mansion with her family, only steps from my parents and a collection of the South’s independently wealthy, from old-money aristocrats to modern-day movie stars. I lived a few streets over in an area where homes were a touch newer and within my budget. My one-story shotgun home, for example, was a New Orleans classic. Originally intended as bland utilitarian housing, the rectangular structure had been built for laborers and their families. Now, however, homes like mine had become one of the Crescent City’s cultural treasures, each as unique and inviting as the owners themselves. Mine was currently in a state of renovation while its owner figured out who she was.

I set Penelope’s carrier on the wide planked floorboards of my living room and kicked my shoes onto the shag rug beneath my coffee table. White wood trim ran the circuit through my home, outlining floors and ceilings, doors and windows. I’d painted the rooms in a muted palette, all various shades of the sunrise. There was something about colors like apricot and amber that warmed my insides and made me smile.

Penelope lumbered out of her carrier when I opened the door, stretching and yawning.

“Dinner,” I said, hurrying to the kitchen to refill her bowls and feed Buttercup, my little beta fish. “Auntie Scarlet is coming to help me brainstorm ways to prove Miss Eva’s innocence,” I told them as they each took a run at their meals.

I popped my phone onto the charging dock on my counter, then unloaded the contents of my refrigerator. Baking kept me calm, but the longer I stood in the safety of my beautiful home and newly renovated kitchen, thanks to the added income from Grandpa Smacker, the closer I came to having that long-overdue emotional breakdown.

A man had been murdered in front of my eyes today.

He’d landed close enough to splash cream sauce on my T-shirt. That was about as traumatic an experience as most people could imagine, and it was hands-down the worst thing that had happened to me in months. I deserved a cry, but I didn’t want one. I wanted to do something.

I wiped my eyes and piled cubed cheese onto a tray with olives, crackers, and grapes. Besides, I refused to have a meltdown with company coming.

I flopped my secret-recipe cookbook onto the marble countertop and flipped through the pages of things I already made regularly for my shop and special occasions, looking for something I could build upon. The board of representatives at Grandpa Smacker had suggested I divine a new product to be sold at the upcoming Fall Food Festival, specifically, something that could be enjoyed equally by humans and their pets. It was a tricky request, because instinct told me the simplest answer was to provide apple and banana slices with peanut butter for dipping, but I knew that wasn’t what the board wanted. They wanted something potentially proprietary, and the Fall Food Festival was a great place to create a test market. Problem was, I didn’t have any new ideas yet, and I’d hoped to bring some samples with me to this week’s early-morning meeting.

The doorbell rang, and I started, having nearly forgotten Scarlet was coming. I laughed at my foolish reaction, then headed for the door.

“Hello! Come in!” I sang, pulling the door wide to usher her inside. “I’m so glad you came. This has been a day from h—”

A startled bike messenger stared back at me from beneath a pointy red helmet. “Lacy Crocker?”

I yanked my chin back. “Yeah?” He was definitely not Scarlet, but I admired his bravery for wearing a skin-tight, bright-yellow knee-length onesie at his age. Since when had messengers needed to be so aerodynamic?

He handed me a clipboard. “Package.”

I signed beside the X. “What is it?”

He shrugged, then traded me a big envelope for his clipboard and pen. “Have a nice evening.” He climbed back on his bike and pedaled away.

I shut the door and ripped the bulbous package open. There was a stuffed National Pet Pageant Pet from my shop inside. I turned the big envelope upside down and shook the kitten out. A flyer for the event fluttered out with him. “Weird.” I lifted the kitty first, and my heart kicked into overdrive. Someone had taken heavy black thread and stitched a pair of large, poorly crafted Xs over his eyes and a series of smaller ones across the mouth.

Block letters on the back of the flyer spelled STOP.

I didn’t need to ask what the sender wanted stopped. I knew from experience. This was a warning to leave Viktor’s murderer alone.