Chapter Twenty

“Okay, no one that skinny should ever have naked pictures taken of themselves,” I said as I struggled not to laugh my ass off.

“Uh, yeah, I completely agree, these are totally wrong in every sense of the word.”

It seemed the vocal Mr. Client Guy might have had another reason for being in town, a reason he was covering up for by making a big fuss about Janice and his files. Or maybe there was something on one of the files Janice had that would be incriminating. Either way, I was pretty sure we’d tracked the wrong rabbit.

“Do you think he was being blackmailed?” Ben asked, stuffing back into the manila envelope the nudie pictures of a very skinny client guy and an extremely tiny, curvy blonde getting it on.

“I can’t think of what else the note we found in the envelope means, since it specifically said, ‘Pay up or suffer.’ But that’s not our main concern. If this guy got caught with his pants down, literally, the only way it would hook into killing Janice is if she was the blackmailer. I can’t see that.”

“I can’t either. Janice never struck me as the greedy type.” He ran his fingers through his already mussed hair and looked a little more adorable than usual. Put together Ben was nice. But Ben slightly disheveled was a whole other sexy animal.

And this line of thinking was definitely not helping our investigation. Plus, sexy or not, those pictures put me off from getting naked with even a slightly disheveled Ben. No way did I want to go to bed with someone who had spent the last ten minutes staring at that blonde’s perfect, little, cellulite-less body. If he thought he was getting on to mine after that, which was seriously a far distance from perfect, little, or cellulite-less for that matter, he was so wrong. Sigh.

Ben had the envelope resealed and ready to take back to the bed and breakfast before dawn came. I looked at the clock on his mantel of pictures and winced at the time. “It’s after midnight. I should probably go; I have to work tomorrow. Well, today, actually.” I stood up from the surprisingly comfortable and yet still ugly-as-sin couch, and went to the piecrust table to pick up my keys from the wooden bowl. “You’re going to take those back tonight, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll get them back in, and we’ll wait to hear what the police have to say tomorrow before officially crossing this guy off our list. Pictures or no pictures, there is still something wrong about the way he keeps demanding files that aren’t his. But I did tell Dennis down at the station to look into the guy’s alibi and whereabouts for the last week or so. Hopefully, Dennis will want to share with yours truly what information he finds, when he gets done, since I put him on the lead.”

“Well, let me know what you find out, if anything. I feel like so much time has passed since her death and we’re not getting anywhere. It’s frustrating.”

“I feel the same way, Ivy. We’re going to have to be a little patient and let the police do their thing while we do ours.”

This time there was no lascivious look in his eyes and I knew he was being totally sincere. I thought about the fact that Ben had a whole year to get to know Janice and see her around town. He had a lot more invested in this than I did. After all, I knew her only one evening.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” I grabbed my discarded windbreaker and put it on in anticipation of the cold night air outside.

Ben stood from his position on the comfy-looking chair and walked over to me. The way he moved reminded me of a cat on the hunt. Stealthy and sleek, animal in his grace. Okay, now I was getting a little hokey and a lot turned on. Again.

Think of the blonde, think of the blonde, I reminded myself, and the urge to throw Ben on the convenient floor he’d mentioned earlier subsided a little. But before I could blink, he was next to me and his hands were tangled in my hair. His mouth swooped down on mine and I felt branded, owned, possessed. Those soft lips caressed mine as he massaged my scalp and made a low growl in his throat.

I thought I purred myself and wondered what kind of wild animal jungle sex I was missing tonight by going home to my cold, lonely bed. But Ben had things to do tonight, the least of which was to put the blackmail envelope back in Mr. Hedlund’s room before the man came back from his hopefully very unpleasant night in jail.

Ben licked the seam of my lips and all other thoughts fled.

After we both came up for air, I walked my shaky legs out to my Santa Fe and Ben stayed in the open doorway until I had started the car and driven off. I watched him in my rearview mirror until I almost couldn’t see him anymore and realized I was no longer on the pavement part of the road.

Back at the old homestead, and still shaky from my near collision experience with the drainage ditch on the side of the road, I wrapped up in a terrycloth robe and made myself some hot chocolate to chase away the cold.

I hoped Ben was safely back at his house and kicked myself for not asking him to call when he finished returning the goods. Even though Hedlund may not have been responsible for Janice’s death, it didn’t mean he wasn’t culpable for something.

Looking at the clock, I realized it was after one a.m. and I’d better get into bed if I wanted to retain even half of my normal capacity for dealing with customers. I downed the hot chocolate and trundled myself off to that lonely, cold bed I’d thought of earlier and tried to snuggle down under the warmth of the covers.

Weird dreams of knights in tarnished armor and flappers dancing with caped men intruded into the few hours of sleep I got. So I was not a happy camper the next morning when Mr. Jorgensen and his wife came in about the cape with the dried blood, but I still tried to be nice. They were customers, after all, and even if he was innocent until I could prove him guilty (now that I’d essentially lost my prime suspect), she could still be a client, living the high life, while he was behind bars.

“Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen. How are you today?”

Perhaps I didn’t pull the polite thing off very well, because she squinted her little eyes at him and he gave me a very odd look before answering. “We’re fine, Ivy. Thanks for asking. I, uh, wanted to come in this morning because of the cape I dropped off last week.”

Ah-ha! So he was going to try to get the cape back. He’d realized what incriminating evidence it had on it and now he needed to take it for a cleaning before he brought it back. Guilty, guilty man. My inner voice shook its head at the duplicity of people.

Mr. Jorgensen cleared his throat and I waited for the words to come out of his mouth. Words that would condemn him for the bad person he was. I was just sorry it had to be done in front of his wife.

“I, ah, wanted to see if the cape ended up with some blood on it and, if it did, say I was sorry. I thought I turned it in clean, until Doris went to wash my good white shirt I wore that night and saw the blood on it. I’d had a bloody nose before all the commotion—allergies—and thought I’d caught it all with the tissue, and kept it off your cape. But Doris showed me the stain, so I came down here to apologize, if necessary, and pay you that extra fee you charge for damaged articles.”

A likely story, but then when I thought about it, it actually was a likely story. Why would this guy offer to pay for the cleaning fee and not even try to deny the blood? If I were a murderer I would try to get it back, then clean it myself or something. Besides, wouldn’t Doris have questioned the stain?

“He has medicine to take for them darned allergies, but he never will. Too much of a guy, I guess,” Doris said, seeming to pull the thought right out of my head. What was it with the people in this town and mind reading? “Anyway, we’re real sorry about the whole thing, and I’m ashamed I didn’t see it before we brought the costume in. I have this laundry potion, would have taken the whole thing out. Could have shared it with you instead of you having to send the cape out to the dry cleaners. I feel awful.”

The woman was concerned about the dry cleaning bill and wanted to share a potion with me? Ah, small towns, gotta love ’em. Right?

Just then the phone rang, and since I’d told Kitty to take the day off, I was the only one here. “If the two of you will excuse me for a quick moment, I’ll be right back and we can settle your account. Thanks for coming in, and I appreciate your time. I’ll be right back.”

I dove for the ringing phone, my head whirling with questions. I’d fumbled two suspects in a twenty-four-hour period. Or had I? Couldn’t Doris be covering up for her husband? Or maybe she had fallen for the bloody-nose thing. Either way, I’d still wait to hear back from the police before I totally crossed him off my list, too.

I pushed the On button for the phone and was rewarded with a squawk and a woman’s voice saying, “Please hold for the next available officer,” which I took for a serious command to go find a spot where no one could hear me as I explained my idiocy. Oooo-kay. I ducked into the room between the main shop and the boudoir and hoped no one would come in.

Thirty seconds later, the deep voice of Detective Jameson came on the line. “Ms. Morris, is that you?”

“Yes, sir, it’s me. And in fact, I have the customer we spoke about last week waiting in my front room. Is this about the cloak? Should I detain him?” Oh, God, had I jumped to conclusions and this call was because they’d caught Ben sneaking out of the cabin? Had he ratted me out and said I was there, too? Or had they found my fingerprints and were making sure I was here? That way when they came and arrested me, they didn’t have to look for me?

All of a sudden I was very nervous as the detective cleared his throat. “Ma’am, you’re not going to want to detain anyone. That would be our job.” Oh, I was right, they were coming to get me. “The blood on the cape was from the wearer. We’re assuming he nicked himself shaving or had a nosebleed or something. The hospital checked the blood against his donor card.”

I guessed they weren’t coming to cart me off to jail after all. “Detective, I appreciate the call and need to tell you the man just came in this morning to tell me it was a bloody nose that left the stain. I’m sorry for the trouble you went through.” I really didn’t want to lose a client over my active imagination. “Uh, is that okay instead of you talking to him? I really don’t want to come across as some tale-teller, and since nothing was what I thought, I’d rather not lose a customer over it.” Silence greeted me from the other end of the telephone. So I added, “Please.”

A brief conversation was held on the other side of the phone line before the detective came back on. “All right, little lady.” Perhaps he didn’t remember meeting me. “That’s fine for this time, but maybe next time you’ll want to keep your nose out of things like this. Or ask your customers questions about stains before running to the police. Have a good day.”

Then he hung up and I sat on the brocade couch, dazed. What the hell kind of police force did we have here if they didn’t want to hear about possible leads from the average citizen? And had I just been totally dismissed as a feather-brained “little lady” because I brought something to them that didn’t pan out? Well, now I was really going to find out who did this to Janice before they did. I’d show them “little lady.”

I went back out to the main counter and dealt with Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen. They went home happy and my register was a little bit fuller.

I wanted to check on Ben this morning and make sure everything had turned out okay. We also needed to put our heads together and come up with another suspect. I dialed the number Ben had given me and waited for him to pick up before I could breathe a real sigh of relief. Now for a new suspect. Yep, two suspects down. Who else could I wrongfully accuse?