CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

“Stop yelling,” I beg Julia as we walk into the office the next morning. I have a killer hangover.

“I’m whispering, you idiot,” replies Julia. “I don’t know how you’re going to make it through the day.”

I hold my throbbing head. “Lots of coffee.” I hesitate. “I vaguely remember puking last night.”

She chuckles. “All over yourself and on Brody’s shoes. You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.”

“He deserved it.” He’s not the first cop to get Lizzie puke on his shoes. I vomited all over an LPD Lieutenant’s shoes last summer after I saw Jesse’s dead body.

“You know, you also called him hot and a dickhead in the same sentence. And he was standing right beside you at the time.”

I sigh. I have no filter between my brain and my mouth after even a sip of alcohol. “That wasn’t drunk talk. He is hot, and he’s also a dickhead. It’s just unfortunate that he heard me say it. Eh, if I’m lucky, I’ll never see him again.”

Pointing in the direction of my desk, Julia says, “Look! You got flowers! Do you know who could have sent them?” There is a small bud vase on my desk filled with baby’s breath and two pink carnations.

“I could give you a list of people who didn’t send them,” I admit ruefully, studying the flowers. Why would I be getting flowers from someone?

Julia hurries over to read the card. Her mouth drops open. “They’re from Todd!”

“Douchebag Todd? Not a chance. He didn’t even pay for my dinner last night. Come on, who are they really from?”

She reads, “‘My Dearest Lizzie, Your charm is only exceeded by your beauty. Yours, Todd.’ That’s so sweet.”

“Real men don’t say girly crap like that. Seriously, are they from my parents? Or maybe my brother? My birthday is in a couple of weeks.” Although really, if these flowers are a birthday gift, I’d expect them to be a little more extravagant. I hate to be snooty, but a couple of carnations is hardly worth sending.

“Who’s Todd?” asks Blake, who has appeared next to us. Oh, holy hell. Blake is the last person I want to know anything about Todd.

“No one,” I say between gritted teeth, moving to take the card from Julia.

Blake is faster than me, and he snatches the card out of her hands. He reads the card like a bad TV announcer, “‘My Dearest Lizzie, Your charm is only exceeded by your beauty. Yours, Todd.’ Ooh, Hart has a boyfriend.”

Shit! The flowers really are from Todd! Well, that explains why the flowers are so cheap. Oh, I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. If it isn’t bad enough that Todd inexplicably has a thing for me, it’s even worse that Blake is going to ridicule me for it.

I glare at Blake. “Give me the card. Now.”

“This card?” he says, holding it up over his head and out of my reach.

I roll my eyes. “You are so immature.”

Ever my friend, Julia echoes, “Yeah, Blake, you’re so immature.”

Leering down at me, he says in a low, sexy voice, “I always thought your beauty exceeded your charm as well.”

Now I’m seeing red. Quickly, I climb onto my chair and lunge at Blake to get the card back. Once airborne, I realize I didn’t think my dismount through. My body slams into Blake’s, and he stumbles back, but manages to get his arms around me and set me down feet first. Ooh. If I didn’t hate him so much right now, I might be a little turned on. I shove him away, crumple the card, and throw it into my desk drawer.

Blake looks flustered for a moment, but quickly puts on a smirk. “Wow. You’re like a ninja. Enjoy your flowers, Hart.”

***

You know what? It’s really hard to read with a hangover. It’s even harder to catch mistakes and correct them with a hangover. I’m having a hell of a time getting my work done with this throbbing headache. I’ve already taken more than the maximum recommended dose of Advil, and I’ve had several cups of coffee. Nothing is helping.

I’m trying to make sense out of an article Blake wrote about a car accident from last night, but my brain is not functioning. I’ve read it several times, and it’s still a bunch of jibber-jabber. I finally decide to break it down sentence by sentence. The first sentence says: Tuesday evening, Liberty resident Mark Heston was killed in a one-car accident on Route Three. Okay, no mistakes there, so on to the next sentence. Witnesses say that Heston’s vehicle suddenly left the road and slammed into a telephone pole. That’s two down. Only a dozen or so left to go. Emergency vehicles blocked Route Three for two hours to assess and remove the damage. Sentence three seems good—whoa, hold on. I think I saw that wreck last night as Douchebag Todd and I were leaving the restaurant. The name Mark rings a bell from last night, too. What was it? Damned alcohol!

Already irritated, I walk over to Blake’s desk and demand, “Do you have a picture of Mark Heston to go with your article?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I do. I’m asking, aren’t I?”

Blake smiles at me coyly. “You didn’t ask nicely.”

Grrr. “Blake, would you please let me see a picture of Mark Heston?”

“No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?” He is treading on thin ice.

“I don’t have a photo yet.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

He laughs. “What would be the fun in that?”

Without another word, I stomp back to my desk, so infuriated I can’t even see straight. While I was away, a calendar reminder popped up on my screen that I need to leave now for my chiropractor appointment. Maybe if I’m lucky I can talk her into giving me a doctor’s note to get out of the rest of the day at work.

***

Lydia is all business at my appointment, and frankly, I haven’t the energy or the desire to grill her about her date with Jason like I had promised Julia. The more I think about it, the facts seem pretty straightforward—Jason was having an affair and using drugs. Sooner or later, one of those things was going to catch up with him, and unfortunately it was the deadlier one. Although if Kim had found out about the affair and gone ballistic, it could have been just as deadly for him. Maybe I’ll try asking some of Jason’s friends if he was doing drugs and call it good enough. Kim needs to face the facts, even if she doesn’t like them.

After getting some fresh air on my trip to the chiro, my hangover is surprisingly better. I return to the office and get reamed (again) by Julia about my suckish interrogation skills, but I tune most of it out. I go back to Blake’s article and am able to check and correct it in a matter of minutes. I finish up the rest of my articles for the day with no trouble. I shut down my computer and head out the door.

As I’m getting into my car, I get a text from Blake that says: A gift for you, since you asked so nicely. Huh? What is he talking about? A second later, a man’s picture pops up on my phone, and under it is written Mark Heston. Oh, snap! That’s why the name Mark rang a bell with me. Mark Heston is Lydia’s date from last night! At least he was…before he died!

My heart starts pounding as everything clicks into place. Lydia’s date from two nights ago, Jason, turns up dead from an OD, which according to his wife was completely out of character. Lydia’s date from last night, Mark, turns up dead from a car accident. Do you know what the odds are that this is a coincidence? It has to be a million to one.

Forget about protecting Lydia’s reputation. Something doesn’t feel right. This time, I’m doing the smart thing. I’m going straight to the police.

***

I march into the Liberty Police Department, state my business, and wait patiently for an investigating officer to see me. As I’m waiting, I close my eyes and run through all of the facts in my head one more time so I can give the officer a clear, detailed statement about the conclusion I’ve put together.

“Ms. Hart. Funny how we keep bumping into each other.”

I freeze at the sound of that irritating voice. Oh, why did it have to be Detective Dickhead? I open my eyes. “Is there anyone else I can speak to instead?”

He grimaces. “We’re stuck with each other. I’m in charge of the Harris case, and the Heston accident is being handled by a couple of night shift uni’s who are off-duty at the moment. Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

He leads me toward the basement stairs, and I stop dead in my tracks. “I am not going down in that creepy little interrogation room in the basement.”

“Why not?” he asks, puzzled.

I’m not telling him, because it sounds stupid. This building used to be the library when I was little. They always had their yearly Halloween party in the basement, and they used one of the rooms as a haunted house, which scared the piss out of me as a kid. That room is now the interrogation room, and I get déjà vu every time I have to go in there, which unfortunately is way too often given my extra-curricular activities this past year.

“Just…isn’t there somewhere else we could go to talk?”

The detective furrows his brow. “I guess we could go to the break room.”

He leads me down a hallway and ushers me into the police break room. It smells like stale coffee and guns, but it’s soooo much less scary than the basement room. He offers me a chair at the table and walks over to the counter, leaning lazily against it and crossing his arms. Ooh. His biceps are straining against the sleeves of his t-shirt. Gah! Why did that thought just pop into my head?!?

“You said you had some information for me,” he prompts.

“Right,” I reply, nervous about telling him my half-baked theory. “I saw Jason Harris at that new club over in Ellsworth, Vibe, two nights ago. He was with my chiropractor, Dr. Lydia Thomas.” I pause.

“Okay, and that information is pertinent why?”

Does he have to ask rude questions and look at me like I’m an idiot? It’s making me flustered. “Well…he was cheating on his wife.”

“Lots of men cheat on their wives.”

“But that’s—um…let me just go on. Last night, I saw Dr. Thomas having dinner with Mark Heston at Cooper’s Restaurant out on Route Three.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asks, his mouth pulling up in one corner.

“Yes, I’m sure. Why?”

“Because you were falling down drunk last night. You didn’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.”

I exclaim, “I wasn’t drunk when I saw them together!”

He shrugs. “I still can’t use you as a reliable witness.”

“But Jason and Mark are both dead, and Dr. Thomas was with each of them on the night they died! Don’t you think that’s a bit of a coincidence?”

“I can’t very well launch a murder investigation on ‘a bit of a coincidence’ and what seems like one woman’s bad luck with men. Besides, Heston’s accident was drunk driving, pure and simple. The officers who found him said it smelled like a distillery in his car.”

“I talked to him twenty minutes before that wreck, and he was completely sober!”

“A lot can happen in twenty minutes.”

I huff, “Fine. I’m only telling you what I know. You people can choose to ignore my opinion, yet again, and some bad shit is going to go down, yet again.” I’m starting to get a really queasy feeling in my gut about Lydia and these guys. My gut can usually detect when something bad is going on, but it’s not always so good at figuring out who the bad guy is.

I stand up to leave, and the detective moves to catch my arm. His touch is warm, and even though I’m completely pissed at him, a part of me likes being this close to him. He’s kind of…dangerous.

His voice low and ominous, he says, “I want to make it clear, Ms. Hart, that this is as far as you’ll go in this investigation. I’ve heard you have something of a reputation for meddling in police business, and I’m not going to stand for it. Do I make myself clear?”

I yank my arm away. “Very,” I sneer, stalking out of the room.

What an ass. If it weren’t for my “reputation for meddling”, two murderers would have gone free. I’ll show him. There’s a connection between those two deaths, and I’m going to find it. And when I do, I’m going to throw it in his stupid face. Then we’ll see what Detective Dickhead has to say about my “meddling”!