“Dad?” I asked, eyes darting back and forth between him and Mom. “What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t answer your phone, and I needed to speak with you.” He noticed Deke and gave him a brief nod. “Now.”
Mom had gone stock still, the color draining from her face. I could only remember how much it hurt to see Landon again, how many mixed emotions had swirled around in my head and my heart.
That was after spending three years with the man. A far cry from the quarter-century of marriage she and my father had shared before everything fell apart.
I turned to him. “We should get out of here and talk someplace else. Next door.” Darcy wasn’t his biggest fan—she was Team Mom, all the way—but she wouldn’t kick him out. Not if I begged her not to.
Deke followed us without asking if we wanted him to. I was starting to understand him a little better, and one thing had already become abundantly clear; he didn’t hang much weight on social niceties. I made a mental note to revisit the secret pictures he’d hinted about.
Darcy’s jaw fell when the three of us walked in with Dad in the lead. I threw her as apologetic a look as I could. But that wasn’t enough. “What are you doing here?” she asked, coming out from behind the register to greet us. Or throw us out. I wasn’t sure which way the wind would blow.
“We needed somewhere to talk that wasn’t next door,” I explained in a whisper. There were customers in there, even so early on a Sunday morning. And naturally, they all wanted to see how this would play out.
Darcy eyed Dad, which he pretended not to notice. One thing she and I had never agreed on and maybe never would was our view on how to treat him after the divorce. And his subsequent relationship with Holly, his girlfriend.
It was Holly who hurt Darcy worse than anything. She was barely ten years older than Darcy, twelve years older than me. Not young enough to be his daughter, but it still irked my sister something fierce that he had moved on with somebody who we could agree didn’t hold a candle to Mom.
But that wasn’t our business, not really. He was still our father, and it wasn’t like he’d cheated on Mom.
“Don’t raise your voices,” she warned, arms folded over her chest like she was protecting herself. “And make it quick if you can.”
I gave her another apologetic look before following Dad to the rear corner of the shop, between dusty stacks of secondhand books turned in for store credit. “What’s this about?” I murmured, careful to look around for eavesdroppers.
He grimaced. “I wanted to give you a little more insight on what I referred to yesterday. Before I drove away. Remember?”
My heart beat a little faster. “Sure.” I looked up, over my shoulder, to find Deke standing just behind me. Strangely, his was a comforting presence. “He said there were lots of people who might have wanted Flynn killed.”
“How do you know that?” Deke asked Dad.
Dad sighed.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “You can say it in front of Deke. He’s helping me.”
“Helping you?” Deke asked.
If he only knew how to hold his tongue when it mattered.
“Helping you?” Dad repeated. “With what? When last I checked, I asked you to leave it to the police.”
“And yet you took the chance of walking into the café, which tells me there was something you found important enough to step foot in there. What is it?”
“I only wanted to grant you a little consolation, since I know you’re worried about your friend.” He looked at Deke before continuing. “You know James Flynn owned property in Cape Hope. Up and down the coast, in fact, at times through shell companies and at times under his own name. We were already investigating after a handful of lawsuits were filed against him by vendors, contractors. There was quite a lot of questionable activity going on.”
My palms tingled. My pulse raced. “So there were tons of people who might’ve wanted to kill him.”
“But how many of them had access to the chef’s knife?” Deke murmured, close to my ear. Like the devil on my shoulder. Just when I was starting to get excited.
I turned my head, looking at him. “Okay. Then I’ll find out who did it.”
“Emma. Don’t make me regret sharing this information with you,” Dad growled.
“I’m not asking you to tell me exactly who threatened to sue him, am I? No. You don’t have to give me any specific information. Unless you want to,” I added, hopeful.
“You know I won’t.”
“I wonder at Robert Klein getting himself mixed up with a guy like that,” Deke mused. “I thought he was supposed to be smart.”
“Yeah, but if he didn’t know, he didn’t know,” I whispered with a dirty look.
“You don’t have to get so defensive.”
“I’m not!”
“Regardless,” Dad interrupted, “that was what I had to tell you. Now that he’s dead and word has spread down here, there’s more interest than ever in learning who he screwed out of what. Pardon the expression.”
“Could you tell me what you find?” I asked, hopeful again.
“What difference could it possibly make?” He wouldn’t let me look away, holding my gaze. “Well? Tell me.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have to do something, Dad. I have to feel like I’m helping. I can’t let Robbie rot in prison when there might be a way to help.”
He glanced at Deke, then sighed. “There is next to nothing you could truly do, you know.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Deke snickered softly, but I pretended not to notice instead of stepping on his foot like I wanted to. I was proud of my maturity.
I knew my father’s sighs. The one he let out then told me he knew when he was beaten—and that my sister was probably shooting us dirty looks from across the room, which meant time was growing short. “If anything comes up, I’ll let you know. But.”
I gulped. “But?” Of course, he wouldn’t let me get off that easily.
“But I want a promise from you. Promise me you won’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
“Dad—”
“I mean it,” he continued, his voice firm. “Stay out of this. Somebody killed that man. You don’t think they would hurt you if they knew you were getting close to them?”
“He has a point,” Deke murmured.
“Hush,” I hissed.
“Maybe I should leave you in charge of her,” Dad suggested, raising a brow.
“Oh? Like I’m a baby? Like I need to be babysat?”
He chuckled. “Emma. Promise me you’ll be careful and stay out of trouble.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back. “I promise.”
Dad kissed the top of my head and slipped past me, making a quick exit. He looked to Darcy before stepping out, like he hoped she would turn toward him for once, rather than away, but he was disappointed. So was I.
Meanwhile, Deke touched the hand behind my back. “Your fingers are crossed,” he observed with a wry laugh.
“Yeah? So?”
“So, I could’ve said something while your father was here but decided not to.” He ran a hand over the spines of a row of books. “Because I respect you wanting to help a friend.”
“Well, gee golly. I’m glad I’ve met with your approval.” I tilted my head to the side. “What? Are you going to take my father up on it? Are you planning to babysit me?”
“Do you need babysitting? Are you going to keep behaving like a baby?”
“You literally just finished saying you respect me, and now you’re calling me a baby. Which is it?”
“You tell me,” he challenged. “Which do you intend to be? Somebody with guts, or a baby who whines?”
“You are so lucky my sister owns this store,” I whispered, turning my back on him and working my way through the stacks to get to the door.
“Why?” he asked, and I hated the laughter in his voice.
“Because I might have pushed a pile of books on you.” I waved to Darcy on the way out and noted her interest in Deke. I would have a few questions to field later.
“But then you would never get to see the pictures I took, would you?” he asked, patting the bag he still carried over one shoulder. I guessed his laptop was in there, and the memory card.
Upon stepping outside, I turned to him. Better to ask this question now, on the sidewalk, rather than wait to enter the café and run the risk of half the town hearing in time. “How did you take pictures the cops didn’t see?”
He smiled, his eyes darting over my face. “I don’t know if I’ll tell you now. You threatened violence upon me.”
“I’ll do more than threaten if you don’t tell me. Dad made sure I took self-defense classes for years. One of the benefits--or perils—of being a detective’s daughter.”
“But I don’t intend to give you anything to defend yourself against, so I guess you won’t have reason to put all that training to use.”
Dang, he had an answer for everything. I could only shrug. “Please. Just tell me. I’ll lose sleep if I don’t know.”
“Tell me the truth about something first, if you would.”
“Can’t you ever just give me a straight answer?”
“One question.” He lowered his brow. “Just how close were you with Robert Klein? Or Robbie, as you keep calling him?”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “That’s what you wanna know? What are you, jealous?”
“Curious.” He didn’t crack a smile.
What did I have to lose? “I had a crush on him when I was sixteen. We kissed one time, near the end of the summer. My first kiss. I call him First Kiss Robbie sometimes. Do you want details, or is that enough humiliation?”
He pursed his lips. “First Kiss Robbie. Boy. You must really want to know about those pictures I took if you were willing to share that.”
“You’re right. I do. It was in the walk-in fridge, by the way.”
“Okay, okay, forget I asked.” He rubbed the back of his neck with a rueful grin. “You’re tough.”
“I know. Now. The pictures.”
“Is there anyplace a little more private where we might look at them? I doubt the café is the best option, what with all the hearing aids set to top volume and everything.”
“Good point. I’d say the library, but the head librarian is one of Mom’s best friends and my godmother, on top of that. And she’s also super into real-life murder mysteries. She’s thinking about starting a podcast and everything.” I was rambling again and knew I was rambling again and needed to stop myself.
So what did I do? Simple. I came up with the worst idea I’d ever had. “Maybe my apartment?”
I went cold inside the second I said it. What was I thinking? Would he take it the wrong way?
Shoot. Had I left any underwear lying around?
“Okay,” he agreed. “Lead the way.”
Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.