Chapter Eleven
Solomon was parked near the remains of the bonfire, the ashes swept under the hedgerow.
He had packed a very sensible case full of jeans, leggings, light sweaters, a dark jacket and gloves, my recently purchased dancing llama pajamas (because he couldn’t find the horsey ones), and a pair of sneakers.
There was a matching amount of underwear and matched socks and a small pack of skincare and cosmetics.
If he were a regular man, I would have been astounded by the attention to detail and texted all my friends, but since he owned a private investigation company, it was to be expected that he noticed things I used.
I didn’t even need to text my friends since Lily was here too.
“I thought you were sending someone from the agency,” I told him after he unloaded.
“Since we don’t know how long you’ll be undercover, I thought I’d come myself,” he said. “I’d kiss you but I don’t know how that plays into your cover story.”
“Best play it cool,” I said, turning my back to the stable yard and blowing him a kiss.
After he left, Lily said, “Remember when you and Solomon went undercover as husband and wife?”
“Yeah.” I smiled.
“Amazing how long ago that feels.”
“Isn’t it?”
“If necessary, we could have been wife and wife for this job.”
“We practically are anyway.”
“If everything goes wrong in life, shall we just give up and marry each other?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t seem like giving up. Just more bestie goals.”
“We’d have such a cute house. We can bring our kids up together. We can have separate bedrooms and never hear each other snore. We can file our taxes together.”
“I don’t snore!”
“You’re asleep. How do you know?”
“No one’s complained.”
“Maybe your sleepmates are too polite.”
We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Politeness had never been a top quality in my previous relationships.
Neither had honesty. In fact, until Solomon, and before him, Maddox, I’d had a string of unsuccessful relationships.
Even calling them relationships felt like an over-exaggeration.
There had even been one really unfortunate engagement that came close to blowing up my family.
“We can babysit each other’s kids,” Lily continued. “We can have a kitchen garden and movie nights and… are you pregnant yet?” Lily stared at me.
I sucked in a breath and shook my head. “No. We’ve been trying but no dice. We even went to a fertility clinic and they said there’s nothing wrong, nothing that should feasibly stop us from conceiving, so just keep trying.”
“This case has now got in the way of that,” pointed out Lily. “If you need to sneak out for conjugal relations, I can hold down the fort.”
“We’re past the optimal days this month,” I said, “but thank you for that.”
“Guess we’d better solve it then so you can get back on the horse, so to speak, next month.”
“I’m not sure Solomon will like being referred to as a horse.”
“You’re the one riding him,” said Lily with a shrug. Then she winked. “Giddy up.”
“Stop horsing around,” I said and we fell about in fits of laughter. When I stopped giggling, I reached for her hand. “I’m really glad you’re here. I can’t think of a better person to solve a mystery with.”
“Of course you can’t. Qualified, yes. Better, no. I am so far beyond excited, I can’t even tell you. When we open our detective agency…”
“We are?”
“Duh, of course. After we’re married—”
“We are, already.”
“I meant to each other, and when the kids are at school, we should start a new business.”
“Oh, of course,” I agreed, playing along.
“We’ll call it the Graves Sisters.”
“Aww.”
“And the tagline will be ‘Digging Mysteries’ and we can have a little drawing of us as cartoon characters in beige coats carrying magnifying glasses.”
“We can wear deerstalkers.”
Lily pulled a face. “No. We have to draw the line somewhere. What do you say? Are you in?”
“In,” I decided and we shook hands. “But before we upend our lives, we should eat and get some rest, then we’re going…”
“Don’t say it,” Lily squealed.
“We’re…”
“Ooooooh!”
“Going snooping,” I finished quickly.
“I knew it! Argh! So excited!”
Lily made dinner and we ate at the small table while I ran through what we knew so far, and whom we’d met, with Lily nodding and exclaiming. When we finished, we washed our dishes and left them on the draining rack to dry, and changed into dark clothes.
“Should we smear our faces with mud?” Lily asked as we peered out the window into the dark of the yard. I pulled the drapes shut, cutting us off from the outside, and moved around, closing all the other drapes and blinds.
“No, we’ll look crazy if we bump into anyone,” I said as I switched on the TV. “Now it looks like we’re home all night if anyone checks out the cabin.”
“I thought the whole idea of snooping is to not bump into anyone.”
“It is, but we should be prepared. We don’t know who’s around after dark. If we run into anyone, we’re taking a post-dinner stroll to talk about our schedule or training or something. No one will think anything of it. They will think something of it if we’re covered in mud.”
“Good job I have my knit mask,” said Lily, pulling a hat with holes cut out from her pocket.
“Why? What?” I failed to pull together a question that covered why she had such an item.
“I thought I should be prepared for everything. Don’t you have one?”
“No.”
“Do you want one?”
I thought about it. “Yes, but only for work purposes.”
“What other purposes are there?”
I gazed at her. “I never know with you.”
Lily placed a hand over her heart and sucked in a breath. “I’ll try to not take offense at that,” she said imperiously. “Anyway, your mom made it for me when we did the spy class. She cut the holes and stitched it too! Isn’t it neat?”
Lily held out the mask for me to inspect.
It was well made with perfect stitches and super soft knitted fabric.
Yet it was also disconcerting that my mom spent her spare time making the kinds of masks bank robbers wore; although perhaps she’d tapped into a cottage industry that was underrepresented. It was hard to tell with my mom.
Since I didn’t have my own bank robber mask, I settled for pulling up the hood on my black windbreaker.
“First step is to monitor the house,” I said.
“That’s where we’re most likely to see Joel and Yvette.
I want to know if Yvette has come back yet and what they talk about.
Joel rejected Yvette but they live so close and they have to plan Jessica’s funeral so they can’t ignore each other. ”
“I want to know if they killed your client,” said Lily.
“That’s why we’re listening in,” I pointed out. “If they are in on it together, we need to hear them talk about Jessica and how they’re getting away with it. Then we can call in the police and get them arrested. Even better, we need evidence on how they did it.”
“How did they do it?” asked Lily.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Garrett said it looked an accident but Jessica claimed someone tampered with her car before so maybe that person did it again. Her car does have a flat so that could be more tampering or an accident. I’m not sure how someone would know she’d borrow her sister’s car.”
“The husband is one evil man if he did it, but the sister? Even worse. How can you betray your sister like that?”
“Easily,” I said. “That is, apparently easily for Yvette. Me? I couldn’t do that. Not even to Serena. Certainly not to you.”
“That’s a good thing. If you had an affair with my husband, you’d have more problems than them.”
“Eww,” I said, pulling a face at the idea.
“Hey! He is my husband.”
“And he’s still my brother so my ‘ew’ stands.”
“What about Serena’s husband?”
“Still ewww. I work with Delgado. He’s like a brother to me, too. Let’s go,” I said, hopeful Lily wouldn’t summon up any other possibilities, and we stepped outside.
Night blanketed the stables and the air was still. A full, creamy moon hung heavy in the clear sky and stars twinkled in the distance. An owl hooted then an animal howled, long and low, but mercifully far away.
When Lily’s hand landed on my arm, I jumped. “If I get eaten by a coyote, you still need to raise Poppy like she’s your own,” said Lily.
“Are there different grades of raising children according to what you get eaten by?” I asked, wondering. I checked the cabin door was locked and turned away, not wanting to linger. Noise drifted down from the clubhouse but they would all head to their cabins sooner or later.
“No.” Lily paused. “What else do you think is out there?”
“Nothing. It’s just country sounds we’re not used to.
” We hung a left at the gate and headed towards the stables.
It would have been quicker to pass through the parking lot but we’d also be more obvious as two people walking around.
By the hedges, we had some cover. It shouldn’t matter if we did bump into anyone else but I’d prefer to avoid it wherever possible.
The stables were silent except for the occasional shuffle in a stall, or a huff from a horse, its head hanging over the barn door. A ginger cat ran across the yard, disappearing around the corner, in pursuit of something small we hadn’t seen.
We reached the pathway to the house without coming across another person and followed it all the way to the Caseys’ garden.
We paused, crouching to peer through the hedge just as I’d done earlier when I’d dropped my boot. Lights blazed across the back of the house but there was no sign of movement inside.
“We need to get closer,” I said.
“On it,” said Lily and took off at a sprint, hunched over so she almost scampered on all fours. She reached the back of the house where I thought the kitchen was and leaned her back against it, then slid to the ground.