Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter
Forty-Four
“Look who’s here, Auntie Em!” Livy called out.
She spun in circles, a big smile on her face.
I warily met Wyatt’s gaze.
Yep, as I’d feared, those freaking butterflies woke up and fluttered around inside me.
“I need a number for a good pest control company,” I said to Jemma out of the corner of my mouth.
She glanced around fearfully, as if expecting to see cockroaches skittering across the floor. “What kind of pests are we talking about?”
“Butterflies,” I whispered. “Unwanted, very active butterflies.”
The fear left her eyes as she caught on. “Ooh, but you know what follows butterflies.”
“Heartbreak,” I said, my voice flat as I tried but failed to avert my gaze from Wyatt’s.
“Fireworks,” she countered.
I shook my head and approached Wyatt.
“Hey,” he said. “Thanks for the text about Bitty’s godson. I get the feeling you left out some details, though.”
“Almost all of them, actually.” I’d provided only the bare minimum information, with no reference to the crazy shenanigans.
“And you definitely want to hear the whole story,” Jemma said with a smile.
Wyatt turned his gaze back to me. “Maybe you can fill me in? Then we can come up with a plan of action.”
I wished his obsidian eyes didn’t hold such sway over me. They sent my heart thudding in a way that couldn’t be healthy. “I’ve already had more than enough action, thank you.”
A spurt of laughter burst out of Jemma before she stifled the rest of it.
I shot a glare in her direction.
She transformed her expression into a mask of innocence.
Wyatt waited for a further response from me.
I sighed, realizing that he wasn’t about to walk away and disappear from my life. “I might need a stiff drink before I tell you about Vinny. And anyway, I think it’s time to focus on Hoffman again.”
Doing that would not only help the investigation—hopefully—but it would also serve as a good reminder that romantic liaisons did not lead to happily ever after.
Not for me, anyway. Clearly, I needed that reminder, because my heart was still galloping and my fingertips itched to run down his T-shirt-covered pecs.
Well, uncovered pecs would be even better, though maybe not in the middle of the lobby.
Focus! I scolded myself silently.
“If you need a drink, we should raid the speakeasy,” Jemma suggested with an excited gleam in her eyes.
“Too late,” Wyatt said. “I just took a look in there. The cops must have cleared out all the booze.”
Jemma frowned with disappointment. “Darn.”
“Why are you talking about booze?” Livy asked as she skipped and hopped over our way.
“No reason, sweetie.” I undid and refastened the loose hair tie at the end of one of her braids.
“I have umbrellas.” She looked at us in turn with blue eyes that were so much like her dad’s. “You know, for fancy drinks. You can all have one, if you want.”
Jemma put her arm around my niece and gave her a squeeze. “Thank you, sweet pea.”
Livy bounced up and down. “Can I go out in the courtyard?”
“Okay,” I said, “but only for a few minutes.”
She slid her arms free of her backpack and let it fall to the floor at my feet. Then she took off at a run.
I wished I had even half of her energy.
It didn’t seem like I was getting my drink, and I wasn’t getting rid of Wyatt until I shared what information I had, so I gave him the condensed version of what had happened at the pawnshop.
“So, Freddie took one bottle to his meeting with Vinny,” Wyatt said once I’d finished the tale and he’d had a chance to shake his head over the antics of my older partners in crime.
“And he had one in his apartment,” I added. “Partially empty. And another in his office that ended up broken.”
“Sampling some of the wares himself,” Jemma said with a nod. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Wyatt tucked his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “That accounts for three of the missing bottles.”
I thought back to what we’d observed in the speakeasy. “But, judging by the clear circles in the dust, there were six bottles missing.”
“So maybe Hoffman found out about the speakeasy and fought with Freddie,” Jemma theorized. “A bottle broke during the tussle. Then, after killing Freddie with the croquet mallet that was sitting in the office, Hoffman took some bottles from the speakeasy.”
“But then why would he have taken the label off the broken bottle?” I asked, unconvinced.
She reconsidered her theory. “Okay. Maybe he took the label, did some research, and then came back and took some bottles from the speakeasy on another day?”
“I don’t know. We should ask Theo if she can find him on the security footage any time after the murder.” I looked around. “Where is Theo, anyway?”
Jemma shrugged. “She doesn’t actually live here, right? Maybe she’s at home.”
I tapped out a quick text message to the teen. Where u @?
Not that I needed Theo around to run my life.
Okay, maybe I did.
I tried to stay focused. “For now, I’m going to see if Hoffman’s been up to anything fishy, like trying to sell old bottles of booze. Can I use your car for a stakeout, Jemma?”
“You could, but it’s at home, remember?”
Wyatt spoke up: “I’ve got my car right here.”
“There! That’s the perfect solution,” Jemma declared.
“No, it’s not!” I shot her a glare before forcing a smile for Wyatt. “Thank you, but I don’t need your car.”
“But I’d like to be part of the stakeout,” he said, “so why not go in my car?”
“And I’ll help out by babysitting Livy,” Jemma offered, as if it were the best idea ever.
“That’s not helping, Jemma. It’s really not.”
“You don’t want to go on the stakeout with me,” Wyatt surmised, studying me with those coal-black eyes of his.
“That’s not what I said.”
“You claim that you’re not avoiding me, and yet you don’t seem to want anything to do with me.”
“She’s avoiding you,” my friend said.
“Jemma!” I seethed. I flashed my fake smile at Wyatt again. “I’m not avoiding you.”
“Oh, she is.” My traitorous BFF lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Because of the kiss.”
Wyatt glanced from her to me. “You told me the kiss didn’t make you uncomfortable.”
“That’s not the issue,” Jemma said. “The issue is that the kiss was sizzling.”
“Jemma!” I was seriously considering trading her in for a new BFF. I took her arm and dragged her off to the side. “I was just telling you how I need to not be around Wyatt.”
“But maybe you do,” she countered. “See how you feel after you spend hours with him in his car. He’s bound to have some disgusting habits that will completely turn you off. And then, hey, presto! Your problem is solved!”
I considered that. “You might have a point. Maybe his car is full of fast-food wrappers.”
“And mouse droppings.”
“Ew! I’m not sitting in a car with rodent poop.”
“Okay, no mouse droppings,” Jemma said. “But he’ll probably sit there belching, talking about himself nonstop, chewing gum with smacking, wet mouth noises.”
I shuddered. “I just can’t with wet mouth noises.”
“Exactly.”
She pushed me back toward Wyatt and smiled brightly at him. “Emersyn would like to graciously accept your offer to accompany her on the stakeout in your vehicle.”
Wyatt looked to me. “For real?”
“For real,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t regret it.
Livy reappeared, spinning in circles on her way toward us. “When are we going out for dinner? I’m already hungry.”
“Slight change of plans, sweet pea,” Jemma told her. “It’s just you and me tonight. Do you know what that means?”
“What?” Livy stopped spinning and stood in one spot, swaying slightly.
Jemma waved her hundred-dollar bill in the air. “We get to spend all of this on the two of us.”
“Yes!” Livy danced around with excitement.
“Should we leave now?” Wyatt asked me.
“We can’t,” I said. “We’re not prepared.”
Jemma nudged me with her elbow and whispered in my ear, “Maybe he is.”
“Jemma!” With my cheeks flaming, I made a beeline for the elevator. I hit the button and then whirled around.
Wyatt, midstride, came to a halt.
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I’d almost told him to wait in the lobby, but as soon as I met his eyes, I knew I couldn’t do that. Well, I could, but I wouldn’t feel good about it.
“Come on,” I said. “I just need a few minutes to get ready.”
The elevator doors parted. I swept Jemma and Livy on board ahead of me and waited for Wyatt to follow us before I hit the button to close the doors.
Once they’d shut, I slumped against the back wall.
Despite Jemma’s master plan to get me to lose my attraction to Wyatt, I looked ahead to our stakeout with dread.
“What’s wrong, Auntie Emersyn?” Livy asked, looking up at me with her innocent blue eyes.
I rested a hand on her head. “Oh, nothing, sweetie.”
“Think happy thoughts,” she advised. “They’ll turn your frown upside down!”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Thanks, Livysaurus. You’re right.”
As we disembarked from the elevator on the third floor, I cast around in my head for happy thoughts.
The only one I could latch on to in that moment was the fact that Theo hadn’t been present in the lobby.
I liked the kid, there was no denying that, but having her and Jemma double-team me there in front of Wyatt… that would have been way too much.
I decided to thank the universe for small mercies.
Even if the universe didn’t have a habit of playing nice with me.