Chapter 6
“Your kitchen looks just like ours,” I said as I stepped into an identical space as the one I left. They had the same setup, just in reverse. I slipped my hand in the pocket of my spring jacket and hit the record button on the small device I’d hidden.
Casey held the kitchen filter up to the overhead light as he inspected it. Small droplets of water landed on his navy T-shirt. “Yes, they hired a designer when they split the original home into four units. We’ve only made cosmetic changes after my mother purchased it in the early aughts.”
I inched to the left, checking out the opening and living room on the other side. Yes, set up just like our unit a few feet away. Sadly, he didn’t have his murder confession written on the wall. That might make things too easy.
Did I really think Casey killed his mother? I stared at him as he tossed the filter in the trash, using his foot to open the top. Did murderers own rental homes? Did I just stick myself in a kitchen with a murderer? I wouldn’t do something that stupid. Would I?
Damn it.
Maybe.
“Did you need anything else?” he asked, leaning against the counter beside me but somehow still blocking my escape.
“No.” I shook my head and let my gaze wander around the kitchen, trying to come up with something. “I just opened the dishwasher to toss in a few plates and saw it sitting there. It’s a weird place for a water filter. Right?”
Look, it’s the first thing I thought of at the time. Sue me.
A photo of two women standing side-by-side in front of Niagara Falls caught my attention. It had a prominent space in the middle of the freezer door with a Pluto magnet keeping it up. The Disney dog, not the planet.
“Selene’s sister, Samantha. They take a girl’s trip together every other year. She’s here often. You might see her around when you’re coming or going.” Casey tapped the edge of the fridge. His long, outstretched arm blocking any escape even more.
My heart registered my stuck condition but my eyes focused on something different. “They must be close.”
“As my mother used to say, ‘two peas, one pod.’” He had his attention on the photo, but I’d moved on to something more intriguing.
A few inches from the photo, a car mechanic’s promotional magnet held up the ripped off bottom portion of a piece of paper. It wasn’t the paper that caught my eye but the writing on it.
There’s something I need to tell you. Meet me for dinner at your favorite place.
“My mom,” Casey said, as he caught me staring at the paper. “It’s just a stupid little note, but it’s the last thing she ever said to me.”
I couldn’t rip my gaze away from the heavily slanted writing. It appeared like she’d written the note in a hurry, but I wasn’t a handwriting expert. “What did she want to tell you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. She died before we had a chance to talk that night. We were going to meet for dinner at the bar on Bay Street. She thinks it’s my favorite place.”
My lips tipped up in response to the grin he started when mentioning the bar. There had to be a story there. I’d opened my mouth, ready to ask, when my phone vibrated at the same time his front door opened and closed.
“We’re in the kitchen,” Casey called as I lifted the phone, snapped a shot of the note on the fridge, and opened my texting app.
Exactly fifteen nanoseconds after Selene walked into the kitchen, I clocked how close Casey and I were standing to one another. We’d both worked our way over to stare at the fridge door, but it put us so close our shoulders were almost touching.
“Excuse me for just a second,” I said into my phone and used it as my chance to move closer to the back door—and my escape.
Casey was still my suspect numero uno, but the note made me reconsider a few things. A murderer didn’t keep his mother’s last hastily written note on his fridge. Unless he killed her on accident.
DELANEY: Why haven’t I seen pictures of the hot SEAL?
I swear she had the worst timing.
“How did you ever manage to leave your new hubby alone?” Selene asked as she lowered the lid on the trash can.
My nail scratched the skin at the top of my jeans as I shoved my phone in my back pocket. “He’s on a run. We do not agree on exercise routines,” I said around a laugh.
She didn’t match it. “Where did you two meet? Is it one of those super cute stories that you’ll tell your grandchildren about in thirty years?”
Thirty years for grandchildren? That seemed awful soon. I swallowed hard after doing the math. Selene and Casey stared in my direction. Crap, right? They wanted an answer.
Anxiety blossomed in my chest. Shit. How did Reed and I meet?
Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
The back door rattled next to me, and I jumped a foot in the air. A slight scream slipped past my lips, and I moved away, getting a look at the man through the slit in the window curtain. I released the breath I’d sucked in, but my body didn’t release the tension.
“How did you find me?” I asked Reed as I hurried over to open it for him.
He walked inside and gave the room a hard gaze before answering. His hair looked freshly showered, so he must not have been too worried. “Remember, we put those trackers on our phones?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. We definitely never agreed to put trackers on our phones. Did Delaney say he could track me? How’d he get it on my phone? “I guess I forgot.”
Selene laughed, interrupting the tense moment. “Oh no. That seems like trouble in a lover’s paradise. See, honey,” she said, giving Casey a slight slap on his shoulder. “It happens to everyone.”
“We’ve got to get those first few out of the way,” Reed said as we wrapped his arm around my middle. “But remember, we have lunch reservations at the Pirate House.”
“Oh, right.” I nodded enthusiastically at our fake plans, otherwise known as my get out of this situation free card.
We’d made it almost back to our side of the home before Reed started yelling. Well, whisper yelling so Casey and Selene didn’t hear.
“What were you thinking? You promised to stay inside until I got back. It took me getting out of the shower to realize you weren’t there because I never thought I had to worry about you leaving.”
Oops.
I opened our back door. “I wanted to ask Casey questions, and since he won’t agree to an interview, I had to get creative.”
“How’d you do that?” Reed locked the door behind us and then peeked out the window, as if making sure we weren’t being followed.
“I told him I found the water filter in the dishwasher. He totally believed me.”
Reed closed his eyes, held them that way for a full three seconds, and then slowly opened. Weird. “What if he murdered his mother and decided you were next?”
I shook my head and shrugged. “He didn’t kill his mom.”
Sure, I wasn’t ninety-nine percent certain he hadn’t done it by accident, but I was sure enough to say that in order to win this argument.
“What if Selene killed his mother because they didn’t get along?”
“Selene is definitely not the killer,” I said with puckered lips. The entire idea was just not even plausible.
“Oh really. How are you so sure of that?” Reed asked, stopping halfway through the kitchen.
Wasn’t he paying attention? I thought the government taught SEALs to be super smart. “Because bimbos don’t kill people. Duh.”
“What?” he asked so forcefully that wrinkles creased his forehead.
“It’s a complicated analysis. Just trust me.” I waved my hand between us. “We don’t really have reservations at the Pirate House, do we? Because I could eat. Are you hungry?”
Reed laughed. The move reduced the tension in his face. “We don’t, but I’m sure we can just walk over and get a table. Tonight we have the haunted tour of the bar where they found Lisa’s body. We could do lunch and then catch a nap.”
“I like the sound of a nap.” Although, that brought in mental images of me sleeping next to Reed—which wouldn’t be happening—but for some reason my body still reacted to it. “But first, let’s meet the pirates.”
I really had to get a handle on myself and refocus. A crowded restaurant would help with that.
“Give me just a second to change into a polo,” he said, slipping off his shirt in one smooth movement. His tan, smooth skin glistened in the sun coming in from the windows. I swallowed. Did he oil himself up after his shower? And that question brought on illicit thoughts of him in the shower.
Mother effer.