“You can’t believe it? Peter, those detectives think I’m a murderer. I mean, me.”

  He nodded his head, eyes roaming her face. “Yes. They do.”

  “Why the hell would I kill Dan?”

  Peter’s face tilted, his expression clear.

  “Okay, yeah. ’Cause I hated the guy. But not really. And also, I don’t kill people. ’Cause I’m not a murderer!”

  “Anyone is a potential killer in our line of work, Hayley.”

  Hayley took three deep breaths, letting that sink in. It seemed so impossible, so utterly ridiculous, that even as her mind whirled, she couldn’t fully accept that she was actually a suspect. But there it was. She swallowed back a tear before hitting Peter with her most determined gaze. “So, please tell me you’re going to find the real killer before this goes any further.”

  Peter leaned toward her, his dark eyes molten. “I swear.” The simple promise was made on a whisper.

  Haley leaned into those two words, her mouth propelled toward Peter’s. Her desire to sip those words up and make them a part of her overwhelmed her senses. And when her lips landed on his, all reason was gone.

  Hayley had finally tasted something she’d been resisting for years. Like an addict, she was unable to stop now. She pulled herself closer, arms looping around Peter’s broad shoulders, lips parting.

  Peter’s hands, so big and strong, cradled her sides and back. And his own lips met hers with enthusiasm. It took a moment of crawling out of the haze of pleasure for it to register with Hayley—he was kissing her back!

  Chapter 7

  Peter stood with his back against the slick siding covering the outside of the Cutters’ garage, his breath coming in deep pants. He wasn’t entirely sure what was worse, the fact that he’d kissed Hayley or the way he’d fled like a frightened cat hiding under the bed.

  He glanced up at the apartment above him. Light still shone from the window, but there was no movement at the top of the wooden stairs where the front door to the apartment stood. Hayley wasn’t coming out to find out why the hell the chief of police was such a damn coward.

  Good.

  A sound to his left had Peter swiveling his head so fast his neck cracked. Joshua, a cell phone at his ear, slipped through the front door of the family home and onto the wide porch.

  Not wanting to make this any worse than it already was, Peter ducked his head and stalked to his car. Moving with the skill of a practiced law enforcement officer, he jumped into the vehicle and sped off as quickly as possible.

  When he pulled away from the Cutter home, he didn’t have a destination in mind, but his subconscious led him to a stately Victorian on the edge of Sausalito and Marin City. He parked his squad car in the only available space on the street and crossed in the dark of night to deep blue double doors that signaled the entrance to the building.

  It was open, as always. Shaking his head at the trust the inhabitants were placing in him and his employees, he plunged into the entryway. Lit only by a dimmed fixture overhead, the foyer held an air of age and dignity, as did the spiral staircase he took to the second floor. There, two doors opposite one another stood at the landing. No visible numbers distinguished one apartment from the other, only the color of the doors.

  Peter glanced at his watch. It was nearly eleven. He glanced at the door behind him before rapping lightly on the green one right in front of him. He waited, his breath echoing off the yellow walls and ornate cream molding.

  A whiney creak accompanied the opening of the door. Kenna’s head popped out, her hair matted on one side, her eyes squinting. “Peter?”

  “Sorry, did I wake you?”

  Kenna swung the door open to reveal plaid pajama pants and a soft white T-shirt. She rubbed her eyes as she moved out of the doorway. “Yeah. Kind of. I was tossing and turning a bit, anyway.”

  Peter moved into the apartment, shut the door behind him, and toed off the polished leather shoes he wore on duty. He followed Kenna down the narrow hallway into her large living room. He sat on the overstuffed couch while she ducked into the galley kitchen to set a kettle to boil.

  “Sorry to bug you.”

  Kenna didn’t reply until she emerged from the kitchen and sat beside him on the couch. “You arrested my best friend today. I’d be pissed if you didn’t explain.”

  “I did not arrest her. No one arrested her. Did she call you?”

  Kenna rubbed at her cheek. “Her mom did. I haven’t talked to Hayley. But we texted. She said she didn’t have a lot of words. She’s upset, Cuz.”

  Peter ran his hand over his chin and leaned back in her couch. “So am I.”

  Kenna patted his knee as she rose. It was a move her mother, his aunt Marsha, pulled all the time. She popped into the kitchen again. The apartment wallowed in silence punctuated by the sounds of water boiling and ceramic touching. When Kenna emerged with two mugs of tea, her eyes were red and watery.

  Peter waited until they were both sitting on the couch again drinking side by side as they’d been doing since childhood, when instead of hot tea in a mug it was juice in a sippy cup. “It’s going to be okay, Kenna. She didn’t kill anyone.”

  Kenna’s eyes flared. “Of course she didn’t. But your detectives think so, don’t they?”

  He shrugged, unable to say anything else.

  “What are you going to do about this, Peter?”

  He set his mug on the low coffee table and turned toward his cousin. “I don’t know what I can do.”

  Kenna set her own mug beside his, an audible clap as it hit the wood indicating her irritation. She leaned toward him. “You better figure it out.”

  “She’s got a great lawyer. I’ve recused myself.”

  “I know, and I know.”

  “I kissed her tonight.”

  Kenna leaned back, her face twisted in shock. “Now? Now, you kiss her?”

  Peter nodded slowly, bogged down in misery his beloved cousin was doing nothing to alleviate.

  Kenna picked up her mug and took a couple of sips. Her face moved slightly as her thoughts rolled over her features. She chewed on one cheek between tiny sips of tea. Peter just watched her, hoping she was about to throw down some incredible wisdom that would fix everything.

  “What did you do afterward? Run away and drive here?”

  Being born three weeks apart and spending their entire childhood attached at the hip had led to this uncanny ability of hers to predict his behavior, sometimes even his thoughts. It was probably exactly why he’d come here, it didn’t require a lot of explanation.

  Kenna pierced him with her gaze. “Did you?”

  Peter nodded miserably.

  Kenna let out a long sigh. She reached over to a small table that held a lamp and her cell phone. She glanced at the phone quickly before turning back to Peter. “No text. I wonder how bad your screwup was.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Did she kiss you back?”

  Peter pressed his eyes closed reliving the moment for the first time since he’d fled. “Actually, she kissed me, and yeah, I kissed back. I definitely kissed back. A lot.”

  “Okay, spare me the details.” Kenna held up one hand. “So no one should have been upset at that point. Then what?”

  “I left.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “You’re such an idiot.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay. Why did you run?”

  Peter stared into his cousin’s eyes, the truth so overwhelming it might swallow him alive if he didn’t relieve his soul of this burden. “I’m in love with her.”

  Kenna let out all the air in her lungs, the sound reverberating through the room and striking Peter in the chest. “I know.”

  Chapter 8

  “Where is all the dust?” Hayley didn’t go into her parents’ attic often, but she was sure that, in general, attics were supposed to be coated in dust. This one was practically pristine.

  “I come up here once a month and clean it.”

  Hayley spun around so fast, she nearly hit her head on a wooden beam. She gaped at her mother. “You clean the attic?”

  Her mother shrugged. “Well, if I don’t, it will get all dusty.”

  Caught between the logic of that and what was surely a bit of insanity, Hayley turned away from her mother and toward the neatly stacked boxes, one of which held the missing Christmas ornaments they’d come up to search for.

  “All the Christmas stuff was supposed to be here.” Her mother gestured toward an empty space on the far end of the stack. “But when your dad brought it all down, that box was missing.”

  The emotion in her mother’s voice touched Hayley’s heart. She knew the box in question—which contained the ornaments she and Joshua had made or given to their mom over the years—was very dear. The family tradition had resulted in reindeer made of popsicle sticks, painted plastic globes, and cheaply made tourist trinkets with locations and years on them. It meant everything to her mom.

  Hayley touched her mom’s shoulder. “We’ll find it. I promise.”

  The two women dove into the stack of boxes. Hayley started on one side and her mom on the other, working their way toward the middle. While her mother stacked her already inspected boxes neatly against another wall of the attic, Hayley haphazardly pushed hers aside and moved on to the next.

  There were only two stacks left, each three boxes high, when Hayley found something unexpected. The banker box was innocuously labeled “Hayley’s childhood things.” Pure curiosity compelled Hayley to rip the top off and peer inside. She spotted one item immediately, even though it was largely buried by stuffed animals and worn blankets. The small cedar box with a tiny brass clasp still held that unique scent.

  A part of Hayley knew the best thing to do would be to shove the lid back on the box and push it into the pile behind her. But she couldn’t do that. Slowly, she reached for the little cedar box and pulled it out.

  “What’s that?”

  Her mother’s sudden presence over her shoulder created a jolt through Hayley. She swallowed hard. “It’s a box of memories…um…of Peter.”

  “Peter?”

  Hayley glanced up in time to see her mother’s face morph from an expression of confusion to one of excitement. “Oh my God! Is Joshua right?”

  After years of teasing, her family had come to dismiss Joshua’s claims that Hayley had a crush on Peter. But for some reason, this box made Hayley want to confess. She nodded slowly.

  “Oh, baby. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  Her mother threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace that was suffocating and comforting at the same time. “Why not?”

  “I guess because he was always way older than me. I was just a dumb kid, and he was…”

  “That doesn’t matter at your age now.”

  Hayley repressed an eye roll at the age comment. Making her feel young and spry clearly wasn’t on her mom’s to-do list. But there was more for Hayley to confess about her deep, dark secret. “I also thought it would be uncomfortable for everyone to know.”

  “Of course not,” her mother insisted. “What’s the real reason?”

  Hayley let out her breath, and the truth was freed. “I don’t think Peter feels the same, and I don’t want to ruin our friendship or make things weird between us.”

  “Aha.” Her mother’s knowing words, accompanied by a kiss on her temple, soothed her nerves. “I see.”

  “But I’m tired of denying it.”

  “I bet.”

  With the soft echoes of her own breath and that of her mother creating the background sounds, Hayley flipped the clasp on the lock. Using her thumb to grip the smooth wood, she opened the box.

  Hayley’s eyes flitted across the objects littering the wood surface. The ticket to a concert Peter had taken her to partially covered a feather she’d picked up while on a walk with him in the woods. Settled at the curved tip of the feather was a pressed flower, so small it would have fit inside a thimble. Peter had picked that for her and stuck it in her hair.

  A tear settled on the edge of Hayley’s eye. “I have it bad.”

  Her mother’s soft chuckle warmed her. “I guess so.”

  Hayley snapped the box closed and looked up at her mother. “What should I do?”

  “Have you thought about telling him?”

  “There is the whole ‘don’t want to ruin our friendship’ thing?”

  “And what does that cost you?”

  The question started a wave of emotion running through Hayley from her toes to her head. What did it cost her? She and Peter had already broken that bubble with a searing kiss. Nothing would ever be the same between them. So what did she have to lose?

  “Nothing now,” she confessed.

  Chapter 9

  Laney James reminded Peter of a scared dog. One minute she cowered, and the next she lashed out. And like a neglected pet, impressions were deceptive. Laney was smart and capable. But she’d never quite figured out how to turn the lemons life gave her into lemonade.

  “Why do you care what my relationship to Dan was?”

  Peter took a deep breath. His eyes shot to Joshua who sat beside Laney on her battered green couch. It would be so much easier to ask her these questions as a cop. But he had made it perfectly clear this was unofficial because he wasn’t supposed to be working on the Dan Springs murder. “Honestly, Laney. I just want to know more about the guy.”

  Laney’s shoulders fell from their position beside her ears. She glanced at Joshua and back to Peter again, her flight or fight reaction vanishing. “Well, he’s kind of a tough guy, you know?”

  “Tough guy, how?” Peter asked.

  “Like my dad. I guess that’s why I didn’t mind working for him. People used to ask me that all time. ‘Why do you work for that guy?’ But he’s all just bluster and bullshit like my dad. And he paid me well.”

  “Yeah?” Joshua looked over at her.

  Laney pursed her lips together. “Yeah.”

  Joshua shrugged. “Lawyer, you know. I assumed he was cheap.”

  “Not at all,” Laney countered. “In fact, he kind of threw money around.”

  Peter’s interest piqued. “What do you mean?”

  Laney shoved one hand through her brunette curls. “He called it investing, you know. But, like, he spent sooo much money on that bakery. Definitely more than he was making. Though I suppose now that he did all that up front, the bakery will rake in money.” She shrugged. “At least that’s what he said.”

  Peter wasn’t fooled by Laney’s pretense that she didn’t understand. She had been on her own since she was nineteen, and she was managing to pay for a place in the expensive North Bay with two kids. That took economic skills he couldn’t even fathom. She was frugal, smart, and savvy. Part of that was her ability to pull one over on everyone by acting clueless.

  “He spent all the money on the bakery?”

  “I guess. I mean, I wasn’t his accountant. I just sold cookies.”

  Peter nodded, the smile on his face a conditioned reaction to snark. “Was the business doing well?”

  Joshua couldn’t resist commenting on his competition. “Despite his being a jerk to everyone?”

  “He wasn’t a jerk to the customers. He was like freaking jolly ol’ Saint Nick with them. They loved him. He was just a jerk to the help.”

  “He was a jerk to you and Jill?” Peter asked.

  “Yeah. For sure, Jill. But also, like everyone else. Delivery guys, the people he paid to clean. Everyone he paid. He gave us good money, but he did it with a bad attitude, you know.”

  Joshua shifted on the couch. “Anyone hate him enough to kill him?”

  Laney shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably his ex-wives. I can’t imagine being married to that dude.” A shiver rippled down her body.

  Peter leaned forward, resting his forearm on his jean-clad thigh. “What do you know about the ex-wives?”

  A new level of interest sparked in Laney’s eyes. “There are three of them, right?”

  Peter sighed in relief. He’d finally found a way to get her to talk with more enthusiasm. “Yeah, I heard that.”

  “And he’s not that old. Or…he wasn’t. He was only fifty-five.”

  Peter knew this, having seen the man’s driver’s license, but he still had trouble believing it. Dan was in rough shape, appearing closer to sixty-five. And in Peter’s mind, retirement was something that didn’t happen until a person was at least that old.

  “So each marriage only lasted a few years, apparently. And none of them ended well, I guess. I mean, you should hear the way he talks about those poor women! Yikes. Thank God he didn’t have any kids. Because you can’t badmouth your ex like that in front of the kids. I never do that, even though Rick is a dick.”

  “Do any of these ex-wives live nearby?”

  Laney rested her chin on her hand. “I heard from Jill that the first two live far away. I don’t remember where exactly. I just remember her saying that they got as far away from him as they could. One’s in Europe, I think. But the last one, she lives in Napa.”

  Peter’s ears perked up at that. An ex-wife just north of here made for an intriguing lead. “Oh, yeah?”

  Laney lifted her head and gave him a hard nod. “Yeah, she—”

  A loud cry interrupted whatever Laney was about to say. Peter slumped in the folding chair he perched in opposite the couch. Laney’s baby had just stopped their conversation in mid-sentence.

  Joshua jumped up from the couch before Laney could. “I’ll get her.”

  Laney stared at her high school boyfriend, mouth agape. But Joshua didn’t look back. He darted into the nursery.

  Peter jumped on his chance. “You were saying?”

  Laney’s eyes veered back to him. “Oh, yeah. Um, she lives in Napa. She got remarried to some cranky winery owner dude, apparently.”

  “Did Dan tell you this?”

  “Yeah, and Jill. Jill knows her, I guess.”

  Peter’s mental note-taker was on overtime. He had to ask Jill about this ex-wife. “Thanks, Laney.”

 

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