The Old Witcheroo (6 page)

Meaning he’d lost it again after the beach? Goddess, he was a wreck.

Dana looked up then, staring directly at Sandwich. “No. I’m not okay, but I’m more together than I was,” he cleared his throat, “uh…earlier.”

Setting a plate in front of Sandwich, I slid into a chair between the two of them and folded my hands, waiting. I wasn’t sure where to go from here.

The sun was beginning to fade, leaving the purply-orange twilight of the approaching evening, and time was wasting. I didn’t want to upset Dana, but I did want to keep working on that list while the details were still fresh in my mind.

“So what brought ya to Stevie’s, buddy?” Sandwich asked, nodding his thanks for the plate of food.

“
She
brought me here,” he offered, wooden and short.

Sandwich looked to me, his eyes suspicious and accusatory. I knew that look. It said, “Nosy Stevie can’t even let a guy grieve before she’s sticking her face in the middle of things because she loves a good mystery.”

“No-no-no. I didn’t bring him here, Sandwich. Give me some credit, would you? How’d I get such a bad rap with you? Yeah, I’m nosy. Yes, I’m pushy, but I’m not some insensitive ogre, eating the flesh from the bones of my victims. Officer Nelson came to
me
.”

Sandwich didn’t look like he believed me, but he looked at Dana and gave him a brief smile of sympathy. “Why don’t you let me take you home when we finish eating, D? We’ll get you a shower, maybe a beer, yeah?”

But Dana shook his mussed head full of hair. “I don’t want a shower or a beer, and I don’t want to go home, Lyn. I need Stevie.”

How I’d suddenly become the object of his fixation was beyond me. Clearly he wasn’t thinking rationally. “You mean
me
, Stevie? Stevie Cartwright, the woman who drives you up the proverbial wall with all her questions and her amateur, bumbling, dare I say, full-blown chaotic sleuthing, Stevie? Surely you’re flush with fever,” I teased, because I needed to lighten up this conversation. I didn’t understand where he was going with this.

“But I do mean you, Miss Cartwright,” he reiterated with a hint of determination to his voice, sounding more like the Officer Nelson I knew and had grown to maybe not love, but appreciate.

I looked to Sandwich as he wiped his mouth with a napkin and lifted his shoulders. Obviously, he had no answers either.

I decided to change the subject. “Dana? Would you like to stay here tonight? You’re welcome to one of the eighty million rooms upstairs. Lordy knows, there are plenty—all freshly renovated. Maybe get a good night’s sleep and then we’ll have breakfast together in the morning. Carmella always brings over some of her breakfast casserole. Even if Enzo’s not working here at the house. I’ll share.”

“What would people say if I spent the night at your house without the benefit of a chaperone, Miss Cartwright?”

Okay. That sounded even more like the Officer Nelson of old, all propriety and manners. “Like I give a flip what people say? I’m a medium, for Pete’s sake, Dana. If that doesn’t say all my fields of giving a flip are dried up, then I don’t know what does. People talk about me all the time, I’m sure.”

Sandwich nodded his head in the affirmative. “That’s true, D. They’re always speculatin’ about how she got all this money and how she’s the nicest nut they know because she’s always talking to herself.”

“See? What he said,” I pointed out, then frowned, suddenly affronted. “Wait. People call me nuts? That’s so mean. I’m not talking to myself. I’m talking to my virtual assistant. You know, the guy who called you tonight, Sandwich?”

“Aw, jeez. I didn’t say I thought that. Though, they do kinda have a point. I caught you a coupla times, yakking away, but you didn’t have that Bluetooth in your ear. I just figure everybody’s got their quirks is all. I don’t care if you don’t care.”

I rolled my eyes in aggravation. Sure, I’d heard the gossip, and I admit, some of it was too funny to take seriously.

Like the rumor I’d gotten all this money from a Bulgarian viscount for nursing him back to health after a car racing injury. I couldn’t tell you where Bulgaria was on a map if you paid me, not to mention, does Bulgaria even have viscounts?

“Obviously, I don’t care, Sandwich. If people want to know, they should just ask me, for gravy’s sake.”

Sandwich dropped his napkin on an empty plate. “But that’s rude, Stevie.”

“Ruder than calling me a nut behind my back?”

“Nobody called you a nut. Just eccentric.”

I was indignant. “At thirty-three?”

“Is there an age limit on eccentricity, Stevie? You can be kooky and ten. Listen, you know what folks are like in this town. They like to have a good gab. No harm intended, and you have to admit, the way you showed back up here, all diamonds and furs, is a little worthy of some gossip.”

I shook my finger at Sandwich and narrowed my gaze. “I do not wear fur, buddy. Ever. I didn’t show back up here dripping anything. If you’ll recall, I showed back up here broke—”

“Stop!” Dana shouted in a tone so sharply clipped, both Sandwich and I jumped.

We went silent again, neither of us willing to prod Dana for fear we’d send him over the edge. So we sat while the minutes ticked by and my stomach grew queasy with dread.

When I thought I wasn’t going to be able to take another second, Dana’s eyes popped open, as though he were just realizing he was in the meddlesome Stevie Cartwright’s house.

His gaze was intent and clear as a bell. “I want you to help me, Stevie.”

I wasn’t sure what he wanted help with. Maybe a memorial for Sophia? No matter, I was both feet in, whatever it was. “Sure, Dana. Just tell me what you need.”

“I want you to help me find out who killed Sophia.”

I’m pretty sure my face went blank. In fact, I know it did. Dana Nelson was asking for my help—
in front of a colleague
? He was overridden with grief. That had to be what prompted this.

When I didn’t answer, he pressed. “I mean it, Stevie,” he said with urgency, the rigid lines of his face snapping back into place in determination. “I know we’ve had our differences. I know we don’t see eye to eye on police protocol and I give you a hard time at every turn when you’re interfering on other cases. But this…you…somehow, you manage to avoid the law altogether and get the job done. I need your help.”

Okay, stop, drop and roll, Stevie. Consider his state of mind and use the walking-on-eggshells technique. Approach with caution.

As I spoke, I chose my words carefully. “Okay, so hear me out, all right?” When he nodded curtly, I continued. “First, you have a whole team of people who’ll look into this, Dana. Not just because it was a murder, but because it was Sophia who was murdered. A fellow officer’s girlfriend. They’ll put their noses to the grindstone and beat every dead horse along the way to solve it because it’s you.”

Dana raised a finger to stop me, but I held up mine, too. “Please, let me finish. You’ll have tons of inside information that I won’t be able to touch because, as you know, I’m always on lockdown when it comes to getting the skinny. I work hard for every tip I wrangle out of you guys. Now, I don’t say that with any grudge in my heart at all. That’s just how the law works. I get it. You guys have a job to do, and that includes preventing busybodies like me from taking inside information and maybe leaking it before the public should know. I’m a civilian.

“That said, I won’t lie to you and tell you I won’t stick my nose in anyway. I found her, Dana. I hate that I’m the one who found her, but by hook or by crook, I’m going to poke around. That’s just who I am. And I promise, if I find something, remember something, whatever, you’ll be the first person I tell.”

Dana’s head swung back and forth. “No. Here’s where you’re wrong: They won’t tell me anything because I’m too close to this. They’ll follow procedure. They’ll do everything by the book. I need someone who’ll blur the lines. Especially after I tell you something I haven’t told anyone else.”

My mouth was dry now, and my stomach kept rolling like a wave in the Puget on a stormy day. As much as I liked being considered a line blur-er, his words stopped me cold. “What do you need to tell me?”

Dana looked to Sandwich then, his jaw tight and his teeth clenched. “Maybe you might not want to be here for this.”

My fingers went icy cold, my spine on fire with awareness as I looked to Sandwich.

His face went soft with sympathy. “It’s okay, pal. You can tell me anything.”

“Not
this
thing, Sandwich. It’s something I didn’t tell the guys at the station when they first questioned me. That’s why I want to hire Stevie. So unless you want to hear something you’ll get banged for later if Sarge finds out, you’d better excuse yourself to the bathroom.”

Even with central air in the house set at a cool seventy-three degrees, sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. Should Sandwich leave me alone with him?

Sandwich pushed the chair out, the sound jarring as the legs scraped on the wood floor. He obviously wasn’t concerned that Dana was going to tell me something too awful. “Okay, but I’ll be right down the hall if you need me,” he reassured me with a pat to my shoulder.

As Sandwich took his leave, my mouth took its opportunity to run free. “You’re full-on freaking me out, Dana Nelson! If anyone had asked me if I thought it possible you could hurt Sophia, I would have screamed from the rooftops a resounding ‘no’. But this covert, make-Sandwich-leave-because-he’s-a-cop-and-might-use-this-information-against-you thing is giving me the willies. What’s with all the cloak and dagger? And so help me, I’ve been taking Tai Kwan Do at the high school two nights a week with Bjorn. I can put your face on your backside if you make me!”

But Dana wasn’t even a little fazed. He leaned in close to me; so close, I smelled the hint of his perspiration, his anguish. His eyes were on fire as he held my gaze. “My
colleagues
,” he spat, almost with a disdain that left me shocked, “they’re going to accuse me of murdering Sophia.”

I
f the goddess herself had plucked me from the room and invited me to a potluck in the realm where I was personally seated between Mother Nature and Father Time, I don’t think I could’ve been more surprised.

“Stevie, my dove? Maybe we should invite Sandwich to rejoin you? I’m not at all sure I like where this is going.”

But I waved my hand over my shoulder to indicate I was fine. I was just trying to gather words that made sense before I spoke.

Peering at Dana, so intent and on edge, I asked, “Why would you say that?”

“Well, I’m sure you know the first person they suspect is the husband or the boyfriend. That’s just standard.”

“Yeah. Okay, I get that, but you were questioned, weren’t you?”

“I was. I just omitted one vital piece of information.”

“And that was?”

“I asked Sophia to marry me last night.”

“Ah, ’twas as we feared, Stevie,” Win murmured, his voice genuine with sorrow. “’Tis a shame like no other.”

I was desperately trying to keep my sleuth hat on—to keep my emotions from bogging down the hardcore facts—but I can’t deny, I was once again fighting tears. “I thought as much,” I confessed. “I’m sorry, Dana. No matter how many times I say it, the words never make anything better. But I truly am sorry.”

“I didn’t tell them I proposed and I didn’t tell them something else either.”

This was a man who did everything by the book,
not
doing everything by the book. “Like?”

“Like, her answer. She said no,” he offered, his voice now like granite.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Win whispered.

Yeah. That could definitely look bad. It certainly presented a viable motive for murder.

“Did she say why?” I asked, but I hated asking. I hated that she’d said no. No way did I believe Sophia wasn’t nuts about Dana. In my mind, after he’d asked to borrow the boat yesterday, they were already married and making baby Officer Nelsons.

I was speechless that she’d turned him down. What about the postcard? The one where she’d called him the one? Maybe she hadn’t meant Dana, or maybe it had nothing to do with a romance at all. Or maybe she just didn’t believe in marriage. There were plenty of people who had healthy, monogamous relationships without a legal document.

But that explanation just didn’t sit right. Sophia came across as a traditional girl with traditional values.

Dana blew out a sigh, pinching his temples with his fingers. “All she said was she had some things to tell me before we went any further, and she couldn’t accept my proposal because of them.”

Things to tell him? Something so life altering she couldn’t accept his proposal? I knew I needed to dig further into their conversation, but Dana was so fragile, whether he liked to admit it or not, so exhausted, I hesitated to push even though that was the very thing I needed to do.

“Okay, so we need to go over this conversation you had with Sophia, Dana, but I’m gonna be honest, you’re so mentally exhausted, even I can see it. I need you to get some rest for the moment. If they didn’t keep you there after questioning you, they had nothing to hold you on. I know time is of a premium, but I can’t badger you tonight with the endless questions I’ll no doubt come up with when you’re in such a raw state.”

Common sense or some piece of his sanity must have clicked back into place. His eyes no longer had that wild glint to them and the tension he carried around like an albatross had eased. “So you’ll help? Because you know when I tell them that they’re going to look at me real hard, Stevie. Sophia turning me down—it’s a motive for murder. If they find a reason to lock me up, I can’t do what needs to be done. I need someone I can count on to do it for me.”

I didn’t even have time to be surprised Officer Nelson felt he could count on me—I didn’t have time to feel the pressure a statement like that would surely bring—because ding-dong, my overworked doorbell rang.
Again
.

Dana stiffened but I patted his hand. “Just sit tight, okay? Please, relax. Eat that sandwich. Heaven knows you’ll need all your strength if I’m the one helping you. Oh, and a lot of patience. A lot. So just wait here, okay?”