Whiskey, You're The Devil: An Addison Holmes Mystery (Addison Holmes Mysteries Book 4) (8 page)

“It’s because they cover the feet,” Phoebe said. “Feet aren’t sexy to most people. But I bet if Nick had a foot fetish taking off your socks would be the best foreplay of your life. Socks are like a bra for the foot to a foot fetishist.”

“I never thought about it that way.”

“I always tackle the difficult discussion topics,” Phoebe said wisely.

Vince had been part of the family long enough to know to keep his focus on the burger he was putting into his mouth and not look up.

“My point was,” mom said, veering the conversation back in her direction, “that Daphne is twenty-seven years old and Duane is nineteen.”

“Good for her,” Phoebe murmured under her breath.

“And there she is, old enough to know better, but getting caught bare-ass naked in the back of a Camaro with a boy that doesn’t have the sense that God gave a turnip, because now Daphne is pregnant. And who is going to take care of that baby? It’s not going to be Daphne, bless her heart. She works better on her back than on her feet. And it’s not going to be Duane either. He still hasn’t graduated from high school. Which leaves her poor mama the one left holding the responsibility.”

“It’s a damned shame,” Vince piped in. “But in my experience the one thing dumb people are good at is breeding. It turns out sex is something everybody can do.”

“And praise Jesus for that,” Phoebe said. “Because how boring would life be otherwise.”

Another crash came from the kitchen and a whoosh that had the hair standing up on the back of my neck.

“I think I need to go check on Rosemarie. Things don’t sound so good.”

“Damn, I was just about to volunteer to do that,” Phoebe said.

“You snooze, you lose.” I pushed back my chair and headed toward the chaos. Just as I pushed open the swinging door Rosemarie came barreling toward me, followed by a cloud of black smoke that burned my eyes and lungs.

“Look at my kitchen!” A short, bony thin man dressed in torn jeans and stained white t-shirt cleared from the smoke. He had a meat cleaver in his hand and I remembered what Byron said about how much damage to the human body a cleaver could do.

“What the hell?” I yelled as Rosemarie knocked me to the ground in her attempt to escape. The swinging door smacked me in the side of the head, and I got to my hands and knees and managed to stick my hand out before it smacked me a second time.

“Come on woman,” Rosemarie yelled back at me. “This is no time to dillydally. The whole place is going to burn to the ground.”

With that announcement, everyone seated in the restaurant hauled ass and pushed and shoved their way out the front door. Rosemarie hadn’t been kidding. The kitchen was in a shambles and flames whooshed up from the grill almost to the ceiling.

Someone picked me up from under my armpits and I looked back a little dazed. The door had whacked me pretty good and I was seeing stars. Or maybe it was just the smoke. Vince’s face cleared in my vision.

“It’s probably a good time to leave. If I wanted a burned hamburger I’d have stayed home and let your mother cook.”

I burst out into laughter and let him help me outside. I could see why he and my mom got along well together. It took a good sense of the absurd to love a Holmes girl.

Chapter Six

Tuesday

T
HERE ARE TWO
kinds of people in the world—those who can function in the mornings and those who can’t. I fell into the first category, and I’ve been told on more than one occasion that it’s an annoying trait to possess.

Nick fell into the second category. Though there was one part of his body that woke up alert and ready to go every morning. It was currently poking me in the back and didn’t seem to have any intention of going back to sleep.

“What time did you get home?” I asked. It was just shy of six in the morning, and though I woke early and alert, I also slept like the dead and hadn’t felt him get into bed.

“About half an hour ago.” He snuggled in closer behind me and his hand cupped my breast.

“Long enough to recharge it feels like.”

He laughed, low and raspy, and kissed the side of my neck. Nick was really good at a lot of things. But he was exceptional at sex. Like All-American exceptional. If sex was a sport he would’ve lettered many times over. He was so good at sex that he gave me the illusion that I was pretty good at it too. And that took an amazing amount of skill. Because once I orgasmed I was pretty much the man in the relationship and wanted nothing more than to roll over and go to sleep. Unfortunately, Nick usually had at least another half hour of stamina at that point and he oftentimes required me to be conscious for it.

“Recharged doesn’t even begin to describe it. And I figure I owe you one for missing dinner last night.”

He rolled me to my back and parted my legs with his knee, sliding smoothly between them. My pulse was beating about a hundred miles a minute and things were starting to tingle in all the right places.

“I’m thinking you owe me two or three for missing dinner. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the smoke out of my hair.”

“I hate to tell you this, babe, but you didn’t. Though now that you mention it I’m getting hungry for a hamburger.”

He sniffed at my hair and then bit my neck hard. I huffed out a breath and pushed against his shoulder, but he chose that moment to slide deep inside of me and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Twenty minutes later I was just about to see God when Nick froze.

“Don’t stop! Are you crazy?” My nails dug into his back and I used my yoga-trained muscles to wrap my legs higher and tighter around his waist. I could tell by the hitch in his breath that he was as close as I was, but still something had made him stop.

“I swear to God, Nick, I’m about this close to doing violence if you leave me hanging here.”

“I heard a noise downstairs.”

“I don’t care if it’s the Russian mafia tap dancing on you kitchen counters. I’m about to come.” I squeezed my vaginal muscles tight and he groaned with pleasure. “And so are you.”

“Race you to the finish line.”

He’d just started to move again when I heard the noise this time, and I froze beneath him. I could’ve sworn I heard the blender going. Or maybe a chainsaw. It was hard to tell with the blood rushing in my ears like it was.

“I don’t even care that someone is in my house right now. I’m that close. At least I’ll die happy.”

“It’s just Rosemarie. She spent the night in the guest room. Ohmigod! Right there. Do that again.”

Nick froze again and I screamed out in frustration, grabbing one of the pillows and smacking myself in the face with it to muffle the sound.

“Rosemarie is in the guest bedroom?”

“Can we not talk about this in another thirty-five seconds? Preferably after we’ve both come? For cripes sake.”

“Addison—”

“Fine. Your negotiating skills are top notch. I’ll make it twenty seconds.”

I threw my weight sideways so we rolled and reversed positions and I was on top. I wasn’t even going to make it twenty seconds, and by Nick’s swiftly indrawn breath I was guessing he wouldn’t either.

“Twenty seconds,” he said between clenched teeth. “Better get to work.” His fingers dug into my hips and I started to move. I loved a challenge.

I’m not sure how we ended up on the floor. Apparently a lot can happen in twenty seconds. The sheets were tangled in our legs and there was a broken lamp a few feet away. It didn’t matter. I was paralyzed from the neck down. Like I said, Nick was excellent at sex.

“A murder suspect is sleeping in my guest bedroom?” he asked once his heart rate reduced to a normal speed.

I tried lifting my head to look at him, but I didn’t have the strength so I dropped it back down to his shoulder. “Don’t be such a hardass. It’s just Rosemarie. You know her. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Baby, her prints were all over the murder weapon we found at the scene. They’re going to arrest her today.”

“Ohmigod.” My head jerked up at that and I caught Nick in the chin. I rubbed at the top of my head while he rubbed at his chin and said, “That’s impossible. There’s no way she killed that woman using that kind of violence. I took her to the range once and we drew faces on watermelons before we shot at them. She dry heaved for five minutes after I blew away the first one.”

“You shot watermelons at the range? I can’t believe they let you do that. They’re usually pretty strict.”

“Only at the civilian range. Bunch of pansies. I shoot at the cop range.”

“Civilians can’t shoot at the cop range without an escort. Who takes you?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t need an escort. Denny Brice and my dad were best friends. His wife threw my wedding shower.” Denny was retired from PD now, but he worked at the range to supplement his pension.

Nick quirked a brow and shifted beneath me. “Did you get to keep all the gifts even though you didn’t get married?”

“Nope. Had to return each and every one, along with a note. Except for the Kitchen Aid mixer Greg’s mother gave me. I kept that. Figured she owed me one for birthing a son that was such an asshole.”

Nick’s chest vibrated with laughter and he pulled me in closer. “If it makes you feel better I agree with you about Rosemarie. She doesn’t have what it takes, and things at the crime scene don’t add up. She’s married to a man name Lance Mayhew and he’s set to make millions from her death. His alibi isn’t ironclad, but it’s backed by their two children. Apparently they were all home together, but in their separate rooms.

“So he could’ve left and killed her and they wouldn’t have known.”

“It’s possible, but there’s no record the alarm system was shut down or reactivated, so it makes their stories more plausible.”

“Anyone else stand out?”

“There’s any number of people in her former industry she could’ve pissed off over the years. And some of them have mafia ties. There are rumors of blackmail, but nothing solid at this point. Everyone’s keeping pretty tight-lipped. What it comes down to is that Rosemarie’s prints are on the murder weapon and no one else’s. All the investigating team can do is follow the facts and do it by the book.”

“I thought you were in charge.”

“I’m not impartial. They handed it over to Jacoby.”

Something nudged at my subconscious but considering I could barely remember my name I didn’t try too hard to bring it to the surface.

“It’s just as well anyway because my plate’s full with the case I caught last night. It was a bad one.” He stretched and then pulled at the tangled covers. “Speaking of, I need to get back to work. How did we end up on the floor?”

“The Lord works in mysterious way.”

“I did see the white light toward the end there.”

I snickered and untangled myself from his hold. “Watch out for the glass. I don’t want to spend the morning picking shards out of your ass.”

“That lamp was an heirloom. Belonged to my great grandmother.”

“Oh, geez. I’m sorry.” I had visions of trying to glue the shards back together in hopes of saving a piece of Nick’s family history, but more than likely I’d end up gluing my hands together.

“Don’t be sorry. My great grandmother makes my mother look like Betty Crocker.”

“Wow. You have a hell of a family.”

“I like to pretend I was adopted.”

“Sometimes I like to pretend that too. Especially after the time I went to a hot yoga with my mother. There are some mother daughter moments that should never be shared.”

Nick used the sheet to scoop up all the broken glass and rolled it up in a ball. He was the typical male when it came to housekeeping, which wasn’t surprising since he had a cleaning lady come in three days a week and do it all for him.

I winced as he left the balled up sheet in the corner and made a mental note to take the whole thing out to the dumpster. That’s all we needed was for Rhonda to pick it up while she was cleaning and cut her hands off.

I still wasn’t quite used to having a cleaning lady. It felt weird for someone else to handle my underwear, much less washing our sex sheets or removing a pair of handcuffs Nick had accidentally left attached to the headboard. I’d seen Rhonda three days a week for the last couple of months and I still wasn’t able to make eye contact.

“I’m going to get in the shower. I’ll pay you a hundred dollars if you can get Rosemarie out of the house before I come downstairs.”

“You paid me five hundred when you needed me to meet your mother.”

“Rosemarie isn’t in the same league as my mother.”

“That’s the truth.” I pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt from the drawer and pulled my hair back in a ponytail. I normally liked to shower with Nick in the mornings, but it looked like he was going solo today. “But don’t keep thinking you can keep throwing money at me to do your dirty work. You’ve still got rich boy mentality that money will solve all your problems.”

“Sweetheart, it certainly makes them easier.”

It was kind of hard to argue with that.

Chapter Seven

A
N HOUR LATER
I’d showered and changed into black yoga pants, a purple sports bra, and a black hooded athletic shirt. I chose my purple Nike Cross Trainers because I’ve always felt that if a person is going to sweat then they should match while doing it.

I put on my black baseball hat and stared at myself in the mirror. I gave my reflection a couple of determined looks and flexed my muscles once before grabbing my shoulder bag and heading downstairs. I was going to kick ass today. I’d ace the written part of the P.I. exams and I’d score in the top percentile of the class during the physical exams.

My agreement with Kate was that I’d place near the top in all portions of the tests to get my license. I’d placed first in my conceal to carry class. Not a problem since my dad had raised both Phoebe and me to be comfortable around guns. I outshot most of the cops on the force. The written exams would be a piece of cake. I was a history major for cripes sake. I knew how to study, and if I read it my brain would remember it forever.

I decided what I needed was a pep talk. The only person who could hold me back was myself.