I Think I Love You (16 page)

She winced. "Whatever you do, don't tell Justine—she'll be furious all over again for having to work off the debt."

The door chime sounded, announcing a customer. Regina smoothed a hand over the front of her jeans, then walked into the main showroom to see a tall man in a khaki uniform with his back to her. "May I help you, sir?"

He turned and grinned. "Hi, Regina."

Dark hair, touch of gray, blue eyes, hooked nose, toothpick clenched in his teeth like an accessory. A vague memory chord stirred, but she couldn't come up with a name.

He removed the toothpick and held out his hands. "It's me—Pete."

Her racing mind finally put the pieces together. "Pete Shadowen."

"Deputy Sheriff
Pete Shadowen now." He thumped an official-looking hat he held in the crook of his arm. "At your service."

She smiled and embraced him. He wanted to hang on a little longer than she did.

"Wow, Regina, you look
swell."

"Thanks. So do you. Is your dad still sheriff?"

He nodded, then looked over her shoulder. "Hello." The toothpick went back to the space between his eye-teeth.

"Hi," Mitchell Cooke said.

Regina's smile encompassed them both. "Mitchell Cooke, this is Deputy Sheriff Pete Shadowen, an old friend of mine."

"And old boyfriend," Pete clarified.

Mitchell looked amused. "Yes, I could see right away that you were a boy. Nice hat."

Regina glared at him.

Sam appeared, took one look at Pete, and bared his teeth in a snarl. Mitchell snapped his fingers and Sam retreated. "Sorry—it's the uniform."

Exasperated, Regina turned back to Pete. "Mom and Dad are going to auction off the inventory. Mitchell is an appraiser."

"Ah." Pete gave an open-mouthed nod, then used his toothpick to point back and forth between them. "So you two don't... know each other."

"No," she said.

"Yes," Mitchell said at the same time.

"Not really," she added, then served up a smile. "Pete, what brings you up this way?"

He winked. "Well, Mrs. Woods at the Grab 'N Go told me you were back in town, so I was looking for an excuse to come see you."

"What excuse did you come up with?" Mitchell asked with a glib smile.

Stop,
Regina telegraphed with her eyes.

Pete stared at the other man, then set his hat on his head and straightened his shoulders. He turned back to Regina. "I just left your house. I had to speak with Justine about an official police matter." His gaze flicked back to Mitchell. "Maybe I shouldn't—"

"It's okay," Regina said with a sigh. Mitchell already knew most of their family drama. "Does this have something to do with the shooting at Cocoon?"

Pete nodded. "I got a call from the Shively, Pennsylvania, Police Department, and it's possible the shooter might have left the state."

Mitchell leaned in, clearly confused but riveted.

Regina swallowed. "Could the woman be headed here?"

"It's possible," Pete said in big-eyed seriousness. "But I'm going to be on the lookout." He plucked a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded a faxed photo that was so dark and indistinguishable, Regina couldn't even tell that it was a woman.

WANTED: LISA CRANE

CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS

Pete used his tongue to direct the toothpick toward Mitchell. "Where are you staying, Cooke?"

"At the Russell Motel."

"See any woman hanging around who looks like this?"

Mitchell glanced at the photo and wiped away a smile with his hand. "No, thank goodness."

"Well, if you do, contact the sheriff's office at once."

"Will do."

Pete refolded the fax and tucked it into his pocket. "Regina, I suggested to Justine that she stay close to home until this Crane woman is found. Your Uncle Lawrence offered one of his security guards to watch the house at night, but I told him it wasn't necessary—we'll patrol."

She looked at Mitchell. "Cissy's brother, he's a U.S. representative, running for the Senate." She was glad to impart that at least one person in her warped family was accomplished.

"Lawrence Gilbert is your uncle?"

She nodded with pride, then looked back to Pete. "Uncle Lawrence is in town?" He rarely returned to Monroeville—and who could blame him, with all the bad memories? She hadn't seen him in four, maybe five years.

"Yeah, he's back to testify at the Bracken hearing next week."

She remembered the unread newspaper at the bottom of her purse, and unease plucked at her. "What kind of hearing?"

"The scumbag wants a new trial—claims he's innocent and that there was some kind of police conspiracy to convict him."

Her stomach plunged.

"What was the crime?" Mitchell asked.

"Murder," Regina offered. "The man murdered Uncle Lawrence's wife, my Aunt Lyla. He's served twenty years of a life sentence with no parole."

Mitchell whistled low. "Twenty years? He's either guilty as hell or patient as hell."

Pete scoffed. "He's guilty as hell. My dad conducted that investigation. I hear Bracken has some new hotshot lawyer who's looking for publicity. Just wasting the taxpayers' money, if you ask me."

"Right," Regina said with a nervous laugh.

"Well, guess I'd better be going," Pete said, jerking his thumb toward the door.

"It's nice to see you, Pete," she said, and meant it.

"I'm not married," he blurted.

Mitchell coughed.

"Oh?" she asked.

"Well, me and Tobi Evans, we gave it a stab for a couple of years, but that's over. Tobi lives in Florida now, selling real estate. We didn't have any kids, but I'm not sterile or anything like that."

"Oh. Good."

"Are you married?"

"Nope, never did."

Pete frowned. "Never did, huh?"

She knew that look. "None of us girls are married."

He laughed. "Yeah, I remember Justine wigging out and chopping up that cabinet at her wedding when Dean ran off with Mica." Pete kept laughing.

Mitchell raised one dark eyebrow, Regina ignored him. "Yeah—she wigged out, all right."

"Mica looks hot," Pete said, rambling now.

"Yeah," Regina said, nodding.

"So Mrs. Woods tells me you write books in Boston."

"Well, actually, I edit books."

He smiled. "You always were a smart one."

"Still am," she assured him with a smile.

He laughed at her joke and pointed his toothpick at her. "We need to go out sometime."

She looked at Mitchell. "Don't wait on me if you need to get back to work."

He shook his head. "No. I'm enjoying this... break. Take all the time you need."

She looked back to Pete. "Why don't you call me this week?"

He grinned. "I will." Pete said good-bye and lost his hat when he walked through the door.

Regina waited until the door closed before she turned around.

Mitchell was nodding, mouth pursed.

"Don't say a word," she said.

He lifted his hands. "I don't
have
words for what I just witnessed."

She headed back toward the storeroom. "Do you have an Internet connection on your laptop?"

"Yeah."

"Can I borrow it for a few minutes to look up something?"

"Sure—if you tell me what's going on with your sister and this faceless shooter."

She talked as she walked. Sam trotted alongside. "Long story short, Justine had an affair with a married man. His wife found out and went to Justine's office with a gun. Someone else was wounded instead, and they still haven't found the woman."

He caught up to her at the door of the storeroom. "Wow, you Metcalf girls have bad taste in men."

"What?"

"Well, Mica's guy knocks her around—"

"Whoa—why would you jump to
that
conclusion?"

"I could be wrong, but she does have a black eye."

"Justine gave her that black eye, remember?"

"No, she had that black eye when she arrived."

Regina squinted. "Are you certain?"

He nodded, then gave her a sheepish smile. "I noticed, um, everything."

She smirked, then said, "I'll bet Dean did give her that black eye—that would explain why she showed up out of the blue."

"See? Bad taste in men. And Justine got involved with a married man—bad taste."

She crossed her arms. "I still don't see what that has to do with
my
taste in men."

"What about Dudley Do-Right back there?"

"I was
sixteen
—that was... a long time ago."

"And you don't find me irresistible, so that definitely throws your taste into question."

She narrowed her eyes. "You were going to get me onto the Internet."

He sat down in front of his laptop and within a few keystrokes, was on-line. "This portable wi-fi connection is slow, but go for it."

With nervous hands, Regina went to the site for her e-mail provider, then entered her log-on and password to access her e-mail. No response from the seller of the letter opener to her request for more information. Deciding not to read anything into the lack of response, she went onto the auction site.

"I've bought and sold a few things through this site," he said, looking over her shoulder.

The pages were slow to load, but eventually she made her way into the auction for the carved ivory letter opener. Someone had topped her bid by a buck a mere ten minutes before the auction had ended, but she didn't mind. She clicked on the "see similar items" button and scanned the listings, which were pretty much the same as when she'd browsed two nights ago... except the listing for the Russian sterling-and-gold letter opener was gone. She performed a few searches using different criteria, but the listing didn't come up.

She breathed into steepled hands—
don't panic.
"How can I find an item that's been pulled?"

"If the auction has ended, this particular site keeps the data out there for sixty days. That's in case the sale falls through and they have to repost the listing. But you'll need the item number to look up an archived listing."

Which she didn't have. "What if the item was pulled early, before an auction could begin, or before the auction was scheduled to end?"

He shrugged. "The buyer has the right to pull the listing at any time before the electronic gavel comes down. But this site doesn't keep historical data on items that aren't sold."

She groaned.

"It must have been something important."

"Maybe. I honestly don't know."

He hummed. "Well, if you remember the name of the seller, you might see if they have another item for sale and contact them that way."

She shook her head. "I checked last week, and the seller was only offering this one item. And there was no history for the seller."

"That's odd."

"I e-mailed the seller, but they didn't respond. In fact, I think my questions might have precipitated the item being pulled."

"Do you have reason to believe the item was stolen?"

She hesitated. "Maybe. Then again, maybe it wasn't what I thought it was."

"But you're thinking that the listing being pulled is pretty coincidental."

"Yes." Not to mention the coincidence that the letter opener was being sold at the same time the man convicted of her aunt's murder was lobbying for a new hearing.

He scratched his temple. "I don't guess you want to tell me what this thing is?"

She shook her head. "I can't."

"You could always let the authorities know. Maybe they could track down the person through their e-mail account."

"I can't do that either."

He sat back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and studied her so scrupulously, she needn't have bothered getting dressed this morning. "And I was starting to think you were the only one in your family without secrets."

Chapter 13

DO develop a system for keeping your lies straight.

Justine slung her bag over her shoulder as she walked down the stairs, gratified at the weight of the weapon inside. Lando had called her again this morning while she was in bed—hm, later she might have to analyze his timing—to tell her the female gasoline thief had turned out not to be Lisa Crane, but they hadn't yet found the woman. So she wasn't taking chances, even if she was only taking a walk with Regina. After all, Lando had reminded her to take care of herself.

In truth, she'd never felt so alive. Her anticipation at seeing Dean again after all these years made her alternately giddy and malevolent. Despite their obvious problems, she and Dean had always shared an incredible chemistry. She paused at the mirror in the entry-way to check her appearance—hair, skin, clothes. Casual and sexy. A slow smile curved her mouth—not bad for thirty-seven.

Then she grinned—who was she kidding? She wasn't bad for
twenty-
seven.

She closed the door behind her and skipped down the steps into the sunshine—then stopped dead. In the side yard, beneath the shade of the oak tree, Mica watched her from the hammock, looking lean and fit in shorts and tennis shoes. So far they had managed not to be together alone, and Justine rather wanted to keep it that way.