I Think I Love You (34 page)

He used the heel of his boot to scratch the shin of his other leg. "And then turns out he's mixed up with the Bracken hearing, too."

"Mitchell believes that Lyla's murder and Dean's are related."

He sighed, then wiped his hand over his mouth. "Regina, I know you don't want to believe your dad did what he did, but you're allowing Cooke to lead you on a wild-goose chase. All he's trying to do is build reasonable doubt on the Gilbert case so that when his brother wins a new trial, he'll get Bracken off. You're playing right into their hands."

She tried to calm her breathing and fight the tiny voice in her head that whispered, He's right.
You had reservations, too, but you threw them out the window because Mitchell flattered and flirted and did that squiggle maneuver.

His frown was rueful. "Guys like Haviland and Cooke go through life using people, and I don't want to see you get hurt."

The anxiety in his blue eyes doused her previous anger. She hadn't given him a chance, choosing Mitchell's smooth-talking charm over Pete's good-hearted attentions.

Women can't get enough of that kind of thing. Take it from a former bad boy.

A new sense of self-awareness settled over her, and not comfortably. Regina wet her lips and touched Pete's arm. "I really appreciate your concern, and I'm grateful for your advice. Thanks for coming tonight—I know you did it for us."

"I did it for
you,"
he corrected, and picked up her hand.

"Regina?"

She looked up to see Mitchell walking toward them, wearing slacks and a sport coat.

Pete frowned and released her hand. "Speak of the devil," he murmured. "I guess I'll be going."

"Pete."

He turned back.

"Maybe when all this mess is over, we can have dinner. For real, next time."

He smiled. "I'd like that." He ignored Mitchell as the men passed.

Mitchell walked up and watched Pete walk away. "What's his problem?"

"You," she said, and couldn't keep the indictment out of her voice.

His eyebrows went up. "Let me guess—he said that we should stay out of police business."

She turned to walk toward the entrance where Justine, Mica, and her agent were heading. "Something like that."

"Who's the new guy?"

"Mica's agent. I think he came to assess the damage."

"What's she going to do—have her hair woven back on?"

"I ready don't know."

"Have your sisters patched things up?"

She gave him a bright smile. "I really don't know."

"So you're finally letting them fight their own battles."

She set her jaw at his ease in evaluating her interaction with her sisters. "I could do without the analysis," she said over her shoulder.

"Sorry. How did the service go?"

"Fine. I'm glad it's over."

"I thought maybe we could have dinner," he said. "And talk about some things I found out today."

"I was planning to spend the evening at home with my family."

He caught up to her. "Hey, what's wrong?"

She took in his handsome face, his crinkly eyes that made her heart jerk sideways. Pete was right—Mitchell had smiled and smirked his way into the corners of her life, and she'd put up very little resistance. What a sucker she was to think that he'd actually been attracted to her on some kind of connective level. "Wrong?" she managed to say. "Nothing new."

"At least let me give you a ride home."

She stopped beside Justine at the door. "I'm riding with Justine."

Justine looked back and forth between them with pursed mouth, then turned to Mica. "Are you riding with us?"

Mica looked at Everett.

"Absolutely. Go with your sisters," he said.

"Follow us home," Mica said. "And we can talk there."

Mitchell looked at her as if he, too, was waiting for an invitation, but Regina stubbornly refused. "Maybe we can talk tomorrow," she said, then followed Mica and Justine outside and across the parking lot to Justine's car. Williams's was deserted tonight—only the hearse, Mitchell's van, and Everett's expensive rental car sat in the lot opposite Justine's Mercedes. She frowned, remembering the lady who had crashed the service. The woman must have been dropped off by one of the blue-hair regulars who considered the funeral home a social haunt.

Justine stopped a few feet in front of her car and fished out her keys. She looked at Mica, then pointed to the urn. "Do you want Dean back? Or do you want me to take him, now that your boyfriend's here?"

Regina rolled her eyes—whatever truce her sisters had called hadn't lasted long.

Mica glared at Justine and wrapped her hands around the urn. "Everett is not my boyfriend."

Justine refused to relinquish the urn. "Then why was his coat hanging in your bathroom?"

Mica tugged. "That's none of your business, impersonating snoop. If you hadn't hacked off my hair, Everett wouldn't have had to come."

Justine tugged. "I should've used an ax like I did on that wardrobe."

Regina looked longingly in the direction of Mitchell's van—maybe it wasn't too late to catch a ride after all. He was looking back. She made a mental note not to be so predictable, then plucked Justine's keys from her hand. "Whenever you two grow up, get in."

She opened the door and slid behind the steering wheel, shaking her head as the urn went back and forth, back and forth. She inserted the key and turned, tempted to leave them altogether. A loud boom shattered the air and shook the car, and for a moment she thought someone had fired a gun. But when she saw the spiderwebbed windshield and the buckled hood spewing smoke, she registered some type of explosion. More frightening still, she could see through the smoke that her sisters were no longer standing in front of the car.

Regina hurtled herself out the door. She heard rather than saw Mitchell and Everett run toward them. Justine and Mica lay on the pavement several feet in front of the car, moving, thank God, but covered with pale smoky ash.

Then she saw the topless urn next to a tire and realized the ash wasn't just any old ash.

"What happened?" Justine asked, unwittingly spitting Dean off her tongue. She looked as if she'd been powdered with a giant puff—only her eyes stood out in relief.

"Car engine fire," she said, giving Justine and Mica both a hand to their feet, dreading the moment they realized the true extent of the disaster. She relinquished Mica to Everett and pulled Justine away as Mitchell lifted the hood. A small fire licked at the engine block. He shrugged out of his sport coat and used it to smother the flames.

"Are you okay?" she asked her sisters. "Any broken bones?"

They shook their heads and peered down at their ash-covered fronts, arms extended. Justine suddenly went still. "Oh, God—is this what I think it is?"

Regina pressed a fist to her mouth to quell a wholly inappropriate urge to laugh. She nodded.

"What?" Mica asked, shaking her arms. "What is this?"

Justine released a muffled scream. "It's Dean, you idiot!"

Chapter 28

DO wash that man right outta your hair.

Justine stood under the hottest shower she could withstand and scoured her body with soap and a stiff brush. She tried not to think about Dean's remains swirling around her feet, washing down the drain. She'd eaten her words about putting him somewhere to get under their skin, and she'd eaten a good bit of him to boot. Tate Williams had assured her that ingesting a little human ash wouldn't harm her, but she was sure if anyone could reach back from the dead and ruin her life just a tad more, it would be Dean Freaking Haviland.

The door opened.

"Justine!" Regina called into the bathroom.

"Yes?"

"The sheriff is here and he needs to talk to you." The door closed.

She said every curse word she could think of, and made up a few. After a final rinse, she wrapped her hair in a towel and pulled a yellow terry-cloth robe from the back of the door. Another one of the non-cosmetic items she'd added to the Cocoon line a year ago. And now it seemed likely she would never return to that penthouse corner office.

God, what she wouldn't give for a cup of nutmeg tea right now. Instead, she dressed quickly in jeans and casual pullover and slipped on sandals. She finger-combed her hair and walked downstairs, half-hoping and half-dreading that the sheriff had word of her father. But wouldn't Regina have told her if they'd found him? She'd never forgive herself if he got into trouble... all because of her.

Everyone had gathered in the TV room, including Cissy and Uncle Lawrence. Mica looked pink and fresh-scrubbed, and her agent, perplexed. Regina stood in front of the bookcase, next to Deputy Pete and across the room from Mitchell—curious. And Sheriff Hank Shadowen dominated the room in the center. He gestured to an empty wing chair.

"Sit down, Justine. I need to talk to you girls about a few things."

"Did you find Daddy?" she asked. "Tell me now."

"No, we didn't find your daddy."

She sat. "What, then?"

"Someone tampered with your car."

She frowned. "What?"

"Old trick," Pete said. "Pull a plug wire, cut the fuel line, lay the wire in the fuel, and when you crank the engine—
pow."

"Your gas tank was almost empty," the sheriff said. "Else all you girls would probably be dead."

She swallowed, then murmured, "I always ride on empty." She looked vaguely around the room. "Does anyone have a cigarette?"

Mitchell handed her a smoke and a light, and she nodded her thanks. "Somebody rigged it while we were in the funeral home?"

"Looks that way."

"Was it Lisa Crane?"

"We're not sure, but she seems a likely suspect. Regina and Mica tell me there was a woman at the memorial service that they didn't recognize."

She squinted. "Yes... big glasses."

Regina nodded. "Could it have been her, disguised?"

Justine drew deeply on the cigarette that was jerking in her hand. "I don't know—maybe. I only remember the glasses."

The sheriff grunted. "Tate Williams had never seen her before, and she disappeared right after the service and before the explosion."

She exhaled a plume of smoke. "So, Sheriff, you're telling me I'm being stalked by a maniac."

"Maybe, but I'm afraid I have more bad news." He handed her a piece of paper that looked like some sort of lab results.

"Those pills that Dean was trying to get you to take were ecstasy, laced with something called PMA, parametho-something or other. The chemist said it's a stimulant that raises your body temperature to the point where your nervous system fries. Two would've probably killed you."

And Dean had wanted her to take three. Her blood ran cold. "Are you saying he meant to kill me?"

"I don't know. Do
you
think he meant to kill you?"

"Sheriff, we could go in circles all night—I can't pretend to know what Dean Haviland was thinking."

He stared at her long and hard. "Fair enough," he said finally. "But you've got some explaining to do about your own state of mind that night." He made a sorrowful noise and looked across the room to Mica. "You, too, Mica. We got back the results of the polygraph tests, and both of you girls failed. Now maybe you didn't kill Dean, but you're lying about a whole bunch of details."

Justine closed her eyes.

"You got two choices," he said. "I can arrest you both right now and you can call a lawyer, or you can tell me what the hell happened that night."

She opened her eyes and stared across at Mica, who stared back, big-eyed. Christ, were they to be forever embroiled in each other's lives? She gave Mica a challenging look. "I don't need a lawyer."

Mica's chin went up and she ignored her agent's pleas. "Neither do I."

Regina looked ready to come out of her skin. Cissy started crying.

"The rest of us should leave," Mitchell suggested.

"No, I want everyone to hear," Mica said.

Justine splayed her hand. "I just want to get it off my chest."

The sheriff signaled Pete, who pulled a notebook out of his pocket. "Who wants to go first?"

"I will," Mica said, and stood up to escape her agent's protests. "I lied about Justine's gun on the table downstairs. The truth is, I picked it up, and I was going to go after Dean. I wanted to hurt him back for everything he'd done." She teared up and the end of her tongue appeared between her teeth. "But I got as far as the front porch before I realized the gun wasn't loaded. I left it there and went back inside to get a shell from my gun. I ran into Regina and she asked me to help her sweep up the plaster in Justine's room."

The sheriff looked at Regina, and she nodded confirmation.

"By the time I removed the round from the gun in my suitcase and went back outside, the revolver was gone."

"Then what?" Sheriff Shadowen asked.

"Then nothing. That missing gun was a wake-up call. I sat there and shook like a leaf for ten minutes; then I went upstairs and put the shell back into the gun in my suitcase."

Justine narrowed her eyes. "You were going to shoot him with my gun?"