It Had to Be You (6 page)

Ali heard all her things clink together. “Careful—”

She broke off when he pulled out the pine tree pencil pot.

“What the hell?” Teddy said incredulously. “You gave that to me.” He turned to Ali, brows knit together. “You stole it out of my office?”

“
Took back
,” she corrected. “I took it back because you didn’t deserve it.”

“You
stole
it. Where’s the money, Ali?”

“I didn’t take the money!”

The first cop pulled something out of the pot.

“Jesus,” Teddy said as they all stared at a bank bill wrapper, the kind that was used to hold together a stack of money, exactly like the bill wrappers that’d been used on the auction money.

He whirled on her now, eyes furious. “
Where’s the money?
”

“I…” At a loss, she shook her head. “I didn’t know that was in there.”

The cops looked at each other, faces impenetrable, their entire demeanor shifting from fairly relaxed to on guard and far more alert.

“Oh no,” Ali told them. “This isn’t what you think. That bill wrapper must have been in there when I took the pot.”

“So you admit to taking the pot, ma’am?” the first cop asked.

“Well, yes, but…” She trailed off at their expressions. Clearly, they thought she was full of shit. She didn’t dare turn to look at Luke to see if he felt the same. “I didn’t steal the money,” she said, suddenly feeling very small and very alone. “I didn’t.”

Teddy blew out a breath and shoved his fingers through his hair. “What now?” he asked the two cops.

“Do we still have your permission to search the premises?” one of them asked her.

“You don’t need her permission,” Teddy said. “I shared this place with her. It’s half mine.
I
give you permission.”

“Wrong,” Luke said with that same steely authority in his voice. “You no longer live here or have rights to the property.”

Again, Ali didn’t know whether to be touched or upset. She went with upset. “Search,” she said. “Please. You’ll see…”

They started with the living room and kitchen. Luke stood by, watchful. Impassive.

Not Ali. Her thoughts raced. Why was Teddy was acting so sure that it’d been her? Had he set her up? And what was the motive for that? Did he think that would keep her quiet about what he’d been doing in his office that night? “Where was the money in the first place?” she asked.

“In my locked bottom desk drawer,” Teddy said stiffly. “As you very well know.”

“I
don’t
know,” she said, just as stiffly. But she’d gone through his desk looking for the pencil pot. Had there been a locked drawer? She didn’t think so. “You sure you locked it?”

“Yes.”

“
Sure
sure?”

“Jesus! Yes!”

But Ali knew that expression and defensive tone.
He wasn’t sure.
“You’re lying about being sure,” she said. “What else are you lying about, Teddy?”

Both officers straightened and gave him a long, appraising look. He raised his hands. “Hey,
I’m
the wronged party here! I put the briefcase in the bottom drawer to keep it locked up until the bank opened so I could deposit it. Hell, it was all just for show to begin with. Most of the money that had been actually collected was in electronic form. But we wanted to display cash that night to make it look impressive and to encourage more donations. I had it in my bottom desk drawer. I just…”

“What?” asked one of the cops.

Teddy sighed. “Okay, so maybe I can’t remember if I locked the drawer. I was in a hurry.”

“Doing what?” Ali asked, knowing damn well what—just not who.

“It’s not pertinent,” Teddy said.

The cop looked pained, and the look he gave Teddy said he didn’t appreciate being put in the position of having to push. “It’s pertinent. What did you do directly after putting the money in your bottom desk drawer?”

Teddy opened his mouth, and then closed it. After a long pause, he sighed again. “Melissa Mann.”

“What?” the cop asked.

Teddy sighed. “I was doing Melissa Mann.”

There was a beat of stunned silence.

Melissa Mann was a local manicurist, fun and sweet and pretty. She worked at the Hair Today salon a few doors down from the flower shop. Ali absorbed the hit and stared at Teddy.

Surprisingly, he had the balls to meet her gaze, an apology there behind his lingering temper. “I’m sorry, Ali. But we’d been over for a while.”

That was not even close to true, but she didn’t dispute it. Because dammit, he meant for him. It’d been over for him, and she’d not paid close enough attention to notice. But hell if she’d admit to being stupid.

“So you had Melissa in your office,” the second cop said, “with the money.”

“Yes,” he said. “Apparently money is an aphrodisiac.”

Ali felt the snarl catch in her throat and thought about how satisfying it’d be to wrap her fingers around his neck, but the witnesses were problematic. If she was in trouble for a crime she hadn’t committed, she could imagine how much trouble she’d be in for murder.

A hand settled on her shoulder. Luke’s. Clearly she’d projected the murderous urge…

Teddy took in the touch and narrowed his eyes.

“And afterward?” the first police officer asked him.

Teddy was still eyeing Luke’s hand on her shoulder. “I gave Melissa a ride home.”

“You gave her a ride home,” Ali repeated slowly. “Let me see if I have this right. You stood up your girlfriend, dumped fifty thousand into your desk, maybe forgot to lock the drawer, had sex with Melissa, and then gave her a ride home and left the money there.”

Ted grimaced again. “Listen, I realize that makes me look bad.”

“Actually,” Luke said, “it makes you look like a douche.”

Teddy flushed an angry red. “Which still doesn’t make me a thief.”

The cops moved on to check the rest of the house, including the bedroom Ali had been using. They went through her drawers, which was embarrassing enough, but then the closet. One of the cops pulled out the
Fun ’N Pleasure
bag that she’d gotten as a gag gift for her birthday from her sister. “No,” she said quickly. “Wait— That’s not mine—”

Cop number two pulled a Catwoman costume from the bag and then a massive, eye-popping neon-pink vibrator.

Teddy gawked at the sheer size of the thing. “You have a vibrator?”

“It was a gag gift,” Ali said, sure she was as pink as the vibrator.

Still standing stoic and steady as ever, Luke eyed the items without a word.

“You have a vibrator,” Teddy repeated in disbelief. “Is
that
why we hadn’t had sex in two months?”

Once again Luke’s hand settled on Ali. Just as well since there were two—no
three
—cops watching. So she didn’t go for Teddy’s throat, a fact she considered a real feat of restraint.

But it wasn’t restraint at all. It was burning humiliation, anger, and something else.

Terror.

And that terror was tripled when the cops finished searching both the house and her truck. Though they didn’t find the money, they took her downtown anyway.

L
uke stood in the center of his living room, which looked like it’d been tossed by a couple of thieves.

Hurricane Ali.

He didn’t know what to make of the fact that she’d been caught with the bill wrapper. Nor did he know what to make of her being taken to the station for questioning.

But he did know one thing. Marshall—he refused to think of him as
Teddy
—had rubbed him the wrong way.

Still, this wasn’t his problem. He didn’t know Ali from Adam. What he
did
know was that he didn’t want to get involved. He was on break from getting involved. In spite of what his commander wanted, he had nineteen days left on his leave, and he planned on using every single one of them to do jack shit. He was looking forward to it.

But for reasons he couldn’t explain, he couldn’t dispel the image of Ali at the station, sitting in an interrogation room, in trouble.

He’d always believed in the system. He’d had to. It was what had made his job so important to him. Take down the bad guys and let the courts keep them down—that had been his life, his entire reason for being.

But then that very system had failed him. And he’d failed too. He’d failed the people who believed in the system. And now he was taking a break from people so he couldn’t fail again.

Which in no way explained why, instead of putting the house back together, or hell, going back to paddleboarding, he ended up in front of his laptop.

He’d already done that basic search on Ali, but he hadn’t gone far. He picked up where he’d left off. Her mother had a record: two arrests for assault and battery, one, apparently, for the baseball bat incident Ali had told him about. Both times the charges had been reduced, and Mimi Winters had been let out on time served. Ali’s sister, Harper, had a record as well, for indecent exposure.

Nothing for Ali. Though going back further, he caught a few additional times where she’d been questioned, one for an incident involving her science teacher, who’d allegedly been sexually inappropriate with his students. Christ, he hoped she hadn’t been one of them. Leaning back in his chair, Luke stared at his screen. He already knew that she was protective, loyal, and tough as hell. Now he also knew that she’d grown up knee-high in shit, and yet somehow she appeared to come out of it with a sweet kindness that was to-the-bone genuine.

And she
was
innocent in regard to the money. He felt it deep in his gut.

He researched Ted Marshall next. There’d been the basic search done when Marshall had applied for the lease, but Luke went deeper without remorse, because something wasn’t right.

The golden boy had certainly sailed through life so far. He’d been raised here in town, was captain of the football team, and had gone on to the University of Washington, graduating with a degree in political science. He’d not gotten into law school, so he’d come back to Lucky Harbor. He paid his bills on time, golfed, and had a fantasy football team that did pretty well. He’d been pulled over three years ago in Kent with a hooker in his car, but the story had later been amended to describe the woman as being an “exotic dancer.” Marshall sat on several charitable committees in Lucky Harbor, and as the town clerk, no one had a single negative thing to say about him. He was well known and well liked.

Luke was experiencing bad flashbacks from the whole senator nightmare. Not that Marshall was a secret stalker and murderer. No, Luke suspected he was exactly as he appeared—a guy for whom things either came easy or not at all, because he was just on the wrong side of lazy.

Which also told Luke something else. Marshall wasn’t the thief either. He didn’t have it in him.

So the question was, did Marshall really believe Ali had taken the money? This was a tough one because there’d been something in the man’s eyes, something in his tone, that hadn’t rung true to Luke.

He’d been lying.

But about what exactly?

Luke made a call to Sheriff Sawyer Thompson. Sawyer had run wild in his youth, only a few years ahead of Luke. Their paths had crossed professionally on several occasions, most notably when Luke had helped Sawyer track down one of his perps in San Francisco not too long ago.

They bullshitted back and forth for a few minutes, and then Luke asked about Ali.

She was still being questioned. Having the bill wrapper in her possession looked bad, real bad, Sawyer said, but it wasn’t enough evidence for an arrest. He said that a toe ring had been found in Marshall’s office couch, and it didn’t seem to belong to anyone who had business being in Marshall’s office.

Or to Melissa Mann.

Luke hung up and chewed on that for a few minutes.
Not your problem
, he told himself. But he was still mulling it all over when his cell rang.

“How’s the brooding going?” Sara asked.

He frowned at his sister through the phone. “I’m not brooding.”

“Of course you are. You’re a professional brooder.”

Luke pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did you call for something in particular or just to piss me off?”

“Well, fun as it is to piss you off, I did call for a reason.” But then she hesitated.

Shit. “What?” he asked. Sara had come out of prison determined to fix her life. Luke had done whatever he could, paying for rehab—twice—sending her to school—also twice—and finally sitting in the crowd with pride and relief when she’d eventually graduated with her teaching credentials. She now worked with troubled kids in an alternative high school in the Bay Area, and he couldn’t be more proud of her.

But she was still a colossal pain in his ass. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yes. I just…”

“Whatever you need, Sara. You know that.”

She sighed, sounding exasperated. “Okay, stop expecting me to be in trouble every time I call.”

He felt a twinge of guilt, but there’d been years when that had been true. Not that he wanted to remind her. “I don’t do that.”

“Yes, you do,” she said. “But this time,
you’re
the one in trouble.”

“Me? I’m fine.”

“Really? Is that why you took off for Lucky Harbor—
Lucky Harbor
, Luke, where you never go anymore? You ran away from the press. What was that?”

“I needed a vacation,” he said.

“Is that it? Really?”

“Yes,” he said, trying to assuage the worry he heard in her voice. “I told you, I had three weeks of leave that I was going to lose if I didn’t use.”

There was a beat of silence, as if she was trying to assess the truth from two hundred miles away. “Don’t make me come up there,” she finally said. “Because I totally will.”

“I’m fine,” he said, relieved she’d backed down. “I’m just…relaxing. Hanging out.”

“Good. Then you can also give grandpa a hug for me.”

“Sara—”

“He’s old, Luke. And getting older. Do it for me.”

The doorbell rang.
Saved by the bell.
“Gotta go.” Luke clicked off and walked through the house, looking out the window at the white Dial-A-Ride van in his driveway.
Ah, Christ.
He opened the front door and faced the entire gang of Lucky Harbor’s biggest troublemakers: Lyle Lyons, Cecil Elroy, Joseph Wykowski.

And their ringleader, Edward Gregory.

Edward and Luke’s grandma had divorced in the ’70s, when Fay had founded the local historical society to preserve the buildings that made up Commercial Row, and then insisted on running it herself. Back in the day, Edward hadn’t gotten the memo about women’s rights, not to mention exactly how strong willed and stubborn a Hanover could be. He’d stood firm, and Fay had dumped him.

Edward had moved out, eventually buying the house next door, saying he’d done so to spite Fay. But everyone knew it was because he hadn’t gotten over her.

Or her death.

Or Luke, seeing as he’d caused it…

Luke leaned against the doorjamb and waited, because whatever this was, it was going to be good.

Or really, really bad.

“Took you long enough to answer the door,” Mr. Lyons said, leaning heavily on his cane to peer inside, and then let out a low whistle at the mess. “Holy smokes, boy. You haven’t outgrown that party animal stage yet?”

“He didn’t do that, you idiot, the cops did,” Mr. Wykowski said. “They tossed the joint looking for the dough.”

Edward didn’t speak. They hadn’t been face to face in years, hadn’t seen each other since Fay’s funeral. “What’s up?” Luke asked.

“We called Edward to drive us over here to see you,” Mr. Wykowski said. “On account of I lost my license last year and these yahoos are blinder than bats.”

“Hey,” Mr. Elroy said, glaring at him. “You’re the one who tried to drive down the pier and ended up nose first inside the deli. You smelled like pickles for a month.”

“I turned at the wrong place. Big deal, we all make mistakes.” Mr. Wykowski waved this off as he turned to Luke. “Ali’s still at the police station.”

“I know.”

“Thing is, Ted Marshall’s sort of the golden boy around here. Hell, he had the senior center redone last year so we could open up more rooms, and he single-handedly raised the money for the Dial-A-Ride van. He makes sure there’s money in the budget for Edward’s pay. People love him and trust him. If he says Ali stole the money, everyone believes him. You know what I’m saying?”

“No,” Luke said. “Just because someone’s a good guy doesn’t mean what he says is gold. There’s a justice system.”

Which he knew better than anyone didn’t always work.

“Listen,” Mr. Lyons said, “we watch
Law and Order
. We know shit happens. And shit’s happening.”

“Ali’s our ceramics teacher,” Mr. Elroy said. “She also gets library books and reads to us. We need to help her. We’re all she has.”

“And you want me to do what exactly?” Luke asked.

“We figure since she’s been staying here, that makes her yours too.”

“It’s not like that,” Luke said.

“What is it like?” Mr. Elroy asked, and every one of them looked at Luke through rheumy, but sharp-as-hell, eyes.

Yeah, Luke, what was it like?
She’d come along when he’d wanted to be alone, and she’d gotten his entire house torn up in the search for the fifty large. But the landline hadn’t rung in a full twenty-four hours. Ali, whose damn life was circling the drain, had amazingly managed to scare everyone off and give him a chance at his peace and quiet.

In spite of himself, he wanted to help her in return. Not that she wanted his help. The envelope of cash she’d tried to give him was still on the table. Broke as shit, she’d still given it to him, because that was the right thing to do.

It’d been the pride flaring in her eyes that had slain him. She
needed
to pay her way. He was an ass, but not that big an ass to squelch the life that she projected with every single breath. He might be standing in the darkness, wallowing, weighed down by the things he saw on his job, but she wasn’t like that. She was light.

And yet she was at the police station right now being questioned.

Alone.

He told himself that she was used to shitty circumstances. Hell, it appeared she was used to shitty men too. Her father, the pincher…him. She was used to taking care of herself and others.

And he had no idea why that got to him. But it did.
She
did.

“You still with us, boy?” Mr. Elroy asked. “Now’s not the time to go all silent and cranky on us.”

Luke hadn’t been called “boy” in a damn long time. And few other than Sara dared to call him on the silent and cranky. “Ali’s just being questioned,” he said.

“What if she needs bailing out?”

“She doesn’t.”

“But if she does?”

“You could do it,” Luke said.

“Yes, and we would,” Mr. Wykowski said. “But…” He glanced at Edward, who still said nothing, gave away nothing. At seventy-two, he looked as fit and healthy as Sara and Jack had reported and pretty much the same as always—as if he’d just swallowed a lemon.

“We don’t have very much,” Mr. Lyons said. “We pooled our available cash together from what was left of our social security for the month, but it’s not much. We had a poker game a few nights back, see, and normally I’d have taken the pot—”

Mr. Elroy coughed and muttered “bullshit” at the same time.

Mr. Lyons glared at him. “—But I had a little bad luck.”

“That’s not what happened,” Mr. Elroy said.

“Yes, it is,” Mr. Lyons said.

“No.” Mr. Elroy shook his head. “Eileen Weiselman knew she had a losing hand, so she flashed you her tits to distract you into folding, and you lost. We all lost.”

“Okay, look,” Luke said, rubbing his temples where he was getting a stress headache. “Ali isn’t a thief. I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding that will get worked out.”

“But you can’t just let her sit in jail while it does,” Mr. Wykowski said, horrified.

“She’s not in a jail cell. She’s being questioned. Big difference. And unless she’s charged and arrested—which they won’t do without just cause—she won’t need bailing out.”

“See,” Mr. Elroy said, “that’s good information. I didn’t know that. It’s why you need to be in charge of this situation.”

“I’m not in charge,” Luke said. “Of anything.”

“But she’s down there with
hardened
criminals,” Mr. Lyons said. “You can’t let her sit there with them.”

Luke sincerely doubted there were any hardened criminals in Lucky Harbor. The daily police reports read like something right out of Mayberry: an elk walking down Main Street, a drunken and disorderly at two a.m., high school punks running over mailboxes. “This isn’t up to me,” he said. “You know that, right? They’re just following procedure.”

They all looked deeply disappointed in him. And then Edward spoke for the first time, uttering only two words. “Get it.”

Mr. Lyons nodded and used his cane to navigate back to the van.

Edward just stood there looking at Luke.

Luke ignored them all and thought about Ali. He’d meant what he’d said, she was no thief. She’d probably give a stranger the shirt off her own back. The thought reminded him of what she’d looked like without a shirt in his kitchen, yelling at Marshall’s voice mail.