Page 25

“Should we ask a blessing?”

“Oh, right.” She smiled, nodding toward him. “Go ahead.”

His flash of surprise didn’t surprise her. But he covered it and bowed his head. “Lord, thank You for the food and the sunshine. Help us figure out what’s going on, and the people behind it. Keep Brooklynn safe. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

“Amen.” She smiled at him. “Thank you. I’d sort of like you to stay safe too.”

“I’m fine. Eat.”

“Loquacious, as always.”

Taking her first bite, she closed her eyes to savor the flavors. Salty and spicy and sweet. She swallowed and wiped her mouth. “Delicious.”

Another shrug.

He ate a couple of bites, then set his fork down. “I wanted to apologize for last night. I got a little…carried away.”

“No need to apologize. You carried me right along with you.”

She’d said the words to lighten the moment, but his ever-present scowl deepened.

“It’s not that I don’t… I mean, you’re obviously very attractive.”

When he said it, it sounded like an accusation. “Thank you. So are you.”

He huffed. “The point is, I’m just not…” He seemed to struggle to finish the sentence.

“Interested in women?” She added humor to her voice.

“What? No. I like women. I didn’t mean…” He mashed his lips closed.

“So I’m attractive, but not for you.” She smiled to show she was teasing.

“Stop putting words in my mouth.”

But it was so much fun.

He tried again. “I’m saying I’m not in a place where I can get involved.”

“Right. You don’t live here. Where do you live?”

“Boston.”

“Practically the other side of the planet.”

He took a giant bite of his noodles.

She took a smaller one, then sipped her water. “You have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Wife?”

That earned a glare.

“Yeah, you don’t seem like the type to cheat. Or almost cheat, in this case.”

Now he ignored her, not even looking up.

Frustrated or rattled? Maybe a little of both.

“Don’t worry, you haven’t broken my heart.”

“Just trying to apologize. You don’t have to make it so hard.”

Exactly what Lenny had said, but coming from Ford, she found it amusing. “That wasn’t hard for me at all. It was the most fun I’ve had all day.”

“You don’t like to clean?”

“Nobody in their right mind likes to clean. But I have to do something. I’ve done everything I can for the gallery and Old Home Days from here.

Fortunately, Jewel is managing the day-to-day, but I can’t stay gone much longer.

I have work to do. And I need to take photos.

” She’d restrained herself from taking pictures inside the house, though she’d considered it many times.

Not that she’d sell them, but if she could…

She could envision a whole series on this house, secret hiding places and passageways and all.

He lifted his gaze to hers, eyes narrowed. “You can’t go back to work until this is over.”

“I’m tired of people telling me what I can and can’t do.” Her irritation was back. “Especially when they don’t trust me to tell me anything else. Just keep Brooklynn in the dark. She doesn’t need to know anything. She can’t possibly help.”

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, just returned to eating.

Fine.

She did the same.

It was hard to stay annoyed with someone who’d made such a delicious meal. She added a little soy sauce and stirred it into the noodles.

“I’m investigating Charles Ballentine.”

Her gaze lifted and met Ford’s. She didn’t ask, just hoped he’d keep talking.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that I don’t usually talk about what I’m doing. I tend to work alone.”

“Really? Because you seem like such a people-person.”

He swallowed another bite, then set down his fork. “I believe he knew his killers, so I thought if I could figure out who he was doing business with, maybe I’d be able to follow the clues to what he was into that got him killed.”

“You don’t think it was random?”

“Why him? Why this house, this family? There was a reason for it.”

“But the police?—”

“Didn’t care that much.”

That had her back straightening. “You think a triple murder wasn’t enough to get their attention?”

“I think…I think maybe one of them was involved.”

“In murder?” The second word came out too loud and too high-pitched.

If he noticed, he didn’t remark on it. “It’s just a theory. The cops searched the place, but they found nothing.”

“How do you know what they found?”

“I have a copy of the police report. It’s very thin.”

“Okay, but if clues were hidden in hiding places, then they were, you know, hidden.”

“You found one yesterday.”

“I knew they existed. If the cops didn’t, then they wouldn’t have known to look.”

“But Charles’s mother knew about them. She’d lived in the house for years. She told the police, but still they didn’t find anything. They should’ve worked harder to unearth them. Instead, they decided early on that it was about the robbery.”

“I didn’t realize anything was taken.”

“Grace’s jewelry. Most of it was pretty commonplace—valuable, but not worth killing over. But she had an antique ruby necklace worth a couple hundred grand.”

“That could motivate some people to kill.”

“I don’t think it was about the necklace. The house was filled with valuables that weren’t touched. I think one of the killers grabbed her jewelry box because…why not? Why not take that after they’d taken lives?”

“Was anything else stolen?”

He shrugged. “There was nobody left to say.”

“The little boy?—”

“He was eight. Would he have known about hidden stashes of cash?”

“Okay. But your theory that a cop was involved… That’s quite a stretch. Maybe the police looked but failed to find anything useful.”

“If they were serious about their investigation, they would have found something. You’re not a cop, and you found a ledger I’ve spent weeks searching for.”

“I’m special.”

That brought the telltale twitch that told her he found her amusing. “True. I hadn’t found it. But they were professionals. So they were either incompetent or covering up the truth.”

“You’re a professional, aren’t you? I mean, not a cop but someone who digs up secrets? Is this your first unsolved-mystery book?”

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

“And you didn’t find the ledger.”

He said nothing, just returned to his lunch.

Was Brooklynn making a mistake in trusting the police? Even Lenny the Stalker, for all her issues with the man, took his job seriously.

Or was she wrong about him—again?

Were the local cops incompetent? Or worse, corrupt?