Dial M for Mischief

“It does when somebody turns his back and somebody else slips a teaspoon of sugar into the glass,” Jolie reminded him, grinning at the memory. “How old was that wine I did that to?”

“Old enough to have been treated with more respect.” Sam turned his back to the sink and leaned against the edge of the counter.

Jolie caught her breath. Movie stars were handsome, granted. Although she’d often wondered about the offspring of all those gorgeous faces born with Mommy’s original nose and inheriting daddy’s original receding chin. But Sam? Sam was just Sam, and he was the real McCoy. He also didn’t throw a hissy fit if she accidentally moved into his camera line during the filming of a love scene.

“Are we good now, Sam? There was hurt on both sides when I left, I know that, and I caused most of it. But have we agreed that what happened is in the past and at least now we can be friends? Can we move on now?”

“Friends? Maybe you could clarify that.” He looked at her for a long moment, slowly measuring her from head to toe and back again with his gaze before seeming to concentrate on her mouth. “What level of friends are we talking here? Good friends? Very good friends?”

Her bare toes were trying to curl themselves into the coolness of the tile floor. “Good friends. Older. Wiser. Less inclined to be selfish, self-centered—and I’m speaking of myself, mostly. How’s that?”

“It’ll do. For now. And I take full blame for my part in what happened back then—even more than you know. Shall we seal the bargain?”

“You never give up, do you?” Jolie said, laughing. And then she held out her right hand just to see what he’d do.

He did what she’d wanted him to do. He ignored her hand to slide his arms around her and lowered his mouth to her own.

For the first time since Jade’s call at midnight four days earlier, Jolie let herself feel. Really feel, react, instead of just acting and hoping for something to fill the sudden hole in her heart. But what she felt when Sam kissed her wasn’t passion. Nor was it the momentary escape she’d insanely hoped to find in their desperate coupling of only a few hours ago. Not lust, not even love. What she felt was this enormous sorrow welling up inside her. Filling her, crushing her, yet leaving her unbearably empty.

So many chances lost. So many missed moments that could never be recaptured. Choices made. Paths taken…and those not taken. But there was time; there had always been time—that’s what she’d told herself.

And now she was out of time.

She couldn’t go back, change anything.

Even Sam’s strong arms around her couldn’t change anything…

When she broke the kiss, it was to press her face into Sam’s neck, her voice catching on a sob. “He’s gone, Sam. Teddy’s gone.”

Sam held her tight, mumbling words she couldn’t quite make out because the hurt was swallowing her now, pulling her down into that black hole of misery and loss she’d been fighting any way she could, calling on every acting skill she might possess in order to hide her tearing grief. Her guilt.

“I phoned him once a week, Sam, faithfully. I invited him out to the coast a million times, but he always said he was too busy. And so was I. First working three part-time jobs to feed myself and then I always seemed to be shooting somewhere in the world. Six movies in three years. Once…once he visited me on location in South Dakota, but we were behind schedule, and I was almost always on the set and…”

She swallowed down hard. “A year, Sam. I hadn’t seen Teddy in an entire year, not even on Christmas. The big movie star, always too busy even to come home to see her own father. And now I’ll never see him again. We couldn’t…we couldn’t even have an open casket, not the way the bullet tore through…oh, Sam, this hurts. Just hold me, please. I hurt so bad.”

Chapter Four

SAM WALKED INTO THE living room after an hour spent holding Jolie in the privacy of his bedroom suite. He’d taken her up the back staircase from the kitchen to avoid the living room and her sisters. She’d cried and apologized for crying and then cried some more. When he’d left her, she was in the bathroom, washing her face and applying makeup. He believed she was putting her mask back on but didn’t think he should point that out to her, poor kid.

“She was crying about Teddy, not you. Right?”

He looked at Jade, one eyebrow raised at her sharp tone. “I beg your pardon?”

“Jade sneaked upstairs and listened at the bedroom door,” Jessica informed him. “We wondered if we should knock, come in and check on her, make sure she was all right. We took a vote and it was a draw. I voted to leave the two of you alone, and Jade…well, you know how she voted. But that’s to be expected. Jade’s off men right now, especially Becket men.”

“I think the day finally hit her,” Sam explained as he retrieved his car keys from a small table just inside the door. “The finality of it.”

“Exactly what I told Jade. Is she all right now? She probably needed a good cry, Sam. Me, I think I’m all cried out for now, but I cried buckets. God only knows what Jade did until we got here. Jade doesn’t share easily, do you, Jade?”

Jade pointedly turned her back to both of them, picking up a small silver bowl and turning it over, examining the maker’s mark—or pretending to so that she could hide her face.

Leaving Sam to wonder why women always said things like that, that someone needed a good cry. The statement had never made any sense to him, but Sam only nodded, sure it was a female thing men weren’t meant to understand. “Jolie will be downstairs in a couple of minutes. We’re going to go over to the house to pick up her clothes. She can’t stay there anymore, at least not yet. She hates that she can’t, but I think I convinced her that people handle things differently. There is no right or wrong way to grieve.”

Jessica, who had gone back to reading one of the files, looked up at him, a pencil caught lengthwise between her teeth. “I erk,” she said, nodding. “Alwus id.”

“She works. She always did,” Jade translated. She put down the bowl and turned around when Jolie joined Sam, once more clad in her simple but elegant black dress. “I turn into a monster and go looking for a fight. Sorry, Sam. Do you remember the alarm code, Jolie?”

Jolie nodded, wiping at her eyes one last time with the increasingly large wad of crumpled tissues she held in one hand. “Teddy’s birthday. One—two—four—three. I’m sorry I’m bailing on you guys…”

“You’re not bailing,” Jade assured her. “We know where to find you when we need you. Besides, you and Sam are going to work the bride case together, right? We’ll meet here every night to talk over what we’ve done each day—eight o’clock good for everyone? Good,” she said, not waiting for anyone to answer. “So just go now and get your clothes. I’ll wait until five and then call for a pizza delivery at six, so be back by then. Sam? Does the guy at the gate like pizza?”

“Probably. With or without the box,” Sam said, visions of Jade running his life poking at his brain and making him spare a moment’s pity for his cousin Court. Then again, Courtland Becket always liked to be in charge, the go-to man. It might be considered a success that his and Jade’s marriage had lasted a full six months. “Do either of you want anything else from the house while we’re there?”

“See if Teggy as marcus.” Jessica removed the pencil from her teeth. “Sorry. Could you check in Teddy’s office, see if he’s got markers? You know, highlighter pens? Stupid, but I have a system when I work, and that includes highlighters. Pink would be nice, but I’ll use yellow in a pinch.”

“Pink highlighters,” Sam repeated. “Got it.” He put his hand on Jolie’s waist. “Ready to go?”

But Jolie just stood there, staring into the middle distance, every muscle in her body taut. “Jade?” she asked quietly. “When you got home the night you found—when you got home? Was the alarm engaged?”

Jade shook her head. “Sorry, honey, I see where you’re going, but that won’t work. We need the code to shut off the alarm after we enter the house, but anyone can just push the set button on the way out and arm the alarm again. The cops say suicide in a locked house. We can say Teddy let his murderer in and the killer just set the alarm again before he left. We can say Teddy turned off the alarm, which he’s been known to do, so that the killer entered the house without Teddy knowing it. Face it—a man who insists on using his birth date for a code isn’t really taking the alarm system seriously in the first place, as I always told him. Any scenario works, but the cops bought the suicide version.”

“You should change the code in any case,” Sam pointed out, feeling himself being drawn into this whole murder/suicide conspiracy thing. Much against his will, not to mention his better judgment. “If you’re right, that is, and Teddy let his murderer into the house that night. Even if you still need a key for the front door, the guy could—”

“The perp,” Jessica interrupted brightly. “If we’re going to play private dicks, let’s use the snappy lingo, okay? You’re a guy, Sam. The killer is a perp.” Her smile faded slightly. “Besides, I’m having trouble thinking Teddy and killer in the same thought. Somehow perp is easier.”

“All right, the perp,” Sam conceded. “If there was a perp, and Teddy admitted said perp to the premises, said perp may have seen Teddy punch in the code. In other words, ladies, change the damn code, all right?” He looked to Jade because he wasn’t stupid, he recognized the pecking order in their little group: Jade, Jessica, Jolie and, fourth, finishing out of the money, himself. “Jade? We agree on this?”

“Hmm?” she said, blinking as she looked at him. “Sorry. I was trying again to remember if the alarm was on or not that night or even if the door was locked. Teddy was so lax about setting the alarm. In fact, to get real about the thing, if it was on, that alone would be unusual. I just can’t remember if it was engaged or not. As for the front door lock? I always use my key, but that doesn’t mean the door was locked when I put the key in, you know? I think I’ll take Rockne for a walk in the garden, if nobody minds. I have to go think about this, mentally retrace my steps. If it was on, that might tell us for certain that Teddy was killed—not that I’m questioning that…”

Sam looked at Jessica, who was making notes on a scrap of paper and totally ignoring everyone, and then glared at Jolie. “Humor me. Change…the damn…code.”

“We will,” Jolie promised as she headed for the front door. “You want to explain to me why you’d think the murderer would come back?”

“If I had all the answers, sweetheart,” he told her as he opened the car door for her, “I’d be king of the world. I’m basing my concern solely on books and TV shows wherein the murderer—excuse me, the perp—always returns to the scene of the crime. Like it’s part of their job description.”

Jolie buckled herself in as he started the car. “So you’re going along with us? You’re willing to believe Teddy was murdered?”

Sam put the transmission into gear and the car pretty much on autopilot as he headed toward the Sunshine family home in nearby Ardmore. “I just walked in on this earlier today, Jolie, and haven’t had much time to think about anything but the moment following the one that just preceded it.”

“Our fault, I know. The Sunshine girls invaded, and you haven’t had much chance to do anything but listen to us rant and rave. So think about it now, Sam. Do you think Teddy was capable of suicide—for any reason? I really do want your opinion.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

A minute later Jolie gave him a soft punch in the arm. “Out loud, Sam. Think about it out loud.”

“All I seem to be doing today is taking orders.All right. Teddy was one of the most alive people I ever met. That’s one. He loved you three girls more than anything else in the world, and I can’t see him taking the coward’s way out of trouble, leaving you three behind to clean up his mess—and I mean that in any way imaginable. Whatever trouble he might have been in couldn’t have been more important to him than…well, he had to have known Jade would be the one to find him. So, no, Jolie. I can’t see Teddy doing something like that to Jade, no matter how much distress he might have been under at the time.”

Jolie nodded, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “That’s what Jade kept telling the police. Teddy wouldn’t have done that to her. He would have gone somewhere private, away from the house. Somewhere someone else would find the…find the body. And he would have left a note, too. Explaining what he did, why he did it. He would have apologized, told us that…told us that he loved us.”