4 Bodies and a Funeral

“Back to work, huh?”

She nodded. “First day.”

“Are you okay? You look flushed.”

She put a hand to her warm cheek. “Hectic morning. What are you doing here?”

“Extra security for Eva McCoy. It’s a favor for the mayor.”

Carlotta frowned. “What does the city have to do with this?”

“Apparently Eva’s uncle is a state senator. He wants APD on the scene just in case. And since a uniform might send the wrong signal …” He shrugged. “Here I am.”

She surveyed his gray suit and gave his red tie a tug. “You look good.”

“I keep telling him that red is his color.”

At the sound of a purring voice, Carlotta turned her head. A doe-eyed, exotic beauty in a dark suit stepped into Jack’s personal space.

Jack gave the woman a proprietary smile. “Carlotta, I don’t think you’ve met my new partner, Detective Maria Marquez. Maria, this is Carlotta Wren, a friend of mine.”

Carlotta tried not to react. Friends? Is that what she and Jack were?

She had seen the woman once, at a distance. Up close, Maria was even more … wow. She was almost as tall as Jack, with killer curves, and caramel-colored hair smoothed back from her face in a clasp at the nape of her neck.

“Nice to meet you, Carlotta.” Maria’s English was precise, seasoned with the kind of curling accent that made words like blitzkrieg and psoriasis sound sexy.

“Same here,” Carlotta murmured.

When she’d razzed Jack about getting a partner, she’d envisioned a grumpy middle-aged man with hair in his ears, not a Latina siren with perfect teeth and no wedding ring. Damn, the woman even had good taste—her suit was Ellen Tracy and the pumps were Stuart Weitzman. Carlotta knew her own Betsey Johnson tunic dress and Fendi platform sandals could hold their own, but the cast on her arm was an unsightly accessory she couldn’t wait to be rid of. And she tongued the gap between her front teeth self-consciously.

“So you work at Neiman’s?” Maria asked. The way she said it left the unspoken comparison of “and I carry a gun” hanging in the air.

“That’s right,” Carlotta said.

“Carlotta also moonlights for the morgue,” Jack supplied cheerfully. “She’s a body mover.”

Carlotta squirmed. The gorgeous giantess packing heat made her feel like an underachiever. And short.

“A body mover? How … diverse. Is that how the two of you met?”

Carlotta exchanged a glance with Jack. He looked at Maria. “Not exactly. I’ll fill you in later,” he added in a low voice.

Great. He’d tell Maria all about her criminal family—her fugitive folks, her delinquent brother … Not to mention Carlotta’s own scrapes with the law. And her futile—and inept—efforts to hold her life and family together.

“Speaking of your morbid hobby, how is Coop?” Jack asked her with wry amusement.

Cooper Craft—her brother’s body-moving boss who had pulled her in on a couple of jobs … and who’d made it known that he wouldn’t mind them being more than friends. Coop was a former medical examiner. He and Jack maintained a relationship that existed primarily of circling each other like two big-racked bucks, but collaborating when necessary.

“With this bum arm, I haven’t been helping Coop lately,” she said. “And after Wesley conspired with those thugs to steal the body we were hauling from Florida back to Atlanta … well, let’s just say he needs to earn back Coop’s trust before they work together again.”

Her brother with the genius IQ somehow rationalized making the wrong choice at almost every juncture. She bit her lip and wondered how he was faring in court.

“Despite Wesley’s interference, Coop received a lot of attaboys for the way he handled that VIP body pickup—and the aftermath,” Jack said. “I hear that Abrams might give him more access to the active cases at the morgue.”

“Good for Coop,” she said, and meant it. The quiet intellectual acted as if he was content to be relegated to the job of body hauler for the morgue he used to run, but she often wondered if he missed being in the thick of things.

“I figured you’d be happy for him,” Jack said in a sly reference to the road trip she’d taken with Coop to Florida for some fun in the sun before picking up the body. Their plans to get to know each other hadn’t exactly panned out when Wesley had shown up as an uninvited chaperone. Still, she and Coop had had their moment … and had it snatched away.

Of course, Jack didn’t have to know that.

Besides, with her promise to Peter, it was all a moot point.

“I need to get back to work,” she said brightly, gesturing to the milling crowd. “Nice to see you both,” she said, including the decadent Maria in her glance.

“Hey.” Jack caught her good arm and leaned in, his golden-colored eyes serious. “Wes is seeing the D.A. today, isn’t he?”

She lifted her chin and nodded.

“Don’t worry. Liz will take care of him.”

Carlotta’s mouth tightened, but before she could respond, Jack picked up her left hand and rubbed his rough thumb over her bare ring finger.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just checking to see if you’re wearing another man’s ring yet.”

He winked, then walked away to join Maria. Confounded as always by Jack’s behavior, Carlotta turned back to the customers to make sure everyone had a ticket before she shepherded them into line. Beneath her lashes, she stole glances at Jack and his new partner as they scouted the layout of the store event. They looked as if they belonged on TV—the great-looking partners with amazing chemistry who put away bad guys during the day … and burned up the sheets at night?

It only made sense that Jack would want to bed the beauty—he was a red-blooded man after all. And not in a hurry to put a ring on anyone’s finger anytime soon.

Besides, since his sometimes-squeeze, Liz Fischer, aka The Cougar, was now banging Carlotta’s little brother, the big-boobed attorney probably had less time for booty calls from Jack.

If there was a bright spot to Liz seducing nineteen-year-old Wesley, Carlotta thought wryly, it was that maybe she’d work harder to keep him out of jail. The threat of having to resort to conjugal visits in the slammer might keep her on her toes.

Carlotta fretted about Wesley between handing out tickets and informing people about the day’s event, as it had been laid out in the memo that she’d memorized.

“When Ms. McCoy arrives, she’ll say a few words and answer questions from the press. Then she’ll step over to the jewelry section where she’ll pose for pictures, sign autographs, and use an engraving tool to sign the back of any Lucky Charm Bracelet purchased. There is a limit of two bracelets per person.”

It would be a sellout, Carlotta thought as she looked down the long line forming. The jewelry department, adjacent to the event area, was already selling the charm bracelets as quickly as they could ring up customers.

The novelty was that each bracelet was purportedly unique, with random charms denoting travel or hobbies or almost anything. Each bracelet was packaged in a small brown box—the recipient didn’t know exactly what they were getting until they opened it after purchase. The idea was for the wearer to treat the bracelet as a suggested life list of sorts, to be inspired by the charms to try something unexpected. There were even special journals and Web sites for Charmers, as they were now being called. The craze was sweeping the nation, bolstered by Eva’s appearances on national talk shows, hefting the gold medal she’d won for the marathon that had held the world captivated as she’d fought back from her illness to pass the leaders and against all odds, win the event. Hers was one of the greatest human interest stories to emerge from the most recent summer Olympics. And like many athletes, she was cashing in on her newfound celebrity.

“Are those two people over there police officers?” Patricia asked, nodding to Jack and Maria.

“Detectives,” Carlotta said, trying not to let the pair’s familiar body language get to her. It was none of her business where Jack holstered his gun. “Added security as a precaution.”

“So it’s true, then.”