Family Jewels (Dix Dodd Mystery #2)

end table with barely a click. Staying out of the light from the television, I tiptoed my way to the patio doors.

The jewel thief? God, wouldn’t that be convenient?

Or, hey, Frankie Morrell, maybe?

Whatever the case, someone wasn’t using the front door here. Someone was breaking and entering my mother’s apartment. My mind went immediately to our family’s lucky diamond. The one Dad had given Mother all those years ago. If someone was coming in here with a mind to steal that from my mother, they’d be getting one hell of a big surprise.

I’d be their welcoming committee. Hell, I’d be their worst nightmare.

The doors were locked, of course. Both Mother and Mrs. P had checked them twice, including the patio’s French door. But a locked door wasn’t much of a deterrent to a determined thief. These condo locks were fairly high quality (I’d checked), but they weren’t the high security jobs with the floating collars that resisted picking and drilling. They wouldn’t thwart someone who knew what he — or she — was doing.

I stood by the door and quickly looked around for something I could use as a weapon. Mother had deposited a few personal items on the nearby table. Her pierced earrings? Sure, poke him to death with the stems. Her hair brush? Sure I could brush him to death.

Fuck!

I hadn’t brought my gun. Guns and border crossings just do not mix. But I was clever and resourceful, Dix Dodd, private eye.

Shit! Why are there no brass candle sticks lying around when you need them? Why no lead pipes? No wrench? (Clearly I’d been playing too much Clue.) Besides, it was likely a geriatric jewel thief. Old people had thin skulls, didn’t they? And brittle bones. Wouldn’t want to kill anyone by coshing them.

I heard the click as the cylinder turned and the lock gave. I heard the faint snick as the door opened.

Show time.

Fine, I’d use my hands to take down this intruder, and my feet, of course. (I’d long ago learned to never under estimate the power of a well-placed foot.) Oh shit, I’m a woman … I’d use my brains.

I leaned forward just enough to catch the edge of the sheet from the pull-out and I pulled it in toward me.

I readied myself in attack mode — crouching down low, ready to spring. I was ready to kick some ass. Gently, if need be. But harder was good, too. The door opened enough so that the culprit could enter. Oh, please God, let it be Harriet Appleton.

The intruder poked a leaning head into my mother’s apartment, and I jumped into action.

“Gotcha!”

It wasn’t a shout, for I really didn’t want to alarm Mother and Mrs. Presley until I had the criminal fully apprehended. Yes, showing off, but if there was going to be a fight here on my hands, it wasn’t something I wanted either of those two ladies getting in the middle of.

I flung the sheet over the intruder, muffling an exclamation.

Oh, shit! Male! Definitely male. A shot of adrenaline fueling my muscles, I tackled him onto the sofa with a move that would have made an NFL defensive end proud.

“What the hell?”

Okay, that sounded familiar. And so was this physique that I was now straddling on the sofa bed.

“Dylan?” I asked in a harsh whisper, then pulled the sheet off.

“Jesus, Dix.” He matched her stage whisper. “Are you trying to give me a freakin’ heart attack?”

“Give you a heart attack? What did you think you were going to be greeted with when you broke in? A bouquet of flowers?”

I still held him pinned (yeah … moving must have slipped my mind), but he managed to shrug against the white sheet. “I thought you’d be asleep, and I wanted to practice my technique.”

“I appear to have taught you well, Grasshopper.”

He grinned. “Apparently. But I’m disappointed in you, Sensei. This is the best weapon you could come up with. A sheet?”

“I thought you were Harriet Appleton, or maybe Wiggie Appleton, and I didn’t want to kill them. Besides, it worked. You’re caught.”

“Yes, but what if I was a real intruder, not a willing captive?”

Oh, God. Willing captive. The way he said the words — oh, Christmas, it just did it for me. I felt a low hum start deep in my belly.

I jumped off him fast and sat on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t the sex that made me jump away. It was the closeness. You know how it is. Once burned…. To a crisp like a goddamn marshmallow in the face of a flame- thrower.

“Well, if you were a real intruder, you might not be willing, but you’d still be captive.”

Dylan drew himself up on his elbows. He wore a dark turtleneck, and a dark tuque (perfect cat-burglar material) though of course with his dark hair, the hat was not really necessary. But he was fully prepared for any situation.

“So Dylan, is that a flashlight in your pocket, or were you just happy to see me?”

He smiled. Under the glow of the television it looked so damn —

Glow of the freakin’ television! Ack!

“What are you watching?” Dylan sat up. Or rather, struggled to sit up. Hard to do with a full-grown forty- year-old woman body slamming you back to the bed again.

“Hmph.”

“I’m watching … I’m watching….” One arm on Dylan symbolically if not actually holding him down, and one hand frantically searching the pulled-apart bedding, I scrabbled for the remote. Mid waw-waw- wawwwwww, I found it and clicked as quickly as I could. “This is what I was watching.”

Oh God. The Lawrence Welk Show. How uncool was that! How positively geriatric.

“You like this show?”

“Duh. Why else would be I watching it?” Certainly not because I was truly watching porn and just about got caught by my hot, hot assistant.

“Cool.” Dylan looked at the screen. “Man, that Sissy and Bobby sure can dance, huh? I wish I were that light on my feet. Hey, remember old Lawrence conducting? A-one-and-a-two-and….”

I arched an eyebrow.

“My grandparents used to love this show,” he explained. “They couldn’t wait for Saturday nights to sit down after supper to watch it. Whenever they babysat me, I’d watch it with them. I had a real crush on Sissy. But I was just a kid.”

I couldn’t help but smile. The mental picture of a young (okay, younger) Dylan Foreman in his jammies with a crush on the dancing Sissy … well, it was just too cute.

“Hey, remember that theme song? I had it memorized. I used to sing along with it every week.”

I could literally feel the dilation of my pupils. And it had nothing to do with adjusting to the light. Dylan was the world’s worst singer. He just didn’t know it.

“Every week?” I asked.

“Well, every week until my grandmother started turning the television off about two minutes before the show was over. Weird.”

“Huh,” I said. “Go figure.” I muted the television quickly.

Dylan spotted the wine. “Mind?” he asked.

I poured him a glass and refilled my own as I did. We tasted. We sipped. And then it was time to talk shop.

This wasn’t just a social call. Dylan Foreman wasn’t sneaking about on this fine Florida night to join me in a Lawrence Welk marathon.

“I retrieved the office voice mails,” he reported.

“Anything special?”

We did have a few things on the go, but nothing that couldn’t wait until we got back. And I’d notified current clients of our absence, so I didn’t expect there to be much.