Family Jewels (Dix Dodd Mystery #2)

With my tongue.

Jesus.

I raised my gaze to the ceiling. Cotton. We’d been talking about Cotton Caron.

“How did you manage to get him?” I asked. “I mean, anyone could have gotten his name, but for him to accept my mother’s case and rearrange his schedule? To be personally available for the bail hearing in the morning? That must have taken some doing.”

“Pulled some strings.”

I lifted my head and gave him an arched eyebrow.

Dylan shrugged. “What’s the point of having a mother in public office if I don’t use that pull once in awhile?”

Well, he had me on that one. Dylan’s mother, Marjorie Foreman, a prominent lawyer herself back in Ontario, was very politically active in Marport City. It was strongly rumored that she’d be a candidate for Member of Parliament in the next federal election. She was hellishly tough on crime. Pro-women and pro-equality. She was also very pro-environment. She had those who loved her for it, and those who hated her just as passionately for it. Hell, she’d probably made as many enemies in the course of her career as I had. But apparently, Dylan’s mother had made a few friends along the way too. Powerful and influential ones.

I sat up on the bed. “And your mom knows Cotton Carson?”

“No, she knows Cotton’s political affiliations.” He opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a t-shirt. With eyes I knew were way too hungry, I watched him tug it on. “They have mutual friends who have, well….”

“More mutual friends?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

I rubbed my eyes. From somewhere outside a dog howled. “Oh, Mrs. Presley sent spaghetti for you. I think she fears you’re fading away here without a good home cooked meal.”

“Well, she just might be right.”

I somehow doubted Dylan was starving to death. The pizza box in the corner attested to it. He had that young-man metabolism. The guy could eat enough for a lumberjack and still wouldn’t gain an ounce. Damn him.

Well, kind of damn him. Just a little. I watched him walk across the room.

“You having any, Dix?” Dylan asked, digging out the spaghetti and silverware Mrs. P had packed.

I reached for my purse. “No, it’s a cheesecake night.”

“Hey, any night where the sun goes down is a cheesecake night.”

I saluted him with my own fork (a fork lifted from the restaurant/charge it to the Deputy/thank you very much).

Leave it to Dylan. Five minutes in his presence and I was already feeling better. Why did this guy have that effect on me?

I bit into cheesecake and gave an I’ll-have-what-she’s-having moan. Oh God, that was good.

“Now where have I heard that before?”

Oh boy. I set the cheesecake down on the nightstand. He was, of course, referring to our little rendezvous at mother’s condo last night. When he’d kissed me. When I’d kissed him back. When he’d lifted my shirt and touched me with a thousand promises of more.

“Sorry,” Dylan said. “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”

“You didn’t. It’s just that … just that….”

“Just that it’s complicated right now. Right?”

He was right of course. About it being complicated. About the timing. But more. I’d checked my heart at the door. Every door. Yes, I felt for Dylan. In every way — physically, emotionally. Holy crap, how could I not care about him? But there was a fine line in life between loving with abandon and being abandoned in love. Between wrapping your arms around someone and having them squeeze the life out of you. Between a tug on the heart and a sharp- bladed knife slowly twisting right through it.

So how could I argue with Dylan’s ‘complicated’ remark?

I couldn’t, didn’t want to. So, I changed the subject.

“So how is security at the Wildoh these days?”

Dylan answered by stabbing his spaghetti with his fork with a little more punch than normal. “Oh great. Just great. I’m thinking of changing careers.”

I shot up a skeptical eyebrow.

“Where else could I spend all day getting smacked on the butt by feisty little old ladies?”

“Beth Mary MacKenzie?”

“She called me Nibs.” Dylan shook his head. “Is that some kind of kinky sexual reference I don’t know about”

Why was he asking me?

“No, she called dibs. Which means technically you’re off limits to the other residents of the Wildoh. She has her eye on you.” I feigned sympathy. “Sorry, Dylan.”

“All in the line of duty.” Forking, twirling, and scarfing down the last of the spaghetti. Dylan set his plate down, walked over to the bed and opened the small night table drawer. Tucked in under the hotel bible, he pulled out a folded square of tissue.

“But this, I did find at the Wildoh,” he said. “It pays to vacuum.”

So they say.

It looked like the worlds smallest golf club. Or maybe the world’s smallest hockey stick (yes, I do know the difference! One’s for clubbing the bad guys and the other’s for smacking them). This looked like something from another dimension. Too small for a child’s toy. It might have been a dental pick, but was definitely on the dull side.

“Know what it is?” Dylan asked.

It was the way he asked it. I huffed. “So you don’t either.”

Dylan sat down on the bed beside me. “But it feels like something, doesn’t it. You know?” He looked right into my eyes. He wasn’t being funny. He wasn’t being condescending. Dylan was being dead serious. He trusted my intuition more than anyone. Maybe more than me sometimes. And apparently, he was trusting his own a bit.

And he was right. This did feel like something. It was connected with the case. Somehow it had to be.

Enough to call Deputy Nutless and tell him I’d solved the crimes? Or Cotton Carson and tell him not to bother showing up for the bail hearing? Hell no. But enough to trickle some hope.

“Where did you find it?”

“Complex C. In the small lobby off the front doors.”

That was mostly the staff complex. And also where Frankie Morrell was renting his bachelor apartment. There were extra storage rooms, utility rooms, and a few bachelor apartments. One of which was Roger Cassidy’s.

The police had placed Frankie Morrell’s place ‘off limits’. Yellow tagged the door. But I had every confidence Dylan was around other places. Short of break and enter, he would have done some snooping. And he would have done some discreet questioning. Finding physical clues/potential clues was one thing — but finding out about people — whole ‘nother ball game. And Dylan was becoming damn good at it.

“Roger Cassidy is hands-down the cleanest guy I’d ever met,” he reported. “I just happened to be in the hall when a courier stopped by to pick up a parcel. Roger was cleaning the peephole in the door. Windex and everything! Later on, he was cleaning the door knob. From what Big Eddie tells me, the police had a hell of a time finding fingerprints there. Like, any fingerprints!”

And so certainly not my mothers!

“But they didn’t find incriminating fingerprints at any of the break-ins,” I said. “The only incriminating evidence that there even had been a break in were the scratches around the locks.”

“Right,” Dylan said. “According to Big Eddie, Deputy Almond got lock experts in. Those locks were most definitely picked.”

I chewed on all this for a moment.