I walked inside the sheriff’s office and Gail, the receptionist and my ex-boyfriend’s second cousin, greeted me. “Hey Riley. What can I do for you?”
“Hi Gail!” I said brightly. I’d always liked her and even though I wasn’t dating Ryan anymore, we were still friendly. “I’m actually going to be covering the Davenport story for the Times so I wondered if I could talk to Carl about the investigation . . .”
“Good for you, sugar! Look at you go!”
It had been no secret in Tuttle Corner that I’d had a bit of rough patch for a while, but ever since Holman and I broke the story about the corruption and murder of my friend Jordan James, people around town no longer looked at me as an object of pity.
I tried to play it cool. “Thanks, I’m excited. I mean, I’m not excited about Arthur Davenport’s death—oh gosh, that sounds terrible. I’m just excited, you know, for the opportunity to . . . cover it . . . for the newspaper.” So much for playing it cool.
Gail laughed. “I get it, honey. No worries. But it’s gonna be a couple of hours till anyone’s free. If I were you, I’d come back by after a little bit.”
“Okay. Hey, would you mind giving me a shout if there are any developments? I’m going to run to dinner.” I jotted down my cell and handed it to her.
“You going with that new dreamy man of yours? Mmmmm, I’d like to sop him up with a biscuit!”
My face turned bright red. Gail knew Jay because he’d done some consulting with the sheriff’s department over the past few months and she loved to flirt with him on his frequent visits to the station. But since she was Ryan’s mom’s first cousin, it also felt a little weird to be talking about another guy with her. Even though for the first six weeks after he broke up with me, Gail had referred to Ryan as “my stupid cousin.”
“I’ll tell Jay you said ‘hi’ . . .” I said, as I headed home, now excited about the evening ahead for a couple of different reasons.
CHAPTER 4
I barely had enough time to take Coltrane for a quick walk, change clothes, and swipe on a little lip gloss before I heard Jay’s car door close in my driveway. I bounded to the front door to meet him and planted a big old kiss on him before even saying hello.
“It’s nice to see you, too,” he said, coming up for air. “Looks like someone had a good day . . .”
“I can’t wait to tell you all about it,” I said, grabbing my sweater. “We can talk on the way.”
We walked hand in hand over to the Shack, which was about four blocks past Memorial Park along the river. It was mid-October and still warm, but not hot—and perfect for dining al fresco. Louis seated us at a table for two out on the deck overlooking the water.
The Shack, or James Madison’s Fish Shack, was Tuttle’s nicest restaurant by far. Originally a family home, the Shack was a two-story house with gray shingles punctuated by crisp white trim around the many windows. Inside, two dining rooms sat on either side of the narrow staircase that led upstairs to the bar area, which was always crowded on weekend nights. Instead of having tables up there, Louis and Dahlia had put in a bunch of couches and overstuffed chairs, and some low coffee tables filled with board games and trivia decks. But by far the Shack’s best attribute was its large deck that overlooked the James River. It was a wide-plank cedar deck dotted with small tables for two or four, each one covered by a black-and-white striped umbrella. It was the perfect place to unwind after a long day at work. And I was with the perfect companion to do just that.
“You got the story,” Jay said after I’d finished telling him about my day. “That’s great!”
“Yeah,” I said, grabbing a strand of hair just below my shoulders and twisting it. “It is. It’s just . . .” I stopped. Ever since I’d left the sheriff’s office, a kernel of doubt and insecurity had started to take root. This sort of thing had been happening a lot since I left my comfortable job as an hourly worker at the library; I’d go from wildly excited about my new career to desperately insecure in three seconds flat.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s just—what if I mess up? What if I miss an important element of the story? Kay told me I’d better not screw up.”
“So you won’t screw up,” he said, making it sound so simple. He leaned across the table and took my left hand in his right and knitted our fingers together. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Of course,” I said. “Okay, enough about my day. How was yours?”
Jay was a DEA agent who had moved down to Virginia from New Jersey less than a year earlier. He was brought here to go undercover to investigate Juan Pablo Romero, a restaurateur suspected of selling drugs out of his taco trucks. That’s actually kind of how we met. Holman and I were also looking at Romero’s involvement in the death of our friend Jordan—we sort of stumbled into Jay’s investigation. The spark had been instantaneous, and though it had only been a couple of months, I felt like Jay and I were on our way to something pretty special.
“It was work, you know, fine.”
Jay didn’t talk about his job much. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was working on something super secret or some other reason, but his reluctance to talk about work had started to pique my curiosity. “Oh yeah, what’d you do today? Did you catch some bad guys?”
He leaned forward with a sly smile on his face. “Yeah, four or five big ones. Got ’em with my
