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“Too much or not enough?” Syd teased.
“Too much,” she muttered.
Syd leaned forward, hands spread wide. “All right. On the Barney Fife-Bruce Willis scale of masculinity, with Barney being one and Bruce being ten, where does this cop fit?”
Cleo sighed but didn’t hesitate. “Fifteen.”
Syd fell into peals of laughter, and Cleo couldn’t help but smile.
“I’ve got to meet this cop,” Syd said as she fell back.
“You do not.”
“A fifteen! I’m impressed. I need to judge for myself.”
“This from a woman who’s looking for a man who will slide along the scale to fit her every whim.”
Syd straightened her spine defensively. They’d had this discussion before. “What’s wrong with looking for a man who will rub your feet and cook dinner when you need a four, and be a warrior when you want a ten? Or a fifteen,” she said, with a waggle of her red eyebrows.
“Nothing,” Cleo said, “except that such a man does not exist.”
“Of course he does.”
Syd was so optimistic, and Cleo had given up on winning this argument long ago. Some things a woman has to learn for herself.
But Cleo would do anything to keep Syd from learning the lesson the way she had.
Last night it had been too dark to see much of anything, but by morning’s light Luther got a good look at Cleo Tanner’s place. She lived in a neat duplex in an old neighborhood, with tall, ancient oak trees by the curb and bushes growing wildly around the front porch. Those bushes would flower in the spring, he was almost certain. The yard was neat but not precise. There were spots of green in the dormant grass.
It was two minutes after nine when he left his car and made his way to Cleo’s front door. He could hope otherwise, but he didn’t expect she’d be happy to see him.
Too bad.
He knocked once, then rang the bell. Someone inside the place shuffled, then shouted “Just a minute” in a sleepy, huskily sexy voice that made his innards tighten. Luther smiled, but made sure the smile was gone before the door swung open.
Last night Cleo Tanner had been all vixen: slinky black dress, high heels, red lipstick. This morning she was straight from the bed. Curling black hair going everywhere, lips au naturel, though still lush and enticing. And instead of a slinky black dress she wore a T-shirt that hung to her knees. The T-shirt was purple and had a grinning spread-eagled cat in the middle of it: a paw rested over each breast.
She was yawning, but when she stopped yawning and realized who had awakened her, her golden eyes went wide and she slammed the door in his face.
“You’re not supposed to be here until ten!” she shouted through the closed door.
“I said nine,” Luther said, leaning against the closed door.
“I said ten!” she said, and then he heard her stomp away.
The door next to Cleo’s opened, and a petite redhead wearing jeans and a too-large denim shirt stepped out. She looked him over suspiciously.
“Detective Malone,” he said, lifting his jacket to flash his badge.
She was not intimidated. “I figured as much.” She mumbled something as she reached tentatively past him to try Cleo’s front door, finding it locked. “Fifteen, huh?” she muttered.
“Fifteen what?”
“Nothing.” She circled around him to the mailbox, which hung on the wall not two feet from the front door. In a few of these old neighborhoods, the mailman still came right to the door. The redhead reached behind the mailbox to grab a small magnetic box on the underside. She opened the container and took out a key, using it to unlock Cleo’s door.
Luther’s urge to smile disappeared. Not only did the woman not have a peephole in her front door, or the common sense to ask who was there when someone knocked, but she stored her spare key in such an obvious place that any self-respecting criminal would find it in a matter of seconds.
The redhead flashed him a small smile and slipped inside. A moment later she was back, holding the door open wide and inviting him in.
“Cleo’s in the shower,” she said, leading him into the living room. “You’re early.”
“Actually, I was two minutes late,” Luther said, glancing around. The place was as neat and plain on the inside as it was on the outside. Very homey, very feminine. The furniture was mismatched and looked comfortable, and a few odds and ends added color. There was even a vase of red roses on an end table. Something from the boyfriend, he imagined with a frown. Whoever that might be.
While he was contemplating possible suspects for the role of Cleo Tanner’s love interest, a big dog padded up to him and sniffed uncertainly.
“Be nice, Rambo,” the redhead said, then she fixed a calculating smile on Luther. “I’m Syd Wade,” she said. “I live next door.”
“Luther Malone,” he said, offering his hand. She took it and shook, very briefly.
“I have a picture-frame shop in town. I’ve Been Framed.”
“What?”
“I’ve Been Framed. That’s the name of my shop.”
Luther nodded, figuring it would not be nice to tell her he’d never heard of the place.
“And I would love to stay until Cleo gets out of the shower, but I have an order to put together before I open at ten. Since you’re a cop, I guess it’s okay to leave you here unsupervised.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“And for your information, there’s no way Cleo killed that moron she used to be married to,” she said defensively.
He agreed with her but wasn’t ready to say so aloud, so he just nodded an acknowledgment.
“Behave yourself while you’re waiting,” she said with a smile. “Or Rambo will get you. She’s a real tiger under all that hair and those big brown eyes.”
Luther looked down at the dog, whose big, friendly eyes and wagging tail did not jibe with the name Rambo.
Syd left, and Luther sat down on Cleo’s couch. Rambo joined him, placing her chin on his knee and looking up with eyes that begged shamelessly for love and attention.
“Okay,” he said, scratching behind the dog’s ears. He was almost certain Rambo sighed in delight.
No, he didn’t think Cleo killed Jack Tempest, but she was definitely involved. The grapefruit was no accident. In fact, it was downright creepy. If he’d thought Tempest had any reason to kill himself, he’d think the man had jumped with the grapefruit in his hand, just to point the finger at Cleo. From what little he’d learned, Tempest had done his very best to make Cleo’s life difficult since the divorce.
Stealing the publishing rights to the song she’d written and recorded years ago had only been the beginning. He hadn’t exactly let her go after the divorce. He kept turning up, like the proverbial bad penny, wherever she went. She moved, and a few months later he was right behind her. He managed a few unsuccessful musical acts, and a couple that had done fairly well. Surely his business had suffered when he’d given harassing Cleo so much time and attention, but he’d managed to do okay.
He’d tried to ruin her credit by listing her name on his old unpaid debts, causing her all kinds of grief. Whenever she seemed to be doing well, Tempest turned up to throw in a monkey wrench, somehow. He’d gotten her fired from countless singing jobs. He’d harassed her for years, while being very careful not to cross any legal line.
The latest bit was, Tempest was behind a petition to get Cleo’s liquor license revoked. Something about being too close to a church, even though the church in question was three blocks away and she’d been in operation there for over two years without a single problem.
Jack Tempest had either loved his ex-wife very much, or hated her beyond all reason. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, coming into the room and catching him daydreaming with his fingers enmeshed behind Rambo’s ears.
Cleo looked too damn good. Hair damp and curly, blue slacks and matching blouse snug, heels high—if not as audaciously high as last night—she was soft, nicely curved and feminine.
“I thought cops were like vampires and had to be invited in,” she said in a voice that was definitely not soft.
“Your neighbor, Syd, let me in.”
Cleo rolled her eyes and mumbled something obscene, and Luther forced back a smile.
“I don’t suppose you have any coffee?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I don’t drink coffee.”
“No wonder you’re not a morning person,” he said, rising slowly and pushing back the urge to find out if Cleo would growl and sigh if he rubbed behind her ears. She’d probably bite his hand off. Changing the subject seemed like a good idea.
“Why didn’t you ask who was at the door before you opened it?”
Cleo stared at him, wide-eyed and disbelieving. “I thought you were my neighbor. She often drops by in the morning before she goes to work.”
“And why in hell do you keep a key under your mailbox?”
She shook her head. “Sometimes Syd lets Rambo out when I work late, and sometimes I forget my key, and…it’s really none of your business where I keep my spare key.”
“It’s not safe,” he argued.
“Who are you,” she said. “Keeper of the city? Defender of the weak?”
“Watchdog over the stupid,” he added.
Her amber eyes narrowed. “So now I’m stupid.”
“No, but keeping your key—”
“I pushed my ex off a tall building and I’m stupid.” She did as she had last night, offering her hands to him, palms up, wrists together.
His eyes fell to the delicate veins there, to the curve of her wrists and the pale softness of her fingers.
“So cuff me, Malone. Take me in. Arrest me and get this over with.”
He leaned in, ever so slightly. Just enough to make Cleo lean back. “Don’t tempt me.”
Chapter 3
“This is not the police station,” Cleo muttered, as Malone pulled his gray sedan to the curb. “As a matter of fact, we’re not even close to the police station.”
Malone threw open his door and unfolded his long body from the driver’s seat, ignoring her statement. He rounded the car and opened her door for her, leaning slightly in. Like it or not, he took her breath away when he moved in close like this.
“The Rocket City Café has better coffee,” he said as he offered his hand to assist her from the car. She grudgingly placed her hand in his and stood. “Besides,” he added as he released her hand and closed the car door, “you’re nervous. The station would just make matters worse.”
“I am not nervous,” she retorted.
The annoying Detective Malone responded with a brief smile.
The Rocket City Café was a small restaurant with plastic red-and-white checkered tablecloths and a strange collection of patrons. Two old men sat in a corner booth and argued about local politics. A group of elderly women crowded around a table in the center of the room, and from the excited utterances about brownies and bundt cakes, it seemed they were planning a bake sale. A middle-aged waitress in a pink uniform and a white apron leaned against the counter where a No Smoking sign was prominent, and smoked as if she really enjoyed every puff. A very young short-order cook, with his long hair in a hair net, scrubbed the grill behind the counter. He was singing, and not very well.
When the waitress saw Malone she smiled and put her cigarette out in a nearby coffee cup. “Hey, Sugar,” she said, with a grin that transformed her face into a mass of wrinkles. “The usual?”
“Yeah, and…” He glanced down at Cleo. “What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t make me eat breakfast in front of you while you sit there and glare at me. Get something to eat. They have really great doughnuts here, and if that doesn’t grab you, they have pancakes. Eggs. Cinnamon buns.”
She stared at him silently.
He lifted finely shaped eyebrows and pinned those dark eyes on her. “At least get something to drink.”
The waitress was waiting. Malone was waiting. And Cleo just wanted to get this over with. “Orange juice,” she said, giving in too easily. “And toast.”
Malone led her to a booth against the window, where they could watch the people passing on the sidewalk. This position also placed them as far away as possible from the other customers, no doubt so he could interrogate her without having to lower his voice.
Cleo sat, and the old cushion sank.
“So,” Malone said, taking his own seat, which didn’t seem to sink quite so low. “Tell me about Tempest.”
Cleo fixed her eyes to Malone’s. He thought she was nervous? She’d show him. She could be fearless when she had to be, and she was not afraid of this cop or anyone else. “Jack was a mean-spirited, unfaithful, unscrupulous snake. Marrying him was the worst mistake of my life, and I am not sorry to know that I won’t ever have to see his face again.”
The waitress popped into the picture to place a huge mug of coffee before Malone and a tall glass of cold juice before Cleo. Their conversation ceased until she moved away.
“Do you know who killed him?” Malone asked calmly.
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“Probably not.”
Malone took a long swig of coffee. “Fair enough,” he said as he set the mug on the table. “I’ll need a list of everyone who was in the club last week when you told your little grapefruit joke.”
“If I can remember.”
“Do you have a gentleman friend, Ms. Tanner?” He didn’t look at her as he asked this question, but stared into his cup of coffee. “Someone who might have felt compelled to defend your honor and then leave a grapefruit behind so you’d be sure to know this murder was a…gift?”
“No gentleman friend,” she said precisely, her heart clenching at the idea that someone might have thought she’d consider Jack’s murder a gift.
