Blind Dates Can Be Murder (19 page)

Jo kept her eyes firmly on the side window, turned away from Danny. Was she crazy? Was she an idiot?

Was that really the most amazing kiss she’d ever had in her life?

Jo forced herself to breathe evenly, forced herself to act nonchalant. Inside, though, she was gasping for air, gasping for comprehension. This was
Danny
, her best friend.

And, yes, that was the most amazing kiss she’d ever had in her whole life.

Her mind was swirling with thoughts. No wonder girls threw themselves at him all the time. No wonder he usually had multitudes of women waiting in the wings. No wonder he was considered a real catch. It wasn’t just the sweet manner or the sloppy good looks or the artsy photographer-musician appeal thing. It was his kissing!

He must be known far and wide for it, much as Jo was known for her household hints.

Miss Tulip, can you help us get the smudges off our tennis shoes? And, oh, by the way, Mr. Watkins, can you run that outstanding lip-lock past us again?

Jo wished he would run it past her again, just one more time.

Unbelievable
.

Jo’s cell phone rang and she answered it quickly, grateful for the interruption.

“Hello?”

“Jo, Harvey Cooper here. I have an update for you.”

“Yes?”

“Your hunch about murder may have been right.”

“You’re kidding.” Jo looked at Danny, who was glancing at her questioningly.

“You know the inhaler that ran out on Frank Malone last night?” the chief continued.

“Yes.”

“Looks like someone might have tampered with it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it was a brand-new bottle,” the chief said. “He just filled the prescription on Wednesday.”

Lettie sat at the window of her hotel room and watched the sun set over the warehouse across the street. Mickey was on the phone, agitated as could be, but Lettie was hardly listening to him, her mind was so distracted.

“All we’ve learned from Frankie’s computer,” Mickey was saying, “is that he’s been regularly accessing Jo Tulip’s website for a while. Last week he looked up her address and phone number online. And on Friday, he did a yahoo search for ‘steak’ and ‘steakhouse’ in Mulberry Glen, Pennsylvania, so obviously he knew where to find her. That’s it. That’s all we’ve able to learn.”

Lettie closed her eyes, wishing this stupid job could be over. What did she care why Frankie wanted to get close to some Martha Stewart wannabe? Maybe he needed advice about how to keep silverware from tarnishing or get rust out of a toilet bowl.

“Look, Mickey, I gotta go,” she said. “Dates&Mates is closed tomorrow, so I guess I’ll pick things up again on Monday.”

“No way, sweetheart,” Mickey said. “Ziggy did some searching for me through the
Mulberry Glen Gazette’s
online archives. Among other things, we now know where Jo Tulip goes to church. I want you there too, first thing tomorrow morning.”

“You want me to go to church? Why?”

“To keep an eye on Jo Tulip. See who her friends are. See if she mentions what happened. See if she acts suspicious.”

After dropping the film off to be developed and picking up her car at the police station, Jo made it home just in time to change clothes, put out a carafe of decaf tea with lemon, and dust some confectioners sugar over the lemon bars she had whipped up that morning before breakfast. For the low-carb folks in the group, she set out a small platter of cheese chunks and pepperoni.

Jo was just setting out the cream, sugar, sweetener, cups, and saucers when Marie and Anna arrived. They helped Jo finish, setting out paper plates and napkins, laughing all the while about their afternoon tennis game.

“So who was that young woman you were talking to outside the courts?” Anna asked Marie as she folded napkins into little triangles.

“Wasn’t she the cutest little thing? She’s like the ‘before’ picture in a makeover ad.”

“Oh, no,” Jo said, shaking her head. Before Marie got into real estate, she had been a Mary Kay representative, and she still thought frequently in terms of color and skin tone and highlights. “You’re not taking her on as a project, are you?”

“I don’t know. She’s new in town. She also seems real shy and kind of lonely.”

“So instead of getting to know her as she is, you’ve decided to sweep in and transform her into someone else—someone you want her to be?” Anna asked. She was tough, the feminist of the group, and she always took issue with artificial beauty.

Of course, Anna’s words never carried much weight since she was such a natural beauty herself. It was hard to hear her rail against tanning booths when her skin was such a perfect gold brown. Harder still to hear her complain about frivolous plastic surgery when she was naturally blessed with perfect features, not to mention a body that would never have need of liposuction. There had actually been a fight one night when Marie had heard enough and simply exploded. “I’ll listen to what you have to say about plastic surgery the day you wake up with a honker the size mine used to be! Until then, just shut up!”

Marie and Anna could fight like cats and dogs, but they loved each other with the ease of women who had been friends since grade school. Marie had been Jo’s maid of honor in her almost wedding last fall, and Anna had stood second down the line.

Jo wasn’t as close with the other women in the group, but in the past few months she had enjoyed getting to know them all. What had surprised her most about their study was how universal the problem of picking the wrong men seemed to be. From mama’s boys to alcoholics to commitment phobes, it seemed there was a lemon out there for almost everyone. Fortunately, their leader, Denise, was a reformed lemon picker herself who had finally found and married Ray, a man who was definitely
not
a lemon. Denise led the group from her own unique perspective, and though the conversations tended to drift toward man bashing, she always brought the discussion back around, insisting that they remain respectful of men as a whole. It was just the lemons they needed to watch out for.

Jo couldn’t agree more—her best friend was, after all, a man. Denise was Danny’s sister, so of course she, too, was intimately acquainted with one of the best guys out there. Denise was optimistic for all of them, insisting that while good men were indeed hard to find, they
did
exist, and they were definitely worth the search.

More of the women showed up, and as Jo put out some extra chairs, she thought of Brock Dentyne and wondered if he was a lemon or one of the good ones.

If she had learned anything from this study, it was that only time would tell.

Danny stood at the kitchen window and looked out across his dark yard toward Jo’s house. All of the lights were on, and he knew the women would just be arriving for their Bible study. Sometimes he wished he could hear the sorts of things they said about men; other times, he was glad he didn’t have a clue.

He turned from the window and reached for the phone, wishing Denise wasn’t busy leading the group. He needed her. Still, he had two other sisters to choose from for this most important conversation. He dialed Donna, but she wasn’t in, so he tried Diana, who answered on the second ring.

“Talk to me, somebody, anybody I’m going out of my mind,” she said by way of answering the phone.

Danny smiled.

“What if I had been somebody important? Wouldn’t you have been embarrassed?”

“Yeah, except I have caller ID, so I knew it wasn’t anybody important.”

“Ha-ha. Thanks a lot.”

“I’m just kidding, little brother. These kids have been driving me crazy all day. Tony’s still out of town and I’m ready for some grown-up human interaction. So what’s up? Another Saturday night and you ain’t got nobody? I can’t get used to you not dating anymore.”

Danny reached for a bag of chips and tore it open. Then he sat at the table and pulled out a handful.

“Yeah, well, once I realized I was in love with Jo, it didn’t make much sense to keep going out with other women. And since she had decided to stop dating for a while, I didn’t really have any other choice.”

“So you’ve turned yourself into a hermit? Let me guess, you’re about to go into the darkroom and print photos for the next four hours. Some swinging bachelor you turned out to be. Come on, I’ve got to live vicariously through
somebody
. Hold on.
Junior, stop hitting your sister!
”

Smiling, Danny pulled out a chip that was shaped exactly like the state of Florida. He took a big bite, chomping off the panhandle.

“No photo printing tonight,” he said. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“Do tell, do tell.”

“I’m going with Jo up to the Poconos tomorrow afternoon. She has to spend an hour with her grandmother, and then she’s all mine. We’re going to hike to a waterfall.”

“And…” Diana said, sounding excited.

“And I’m going to tell her how I feel about her. It’s time.”

Diana’s whoop was so loud Danny had to pull the phone away from his ear. In the background, he could hear the kids come running: “What is it, Mommy? Why are you so excited?”

After she shushed them away, she came back on the phone and started talking about bridesmaid dresses and wedding cake and linen invitations. She was the stylist of the family, the doyenne of good taste, and the thought of a potential wedding really set her motor running. Finally, Danny had to tell her to stop.

“Yes, Diana, I do see marriage in our future somewhere down the line. But can I please just do the ‘I love you’ part first? Then we need to try dating for a while. The marriage stuff will come later, when the time is right.”

“Oh, fine. But I bet once you tell her you love her, things will move along a lot more quickly than you expect. She’s already been down the aisle once. She’s probably chomping at the bit to go down it again.”

“On the other hand,” he said, “once burned, twice shy. I think she’ll be a little more careful than she was in the past.”

“Either way, brother, if you’re telling Jo you love her tomorrow, then we’ve got some work to do tonight. Let me call Mom and see if she can babysit.”

“Why?”

Diana exhaled in exasperation.

“Because it’s only a little after seven,” she said. “The mall doesn’t close until nine.”

“The mall? I just wanted to know if you could squeeze in a haircut.” None of his sisters were licensed hairdressers, but they’d all cut his hair since he was just a boy.