Nothing but Trouble (22 page)

Her throat tightened. Jeremy spoke like a man acquainted with his own words. But more importantly, those were the words she’d been trying to say to herself for two weeks.

“And who are you really, Pizza Guy? Are you living on the outside who
you
are on the inside?” PJ attempted to keep her voice light, but it emerged pitiful and way too high.

Jeremy looked at her through those dark glasses and said nothing.

“What are you doing at my church anyway?”

“I told you,” he said softly. “I saw it on a delivery.” He peered out the passenger window, his gesture pregnant with what he wasn’t telling her.

“So, what do you do when you’re not delivering pizzas and solving murder mysteries?”

“Ride my motorcycle, fish, read a good book. Sometimes I go salsa dancing.”

She saw his grin out of the corner of her eye. “Funny.”

“Really. I’m very light on my feet.”

“They teach you that in the SEALs?”

“Nope.” Jeremy stretched out his legs and propped the seat back, reposing as they drove. She wished his eyes weren’t hidden.

“Did you grow up in Minneapolis?”

“Nope.”

“St. Paul?”

“Nope.”

PJ glared at him. He smiled, white teeth showing.

“How’d you get that tattoo?”

The smile vanished. Aha, a soft place.

He sighed. “It’s sort of an identity too.” He shifted his seat back up. “All done with the bright lights?”

“Hardly. We have so much left to cover.”

He turned toward her, his shoulder against the seat. “Let’s talk about you. Like, how long did you and Boone date?”

Now that was an interesting starting point. “Two years, with lots of flirting before that.”

“Is he the reason you left town?”

Hmm. “Not anymore.”

“And the reason you returned?”

His question turned her silent. Yes, she may have had Boone on the brain when she motored back into town. But in truth, perhaps she’d been searching for more than the what-could-have-beens. Maybe she’d longed for the what-could-bes
 
—a taste of acceptance, of redemption.

But all that information at once might make her bleed out right here in the car. “I came back to right old wrongs. To rewrite the headlines.”

Jeremy’s posture changed, and he considered her for a long, inscrutable moment. “Are you sticking around?”

Wow, he had the precision of a sniper with his questions. Again, she didn’t know. Maybe she wanted to.

No, it was more than a maybe. With everything inside her, PJ wanted to dig a hole and plant roots, be a part of Davy’s life, and perhaps figure out just what her mother might really be saying. “I . . . don’t know. Maybe.”

“Don’t run away too fast. . . . You should know that I’m not quitting until I figure out what the
P
and
J
stand for.” Jeremy reached over and pushed a strand of her flying-about-her-face hair behind her ear.

She nearly shot past the entrance to the park and smashed the brakes hard as they turned. Jeremy rocketed forward into the dash, barely catching himself. She said nothing as she screeched to a halt before a speed bump.

“In a hurry?”

No, not at all, but her heart had inconveniently decided to stand up, pay attention, and compare Jeremy to Boone. She wasn’t sure how to interpret the results.

They drove around the lake to the public parking lot, and by the time she found a shady spot, she’d finally dislodged her heart from her throat. The sun drew a hazy circle in the sky, and the faint aroma of grilling burgers laced the air. Birds serenaded the day as the lake caressed the shoreline.

She tried to push the memories from her mind. Memories as recent as Friday night.

Jeremy said nothing as he got out of the car.

PJ took a deep, heated breath. Boone she could handle. She’d already left him once and survived, if poorly. And while he still had his dangerous allure, she understood it.

Jeremy, however, became more seductively mysterious with every meeting, and his edging toward her heart felt sweetly terrifying.

“What keeps bothering me,” Jeremy said as she opened the trunk hatch and handed him the basket, “is how the killer got into Hoffman’s house. It had to be someone Ernie knew.”

“Now that you’re done with a deep analysis of my life we’re suddenly going to talk mystery and mayhem?”

“It’s just been bugging me.”

She eyed him as he lugged out the picnic basket and set it on the ground. “If it wasn’t Jack, it had to be someone else he expected.”

Jeremy returned for the cooler, handling it with ease. “And another thing
 
—we still don’t have a motive.”

“Oh yeah? How about the Nero coins?”

He wore the smile that said she had a large and overactive imagination. “I know I suggested that, but it’s probably something much simpler. Like betrayal or revenge. Most crimes are ones of passion, not calculation.”

She reached into her trunk and grabbed the blanket. It was then she noticed the gun. Nestled under the blanket, it lay there like a Frisbee or a softball or another addition to the picnic. She picked it up, her heart thumping. It looked similar to the gun she shot with Boone, the black one.

Had he put it in her car? Why?

She fit the gun into her hand just like Boone taught her, with the handle tight into the web of her palm. Curled her finger around the trigger. It had a hard pull, so that it wouldn’t go off by accident, but she heard Boone’s voice in her head, telling her to keep her finger off the trigger if she didn’t want to shoot. Yes,
that
made sense.

She glanced at Jeremy. He’d turned away from her and walked out onto the lawn, staring out across the lake, his hands on his hips. She could make out the Navy SEAL in his posture, tall and confident.

Maybe it was Jeremy’s gun.

Maybe . . . if he, unlike Boone, thought Hoffman’s killer still roamed the streets of Kellogg. “Jeremy!” she hollered, lifting the gun toward him. He turned at her voice. “Is this
 
—?”

A shot cracked the air, splintered her words. She ducked, her hands over her head.

Jeremy fell, adding a cry of pain that parted her breath. He sprawled on his back, holding on to a gash in his arm.

She ran toward him, her head ducked a little like some sniper might take it off. “Jeremy!”

Blood pooled between his fingers, and his shocked expression wavered from the gun in her hands to her face and back again. “You shot me!”

She looked at the gun, felt its weight, and unhanded it into the grass.

Jeremy morphed right before her, back into the soldier she’d seen at the pro shop, dark and very, very dangerous. Even his eyes seemed to be on fire, scorching her as he climbed to his feet and strode toward her. She shrank back.

“Maybe I should be asking
you
, PJ Sugar, where you were the day Ernie Hoffman was murdered.”

“Boone, I swear, I didn’t shoot him.”

“Save it.” Boone didn’t look at her, shaking his head as he penned something on his clipboard. He’d been working on his car again, evidenced by a smudge of grease behind his ear, as if he’d scratched his neck, perplexed. Still, he’d donned a clean button-down shirt to apprehend public enemy number one.

Behind him, paramedics bandaged Jeremy’s arm as he perched on the open end of an ambulance. They’d attracted a crowd with the whirling lights and the sirens. A cluster of horrified mothers clutched their precious children, wide-eyed, leering at her as if she were a serial killer. Overhead, the beautiful day mocked her with its pristine, cloudless sky, gentle breezes, the lure of lunch in the air.

“C’mon, Boone, he’s not even hurt . . . much.”

“I’m telling you, PJ, for your own good, stop talking.” Boone’s tone bore something beyond anger, edging close to panic.

Okay, now he was scaring her. “I didn’t shoot him!”

Boone put down the clipboard, backed her up to his police cruiser, and lowered his voice to a gravelly whisper. “In my book, shooting a PI is close to shooting a cop. It’s serious, Peej.”

“PI?” Suddenly everything lined up. She could nearly hear the clicking in her brain as she watched Jeremy sitting in the ambulance, stone-faced, cold eyes on her.

Her mind went back to the shadows in the garage, saw Jeremy hiding from Boone, remembered how he knew exactly where she lived, considered his covert supersleuthing of their list of suspects. Of course he was a PI.

And apparently she was too. A Perfect Idiot.

“How did you get my gun?” Boone had taken a step back, and the look on his face made her want to, uh, shoot him.

“I
didn’t
take your gun!”

“It’s mine. And it went missing the night we went shooting together.”

“I didn’t take it.”

“I keep running it over in my mind
 
—it was when I went to turn in our equipment, wasn’t it? You slipped it out of the case into that black-hole purse of yours
 
—”

“Why would I steal your gun?”

“Where’s the other one?”

“You’re kidding me, right?
Two
guns are missing?”

Boone paced away from her, said something nasty under his breath, then rounded. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

No, and in that second the final vestiges of the boy he’d been vanished, replaced by a man she didn’t know, one with wrinkles framing his darkening blue eyes and a solid, angry
set to his mouth and tense, ropy shoulders that carried what he must consider to be his biggest mistake.

Trusting her.

“I didn’t think to check until last night, and even then, I never considered you, PJ. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

She sucked wind. “I didn’t take your guns, and I didn’t shoot Jeremy. And I can’t believe you don’t believe me.”

He held up his hand, palm out, as if to push her words away. “Please, just stop talking.”

Another cop walked over, this one thin and younger than Boone, holding the gun in a cloth, as if there were any question her fingerprints were all over it. “If we find the bullet, we’ll be able to match it to the gun.” He gestured to the two detectives that roamed the picnic area.

Boone took the gun and dropped it into an evidence bag. He didn’t look at her when he said, “It’s clear that it’s been recently shot, and there’s a bullet missing from the magazine. We can test your hands for residue. If it’s clear, you’re off the hook.”

“Please. I watch
CSI
. I know that it takes more than two days for gun residue to wear off. If you’ll recall, I went shooting with you less than forty-eight hours ago.”

“I also recall teaching you to load and shoot a gun. Don’t go anywhere.” Boone walked over to Jeremy.

Like where? South Dakota? She sighed.

Across the parking lot, Jeremy pushed the paramedics away, arguing with them as he got up and approached her. He still wore the unfriendly tint in his dark eyes, and her stomach gave a curl of pain.

Why did she care? He’d lied to her.

“I have to say, you surprise me more than anyone I know.” Venom now infected his normally teasing, warm voice.

“I didn’t shoot you, Jeremy. I promise.”

Boone looked up from where he conferred with his fellow cops and met eyes with Jeremy.

PJ saw it, and her mouth fell open. “You’re in cahoots, aren’t you? How do you know him?” She turned to Jeremy, heat rising in her voice.

“Boone and I work together occasionally. He asked me to keep an eye on you, try and keep you out of trouble.”

She locked eyes with Jeremy, hoping to turn him to ash. “Two lies. You told me you were Jack’s cousin.”

“I am.
And
a PI. And I
was
trying to find out who framed Jack.”

“While babysitting me.” She shook her head. “I don’t need babysitting.”

Jeremy gave a nasty snort.

“Did you lie about being a Christian too?”

His eyes narrowed. “Hey
 
—”

“Don’t even talk to me.”

No wonder he hadn’t been afraid of them getting in trouble at the country club. She’d endured a night noosing herself in her bedsheets for nothing.

Boone came over. “I’m taking you in for questioning.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You shot me,” Jeremy said, like she’d forgotten.

She ignored his tone and glanced at his bandaged arm. “How bad is it?”

“It’s bad enough.” Jeremy turned away, as if washing his hands of her.

Boone grabbed her arm but she twisted out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me.”

“I can cuff you.”

“Don’t even think it.”

Options ran through Boone’s expression, all twisted in a look of frustration. Finally he opened the back door of the cruiser. “Please?”

“This isn’t fair,” she said, climbing inside. “I’m innocent and you know it. Again.”

He flinched, a gesture that gave her not nearly enough satisfaction as he closed the door.

Jeremy was climbing into the ambulance as they pulled away. And behind that, a tow truck began hitching up the wheels of her Bug.

Boone got into the front seat, his face blank.

PJ leaned back against the seat, remembering too easily the haunting, oily smell of the backseat of a police cruiser, wondering if her mother would post bail.

* * *

“Local Girl Shoots PI.”

The headline lasered into her brain as Boone led her through the station to the cells in the basement.

She couldn’t believe she’d been formally arrested.

With each step she took, past the desk attendant Rosie, downstairs and into the holding cell area, then past a collection of other Kellogg truants, the truth drilled farther into her soul.

She’d never escape trouble.

Boone opened the cell door. An overhead light fractured the darkness inside the clean yet barren, solitary, cement-and-metal cell. At the end of the hall, a barred and dirty window tried to barricade even the gaunt sunlight.

She stumbled into the dungeon, her legs numb.

“I’m sorry, Peej.”

“Go away.”

He sighed and looked like he might cry or maybe send his fist through something. “I want you to know that I . . . I’m not sure you shot Jeremy. It’s just that right now we don’t have a better explanation.”

“Sorta like you blamed Jack because he was the most logical suspect?” She let her voice drive that point home. “Old habits are hard to break, I guess.”

His face hardened. “Do you want me to call your mother?”

“Oh yes, please. She’ll be thrilled to hear from you. Don’t forget to include the part where I stole your guns while we were on a date, and how you arrested me despite the fact that I’m innocent. She’ll be glad to know I’m in really good hands.” She forced every bit of rancor she could into her voice, needing to hold on to her anger. Otherwise she just might crawl under the metal bed, roll into a ball, and scream.

“Fine then. You can do the calling.” He sounded defeated, his voice without heat.

She hated the tears that burned her eyes.

He didn’t move, however. Didn’t close the cell, didn’t reach out to her. Just stood there as if unable to move, as if his world lay on the floor in jagged pieces. “I wish I could get you out of this.”

“Then why don’t you?”

He winced. “Because . . .”

Oh. Because if he didn’t bring her in, then the voices would return, the ones from his childhood that told him he was trash. After all these years, he too was caught in time, watching her with tortured eyes as the cops dragged the girl he loved away. Still trapped between honor and his future.
I forgive you, Boone.
The thought rushed through her and pushed her hand to her mouth, wrenched her breath from her chest.
I forgive you
.

The years of anger, the blame, the regret, suddenly loosened from her. She reached out for the bed, sat hard on it, and hung her head in her hands, shaking.

“Peej?” Boone crouched before her, touched her knee.

“You’re right, Boone. It’s not your fault my life is a mess. I screwed it up all on my own.”

“I’m right? Did I ever say that it’s your fault? I
 
—if anyone is to blame, it’s me for betraying you.”

“Maybe you didn’t betray me as much as I betrayed myself. Maybe I’ve been hoping all these years that someone would stand up for me. That someone would believe in me. And when that didn’t happen, I ran. Kept running. But that’s my fault. I should have stood up to my mother and to your dad
 
—to the entire town. But I didn’t believe in my ability to stand alone.”

He closed his eyes. Lowered his head to touch her knee. “And I only made that worse.” His voice was so soft she could barely hear it. When he looked up, even in the dimmed light, she saw tears in his eyes. “I believe in you, PJ. I always have. And I should have stood beside you. That’s what killed me when you left.” He touched her face lightly, as if seeing it for the first time after years of absence. “And why I thought my
life might have started over when you returned. Something about you just makes me think everything is going to be okay. It gives me strength to be a better man than I know I am. You’ve always been the light in my world.”

Oh, Boone.
When would she escape his hold on her?

“It’s time I figure out who I am and how to stand up for myself. Alone, if I have to.” PJ framed his face in her hands.

“Boone?” The male voice echoed down the hall.

“I’ll be right there.” He removed her hands from his face but held them a moment before he shook his head, rose, and walked out.

The click of the cell door resounded like a trigger.

Chill seeped into her. She drew up her legs and folded her arms around them, as fetal position as she could get.

She hadn’t shot Jeremy. She knew they’d eventually figure that out, so she turned to the bigger questions: who stole Boone’s gun, and why would the thief put it in the trunk of her car?

And why would someone make an appointment for Jack that they didn’t intend to keep?

The truth landed like a fist in her chest.

To frame Jack.

PJ got to her feet, pacing to keep warm. Who would set Jack up for a crime?

Footsteps scuffed down the hall. She stepped back as Jeremy appeared. He looked grim, with a bandage around his upper arm and eyes that held no humor.

“Ten stitches.”

“I did mention that I didn’t do it, right?”

He nodded to someone down the hall, and her door slid
open. After Jeremy walked in, it closed behind him. He pressed his lips together as he sat down on the bed.

“Not afraid to be alone with me? I might strangle you with a shoelace.”

“You’re wearing flip-flops.”

“I’ll
 
—I don’t know
 
—do something villainous.” She let her tone bite despite her lack of appropriate threat. How she longed to be dark and dangerous just once.

“Stop.” He ran his hand over his head, sighing. “I’m not supposed to be visiting you, but I thought I’d let you tell me in your own words why you did it.”

“Did what? Shoot you?”

He considered her with a look that should have scared her. But it couldn’t penetrate her righteous anger. “I finally figured it out while I was sitting in the waiting room. I can’t believe I let you fool me like you did.”

“Huh?”

“You roll into town after being gone for ten years, and within two days, one of the men who blamed you for burning down the clubhouse is dead
 
—your history teacher, if I get my facts right. What, did seeing him at the club on Sunday dredge up too many painful memories?”

Her mouth opened but no sound emerged. Jeremy hadn’t just been babysitting
 
—he’d been investigating
her
.

“Did he plead for his life, PJ? Maybe offer you money? this Nero coin collection? After you killed him, did you start to wonder if it was true? Maybe you went back to his house to look again, tore it apart. Good thing Boone drove up or you’d have gotten away with it.”

“Gotten away . . .”
She found disbelief but no words.

“Then, to throw me off the track, you dragged me to the library and fed me a tall tale, all the time planning to kill everyone who wronged you.”

“Can you hear yourself?”

“And then, when you realized I’d figured it out, you tried to kill me. I guess my interrogation touched a few nerves, huh? Like when I suggested it was a crime of passion, even revenge. I have to say, PJ Sugar, you’re good. I guess I should be thankful you don’t have better aim.”

Oh, she had spot-on aim. Except apparently when it came to trusting the men in her life. “Have you lost your mind? Did they give you painkillers? Because I think you might be having an allergic reaction.”

He grabbed her wrist.

She stepped back, snapped it out of his grasp. “You’re serious. Even in your delirium. You actually think that
 
—what, I’m a
murderer
? That I came back, like Carrie, to enact my prom night revenge? Oh yes, I have kung fu written all over me. The goat
 
—it’s really a killer Doberman in disguise. I meant to take you out in the car, but dear old Fido died on his watch.”