Chapter Three
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jess said and glared. Although a good five inches below his six feet, she was clearly not intimidated by his size. Her hands on her hips and her tight posture clued him in to her annoyance.
“I worked with one of you Brash PIs recently, and she was a pain in the ass.” He glared back. “I imagine you’re all chosen by your boss for the sole purpose of emasculating men.”
That comment should get her riled up. He needed something to distract himself from thinking of her ass until his smaller brain got control of itself. Those tiny panties of hers hadn’t left anything to the imagination and what he was imagining was highly inappropriate for a law enforcement professional in the center of a case.
Puzzlement took over annoyance as she worked the comment around in her head. “Are you talking about Summer?”
“That’s her.” For a woman who was hyper feminine in her pastels and antique car, Summer had been one hell of an investigator. Tough, too. Not that he’d admit that to Jess. “She didn’t know when to get out of my way.”
A light bulb clicked on in her head. “You were the lead on the Mary Crosby case,” she said. “Summer solved that one. No wonder you’re ticked off. And feeling emasculated.” She added the last with a smile. “I feel for you, dude. Summer is a kickass PI.”
Dude? Now he was annoyed. “I am not ticked off and not emas—” He couldn’t say the word without ramping up her smug expression. “Summer had insider help that I didn’t have.” Stop now. Immediately, he thought, before you look like a sore loser.
“True,” she admitted. “But she still solved it first.”
His patience was thinning and he gripped the last of it with both hands. Those Brash & Brazen PIs were ball-busters. Good thing he wasn’t about to let this one get close to his.
“Moving on.” He lifted his notebook and jotted down the gun theory. “Is there anything else about the shooting or what happened afterward that seemed off?”
Her brows came together and she closed her eyes. “After Tom went down, the screaming started and then chaos. Everyone was running for cover. I was more concerned with saving him than looking out the window for the shooter. Sorry.”
He noted this. Later, he’d input all the statements into his computer. For now, he was old-school.
“Did you know Tom personally?”
“Not at all.” She played with her hair. “I just met him two days ago at the rehearsal dinner and we barely said hi. He seemed like a nice enough guy.”
Sam wondered if Tom was in the running for an up-close-and-personal look at the still-tagged panties in her duffel. There was no reason for her to have them with her other than she thought she’d get lucky with a wedding guest. Weddings and booze had a way of lowering romantic inhibitions.
Tamping down his frustration over the lack of a solid lead and the peep show, Sam closed the notebook. A church packed with people and no one saw anything useful.
“If you think of anything else, here’s my card.” He handed one over and headed for the door. The particle board panel swung open, almost hitting him in the face. He grabbed the door.
Crime tech Wade Collins stepped in. “Sorry.” He nodded at Jess when Sam introduced them, then turned his back to her. “Detective, I need to show you something,” he said softly.
Sam glanced back at Jess. Curiosity was clear in her unusual purple-ish eyes. Before she could ask questions, he nudged Wade out and closed the door behind them. “What it is?”
“I found evidence outside,” Wade said and headed off.
They were about five feet away when the door jerked open and hurried footsteps fell into line behind them. Wade looked back. If she was anything like Summer, she’d probably been listening with her ear to the door.
“She’s following us,” the tech said.
“I know,” Sam replied and kept going. “Ignore her and maybe she’ll go away.”
“I can hear you.”
Sam ran over the dealings he’d had with Summer and now Jess, and realized she wasn’t about to be shaken off. He could have her arrested for interfering with an investigation. But he knew that like a fly at a picnic, as soon as she was released, she’d be back to stick her face in his potato salad, or in this case, his investigation.
Brash & Brazen were the pit bulls of the PI trade. That’s what made them successful in the three short years since they opened their doors. And what frustrated real detectives.
So he’d let her have this one thing and that would be the end of it. She couldn’t force him to work with her.
They followed Wade outside. He walked to a pair of large maple trees flanked by a circle of matching bushes with red berries.
Wade broke through the bush ring and pointed up into the leafy canopy. “Have a look.”
It had been some years since Sam last climbed a tree, but he still remembered how. He shucked out of his coat and laid it over the nearest bush as the tech explained. “We think the sniper took the shot from here. We found evidence that leads to that conclusion.”
Wade was excellent at his job so Sam climbed. There was a crook in the tree about fifteen feet up and signs of evidence collection, bark scrapings, and missing leaves. It was a perfect place to take a shot into the church.
Wade had placed a scope between two branches and aimed at the church. Sam took position and carefully looked through the scope. From there, he could see past the tall stained glass window through to the inside of the church to the aisle where Becky, Wade’s assistant, stood. She waved.
Jess was right. It was an almost impossible shot.
“Whoever made the shot was good,” Sam said. “There was little room for error.”
He climbed back down.
“Let me see.” Jess was up the tree before he could react, took a look, and climbed back down. “Yep, the guy had skills,” she agreed without adding I told you so.
“It gets better,” Wade said, and back into the church they went, passing several wedding goers coming out. Nodding, the tech led them down the aisle to Becky. The cheerful and pretty assistant smiled up at Sam with a hungry expression. From previous dealings, Sam knew she was sporting a crush, but the girl was barely twenty and much too young for him.
He glanced at Jess. She was scanning the room. The woman wasn’t to his taste, even though he was still thinking of her tight little butt. He liked his women less, well, less irritating for starters.
Wade stopped before the blood spot where Tom had dropped and Becky moved to the left. “Okay,” he said. “I’m groomsman number three and two was there.” He pointed at the spot. “Becky is bridesmaid number two, there.”
Sam and Jess nodded. Wade went on. “Ms. Lucas, if you could take your position beside me.” Jess stepped over. The twos and threes were spaced about six feet apart. “So this was where everyone was when the shot rang out, correct?”
Jess started to nod, then froze. “No, this isn’t right.” She took several steps forward. “The flower girl dropped her basket when Darren burst through the doors and it started a chain reaction. Dodger and I were confused by the commotion and almost piled up on Tom and Shelby. That’s when the shot sounded…”
Her face went white when her last sentence trailed off.
Sam walked forward, looked out the window and back, positioning himself in a rough estimate of the trajectory of the bullet’s path. Shit. He stared into Jess’s eyes. “Had the flower girl not dropped the basket and stopped the bridal party, that bullet would have hit you.”
* * *
Sensing where this was going, Jess shook her head before the words were fully out. “You don’t know that. The sniper could have been aiming at Tom, or any of the other bridal party members. Just because I may have been hit if we hadn’t stopped walking doesn’t mean I was the target.”
“She’s right,” Wade said politely, although he appeared to be on team Wheeler. Becky, staring at the detective like he was covered in melted fudge, was already on board with his conclusion. She nodded, grinning at his brilliance.
“If the sniper was a professional,” Jess said, stressing if. She wasn’t convinced at all. “A trained assassin wouldn’t have missed, despite the pile-up. He would have tried again on another day. I still think Tom’s closet needs to be checked for skeletons before you paint the target on my chest.”
Did the detective just glance at said chest?
Jess let it go.
The notion that she was targeted for assassination was absurd. Yes, she’d worked some cases where the cheating wife or husband was crazy, or some low-level felon was ticked off at getting caught, but there were none she suspected were angry enough to want to kill her.
She glanced around. “I’d check for a connection between Tom and the bride. She does get around.”
Three pairs of eyes locked on to her. She took a second glance around the room. No one from the bridal party remained nearby. She didn’t want to get caught gossiping.
“Last night she had a three-way with the father of the groom and his girlfriend. She also slept with Dodger. There are a lot of potential angry exes. And don’t forget Darren. He stopped the wedding. He could be working with someone to take out the groom.”
“The groom wasn’t in the line of fire,” Wheeler reminded her. She waved him off.
“Yes, but if Darren wanted to stop the wedding without actually offing the groom, he succeeded brilliantly. Mandy is not married.”
She didn’t think that Darren had the stones to plan anything this diabolical, but she had to turn the spotlight off herself until she could get to the office and lay the case out. After all, she hadn’t seen Darren in years. If he was still hanging on to Mandy, he had misfiring brain circuits.
Detective Sam Wheeler pulled out his notebook and stared. “Can you confirm any of these charges?”
Good. He was off her. “Dodger told me about the cheating. Tall. Orange tan.” How had she ever considered Dodger as a potential sex partner? He paled—no pun intended—next to the good detective. Ugh.
At least Dodger wasn’t cranky.
“I’ll talk to him.” He glanced back at the broken window. Angels were playing harps. “Two targets we can rule out are the bride or groom. He was already at the altar and she was still in the vestibule before the shooting.” He glanced back at Jess. “Thanks for the tips, but be careful. I still think you’re in danger.”
He wandered off while the techs returned to taking measurements and collecting evidence.
Jess took this as a dismissal. Fine. She went back to the bride’s room, collected her stuff, and grumbled about irritating detectives. The wedding hadn’t gone as expected, but it had been memorable.
In the wrong way. She could have gone her whole life having not met Wheeler and counted herself lucky. Now they were interlocked through the case. Chances they’d see each other again were very high.
“Great.”
She called Dodger, who’d given her his number before he headed to the hospital, and he told her that Tom was in surgery. On a positive note, the doc said he’d recover. The bullet had gone in, bounced off his clavicle, and then took a southern path into his back muscle. It avoided anything potentially fatal.
Tom was lucky.
They all were, possibly her most of all. She might not believe she was targeted, but until they found a better candidate, she couldn’t rule herself out, no matter what she told the irritating detective.
As she stood in the doorway, taking a minute to solidify the clues in her head, the door opened behind her and Wheeler walked out. Seeing her, he paused as he passed. Frustration lined his face as if reading her thoughts.
“Hey, Brash Girl,” he said. “Stay out of my case.”
Anger prickled down her spine. So much for professional courtesy. Just as he hit the sidewalk, she found her voice and called after him, “Not a chance!”
He kept walking.
Jess loped to her SUV and slammed the door closed behind her. After banging her palms on the steering wheel several times and getting no satisfaction, she reached under the back seat and pulled out her sewing bag. Jerking the crochet needles and her current project out of the bag, she clacked the needles loudly together in the enclosed space and released her frustration for the next fifteen minutes over one too handsome and infuriating detective.