07 It Had to Be You Read online

  And their ringleader, Edward Gregory.

  Edward and Luke’s grandma had divorced in the ’70s, when Fay had founded the local historical society to preserve the buildings that made up Commercial Row, and then insisted on running it herself. Back in the day, Edward hadn’t gotten the memo about women’s rights, not to mention exactly how strong willed and stubborn a Hanover could be. He’d stood firm, and Fay had dumped him.

  Edward had moved out, eventually buying the house next door, saying he’d done so to spite Fay. But everyone knew it was because he hadn’t gotten over her.

  Or her death.

  Or Luke, seeing as he’d caused it…

  Luke leaned against the doorjamb and waited, because whatever this was, it was going to be good.

  Or really, really bad.

  “Took you long enough to answer the door,” Mr. Lyons said, leaning heavily on his cane to peer inside, and then let out a low whistle at the mess. “Holy smokes, boy. You haven’t outgrown that party animal stage yet?”

  “He didn’t do that, you idiot, the cops did,” Mr. Wykowski said. “They tossed the joint looking for the dough.”

  Edward didn’t speak. They hadn’t been face to face in years, hadn’t seen each other since Fay’s funeral. “What’s up?” Luke asked.

  “We called Edward to drive us over here to see you,” Mr. Wykowski said. “On account of I lost my license last year and these yahoos are blinder than bats.”

  “Hey,” Mr. Elroy said, glaring at him. “You’re the one who tried to drive down the pier and ended up nose first inside the deli. You smelled like pickles for a month.”

  “I turned at the wrong place. Big deal, we all make mistakes.” Mr. Wykowski waved this off as he turned to Luke. “Ali’s still at the police station.”

  “I know.”

  “Thing is, Ted Marshall’s sort of the golden boy around here. Hell, he had the senior center redone last year so we could open up more rooms, and he single-handedly raised the money for the Dial-A-Ride van. He makes sure there’s money in the budget for Edward’s pay. People love him and trust him. If he says Ali stole the money, everyone believes him. You know what I’m saying?”

  “No,” Luke said. “Just because someone’s a good guy doesn’t mean what he says is gold. There’s a justice system.”

  Which he knew better than anyone didn’t always work.

  “Listen,” Mr. Lyons said, “we watch Law and Order. We know shit happens. And shit’s happening.”

  “Ali’s our ceramics teacher,” Mr. Elroy said. “She also gets library books and reads to us. We need to help her. We’re all she has.”

  “And you want me to do what exactly?” Luke asked.

  “We figure since she’s been staying here, that makes her yours too.”

  “It’s not like that,” Luke said.

  “What is it like?” Mr. Elroy asked, and every one of them looked at Luke through rheumy, but sharp-as-hell, eyes.

  Yeah, Luke, what was it like? She’d come along when he’d wanted to be alone, and she’d gotten his entire house torn up in the search for the fifty large. But the landline hadn’t rung in a full twenty-four hours. Ali, whose damn life was circling the drain, had amazingly managed to scare everyone off and give him a chance at his peace and quiet.

  In spite of himself, he wanted to help her in return. Not that she wanted his help. The envelope of cash she’d tried to give him was still on the table. Broke as shit, she’d still given it to him, because that was the right thing to do.

  It’d been the pride flaring in her eyes that had slain him. She needed to pay her way. He was an ass, but not that big an ass to squelch the life that she projected with every single breath. He might be standing in the darkness, wallowing, weighed down by the things he saw on his job, but she wasn’t like that. She was light.

  And yet she was at the police station right now being questioned.

  Alone.

  He told himself that she was used to shitty circumstances. Hell, it appeared she was used to shitty men too. Her father, the pincher…him. She was used to taking care of herself and others.

  And he had no idea why that got to him. But it did. She did.

  “You still with us, boy?” Mr. Elroy asked. “Now’s not the time to go all silent and cranky on us.”

  Luke hadn’t been called “boy” in a damn long time. And few other than Sara dared to call him on the silent and cranky. “Ali’s just being questioned,” he said.

  “What if she needs bailing out?”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “But if she does?”

  “You could do it,” Luke said.

  “Yes, and we would,” Mr. Wykowski said. “But…” He glanced at Edward, who still said nothing, gave away nothing. At seventy-two, he looked as fit and healthy as Sara and Jack had reported and pretty much the same as always—as if he’d just swallowed a lemon.

  “We don’t have very much,” Mr. Lyons said. “We pooled our available cash together from what was left of our social security for the month, but it’s not much. We had a poker game a few nights back, see, and normally I’d have taken the pot—”

  Mr. Elroy coughed and muttered “bullshit” at the same time.

  Mr. Lyons glared at him. “—But I had a little bad luck.”

  “That’s not what happened,” Mr. Elroy said.

  “Yes, it is,” Mr. Lyons said.

  “No.” Mr. Elroy shook his head. “Eileen Weiselman knew she had a losing hand, so she flashed you her tits to distract you into folding, and you lost. We all lost.”

  “Okay, look,” Luke said, rubbing his temples where he was getting a stress headache. “Ali isn’t a thief. I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding that will get worked out.”

  “But you can’t just let her sit in jail while it does,” Mr. Wykowski said, horrified.

  “She’s not in a jail cell. She’s being questioned. Big difference. And unless she’s charged and arrested—which they won’t do without just cause—she won’t need bailing out.”

  “See,” Mr. Elroy said, “that’s good information. I didn’t know that. It’s why you need to be in charge of this situation.”

  “I’m not in charge,” Luke said. “Of anything.”

  “But she’s down there with hardened criminals,” Mr. Lyons said. “You can’t let her sit there with them.”

  Luke sincerely doubted there were any hardened criminals in Lucky Harbor. The daily police reports read like something right out of Mayberry: an elk walking down Main Street, a drunken and disorderly at two a.m., high school punks running over mailboxes. “This isn’t up to me,” he said. “You know that, right? They’re just following procedure.”

  They all looked deeply disappointed in him. And then Edward spoke for the first time, uttering only two words. “Get it.”

  Mr. Lyons nodded and used his cane to navigate back to the van.

  Edward just stood there looking at Luke.

  Luke ignored them all and thought about Ali. He’d meant what he’d said, she was no thief. She’d probably give a stranger the shirt off her own back. The thought reminded him of what she’d looked like without a shirt in his kitchen, yelling at Marshall’s voice mail.

  Vibrant. Fierce. Sexy.

  But she was also sweet and warm. And vulnerable.

  And she was sitting in the police station. Shit.

  His cell vibrated. He looked at the screen. His commander. With a long, slow inhale, he connected. “Hanover.”

  “Got a death threat this morning.” Commander Craig O’Neil’s voice was gruff and as commanding as his title. “Aimed at all of us. Just wanted you to know.”

  “Great,” Luke said. “I’ll start working my way down my bucket list.”

  “How about instead you just get your ass back here.”

  Not a question but a statement. Actually, more like a direct demand. “I’m on vacation,” Luke reminded him.

  “You’re not, you’re working a fucking case. Sheriff Thompson call
ed me to make sure I didn’t mind sharing you. What the hell?”

  Thanks, Sawyer. “What did the threat say?”

  “It said ‘die pigs.’ But he misspelled ‘die,’ used a Y. Dye pigs just doesn’t have the same impact. But watch your back just in case.”

  “Will do.”

  “How long are you really going to be?”

  “Didn’t we just do this? Three weeks.”

  “Goddammit.” The commander went quiet for a moment. “How about one?”

  “I’ll get back to you.” Luke disconnected.

  “Work problems?” Mr. Wykowski asked.

  Luke didn’t answer. Mr. Wykowski was a nice guy, but he was close friends with Lucille, which was a lot like being close friends with a PA system. Whatever he told Mr. Wykowski, he had to be willing for the entire county to hear. If he mentioned the threat, it’d be on Facebook in five minutes flat.

  Mr. Lyons made his slow way back up the driveway, cane in one hand and in the other…an apple pie.

  “Homemade,” he said, waving it back and forth beneath Luke’s nose. “We got it off of Betsy Morango, who made it for her granddaughter. We have to let her in on the next poker game now, but anything for Ali.”

  “You can’t bribe me with pie.” Before he’d finished the sentence, his stomach grumbled loudly in a plea for the pie.

  The men grinned.

  “We all know you’re a pie ho,” Mr. Elroy said.

  Mr. Lyons had two plastic forks tucked neatly into his breast pocket. He took one out and scooped up a bite of the apple pie. “Oh yeah,” he murmured, licking the fork. “Good stuff.”

  Just the thought of it was making Luke’s damn mouth water.

  Edward was still looking at him steadily. Intensely. Luke had no idea what his grandfather’s angle was on this, but one thing he did know: There was an angle. “If I agree to step in here, you nosy-bodies have to agree to something too.”

  “What?” Mr. Lyons asked.

  “Ali needs a place to stay until she gets an apartment. You have lady friends.” Again he met Edward’s gaze. “Surely one of you knows someone looking for a roommate. She cooks. She does her own dishes. She’s…” Not quiet. Not easy to ignore. “Cheerful,” he finally said, hoping that sounded like a compliment. “She’d be a good roommate for anyone.”

  Except for him.

  “She can stay with me,” Mr. Elroy said, and waggled his brow.

  Luke wrestled with his conscience and lost. “No.” Christ. “Never mind. I’ll find her a damn place myself.” He reached for the pie, but Mr. Lyons held it close.

  “Almost forgot, I need another favor,” Mr. Lyons said.

  Luke gave him a look. “I’m a little busy working on the first one right now.”

  “This one can wait until you get Ali home safe and sound. Roger Barrett needs to hire you. He’s got a problem. He misplaced his ’67 GTO.”

  “He didn’t misplace it,” Mr. Wykowski said. “He lost it in a poker game to Phillip Schmidt two years ago, remember?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Lyons said, “with the caveat that when the old geezer died, he had to give it back to Roger. Phillip’s been six feet under for six months now, and his grandson Mikey ‘The Doper’ Schmidt still says he hasn’t ‘located’ the GTO, which is bull-pucky. He’s just not done driving the piss out of it.”

  “You realize that car’s no longer PC,” Mr. Elroy said, disapprovingly. “It’s a gas guzzler.”

  “Gas guzzler, smuzzler,” Mr. Lyons said. “It’s a beaut. They don’t make cars like that anymore. God rest Pontiac’s soul.”

  Luke shook his head. “And the GTO is my problem why?”

  “Because you’re the problem-solving guy,” Mr. Lyons said.

  “Says who?”

  “Your grandpa says that’s what you do best.”

  Luke met Edward’s gaze. Edward still didn’t speak.

  “So you’re going to help Ali, right?” Mr. Lyons asked.

  Luke could smell the brown sugar and baked apples. He needed that pie. The hell with it. He snatched it. “Yeah. I’m going to help her.” He snagged the other fork out of Mr. Lyons’s pocket. He took a big bite and nearly died and went to heaven. “Sawyer said the cops aren’t done talking to her yet, not until around two.”

  Mr. Lyons blinked. “You were already going to help her,” he said all accusatorially.

  Luke took another big bite. “Yeah.”

  Mr. Lyons narrowed his eyes. “And Roger? You’ll help Roger too?”

  “Yeah, but only because Phillip Schmidt was the idiot who built that monstrosity on northeast bluffs. It blocks access to the beach from that side of the harbor, so he calls the cops on the kids that have to trespass to get to the water.”

  Mr. Lyons smiled. “You’re a good boy. You’re going to be good for Ali. I take her classes, you know, both the ceramics and her floral-design class. They help with my arthritis. She deserves better than to be treated like a common criminal.”

  Luke turned to Edward. “So what’s your interest in this?”

  “Oh, he takes Ali’s classes too,” Mr. Elroy answered for him. “We all do.” He smiled. “We love her.”

  Luke was having some trouble with the image of his tough, stoic, impenetrable grandfather taking ceramics and floral design.

  Not to mention—what the hell was floral design?

  Chapter 7

  Ali had a recurring nightmare that changed in details, but at the core it was always the same—she was alone.

  Terrifyingly alone.

  Sitting on a chair in some chilly room at the police station, her nightmare had gone live.

  There’d been lots of questions. Had she been angry when Teddy had broken up with her? Angry enough to want to frame him? Because apparently her messages, both the voice mail and the sticky note, indicated a vengeful woman.

  Did she know that if she turned the rest of the money in right now that charges would be reduced, possibly dropped? Because apparently she was holding it hostage somewhere.

  Did she know that the sticky-note message could also be construed as an actual threat? She didn’t know how calling someone an ass who was an actual ass had become threatening, but okay. Fine. Lesson learned.

  She’d said maybe she needed an attorney, and one of the cops brought her to a phone. She stared at it in rare indecision. This was new, being on this side of the phone call. She’d been on the other side, several times, the first being when her mom had been arrested for property damage after she’d taken that bat to her boyfriend’s car. What the cops hadn’t known was that Mimi had been aiming for the guy’s head.

  The second time had been when Mimi had set fire to a different boyfriend’s wardrobe. Her mistake had been in using the bonfire to have a party. Mimi had tried to plead temporary insanity on that one, but no one bought it. There was nothing temporary about Mimi’s rage whenever she got cheated on.

  Both times Ali and Harper had bailed Mimi out using the secret cash stash taped to the bottom of their couch, which was accumulated from her mom’s tips. Over the years, that stash had ebbed and flowed, depending on various needs. Christmas. School field trips. Mimi’s breast augmentation. And then the second surgery to remove the implants after they’d begun to leak.

  Then Harper had taken her turn one year and had gotten arrested for indecent exposure after she’d pulled off to the side of the road to pee in the snow.

  Ali still liked to tease Harper about that one.

  She could call them, either of them. They’d be here in a blink, their tip stash in tow on the chance that she did indeed get arrested. But Ali wasn’t going to call them. She hadn’t been arrested—yet—and even if she had, she wasn’t going to have them spend their hard-earned money on her.

  Besides, neither her mom nor her sister was qualified to offer legal advice, and then there was the embarrassment factor, which on a scale of one to ten, was at an eleven right now.

  She should call Ted, because oh, did she have things to say to Ted.
She stared at the phone some more. Luke. She could call Luke. He’d probably know what she should do. Except she wasn’t his problem.

  And she needed an attorney, not a detective.

  She knew exactly one attorney: Zach Mullen. They’d gone to high school together, and skinny, geeky Zach, the PlayStation master of their neighborhood, had always been the smartest guy she knew, despite his huge crush on Harper. He’d graduated from UNLV law school last year, but it’d been months since she’d talked to him. Had he passed the bar?

  She called him and was so grateful to hear his soft, friendly “yo” that she nearly collapsed. “Zach,” she said. “Tell me you passed the bar.”

  “Okay, I passed the bar.”

  “No, really.” She lowered her voice and crossed her fingers. “Did you?”

  Zach huffed out a laugh. “Barely, but don’t tell anyone that part.”

  Thank God. “So you’re a real lawyer?” she asked, needing to be sure.

  “Yep,” he said. “A real, bona fide lawyer. I work for a hotel in Seattle in their legal department, though this week I’m in their Los Angeles office. Mostly fact gathering, but they pay bank so—”

  “Okay, that’s great,” she said quickly. “Listen, I have a side job for you. How fast can you get to Lucky Harbor?”

  There was a beat of silence. “Lucky Harbor?”

  “Yes. I…sort of need some legal advice.”

  Zach might be a sweetheart, and he looked like a good wind could blow him over, but he was also sharp as a tack. “I’m in L.A. until the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got a late-night flight back into Seattle, and then I’m all yours. What do you need, Ali? Anything.”

  “I need you.”

  Ali was eventually released with the caveat that she not leave town. A few minutes later, she was standing on the sidewalk in the bright sun, staring in surprise at the tall, silent Luke, who’d been waiting for her. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “Later. You’ve got other issues.” He pointed at the two women holding up FREE ALI signs in front of the courthouse.

  Her mom and sister.