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Authors: Jennifer Apodaca

Tags: #Mystery: Cozy - Dating Service - California

Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required (16 page)

BOOK: Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required

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Her face hardened. “You’re a liar, Samantha Shaw.” She turned and stormed out the open front door.

I hurried across the room, slammed the door, and leaned back against it. Ali got up and came over to me. She sniffed the can of pepper spray still clutched in my right hand, then sat down to let me pet her.

Finally I sighed. “Come on, Ali. Let’s go call Angel. If she hasn’t been snatched by aliens, then she can meet me at the police station once she gets her tire changed.” I headed toward the phone on the wall.

Ali barked and raced to the kitchen. I picked up the phone, punched in Angel’s cell phone number then leaned around the corner to see Ali with her nose in the seam of the fridge. Apparently she thought we needed a beer break. “No beer, Ali.”

She kept her nose in the seam and wagged her tail.

Angel’s cell phone started to ring in my ear.

Someone knocked on the front door.

“Finally,” I hung up the phone. Ali followed me to the door, wagging her tail. She apparently liked this game. Probably she thought the winner got a beer.

I pulled open the door and groaned. Detective Vance blocked out the morning sun. He was dressed to arrest in his dark pants, serious white shirt, and snazzy tie. His coat covered his shoulder holster and emphasized his wide shoulders which narrowed to a trim ass. If he’d been five minutes earlier, he could have arrested his lunatic fan.

What a morning.

“Vance, I was just on my way to the police station.” Or I would have been if I had talked to Angel. I opened the door to let him in.

“I’m not taking any chances, Shaw.” He came into the living room and bent over to pet Ali.

“Whatever.” I ignored the implication that I’d somehow lose the necklace. “Did you find Zack? It had to be the necklace that Zack was looking for last night.”

He stood up from petting Ali. “We went to his apartment but he wasn’t there. He didn’t show up there overnight. Oddly enough, I found out that a diamond necklace was stolen from Daystar last Friday night and the suspect is Zack Quinn. He hasn’t shown up for work since his shift ended on Friday.”

I stood there, thinking. “So Zack’s still out there.”

“Looks like it. I got your message on my voice mail this morning that you just happened to find a diamond necklace. A necklace that was stolen the same night you and Angel were at the casino. Quite a coincidence.”

My scalp tightened, contributing to my headache. That’s why Vance had shown up at my front door—cops don’t believe in coincidences. Why the hell wasn’t Angel here to help me explain this? “I just found the necklace this morning. That must be what Zack was looking for at Angel’s house, but we didn’t know we had it!”

Vance stood in the living room between the pressed wood coffee table and the TV set against the wall. “That happens to a lot of folks, Shaw. They can never quite figure out how they came to possess stolen property.” Smug arrogance laced every word he said.

The best way to end this would be to get it over with. Give him the necklace in the vibrator. . . .

Oh crap. “Uh, there’s a reason we didn’t know about the necklace. See, this man at Daystar came to the table Angel and I sat at. He had a proposal for Angel’s lingerie line.” I took a breath.

Vance unfurled a small smile that had his flat cheeks flirting with dimples. “Selling diamond jewelry that fell off the back of a truck?”

“No!” Outraged, I put my hands on my hips. “Cut it out, Vance. You know Angel and I aren’t criminals.” I suspected he was letting me twist in the wind to get a little revenge. Angel and I had made him the butt of his cop buddies’ jokes. Plus Vance and I had a little sexual chemistry, and I kept choosing Gabe over him.

“I have no such knowledge, Shaw. Why are you stalling?”

Hell. “I’m not stalling. Anyway, Mitch—”

“Wait.” Vance’s face shifted into cop mode. He reached up into his shirt pocket and pulled out a notebook and a pen. Opening the notebook, he said, “What’s the name?”

“Mitch St. Claire. But I don’t know if he knew what he had. I mean—”

Vance cut me off. “Where in Daystar were you?”

Getting annoyed because I wanted to get this over with, I said, “The Nova Lounge.”

He wrote and then looked up. “Friday night?”

“Yes.”

“All right, what did Mitch give you?”

“He gave it to Angel, as a sample to see if she wanted to sell his products through her lingerie parties for Tempt-an-Angel.”

Vance made a note, then fixed his eyes on me. “What products?”

I met his gaze. There was no going back now. “Sex toys.”

The only sound was Vance clicking his pen on and off. His expression remained cop-blank. No dimples surfaced. After a few seconds, he blinked and said, “Sex toys.”
Click. Click.

I had finally pushed Vance off balance. “Actually, it’s a box of sex toys. I found the necklace in one of the vibrators.”

The clicking stopped. “This morning? How did you discover the necklace in a vibrator?” He moved in. “I’ll need details.”

If he touched me, I thought I’d see blue sparks. Then it dawned on me. He thought I’d found the necklace while experimenting with the vibrator. “Jeez, Vance, I hate to burst your bubble, but I found the necklace when I threw the sex-toy kit against the wall.”

“Hmm.”

Did I hear a sizzle? “Hmm what?” Outrage rolled up my throat. “It’s the truth! I tripped over the stupid kit, got mad, and threw it against the wall. Stuff spilled out of the sex-toy kit and I saw the necklace. That’s what happened.”

“So you woke up this morning, got out of bed, and tripped over a sex-toy kit that just happened to be there?”

Second time this morning I’d been called a liar. Vance was less blunt than Zoë, but still. “That’s what happened.” I folded my arms over my chest.

“Sure. We’ll write that down. It’ll look better in my report.”

“You have a dirty mind, Vance.” I reached for my purse on the coffee table to give him the sex-toy kit and get this over with. The doorbell rang.

Angel.
Finally.
Letting go of my purse, I went to the door and yanked it open.

Angel strode in wearing a pair of black leather pants and a tan tank top. “Auto Club ran late this morning. Fireman Bob happened by, though, and he changed my tire. Then the Auto Club guy showed up while Fireman Bob was changing my tire and they got into an argument about the right way to change a tire. I had cancelled my Auto Club call, but the guy didn’t get the notice. Typical screw-up.”

I shut the door. Two men fighting over changing Angel’s flat tire wasn’t that big of a shock. But Fireman Bob was a Heart Mates hottie. I wondered if Angel was interested in him.

Angel glanced at Vance, then back to me. “I thought you said we were going to take the necklace to the police station.”

Vance said, “I thought it prudent to come here and get the necklace myself.”

“Prudent. What a tight-ass word.” Annoyed, I said to Angel. “Vance is suspicious of us. Like we’d call and confess we had a diamond necklace if we had stolen it.”

Vance shut his notebook. “Get the necklace, Shaw.”

Angel took in the tension between us, then looked at me. “I want to see it, too.”

I just wanted it gone. Out of my house. Out of my life. As soon as I dumped this on Vance, he could go out and find Zack. Angel and I could get back to our lives. I moved to the coffee table, opened my purse, and peered inside.

Wallet, calendar, lipstick, breath spray, keys-with-Gabe’s-house-key, receipt for new shoes, hairbrush. My heart kicked up and slammed throbs of pain into my head. Reaching in, I dug around. Pulled out my hairbrush, a diet bar, case of pressed powder.

Gone. The sex-toy kit was gone.

Vance said, “Shaw, what are you doing?”

Where was it? I had had it when I answered the door for Zoë. I glanced at the two framed, signed pictures. No sex-toy kit sitting out on the table. I’d set the framed pictures down by my purse.

I distinctly remembered putting the sex-toy kit in my purse.

Omigod. When I moved to the dining room to get the pepper spray, Zoë must have seen the blue velvet box in my purse and stolen it!

“Shaw, stop stalling. Where’s this sex-toy kit and diamond necklace?”

Furious, I let go of my purse and stood up. “Gone. Your greatest fan, who believes you are her heart mate, stole it.”

D
etective Logan Vance didn’t look like a too-handsome sun god. Right at the moment, he looked like an extremely pissed-off cop in a suit. Before he could explode, I said, “It has to be Zoë who took the sex-toy kit and the necklace. I had it in my hand when I opened the door for her, then I stuck it in my purse and set my purse on the coffee table.” Babbling now, I picked up the two framed pictures and held them up between us. “She brought over these autographs and demanded I give her R. V. Logan’s real name and address in exchange!” The woman was crazy.

Angel said, “That yoga freak was here? And she stole the sex-toy kit?” She turned to Vance. “What are you waiting for? Go find her!”

Vance had developed a throbbing twitch at the outside edge of his left eye, and his hands clenched into white knuckled fists at his sides. He ignored Angel and fixed his stare on me. “Did she see the diamond necklace?”

Setting the pictures down, I shook my head. “No. It was inside the vibrator, and that was inside the box.”

Vance reached down to pull a folded piece of paper from his suit pocket. He opened it and stuck it in my face. “Is this the necklace you found, and lost?”

I looked at the paper. It was a faxed picture of the exact necklace. Was I going to jail? “Yes. At least that’s what the necklace looked like.”

Angel grabbed the paper from Vance’s hand. “Are those real? How many carats?”

Vance took the paper back from her. “A quarter of a million dollars’ worth.” To me, Vance said, “The two of you had better start explaining. So far, you’ve led me on a wild goose chase. Now I want answers. Start with who was in the two cars that were pulling out onto the street from your house just as I pulled in.”

“I don’t know what’s going on!” My thoughts spun frantically. “Two cars? You probably passed Zoë, but no one else was here. Grandpa already left to take the boys to school.” I felt like I was sinking in confusion. Nothing made sense. How had Zack gotten that necklace into the sex-toy kit that Mitch gave us? Why? Obviously, it was stolen, but why hide it in there? Was Mitch involved? What about Zoë? Could Zack have sent her to find the sex-toy kit and steal it back?

Vance kept his gaze locked onto me. “Two cars, Shaw. A black Lincoln Navigator SUV and a green Ford Focus. A female in the Ford and a male in the SUV.”

Damn, he was good. I’d never have gotten all those details as I passed two cars. “Zoë must be in the Ford Focus. We just have to find her.” My heart pounded viciously. I swallowed, unable to believe how bad this looked, and how furious Vance was. “I never saw a man. Chances are the SUV that you saw was just someone turning around in the dirt lot in front of our house.”

Angel tilted back her head. “I’ve met Zoë, Detective. The woman is nuts.”

Vance pulled air deep into his lungs, raising his swimmer’s shoulders up to his ears, and then he let it go. He walked to the love seat, sat down, and said, “Start from the beginning with how you met Mitch St. Claire to how the necklace disappeared this morning.”

I went to the couch adjacent to the love seat and sat down. Ali put her head in my lap, while Angel sat on the other side of me. I studied Vance as he arranged his pocket-size notebook on his knee. I didn’t know a whole lot about police procedure and territory, but I suspected that Vance had called either the Temecula police or Daystar security and told them he had a lead on recovering the necklace.

And once again, I had made Vance look bad. I would be lucky if I didn’t end up in handcuffs. Taking a breath, I recounted the whole mess of Mitch’s giving Angel the sex-toy kit, then how I took it home and only just this morning found the necklace in it. I described every detail I could remember.

Vance looked at Angel. “Do you have contact information for Mitch?”

Angel shook her head. “His information was supposed to be in a catalogue inside the sample kit.” She looked at me.

I shook my head. “There wasn’t any kind of catalogue.”

Angel shifted back to Vance, “Mitch has left a couple of messages on my answering machine, but he didn’t leave a phone number.”

“Do you have caller ID?” Vance asked.

“It was blocked.”

“How did he know about your lingerie business?”

Angel shrugged. “He said he had heard about me at the casino. I was promoting my business there. The Silky Men wear my lingerie and promote it as well.”

“I see. And did you give out your address?”

She shook her head. “Phone number on my business card, but it wouldn’t be that hard to find my address.”

Vance frowned. “Something’s not adding up. Why you? According to Daystar security, they believe that Zack Quinn stole the necklace, based on the victim’s story that she picked Zack up for a night of sex. She had the necklace on when they went up to her room, and it was gone when she woke up from a deep, probably drug-induced, sleep.”

I frowned. “It makes sense to me. Zack is the obvious suspect, so he had to find another way to get the necklace out of the casino, in case the victim woke up too soon and he was caught. So he paid someone to pose as an entrepreneur and pass the necklace in a sex-toy kit.”

With a deadpan stare, Vance asked, “Then what? Run to Angel’s house and steal the necklace back? That’s too risky. Too many things could go wrong. And why Angel? How did they know about her lingerie business? Could they be sure she’d accept the sex-toy kit? It’d be much easier just to pay this Mitch St. Claire to walk the necklace out of the casino and meet him somewhere later.”

Crap. There was a reason Vance was a detective, while I only worked part-time for my PI boyfriend. Or at least I had worked part-time with Gabe until he had hired an assistant.

Angel said, “But the fact is that Mitch did give me a sex-toy kit with a diamond necklace in it. What’s your explanation, Detective?”

Vance shifted his gaze beyond me to Angel. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Had you and Sam told me that a man gave you a sex-toy kit at Daystar the day Sam thought you were missing, we might have the answers right now.”

“I forgot! It didn’t even cross my mind.” Lord, I felt stupid.

Vance closed his notebook and faced me. “Unless Zack paid the two of you to get the necklace out of the casino for him. And when you found Angel missing, you thought he’d kidnapped her because the two of you were double crossing him. That would be an excellent reason to not mention the sex-toy kit to me.” He stood up.

I jumped to my feet. “That’s stupid! Angel and I didn’t even know the diamond necklace was in there. Why would I call you and tell you I had it this morning, then?”

He shook his head. “Hell if I know, Shaw. I’m just a dumb cop.” He closed the distance between us. “But if you want to keep your ass out of jail, then you call me the second you hear from Zoë. Then I’ll . . .” He trailed off as he realized that he was the very person Zoë was trying so hard to find.

“You’ll what?” I demanded. I was not going to be threatened by Vance. “Autograph her collection of R.V. Logan books? Give her a bookmark? Dedicate a book to her?”

His jaw tightened. “I’ll send a uniform to get the necklace from her.” Then he added, “My writing never interferes with my job as a cop, Shaw. I do my job.”

“Then find Zoë.”

“Do you have her full name? Address? Phone number? Place of employment?”

I blinked, seeing the problem. “The name she gave me is Zoë Cash. She’s taller than I am, with black hair and brown eyes. Big-time into yoga and romance reading.” I struggled to think of something that would help. I didn’t even know if Zoë lived in Lake Elsinore or had come here to find me, and, ultimately, R. V. Logan. “Wait . . . she said she had just been to a romance convention.
Romance Rocks
magazine holds a convention every year. Zoë knew who I was from the reviews in that magazine, so I’m sure it’s their convention. Maybe you can find out more about her through that.” Somehow.

“That’s all?” Vance drilled home his disgust with his stare.

“I wasn’t interrogating her, Vance! I was trying to help you by getting rid of her.”

“You just never get it right, do you, Shaw?” He turned and left.

Angel stood up next to me. “He’s not going to help us.”

I hadn’t even left my house yet and the day was a complete disaster. “I should call Gabe. He told me to call him if there was a problem with turning the necklace over to Vance.” I headed toward my kitchen phone.

Angel passed by me and went to the coffeepot. “And tell him what, Sam?”

With the phone in my hand, I watched Angel get down a coffee mug and fill it up. “That a crazy romance fan stole the necklace.” Then I admitted, “That probably doesn’t happen to a lot of people.” I hung up the phone. With Dee in the picture, hell, with the picture Dee had taken of me the night before, when she had caught Angel and me snooping through Gabe’s office, I wasn’t excited to tell Gabe my latest failure.

Angel went to the refrigerator and pulled out the milk. “Let’s try to find Zoë first. The two of us can outsmart that lunatic. We’ll get the necklace back.” She poured some milk in her coffee, then put the milk carton away.

I stood by the phone and thought out loud. “Once we take the necklace to Vance, he’ll believe us. Then he’ll concentrate on finding Zack so that you are safe.” That made sense. “I’m sure Zoë took that box to blackmail me. I mean, she’s really focused on finding R. V. Logan. If she was working with Zack, she’d have taken the sex-toy kit the first time she saw it.” I knew she’d seen it at Heart Mates the day I was painting and again the day before, when Angel and I were getting ready to look at it.

Angel took a sip of her coffee. “So how do we find her?”

“She usually finds me.”
Think!
What had Zoë told me? Any hints as to where she might be? “She went to the skate park last night.” How could that help us? “Wait!” I ran down the hallway to my bedroom. Once in there, I went to my desk, snatched up my Rolodex phone tree, and hurried back out to the dining room. “I can call around my phone tree and see if anyone in here knows anything about Zoë.”

Before Angel could answer, the phone rang.

I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Boss,” Blaine said, “there’s a line of people waiting to sign up at Heart Mates. What are the chances of you making an appearance?”

Work. Heart Mates. Ignoring Blaine’s sarcasm, I asked, “A line? Really? How did that happen?”

“Word on the street is that we have signed a sizzling hot fireman who is looking for love. Four women want to sign up before the open house tomorrow night so they can come to the preparty mixer for our clients. Strangely enough, they are expecting to see you here.”

Wow. Talk about a fast gossip grapevine. Excited, I answered, “OK, I’ll be there. I’m leaving right now.” I hung up. Then I looked at Angel.

Nothing like being torn between my best friend, work, and that nagging feeling that I should call Gabe. “Let’s take the phone tree to work. We can make calls from there.”

Angel finished off her coffee and took the cup to the sink. “Maybe Zoë’s there already, waiting for you.”

“Ha, we should get so lucky.” But just in case, I grabbed the can of pepper spray that I’d left on the dining room table and stuck it in my purse. One way or another, Zoë was going to give me that sex-toy kit with the diamond necklace back.

Blaine was on the phone when Angel and I got to Heart Mates, saying, “Yes, ma’am, we did recently add a fireman to our client list.” He looked at me and winked. “We can set you up with an interview today at ten o’clock. Will that work for you?”

I turned to the right. The old metal folding chairs in the little waiting area were empty. Where were the potential clients? Let’s see, all I had to do that day was interview possible new clients. Find the crazy romance fan who stole the missing diamond necklace in a vibrator so I could prove to Vance that Angel and I had nothing to do with the burglary of the necklace. Find Zack before he found Angel again. And get Heart Mates ready for the open house the next night. How hard could it be?

I heard Blaine hang up. I turned around with a questioning look.

“The new clients are in the interview room, boss. I put in the advertising videotape we made for tomorrow night and let them preview it. I’m still putting the finishing touches on it.”

Dang, Blaine was good. I’d never have thought of that. “Great.” I held out my hand. “Do you have their interview sheets?”

“Right here.” He reached to the side of his desk and picked up four clipboards. “Oh, and Gabe faxed over the clearance for our fireman.”

When had he done that? Busy boy, my Gabe. “Good.” I turned to Angel. “Why don’t you go in my office and start calling anyone you know on my phone tree to see if they know anything about Zoë. I’ll clear out these interviews and be right in to help you.”

Angel took the Rolodex from me.

“Boss?”

I had started reading through the first potential client and said, “Hmm?”
Abby Rochester. Divorced . . .

BOOK: Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required

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