Digging Up Trouble

  She cut him off. "Are you two together?" Her gaze jumped between Bill and me, suspicion still apparent. Potato-shaped, she looked to be about fifty, with a short graying bob with chunky bangs, chubby cheeks, and big Sally Jesse Raphael red glasses.

  "Us?" I said. "No. Definitely not."

  We all jumped when the front door swung open, banging against the wall behind it. Seemed I wasn't the only one on edge.

  A red-faced, perspiring Greta filled the doorway.

  "Greta, what's wrong?" Mrs. Potato Head asked.

  Greta still wore the same housecoat as yesterday. "What are you all doing here?"

  I swallowed hard. It was quite clear by her jumpy demeanor and angry eyes that she wasn't in the mood for visitors. This probably wasn't the best time to ask about dropping the lawsuit. "I, um, came by to talk."

  Bill said, "Me too."

  Mrs. Potato Head didn't say anything, but Greta didn't seem to be looking for an answer from her. Greta folded meaty arms across her huge chest. "I have nothing to say to either of you."

  Ohh-kay.

  I looked to Bill. He took a step forward, toward the front stairs. "Greta, I'm truly sorry about Russ, you must know that."

  Her shoulders stiffened. "I don't know anything right now."

  "Fair enough," he said. "But—"

  Greta glared. Her beehive 'do shook as she leaned against the doorjamb. "But what? What do you want, Bill?"

  I saw his pointy Adam's apple bob as he said, "Russ had taken some paperwork home with him from the restaurant. I need it."

  "It'll have to wait."

  "It really can't."

  "It has to." She wiped her forehead with the top of her hand. "Go home."

  Bill held out his hands, pleading. "Greta, please."

  I didn't understand the hint of desperation I heard in Bill's voice. Was he looking for the account books I'd seen through the window? Were they for Growl? Or was he looking for something else? Something so important that he'd leave his pride behind and beg a grieving widow?

  "No." Greta's jaw set stubbornly. "I don't wish to see anyone right now. Go away."

  She looked at wit's end. Russ's death had obviously taken its toll. Not to mention the conversation from the mystery man in her kitchen.

  Mrs. Potato Head climbed the front steps, paused on the landing, adjusted her glasses, and glowered at us as well. Hmmph. Nothing like feeling welcome.

  "You heard her," Mrs. Potato Head said. "The both of you need to leave. Greta needs to rest."

  "You too, Noreen," Greta said. "I want to be alone."

  A look of hurt flashed across Mrs. Potato Head's face. "I can understand that, but now is the time you should be with family."

  Although Bill and I had been dismissed, neither of us made ready to leave. Apparently I wasn't the only one with a nosy streak.

  Or was he waiting until everyone left to talk his way into the Grabinsky house?

  Greta reached out, touched Noreen's arm. Her voice had softened noticeably. "Thanks, but no. I truly wish to be alone."

  When Greta turned to go back into the house, I noted that she and Noreen had the same profile . . . and without the Sally Jesse glasses, the same eyes. Sisters, probably.

  Greta closed the door with much more caution than when she'd opened it.

  Well. I couldn't say this was a wasted trip, not with overhearing Greta being threatened.

  Russ had been a blackmailer. Wasn't that interesting?

  And Bill was desperate to find "paperwork."

  Noreen came down the steps, her chin held high. False bravado, if the tears in her eyes were any indication.

  "Noreen, may I have a word with you?" A strained smile tugged at Bill's lips.

  She sniffed, and looked directly at Bill without blinking. "Now's not a good time. I'm worried about my sister. Greta isn't used to being alone."

  Aha! They were sisters. Good to know my Clue-playing skills could actually come in handy once in a while.

  Bill spoke through clenched teeth. "When, then?"

  Noreen wrung her hands. "I'll be around."

  I looked between the two of them. "You two know each other well?"

  Without answering, Noreen said, "I must go." She hurried down the front walk, opened the door to a small compact, and drove away.

  I looked a question at Bill.

  "Not very well," he said.

  My eyebrow arched.

  "Did you see the man from the kitchen?"

  "He was gone by the time I made it back there. I've got to go too."

  My other eyebrow arched as he walked away, but I wasn't sure why. All I knew was that my instincts were rarely wrong. Bill and Lindsey's explanation about hiring me just wasn't ringing true.

  I walked back to my truck with a lot of questions.

  Who was blackmailing Greta?

  Who had Russ been blackmailing?

  And the most important . . .

  Had Russ been murdered?

  Nine

  I resisted temptation to head to the hospital to visit Tam.

  Okay, okay, so I didn't want to hear Brickhouse's "I told you so" about my disastrous visit with Greta.

  It was closing in on two o' clock, and as I headed to the office to get some paperwork done, I called Kit to make sure the mini was going okay.

  He answered his cell on the third ring. "Yo."

  "What kind of greeting is that?"

  "My kind."

  I imagined him winking when he said it. He had a playful tone in his voice. "Everything going okay?"

  "No dead bodies."

  "Ha. Ha."

  "The brick pavers are laid, the fire pit is done, the flowers are going in now. We should be back at the office in another two hours or so."

  "Did Jean-Claude show up?"

  "Ten minutes late. Looks like death warmed up and spit out."

  I didn't want to think about death. I turned right onto Jaybird, heading toward TBS.

  "He say anything?" I ventured. "About what he's been doing?" I'd kept my gigolo suspicions to myself. Well, I'd shared them with Ana, who said she'd look into it.

  I wondered exactly what kind of connections she had in that area, but truly, there were some things about my cousin even I didn't want to know.

  "Nah."

  "Any suspicions?"

  "Nah."

  I rolled my eyes. "You're so helpful."

  "That's what you pay me for," he said, and I heard a big WOOF in the background.

  "Is that BeBe?"

  "I, um—" Static suddenly filled the line. "You're breaking up!"

  "Kit," I warned, knowing exactly what he was doing. Another WOOF echoed across the line.

  "Gotta go, Nina."

  I stared at my silent cell phone. He'd hung up on me.

  Hmmph.

  Part of me wanted to go to the site and find out why BeBe was once again part of my crew. BeBe was sweet and all, but a work site was no place for her. She could possibly cause more damage than we could fix.

  If BeBe couldn't stay at home, then it was time for doggy day care.

  I walked into the office and found I kind of missed the chimes.

  Coby manned Tam's desk. He looked up at me, the phone balanced between his ear and shoulder, one hand on the computer keyboard, the other holding a pencil.

  "Do you know how to schedule an appointment?" he asked me. Then said into the phone, "No, no, not you."

  He mouthed Help me and added big puppy dog eyes.

  His chubby baby-fat cheeks were covered in a light peach fuzzy blond that would someday turn to stubble.

  I had to imagine that, at twenty-four, he hoped "one day" would be soon.

  I took the phone, sorted out the mess, and hung up.

  "We need to get a temp," Coby said, rising from Tam's throne. It had been odd to see him sitting there, and not Tam. She was such a fixture in the office. Her African violet, Sassy, even seemed to droop a little. I made a mental note to take it to the hospital with me the next time I
visited.

  "Thanks for covering things today," I said.

  He took a set of keys from his pocket, headed toward the door. "I've got a cousin who needs a job."

  "Any experience?"

  He hedged. "Define experience."

  "As in telephone, computer, people skills?"

  "Ah, no."

  "Then I'm going to have to pass."

  "You're missing out," he said, shaking a finger.

  "I'll risk it."

  He waved as he walked out. I wondered if anyone else was there. I checked around but didn't see anyone, and wondered where Deanna was until I played my voice mail and discovered that she'd called in sick today because her two-year-old son Lucah had that weird flu going around.

  I wondered what it was like to have a two-year-old. I didn't have much experience with babies or toddlers. I'd met Riley when he was eight. Though I supposed if I could survive his attitude, then I could face anything.

  This summer flu going around had hit hard. I wondered if that's what Russ had had. Could that have played a factor in his death?

  Tossing aside thoughts of death, I wandered into Deanna's office and couldn't help but peek at her design plan for a mini scheduled for the following afternoon.

  Since she'd shown so much design promise, I'd given her free reign over the project. She'd been ear-splittingly happy. I knew Kit was scheduled to be her project foreman and realized he'd been working a lot lately. Not that he complained—he rarely expressed his unhappiness. Maybe it was time to hire another contractor to lessen Kit's load?

  Or maybe it was time to cut back altogether. I'd been thinking about it more and more lately. The long hours were wearing thin on all of us.

  Looking around, I realized I missed the darn chimes. I went outside to look and found them in a boxwood near my TBS truck. As I reattached them to the door, the phone rang.

  I gave Sassy a pat as I picked up the phone on Tam's desk. "Taken by Surprise, this is Nina Quinn."

  "This is your date, wondering where you are."

  My date. Oh no! "I'm so sorry, Bobby! I forgot." We'd had plans to go to a Reds game. "It's been crazy here." I'd talked to him last night, told him all about what had happened. "The widow is still threatening to sue me. I hate to say it, but she has a case."

  "My cousin Josh is a lawyer. A good one. Let me call him for you."

  I had independence issues and thought I should call my own lawyer, but decided I needed help. I couldn't do it all, as much as I wanted to. "All right."

  "How about dinner and a movie now that the game is just about over?" he asked.

  "Bobby, I'm so sorry I forgot about the game!"

  "It's okay. They're losing anyway. Dinner? Movie? It will take your mind off things for a while."

  I agreed before I thought too much about it, and hung up before I changed my mind.

  I knew I needed to decide how I felt about Bobby. Soon. I didn't want to hurt him.

  The phone rang again, reminding me that I also needed to find a temp for Tam, though no one could ever replace her. She was the backbone of TBS. She kept things running smoothly, me organized, and track of all loose ends.

  Not to mention she answered the phone.

  "Taken by Surprise, this is Nina Quinn."

  "You're too busy to be answering the phone."

  Tam. I smiled.

  "You really need to find a fill-in for me."

  "I know."

  "Let me call a few people. I'll have them there Monday at ten a.m."

  "Okay."

  "Wait. Check the schedule. Make sure you don't have anything going on."

  I checked the schedule, feeling a little bit like a kid being told what to do.

  "Nothing," I said.

  "I'll take care of it."

  "You really should be resting."

  "All I do is rest."

  She had a point.

  "How'd the visit to the dead guy's wife go?"

  I hedged.

  "I told you so," she said.

  I heard corroborating clucking in the background and groaned. "I gotta go," I said.

  "Liar."

  " 'Bye!"

  I hung up, switched on the voice-mail system, and tried to get some work done.

  Ten

  "Do you want to have kids?"

  I choked on my coconut ice cream, spitting some out, which was a shame because it was really good.

  Bobby patted my back, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

  "Sorry," he said. "Just trying to get your attention."

  We were at StarBright, an old-fashioned drive-in movie theater. A speaker box was hooked over Bobby's halflowered window as Star Wars—the original—played on the big screen.

  "Well, you've got it now." I wiped a speck of coconut from the dashboard.

  I'd been a crappy date. So lost in thoughts over lawsuits and blackmailers I hadn't paid Bobby any attention at all. I was wasting prime drive-in make-out time.

  "You thinking about that dead guy?"

  Sadly, I stared at what was left of my little cup of ice cream. I'd lost my appetite. "Yeah."

  "Everything will work out."

  "Wish I could believe that."

  I must have sounded pathetic because he rubbed a knuckle over my cheek, leaned in and kissed me. I tried to move closer to him, but he drove a Celica that had bucket seats and one of the boxes in the middle that was a car's equivalent of a kitchen junk drawer. Whatever happened to good oldfashioned bench seats? Did some sort of abstinence group have them outlawed?

  A car honked next to us, followed by a series of "Woohoo, Mr. MacKenna."

  I'm sure I was blushing, but glad it was dark so the teens in the car next to us couldn't see.

  Bobby wiped his lips, gave a little wave to the group. "Students," he said.

  "I figured."

  "Maybe we should go somewhere private?" he asked, a husky tone to his voice.

  Panic swelled. This. Was. It.

  Could I really do it?

  It wasn't as though I didn't like Bobby. I really did. And it wasn't as though my body wasn't begging for me to say okay. It was.

  I just . . .

  "You're thinking too much," Bobby said, leaning in to kiss me again.

  More honking ensued from the car next to us, but I couldn't have cared less. Bobby either, apparently, because he didn't pull back right away.

  When he finally did, he looked at me, saying nothing.

  I tried to catch my breath, and finally said, "Private is good."

  He fairly chucked the speaker box out the window, started the car, throwing it into reverse. The kids next to us cheered.

  "Riley's not home, right?"

  My libido was doing a happy dance. "He's not home." He spent most weekends with Kevin.

  Kevin.

  No, no, no! Don't think about him, I told myself.

  Over and over again.

  Because apparently it was the only thing I could think about right now. I needed distraction. Immediately.

  I reached over, took Bobby's hand as he sped through the streets. "So," I said, picking up his line of questioning, "do you want kids?"

  He didn't hesitate. "Yes."

  "How many?"

  "At least four."

  "Four!" All right. This might not have been the best dis traction.

  He laughed. "You should see your face."

  I could imagine.

  "I want a big family." He rubbed a finger along the palm of my hand, sending delicious shivers up my arm.

  "Oh."

  "You never did answer me, by the way."

  "What? When?"

  "Do you want kids?"

  This was probably one of those conversations all people should have at some point in their relationship, but now, on the way to do what we were going to do, I didn't think it was the best time.