Criminal Deception Page 4

  The place was charming: old to its very bones, with fresh paint and reproduction fabrics and a few good antiques. Even though a fair number of tables were occupied, the bulk of the deli’s morning rush centered on the takeout counter, a wavy-glassed cabinet that looked as if it might have displayed pies and pastries once upon a time.

  “Table or takeout?” a waitress asked on her way to the kitchen with an armload of plates.

  “Table, please.” Right in the middle of the gossips, if you don’t mind.

  Instead of leading her toward the dozen old men sharing a country-fried breakfast and their opinions on everything, the waitress turned toward the back of the building. The broad hall opened into a smaller, quieter dining room. Only two tables were occupied there: one by the pretty black woman with the baby stroller and a man Liz assumed, by their matching gold bands, was her husband and the one person in town, after Joe, who most interested Liz.

  Natalia Porter’s attention was riveted outside, where the two puppies, restrained by leashes attached to the fence, were digging furiously in the dirt. The tan one created a hole deep enough to plunge her entire head into it, withdrawing only to snap at the fuzzy one when he tried to join her. Chastened, he went back to his own digging, shifting position just enough that the dirt his paws sent flying landed on the sleek puppy’s back.

  Natalia laughed out loud before abruptly realizing that Liz was standing at the next table. For an instant, sullenness crossed her face, then her expression went blank.

  “They’re adorable,” Liz remarked. She pulled a chair from the table so both Natalia and the puppies were in easy view. “Do they have names yet?”

  “No. Joe has to name them.”

  “So they’re well and truly his.”

  Surprise darkened the girl’s eyes—today, sapphire blue at the outer rims, radiating in to pale gray—then she nodded. “Naming things helps form attachments.”

  Natalia certainly had an attraction to Joe, even though he’d obviously not been part of her naming. Liz would like to know what that attachment was, how deep it ran and whether it was one-sided.

  For business reasons, of course. Everything she knew about a subject added to her investigation. She wasn’t allowed to have a personal interest. That had never been a problem for her before. But now…

  The waitress came for her order. After glancing at Natalia’s plate—ham, biscuits and gravy, hash browns with cheese, and hotcakes—and her stick-slender body, then thinking about her own curves that could so easily become dangerous, Liz asked for a fruit plate and unsweetened tea. Natalia remained silent, looking away from the dogs only to take a bite of food.

  After Liz’s fruit arrived, she asked the girl, “Been a long time since you’ve had pets of your own?”

  Natalia glanced at her. “I never have had,” she said flatly, then looked off as if she’d given away too much about herself.

  Instead of questioning her, Liz speared a piece of pineapple on her fork. “I grew up with three brothers. We always had dogs, cats, turtles, fish, spiders and snakes. The snakes were for my benefit. My brothers liked to sneak them into my bed when I was asleep. One morning I woke up with one of the snakes looking me in the eye, smiling this damn smile while it flicked its tongue at me. Once my terror receded, I put it in a box, waited until that night when Mom’s boss came over for dinner and set it loose on the table. He was freaked out, his wife and daughters were in hysterics, and the next day all the snakes were out of the house for good.”

  Natalia shuddered. “I hate snakes.”

  “Me, too. But I couldn’t let my brothers know how much they scared me, or they would have won. You know?”

  Slowly Natalia nodded and something in her expression said she really did know. She’d faced something that scared her, had hidden her fear and stood up to it, because she’d needed to win.

  Liz couldn’t help but wonder what; it was her nature to want answers. An abusive father? A violent boyfriend? A threatening boss?

  It would take more time than either of them had for Liz to gain her trust and find out. Instinct told her that Natalia Porter was a woman, despite her waifish look, who had little truth to tell and less trust to give.

  “Have you always lived here?” she asked before sliding a piece of sweet melon into her mouth.

  Natalia’s expression was torn, as if she’d rather pretend Liz wasn’t there but had already figured out that wasn’t the way to get rid of a nosy person. “No. Just a few months.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  Her only answer was a shrug.

  “What made you choose Copper Lake?”

  “Luck of the draw. The road went left, right and straight. I went straight, and it brought me here.”

  “There are worse ways to decide where you’re going to stay awhile.” Like providing security to someone who couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted or needed it. Liz had worked protective custody before, but never with someone as difficult as Josh.

  “I don’t have to ask why you’re here, do I?” Natalia pushed her plate away, the luscious cheese-covered hash browns untouched, and shifted in her chair to face Liz. “Because of Joe. Are you and he…?”

  Liz signaled the waitress for a refill. “We know each other.”

  “Duh. Like that wasn’t obvious yesterday. How well?”

  Not well enough. Thanks to Josh, they would probably never get to know each other well enough. Either the older Saldana twin would be dragged out of the hole he’d hidden in and would testify against the Mulroneys, or the trial would come and go without his input. Either way, Liz would go on to a new case, and Joe would go on with his new life, and she, for one, would have a whole lot of regrets.

  “I used to date Joe’s brother,” Liz said evenly.

  The relief that flashed through Natalia’s eyes was intense, there and gone, and generated a similar intensity in Liz’s gut. The look that replaced it was flatter, blanker than usual.

  Like those adoring teenagers in the coffee shop yesterday, Natalia had a thing for Joe. The big question was what he felt for her. Was it mutual, or was she hanging around waiting for him to finally notice that she was a very pretty woman with porcelain skin, delicate bones, eyes big enough to drown in and a perfect Cupid’s bow to shape her lips?

  Liz would like to believe Joe was as oblivious to Natalia’s crush as he’d been to the teenagers’, but that would be naive, and she tried to never be naive. Joe and Natalia were friends; they lived next door to each other. She was enough of a regular at his shop to merit her own mug. He’d noticed she was beautiful.

  Saldana men always noticed beauty, Josh had often bragged.

  “So…are you and Joe…?” Liz hoped for the same sort of dear-God-no reaction she’d had to Joe’s suggestion that she’d gotten pregnant by Josh.

  Natalia showed no emotion at all. “Would it matter to you if we are?”

  Like hell, and that was a problem. Federal agents did not get romantically involved with any subject in an investigation—not suspects, not witnesses, not victims, not other agents. Not, not, not.

  How did you stay uninvolved when you’d lost control? When your brain and logic and reason and ethics screaming no couldn’t be heard over the pounding of your heart?

  The first thing you did was lie. To others. To yourself.

  “Joe’s life is none of my business. I’m just looking for Josh.”

  Natalia’s Cupid’s-bow mouth took on a pinched look. She didn’t believe Liz.

  Which was only fair, because Liz didn’t believe herself.

  Chapter 3

  Joe’s primary function at any of the various organizational meetings he attended was to provide the coffee. Oh, he knew Ellie Maricci and the others relied on his willingness to volunteer, but when all was said and done, it was the coffee that counted most.

  Tonight’s meeting was at River’s Edge, the antebellum beauty catty-cornered from A Cuppa Joe. It was a tourist attraction, a community meeting center and th
e place for celebrations of every sort. His mother, Dory, had seen a story about it in the Savannah newspaper and commented—while gazing at Joe with utter innocence—what a lovely place it would be for a wedding. The ceremony in the garden, a string quartet on the verandah, a lavish cake in the gazebo and laughter everywhere. The wistfulness in her voice had been deep, tinged with sadness.

  Like most mothers, Dory wanted grandbabies to cuddle, preferably after a wedding to remember, but, she was fond of saying, she would take them any way she could get them. A bride who needed a little help planning a wedding would have been a plus in her book. She understood it was the bride’s mother who traditionally got the pleasure, but didn’t she deserve something extra for raising him and Josh?

  She’d deserved a lot better than she’d gotten.

  All too aware of that, Joe had responded with a joke. How do you get decent blues out of a string quartet?

  Predictably, she’d swatted him. You don’t play the blues at a wedding.

  Depends on whose wedding, his father, Ruben, had muttered.

  Blues would be most appropriate for the poor sucker who made the mistake of walking down the aisle with Josh. Better yet, a funeral dirge.

  And it damn well had better not be Liz.

  Scowling, Joe carried a wicker basket across the verandah and through the open double doors. Ellie had covered half of the antique cherrywood dining table with desserts from the deli’s kitchen and left the other half for him. He’d already delivered two urns, started the coffee brewing—Guatemalan Antiqua and Ethiopian Yirgacheffe—and from the basket he now unloaded bowls of sugar and sweetener and two small carafes of cream, one plain, one flavored with hazelnut.

  “Oh, my gosh, it smells wonderful in here.” Ellie waited for him to turn away from the table, then hugged him. Her body was solid, warm, with a barely noticeable bump from her four-months-along pregnancy. For more than five years, she and Tommy had gotten together, broken up and done it all over again, all because of his desire to get married and have kids and her opposition to both ideas.

  Funny how surviving a near-death experience had made her see things in a different light.

  It was one thing Joe and Ellie had in common. The near-death experience. Not so much the desire to marry and have kids.

  When she stepped back, he gestured toward the table. “Do I need to set out cups and napkins again, or do you have that covered?”

  Ellie grinned. “I brought finger food. No need for dishes.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve seen people take their coffee directly from the urn, on their knees, scalding their tongues. It’s not a pretty—”

  The door that led from the dining room directly into the kitchen bumped open an inch or two, and black curls appeared briefly before the door received a harder shove. Liz was smiling, saying something over her shoulder and carrying a silver tray loaded with cups and saucers as she came into the room. Speaking of pretty sights…

  Damn. He’d thought since he’d made it the rest of the day without so much as a glimpse of her that he might be safe. He would come to the meeting, it would be late when he got home, he would go straight to bed without even thinking about her…

  Yeah, right.

  “Hi, Joe.”

  He automatically reached for the tray, heavier than it should have been. She flashed him a smile, hotter than it should have been. “Thanks,” she said as she began unloading cups and carefully lining them up near the urns. “I wondered why we were using the good china instead of paper plates and foam cups. Guess I have my answer.”

  We. How easily she included herself among his friends, his town. She’d been there less than thirty hours, already had an invitation to work on Ellie’s project and had apparently made herself at home. Though, to be fair, Ellie would accept help from any living, breathing body.

  And Liz was definitely living…breathing…and what a body. She wore white capris that left her legs bare from the knee down, a black-and-white dotted shirt that clung to her curves and black-and-white dotted sandals. With heels, of course.

  Had he mentioned that he liked sexy shoes?

  Ellie began stacking the saucers around the dessert plates as she primly said, “I admire Joe’s commitment to the environment and avoiding unnecessary waste.”

  “Of course you do, because it means when we do this type of thing, I do the dishes.”

  Liz wasn’t fooled. “I saw the state-of-the-art dishwashers in there.”

  He shrugged.

  “But tell me, doesn’t it take a lot of energy to run the dishwasher, heat the water, dry the dishes—heavens, to manufacture and ship the dishwasher in the first place? How do you know it’s not more environmentally friendly to just use throwaways and be done with it? Not foam, of course. It’s practically indestructible. But paper decomposes.”

  Before he could respond, Ellie raised both hands. “Please, no environmental discussions. Tonight’s for my cause.”

  Still holding Liz’s gaze, Joe directed his words to Ellie. “I heard you’d decided to use environmentally friendly disposable diapers for the kiddo. And that your remodel includes solar panels and a geothermal heat pump system.”

  “That’s our contractor’s idea. Nothing to do with you,” she replied with a wink for Liz’s benefit. She knew Tommy and Russ had discussed it with him before making their choices. “So…I didn’t realize you two had met.”

  “I didn’t realize you two had met,” he said.

  Liz’s movements were fluid as she took a cup from the table, placed it under the spout of the Antiqua urn and filled it. “A good cup of coffee is the first thing I look for in a new town,” she said breezily.

  “I’d’ve thought it would be a familiar face,” Joe said without a hint of breeze.

  Ellie’s gaze shifted from one to the other, then she began easing away. “I’m gonna see if everyone’s here. When you hear me talking loudly in the parlor, that’s your cue to come on in. I’d hate for you to miss out on anything.”

  Liz stirred sugar into her coffee, then held the spoon to drip. “I think that means she doesn’t want to miss out on anything.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I met Ellie at the deli this morning. Cute names in this town. Ellie’s Deli. A Cuppa Joe.”

  “Not my doing,” he reminded her.

  She nodded, then sucked the spoon into her mouth. The action was simple, unaffected, and damn near cut his knees out from under him. “Mmm. You know, there really is a difference between instant coffee and this stuff.”

  “Yeah.” Was his voice really that hoarse? “Lucky for me, everyone else in the world was quicker than you to figure that out, or I’d be out of business.”

  She took a sip and made another, softer mmm sound. “I don’t have time to make real coffee every day.”

  “You can’t spare a few minutes? Keeping up with Josh—or tracking him down—must be a full-time job.”

  A blink, one blink of those java-dark eyes, was her only response to the mention of his brother, and he tried to read a lot into it. Did she love him? Did she miss him? Did she hate him, need him, want to punish him?

  Did she see him every time she looked at Joe?

  Being an identical twin had its pluses and minuses. Being hot for a woman who didn’t even have to close her eyes to imagine she was with his brother was right up at the top of the minus column, along with being mistaken for him by a hitman.

  Thinking about being hot for his brother’s maybe-ex was the perfect time for an interruption, provided by A. J. Decker. “Come on, Saldana. You’ve got all the coffee a man could need all day long. Do you mind sharing a little of it tonight?”

  Joe forced his gaze from Liz. “I don’t know. I’m so used to getting paid for it that it’s kind of hard to give it away free.”

  Decker reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled five. “Now will you move?”

  Liz set her cup aside and picked up a clean one. “Keep your money, Lieutenant. This one’s on m
e.” Her slender, elegant fingers gestured toward the engraved plates that hung from each urn. “What’s your pleasure?”

  Pleasure? On her? Sweet hell, Joe had to get away. Fast. Saying, “Excuse me,” and sounding more than a little strangled, he escaped the dining room for the broad hallway that divided the house front to back. The air was cooler there, easier to force into his choked lungs, kinder to his hot skin.

  Familiar voices came from the parlor across the hall. Ellie and Tommy. The Calloway boys: Russ, Robbie and half-brother Mitch, and their wives, Jamie, Anamaria and Jessica. Sophy from the quilt shop and Officer Pete Petrovski, Joe’s neighbor. KiKi Isaacs, the first female detective in Copper Lake history. Dharma, the temperamental chef at the deli, and Cate Calloway, ER doctor and former cousin by marriage to the Calloway boys. Marnie, the lost-in-another-world crime scene tech who oversaw the CLPD lab. Her people skills mostly applied to the recently dead, but Joe liked her anyway.

  He liked all these people. He liked their parents and their kids and their dogs, and they liked him back, even if they didn’t know much about him. The only person in town who did know much about him was approaching from behind, talking freely with Decker.

  “…don’t know how long I’ll be here. I’ve just reached one of those points, you know, where anywhere you’re not has got to be better than where you are. If I like it, if I don’t…” She finished with a little shimmy of movement that started with the wild curls gathered on top of her head and ended with the slight sway of the ruffles stretched across the base of her toes.

  And Decker didn’t even seem affected. His fingers didn’t tighten on the cup he held in his left hand. The saucer in his right didn’t tremble. He didn’t look as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs with that one little wiggle. He just nodded, said something about Dallas making Copper Lake look damn good, shoved a bite of minicheesecake in his mouth and went off to take a seat next to Cate.