A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) by Darynda Jones

Underneath that in a smaller font it read,

No seriously. I have drugs.

Man arrested on charges of drug possession.

Deputy Salazar was grateful for the heads-up.

—DEL SOL POLICE BLOTTER




“Seabright got to Pres safely,” Rojas said when Sun entered the station, referring to Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque. She needed to tie up a couple of things before they headed out, but Pres was on the way. They could stop and check in on him.

Quincy was en route. Hopefully. That guy took longer showers than she did, and she had to shave her legs.

She’d also texted Levi Ravinder about a thousand times. She was going to kill him. If he didn’t die from internal bleeding first.

“Good,” she said, dropping her bag on Quincy’s desk. “Any word on his condition?”

He spun his chair around to her. “Other than he’s alive? Not yet. There’s some lady waiting in your office, though.”

She checked her watch. “At midnight on a Saturday night?”

“I told her you were stopping by here before heading to Arizona. She seems upset.”

“She is upset.” The female voice of Mayor Donna Lomas echoed across the station, sounding alarmingly similar to the mating call of a barn owl.

“Oh, sorry, ma’am,” Rojas said. He spun back to his desk and pretended to be working diligently instead of updating his status.

Sun ignored her and asked Rojas, “The forensics team?”

“They just got there. Zee and Salazar cleared everyone out.”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

He frowned in thought. “It’s odd that we never found any of the knives.”

Yep. He was going to be a great addition. “I agree.” She couldn’t help but wonder if Levi still had the knife he’d used on one of the assailants. Maybe hidden in that cap. She should have frisked him when she had the chance.

The mayor strolled out of Sun’s office just as she was texting Levi for the tenth time. She wouldn’t hesitate to arrest him for obstruction if he took that knife with him. The mere thought twisted her gut. Removing evidence from a crime scene could rack up some serious charges.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she asked.

Sun glanced up surprised. “Because you told me to stop.”

Only a couple years older than Sun, the beauty known as Donna Lomas wore a bouncy blond bob, square wire-framed glasses, and a tailored navy pantsuit that accentuated her curves and made her look like a businesswoman from New York.

Her bob swished when she shook her head in frustration. How could the woman look like she’d just stepped out of a salon at this hour? “I told you to stop calling me for every little non-catastrophic event. This was a stabbing. In my town. And no one called me.”

After propping a fist on her hip, Sun said, “First you tell me to call you any time there is an incident. Then you tell me not to call you. Now you’re telling me to call you?” When the mayor only glared, Sun added, “I just want to get this right.”

“You were calling every time someone got a paper cut.”

Sun frowned and looked at her finger. “It was really deep.”

Admittedly, Sun may have taken it a tad far, especially with the 3:00 a.m. paper-cut emergency, but she found a bizarre sense of pleasure in razzing the woman. If she didn’t want to be called for everything, she shouldn’t have told Sun to do that very thing. She needed to learn to choose her words more carefully.

The mayor did a one-eighty and stood staring into Sun’s office, supposedly to get a grip on her anger, but Sun figured it had more to do with her own decorating prowess and the mayor’s inherent need to imitate her. If she saw a single Sheriff Hopper Christmas ornament the next time she went into the mayor’s office, Sun was crying foul.

After a few moments, the woman asked, “Why do you have an empty dog crate on your desk?”

Alarm shot through her. She hurried past the prickly mayor and stopped just before entering the small room. Sure enough, the furball had escaped. The crate sat askew on top of a stack of papers, the gate hanging open on its hinges.

“I’m using it as a paperweight,” she said, her gaze darting around like the ball in a pinball machine.

Rojas came up behind her and put a hand on her arm, sending her skyrocketing toward the ceiling in an embarrassing display of unprofessionalism. She put a hand over her heart and glared at him.

“Sorry, boss,” he said, easing past her.

Since he was going in first, she forgave him instantly. She just did not need another face-crotch experience. “No, no, it’s okay.” She leaned inside, scanning every inch before tiptoeing past the threshold. No idea why. “Do you see him?”

He’d bent to check under her desk. “Nope.”

“See who?” the mayor asked, growing wary.

“The ghost haunting my office. He’s tried to kill me twice.”

“You are not taking care of business,” the mayor said, giving up with a huff of air and brushing past her.

Sun thought about warning her, but why be amicable now?

Rojas shrugged. “I don’t see him, boss.”

“Okay.” She cleared her throat and straightened her spine, both physically and metaphorically. “Thank you, Deputy. You might, you know, look around.”