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

Quincy stabbed her with a glare. “Then he was in on it. Your abduction. He had to be. Things went south and he and Kubrick fought. You can’t tell me he went there to save you.”

“I don’t know, Quince. None of it makes any sense. There is a part of him that seems …almost noble.”

“You keep saying that, but nobility in that family borders on psychopathic.”

A knock on the front window sounded. Sun and Quincy looked over at Carver. The exterminator waved enthusiastically and pointed to his phone.

Sun lifted hers to read a text from him, inviting her to lunch. She groaned.

Quincy read it over his shoulder. “He’s persistent.”

She typed back, Huge case. Rain check? She hit SEND then waved back at him.

He read it and his manic expression faded. After texting her a thumbs-up, he waved goodbye, a sad, dejected thing.

Rojas walked up. “Want me to take him out?”

“Someone needs to,” Quincy said. “He clearly hasn’t gone out with anyone since the aughts. Is that how he dressed on your date?” he asked Sun.

“What? No. That’s his uniform.”

The guy had been wearing a pair of stained gray overalls with his signature four Cs on an embroidered patch and carrying an aluminum spray can and nozzle.

“What’s up, Rojas?” she asked Poetry when he continued to linger.

“I’ve gone over the footage from the Quick-Mart and it’s impossible to get an ID on the man our victim was arguing with.

“But there was definitely an argument?”

“Oh, yeah. A pretty heated one.”

Zee walked up, holding a black-and-white printout of a screenshot from the altercation. She handed it to Sun and pointed. “That baseball cap? That’s a Denver Broncos hat.”

Sun looked at Quincy. “That’s the cap Levi had at the scene. I’m sure of it.”

“Then he stole evidence from a crime scene. Can I arrest him already?”

“If you can find him. Any of the employees hear anything?”

Rojas pointed to the store owner, who couldn’t have been more than ten feet away from what looked like a very volatile argument. “Mr. Walden swears he didn’t hear a thing.” His expression deadpanned. “My ass. Said Seabright was a semi-regular customer. Always very pleasant. Always paid in cash. But somehow he didn’t have a clue as to what the argument was about.”

“How would he remember he always paid in cash?” Quincy asked.

“No clue, but I’m guessing Seabright was off the grid. Especially if he never used plastic.”

Sun studied Seabright’s profile. The guy was tall with striking features underneath a layer of scruff. “Interesting. Okay, I want to see the footage.”

“You got it, boss.” Zee went back to her desk to cue-up the video, but Rojas stayed put.

“What else you got?” she asked him after looking closer at the printout.

“This may be nothing.”

She raised a brow. “That’s what the Duke of Wellington’s first officer said when he saw Napoleon coming.”

“Really?”

“No, but he might have. What’s going on?”

“There are some guys hanging out in town.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, this is a tourist town. People tour.”

He propped a hip onto his desk. “Yeah, but they’re just hanging. They’re not touring.”

“Interesting. Are they locals?”

“No.”

“You haven’t been in Del Sol long.”

“I know a local when I see one. And at least two of these men have been to prison.”

That got her attention. “You can tell that by looking at them?”

“I can.”

She didn’t doubt him for a microsecond. “What do you think they’re doing?”

“They’re waiting.”

“For?”

“Us.”

That surprised both her and Quincy, who didn’t seem to be questioning Rojas’s judgment in the matter, either.

“For us to do what?” he asked him.

Rojas pointed at him. “That’s the ten-million-dollar question.”

Sun whistled. “Ten million. Geez, prices have gone up. Can you get some pictures?”

“Of course, boss.”

“Thank you, and—”

Anita stuck her head into the bullpen. “The DA is on line two for you, boss. He sounds angry.”

“Great,” Sun said, embracing the adrenaline spike that shot needles into her heart. She’d need the extra boost to deal with the man. She looked at her deputies. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” Quincy said, knowing she didn’t get along with the DA.

Still, convincing the man to transport Wynn Ravinder across state lines would not be the hardest thing she’d done that day. She’d had the talk with her daughter, after all.





12


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Sun hung up with the DA, scrubbed her face, then headed into the bullpen. “Rojas!” she shouted, even though he was only a few feet away from her. Her conversation with the surly DA had not gone well, but she finally convinced him to have Wynn Ravinder transported to Santa Fe. The fact that she had to resort to blackmail did not sit well with either of them, but the married father of two shouldn’t have asked her out last year.