A Good Day for Chardonnay by Darynda Jones

5

Caller reported a man wearing a

T-shirt that read, Who needs drugs?

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.”

He nodded and left just as the mayor whirled on Sun. “You have to fill that position.”

She set the cage on the floor beside her desk. “You came here at midnight on a Saturday night to tell me that I need to fill the lieutenant’s position?” Her former lieutenant, Bo Britton, had passed away before she’d taken up her post, and she had yet to fill the revered man’s spot.

“No,” she said, gazing at Sun’s autographed poster of Sheriff Hopper. “That’s not the only reason I came.”

Sun fought a desire to rip the poster off the wall and cradle Hopper’s face to her breast. Hopper was hers.

“I just figured, while I’m here, we could examine the status quo.”

“I have to go to Arizona.”

“See, that’s what I mean.” She whirled back to her. “You aren’t taking care of business here.”

Sun bit down. She’d been meaning to talk to Quincy about the position, rifle through his thoughts on the subject, but it just hadn’t come up yet. However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t throw the man under the bus. “I’m waiting for my chief deputy’s recommendation. He has yet to give me one.”

“Then insist on one,” the mayor said. “Give him a deadline, then move on. We need to fill the spot.”

Sun dragged in a lungful of air. “Anything else we need to discuss now that could easily wait until Monday?”

“The Ravinder case. You have yet to make an arrest.”

“I have yet to hear back from the lab.”

“Still? It’s been months.”

“It’s a cold case. I guess they aren’t in any rush.”

“Naturally. They hardly care about us out here in the boonies. Do I need to make some calls?”

“No,” Sun said, resigning herself to the fact that it would have to be done. “I’ll do it.”

“Fine. See that you do.”

Sun wanted more than anything to say, “You’re not the boss of me.” But she’d been actively trying to keep her inner six-year-old at bay. Instead, she said, “You got it.” Mostly because Mayor Lomas could make things difficult for her if she chose to.

The woman had threatened to look into Sun’s election campaign. The one Sun had known nothing about until she was actually elected. Her parents had somehow snared the position for her without her knowledge.

On the bright side, she now knew there was nothing her parents couldn’t do, nothing they weren’t capable of, so the next time they came to her for help with their computer, she would not fall for it. They were like the Illuminati. Or the KGB. Or Cirque du Soleil.

But election tampering, if getting her elected without her knowledge fell under that umbrella, was a serious offense. Her parents could be arrested. And not in a funny, let’s teach them a lesson way like when she and Quincy threatened to arrest them for harboring a fugitive that time they hid Auri from her after the kid scratched Sun’s cruiser with her bike. She’d even handcuffed her exasperated mother.

Good times.

“What about the other thing?”

“The other thing?” Sun asked, knowing exactly to what she referred.

The mayor put a hand on her hip, not falling for it. “The Dangerous Daughters?”

“Ah. Right. The mythical beings who secretly run the town behind everyone’s back, including the city council’s.”

Sun had heard rumors of the infamous group of women who’d come together to run the town at a time when only men were allowed to sit on the council. It all seemed pretty farfetched. Even if they had existed, surely they didn’t now. That was decades ago.

The mayor seemed obsessed with them, however, and part of the woman’s condition to stay out of the mountain of dirt that constituted Sun’s past was for Sun to uncover the members of the clandestine group. Their negotiations and dealings and general goings-on.

“Exactly,” she said. “I was afraid you’d forgotten about that part of the bargain.”

Ultimatum was more like it. “Like I told you, Mayor, the Dangerous Daughters are just rumor and innuendo. How would a group of women from the fifties secretly run the town? And where would they do it from? Their rest homes?”

The mayor pinned her with a rather evil—and sexy if Sun did say so herself—smirk. “That was the deal, Sheriff. You find out who they are. Or were. Either way, I want the lowdown on that group.”

Sun narrowed her lashes. “Why?”

She snorted. A very unladylike thing to do for such a prominent figure. “This town is considered freakish enough without stories of the Dangerous Daughters getting out.”

“Right. Because that would taint our eccentric reputation.”

The scowl the mayor leveled on her would have melted the face off a lesser sheriff. “You aren’t even pretending to take this seriously.”

“Of course, I am,” she lied. She was throwing all of her acting skills at this.

Though, admittedly, she’d asked around. She even asked her parents. Nada, and they knew everything about the town. No one could tell her anything other than the rumors she’d already heard. Short of scouring old newspaper clippings and police blotters—which she had zero time or inclination to do—she was out of luck.

The mayor lifted her chin a notch. “Maybe I should follow my own advice.”

“That would be new.”

“Maybe I should give you a deadline.”

“A dead what?”

“Give you a little motivation.”

“Motivation is not the problem.”

“Light a fire, so to speak.”

“Does this have anything to do with that glass cliff you mentioned my first day on the job? Because I’m not taking the fall for anyone. If funds have been misappropriated—”

She arched a perfectly coiffed brow. “You know they haven’t.”

Sun frowned, remembering her own brow conundrum. “How do you know I know?”

“Because you’ve looked into every transaction this town has made over the past decade. That’s how I know.”

“How do you know I’ve …” Sun gave up with a frustrated shrug. The woman was right. She’d gone over the town’s records with a fine-toothed machete. “Then what was all of that about? And why do you want to know about the Dangerous Daughters?”

“Strategy.”

“Strategy?”

“You left.” She studied her polished nails. “You’ve barely set foot in this town for fifteen years, then you come back here and think you can just pick up where you left off? You can just take over like you own the place?”

“Wait a minute. You played me?” Sun asked, appalled. And a tad impressed. “You wanted me to comb through those records.”

“And now you’re up-to-date. You know the issues. How each council member votes. Who is in whose pocket.”

Damned if she wasn’t right. Sun had noticed a disturbing trend with a couple of the city council members. A tendency to favor some of the more prominent business members, including one of the new winemakers in town who was getting his way an awful lot.

“Okay. Fine. I’m up-to-date. It worked.”

“Naturally,” she said, her pretty mouth curling up at one corner. “On to the Dangerous Daughters. You have one week.”

“What?” Sun bolted to her feet. “You’re actually giving me a deadline?”

“Like I said, I’m following my own advice.”

“What is it, exactly, you want uncovered?”

“I told you. I want names. I want to know who established it and how. And I want to know what they’ve been up to recently.”

“Mayor,” Sun said from between clenched teeth, “I have a county law enforcement facility to run. Tracking down an elderly group of women who probably aren’t even with us any longer—if they ever existed at all—is hardly a priority. Especially right now.”

She leaned over the desk and said softly, “Then make it one.” Sun bit back her reply as the mayor pivoted on her heels and strode out of the station, saying over her shoulder, “And keep me updated on the stabbing victim.”

Sinking into her chair, Sun stewed all of thirty seconds, then grabbed her phone to text her chief deputy. How long could it take to shower and grab a toothbrush?

Rojas poked his head in just as she hit SEND. “There is a Jimmy Ravinder who would like a word with you before you head out, boss. He said you know him and it’s important.”

“Jimmy?” She rose and looked across the station to the darkened lobby out front. Sure enough, Levi’s nephew, Jimmy Ravinder, was sitting in one of the chairs, twisting his hands. “Why is everyone coming to the station at this hour? Did Zee put up that neon sign we confiscated from the madam again?”

Madam Magdalena, the local cat lady, was nothing if not creative when she had a neon sign made that read CAT HOUSE and put in her window. She insisted it was because she loved cats. And she did, if her nineteen-and-counting feline zoo was any indication. Still, wouldn’t that pastime cost her a bit of business? Surely, some of her would-be patrons were allergic.

He chuckled. “No idea, boss.”

“Thanks, Rojas.” She journeyed through the bullpen to let Jimmy in herself, but when she opened the door, he remained sitting. “Hey, Jimmy. You want to come back?”

He looked so young. His dark blond hair, perpetually cursed with a bout of bed head, stuck up in the back and his spiffy new black-framed glasses fit snug against his face thanks to a band that ran from earpiece to earpiece.

She realized he seemed agitated.

“You arrested my uncle,” he said without looking at her.

“No, Jimmy, I didn’t. Why don’t you come back?”

He stood, but kept his gaze on the floor. “Oh, I thought you arrested him because you think he killed Uncle Brick.”

“Nope. No arrests on that, yet.”

“Okay. Good, because he didn’t do it.”

She stilled, trying to decide how to proceed and how unethical it would be to interview him without his mother present. Even though she’d secretly become friends with the local wildcat known as Hailey Ravinder, the woman would kill Sun first and ask questions later if she did anything to hurt her son. Though the boy did come in on his own accord, he was barely seventeen. And on the spectrum, a fact that would play heavily into Hailey’s decision to kill her, Sun was certain.

“How about we go to my office.”

He shrugged, so she led him to her office and offered him a seat. “Do you want a soda?”

He shook his head, too busy taking in the surroundings. She could hardly blame him. She was quite the decorator.

She sat at her desk and asked as nonchalantly as possible, “So, do you know who did? Do you know who killed your uncle Kubrick?”

“Yes,” he said, matter-of-fact.

She heard Quincy come into the station. They really needed to hit the road, but the temptation to learn more about Kubrick’s death was simply too irresistible.

“Could you tell me, then? Could you tell me who killed your uncle?” Her heart raced. Despite her desire to uncover the truth about that night no matter the cost, she wasn’t sure she was ready for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Yes.” He leaned closer for a better look at a figurine on her desk. If this were any other person, she’d think he was playing her when he didn’t elaborate, but this was Jimmy Ravinder. He was innocent and genuine and incapable of playing anyone.

“Okay,” she said, trying not to laugh. “Would you tell me?”

“Yes.” Just when she thought he was going to stop there again, he added, “Me.”

She gazed at him a moment, then leaned back. “You killed your uncle Brick?”

He petted the mountain lion figurine with an index finger. “Yes.”

“Sweetheart, you were two.”

“I know. It was an accident, but my mom freaked out!” He shouted the last words, his seriousness adorable, but he never took his gaze off the lion. “She told me not to tell anyone. Ever.”

Maybe not too innocent to make up stories? The fact that he couldn’t possibly have done it made his confession all the more adorable. But she wanted to know why. Why were so many people confessing? “Jimmy, did someone put you up to this?”

“Can I use your restroom?” he asked, shifting in his seat.

“Of course.” She stood and pointed the way, then looked past him to Rojas and Quincy talking in the bullpen.

Rojas leaned against Quincy’s desk. “I just lost, Chief.”

“Your virginity?”

“You lost, too. I think that kid just confessed.”

“No way.”

Quincy deflated before her very eyes. He’d been in first place to win the pool, but with another confession added to the growing list, his potential winnings of forty-nine dollars and a pan of Salazar’s homemade enchiladas dwindled by the second.

“I really wanted those enchiladas.”

“My tia is making some for dinner after church tomorrow. You should come by.”

“You’re killing me, Rojas. I have to go to Arizona. Think the boss would buy it if I called in with Ebola?”

“Since she’s looking right at you, I’d say no.”

They both straightened as Jimmy walked past her and took his seat again.

She sat across from him and grinned. “Okay, let’s say you did kill your uncle.”

“Accidentally, because I was two.”

“Accidentally, because you were two, and your mom told you never to tell anyone, why are you telling me now?” If someone was putting the people in Levi’s circle up to confessing, it wouldn’t have been Levi himself. His pride would never allow it, especially since he’d been insisting he had killed Kubrick for months. But why else would people just randomly keep confessing if it weren’t a concentrated effort?

“Because I thought you arrested Uncle Levi for killing my great-uncle Brick, so I had to, but since you aren’t, I’d like to take it back now.”

“Your confession?”

“Yes.”

“Yes!” Quincy raised his fists into the air. “He’s retracting his confession. I’m still on top.”

Rojas shook his head. “I don’t think it works like that, Chief. He already confessed. It still counts as a bona fide confession.”

“Those aren’t the rules.”

“I think they are.”

Sun shot both deputies a thinly veiled glare to silence them just as Jimmy stood to leave. “Thank you for coming in, Jimmy.”

He dropped his gaze. “Okay, thank you. I should go.”

“Okay.” She led him to the door. “I appreciate your trying to help your uncle Levi.”

“I know.”

She wanted more than anything to give him a hug, but according to her daughter, only Auri, Levi, and Jimmy’s mother were allowed to hug him. And very briefly at that.

“I’m going to have Deputy Rojas take you home, okay?” Poor kid probably walked into town and they lived miles outside of it.

“I guess, but I don’t know him.”

“Can I vouch for him?”

“Yes.”

Rojas walked up and held out his hand. “Hey, kid. I’m Deputy Rojas. Is it okay if I take you home?”

That didn’t sound creepy at all.

“I guess, but I have to call my mom and tell her so if you kill me and leave me in a ditch she will know who did it.”

He chuckled. “Deal.” The deputy led him out the door to his cruiser.

Sun went to grab the phone off her desk.

“What the hell, boss?”

She turned back to Quincy, who’d poked his head into the room only to stop and stare at the empty cage on the floor.

The epitome of dejection, he looked up at her. “You let him go?”

She grabbed her phone and walked over to stare at the cage alongside him. “He escaped.”

“He escaped?” He asked the question as though it were a personal affront to him. As though the raccoon had rejected his offer to live a life of petty crime with him.

“I told you to lock it.”

“I clicked it closed.”

“You clicked it?” When he nodded, she said, “They have opposable thumbs.”

He leaned against the doorframe, no longer able to hold the weight of his own disappointment. “Wait,” he said, suddenly wary. He straightened and looked around. “Does that mean he’s loose somewhere in the station?”

“It does indeed.” She scooped her bag off his desk and headed for the exit sign. “And guess who gets to hunt him down when we get back.”

“Why me?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?”

“Apparently.”

Two minutes later, after they had settled into her cruiser, Sun said, “Auri had a boy in her room.”

“What?” His belief that Auri was the very angel who hung the moon in the heavens just received a hairline fracture. “You kicked him out, right?”

“No.”

The look of astonishment he shot her was almost comical.

“I sicced the grandparents on him.” She headed toward the interstate. “They’ll keep an eye on the situation.”

“Oh. Okay. So, um—”

“Mom is still great. Just like she was three hours ago when you last saw her. Thanks for asking.”

“What? I can’t check to see how your parents are doing?”

“Of course you can, but you never check to see how my parents are doing. You check to see how my mother is doing. There’s a difference.”

He turned to look out a window. “She’s always been really cool to me, that’s all.”

She turned onto the interstate and set her cruiser to seventy-five. It was going to be a long night. “I know what this is.”

“You do?”

“Yep.”

“And?”

“You’re seeing someone and you don’t want me to know about it.”

After he stared at her a solid ninety seconds like she’d grown another head, he said, “Excuse me?”

“You keep asking about my mother because you’re seeing someone and you don’t want me to know who, so you’re distracting me with your longtime crush.”

He stared again, only not as long this time. “Came up with that one all on your own, did you?”

“And I’m fairly certain it didn’t take you an hour to shower and grab your toothbrush. You went to see her.”

He snorted. “Honey, if I went to see my girl on the side, I would’ve been gone a lot longer than an hour.”

“Touché, but how do you explain Friday afternoon when you said you were out patrolling?”

“I was out patrolling.”

“That’s a federal offense, you know. Getting nooky on the government’s dime.”

“Did you really just use the word nooky?”

“At the very least, you could be fired.”

“No one says nooky anymore.”

She turned to him. “You’re really not going to own up to this when I’ve caught you red-handed?”

“Sunny, the only thing you’ve caught red-handed is your own paranoia.”

“Then why won’t you tell me where you were Friday afternoon? Because you were with her. She wants you to leave, doesn’t she? She wants you to take her away from all this and start a new life in Californ-eye-ay.”

“Wow, you’ve really thought this through.”

Sun’s insecurities were getting the better of her. She truly felt Quincy had been pulling away. Or, at the very least, keeping secrets. Not that she had any room to talk. Maybe he was tired of the small-town life. Maybe he wanted more and didn’t know how to tell her.

She grew serious. “You know you can tell me anything.” It would be her luck that the moment she ended up back in Del Sol, albeit kicking and screaming, her best friend on the planet would leave. Again, not that she could blame him. She’d done the same thing to him fifteen years ago.

She banged her forehead against the steering wheel. But only once. And not, like, hard. “I did something and you don’t know how to tell me, so you’re avoiding me and we will eventually grow apart, and you’ll want to see other people and”—she turned a surprised expression on him—”you have a new bestie, don’t you?”

“Did you sample the confiscated LSD while I was gone?”

“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”

“Acid trips are a bitch.”

“You aren’t even going to talk about it?”

“Says the person who refused to talk about the abduction for fifteen years.”

Classic defense mechanism. “I didn’t talk about it because I didn’t remember anything.”

He nodded.

“Okay,” she said, making a decision. “I’m dropping this for now.”

“About time.”

“But I’m giving you two days to tell me what’s going on, or I’m finding a new best friend.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Watch me.”

“No, I mean you literally can’t do that. No one wants to be friends with you.”

She speared him with a look of indignant astonishment. It was one of her best looks. “I have tons of friends.”

“You have tons of acquaintances. Huge difference.”

“I can assure you, one of my acquaintances is about to inherit the mantle of Sunshine Vicram’s BFF, and you’re going to have no one except that floozy you’re seeing on the side.”

“Good luck with that.”

“I’ll need the tiara back.”

“I’m not giving the tiara back.” With his arms still crossed, he scooted down in his seat, laid back his head, and closed his eyes. “Or the sash. Wake me in two.”

She didn’t answer. She’d drop it for now, but he was holding something back, and the curiosity incinerating her chest was giving her heartburn.