“Duke?” Sebastian asked.
“Deputy Duke. Duke Dawson.” Alden added wryly, “Roz’s boyfriend.”
“He is not!” she exclaimed. “Alden’s teasing me. We had a few dates in high school, that’s all.”
Sebastian actually laughed. “Well, I’m glad that’s all, because you two looked pretty friendly back there at the movie studio.”
Roz gave Alden a cross look, and he laughed, too.
The happy thought came again: We’re alive!
And now damnable Deputy Duke was going to rescue them. Didn’t Comet Cove have other police officers? Alden was kind of fuzzy on how many. Not his beat. It was a small department, that much he knew. But Duke seemed to have an instinct for being wherever Roz was.
At least they wouldn’t have to wade all the way home.
“That’s lucky,” Roz was saying. “I wasn’t looking forward to slogging to shore.”
“We could have been luckier,” Alden groused. A shiver ran through him as he tried to ignore the seaweedy smell of the chilly brine. “Next time I’m having dessert first.”
Chapter Sixteen
Duke’s face said it all as he gave them their ride to shore. Specifically: You two are a wreck, you smell like a bait bucket, and how do you keep ending up like this?
Or maybe that was the voice in Alden’s head. He was fine, though they were checked out by an ambulance crew, wrapped in blankets and given bad coffee—after he and Roz shared a very long hug. Deputy Byrd briefly interviewed them as Duke dealt with Sebastian and arrangements for the plane.
It had been an insanely long day, and Alden needed a shower and a meal and to hold Roz. He’d almost lost her. They’d almost lost each other.
Alden called Toby, who usually drove for Rideeo, for a lift to the airport so they could pick up his car. Then Roz called John and filled him in while Alden drove them back to her house—the house she grew up in. It had a mid-century vibe Roz was accenting with retro furnishings and lamps.
He liked the house. Mostly he liked being in her space. He kept a few things there—basics, some clothes. He’d love to move in, but he didn’t think Roz was ready for that. Small steps.
He laid out the contents of his wallet on a towel on her dining table to dry out. They each took a shower, then ate a pizza from Pluto’s and talked about what happened. He poured them a couple of glasses of nice California cabernet—he’d stocked Roz’s kitchen with some good bottles. By the time they curled up on the couch in soft white robes he’d bought from Lunaria Lodge in a sentimental moment, he felt almost human.
“I feel like we should be working on a story,” he told her, one arm around her as she snuggled into him and flipped through channels on the modest TV, settling on classic movies. She knew they were his comfort watch, and she seemed to like them, too.
“You mean a story about the crash?” Roz put down the remote and picked up her glass of wine. “We should be good for now. John posted something short and sweet, based on what we told him, and I sent him a few more photos when you were in the shower. But he knows we’ll have more later.”
Alden eyed Humphrey Bogart negotiating with Sydney Greenstreet and harrumphed. “We’d better have more. We need to find out what caused that crash.”
“I think you mean who caused that crash.” She sipped her wine.
“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but that’s exactly what I mean,” Alden said. “I can’t believe that engine failure was a coincidence. Sebastian was Wayne’s partner. Wayne is dead. So how would killing Sebastian benefit anyone?”
“Again, who would it benefit? With Wayne, it seems like somebody didn’t like him, at the very least. Maybe somebody gained satisfaction by seeing him dead. But Sebastian?”
“His wife? It’s always the wife.”
“Or the husband,” Roz said dryly. “I don’t know. That’s a grim thought. But it makes a weird kind of sense.” Roz set her wine on the rectangular wooden coffee table and shifted so she could look up at him. She was so deliciously warm. He told his body to behave itself as she went on. “Nicole seemed so nice. Though she was annoyed with Sebastian Saturday when he didn’t show up on time to take the kids.”
“Do you think she had a grudge against Wayne, too?”
“She had the opportunity to confront him Saturday if she wanted to, when she left the kids in the bathroom. But if you’re talking motive for murder, I don’t know.”
“We just don’t know enough,” Alden said. “I think you need to talk to her. And we need to get more out of Enolia about Wayne.”
“Maybe through Craig, her assistant.”
“Right. Good idea. I could reach out to him directly, tell him I need some basic facts about her book catalog and I don’t want to bug her about it.”
