One
I was mindingmy own business, sitting in my incognito black SUV, innocently parked on a quiet street in what’s called ‘an established neighborhood,’ when a sudden rap on the window made me jump in my seat.My heart leapt up onto my tongue and kept banging there, and it took some effort to get it back down where it belonged.
When I turned in the direction of the rapper, I was faced with a badge and an ID-card, held against the window.
The badge was shiny, and hadMetropolitan Nashville Police Departmentstamped on it.
The ID card next to it was almost equally shiny.The picture showed a man in his early thirties, with black hair and the frozen expression people have in official photos.Although he looked considerably less handsome in the picture than I knew him to be in life, I didn’t need to check the name on the card to recognize him.
I powered down my window, as the badge and ID disappeared into the pocket of a very nice suit.Armani.“Detective,” I said politely.“Long time, no see.”
“Three weeks,” Jaime Mendoza answered, putting an arm on the top of my car and leaning down to peer inside.“What are you doing, Mrs.Kelly?”
Eyes the color of melting chocolate took in the interior of my car.Empty back seat—cream colored leather—and a passenger seat with a manila folder, a notebook and pen, a digital camera, and a textbook.The name on the book wasPrivate Investigating for Dummies.
“You’re kidding me,” Mendoza said.
I had known this was coming.Diana Morton—my divorce attorney and current client, and the reason I was sitting here on this quiet street in the middle of the afternoon—had warned me that Mendoza didn’t approve of PIs.Something about his ex-wife hiring one, and then marrying him.
The PI, not Mendoza.
I didn’t know all the details, and had resisted the temptation to use my newly-acquired skills to figure them out.But I’d been waiting for this.Diana had told me that Mendoza would be unhappy when he heard about my new career.
“No, Detective,” I told him.“I’m not kidding.I qualified for my license last week.I’m turning David’s office on Music Row into a PI firm.Fidelity Investigations.”
His mouth curved at that.“That’ll serve him right.”
I smiled back.“I think of it as poetic justice.”
David, who became my late husband just in time to avoid becoming my ex, had left me for a twenty-five-year-old Salma Hayek lookalike a few months ago, and had managed to get himself killed shortly afterwards.Mendoza had been the homicide detective in charge of the case, which was how we met.I’d been the obvious suspect, and I’ll always be grateful to him for digging deeper instead of just slapping handcuffs on me.
“Rachel is helping me run the office,” I added.“David’s administrative assistant, remember?And Zachary is doing the computer searching and online marketing and such.”
“I thought he was waiting to apply to the police academy when he turns twenty-one,” Mendoza said.
I nodded.“He still wants to do that.But he figures working for a private investigator will look better on his resume than being the doorman at the Apex.”
Mendoza looked doubtful, and considering that the PI in question—me—had had her license for all of six days, maybe he had cause.
“We have our first case,” I added.“Diana hired me to stalk...I mean, follow her husband around.”
Mendoza arched his brows.“She thinks Steven’s cheating?”
“She isn’t sure.That’s why she wants me to follow him.To find out.”
Mendoza nodded.
“So what are you doing here?”I added.“Not that it isn’t nice to see you, of course.”
That got me a smile, complete with dimples and a corresponding surge of appreciation in my stomach.Mendoza is way too handsome for his own good—or at least too handsome for mine.He’s close to a decade younger than me, and even just lusting after him in the privacy of my own mind is questionable.Lusting at all, at forty, might be a no-no.
“A call came in to the 911 hotline,” he told me, “about a suspicious vehicle on this street.”
“Really?”I looked around.“I’ve been sitting here for more than an hour, and I haven’t seen anyone suspicious.”
Unless he was talking about Steven’s car, a nondescript brown sedan that was parked in a driveway a couple houses up from where I was sitting.But it was doing absolutely nothing suspicious that I could see.What Steven was doing inside the house might be another matter, of course, but I hadn’t yet dared to leave my own car to investigate.Not in broad daylight.
“Your vehicle,” Mendoza said.
