CHAPTER 10
Vero and I boarded the charter bus to the citizen’s police academy just after sunrise on Monday morning. I fell into one of the last available seats toward the back, cradling my thermos of coffee, my eyelids already threatening to drift shut. I’d been up most of the night, staring down my revision for Sylvia, and while I had no problem envisioning the hot cop’s very impressive assets (or what the heroine would like to do with them), whenever I began typing, the bad guys closed in and someone managed to die. Last night, it had been a huge, tattooed street fighter named Refrigerator Mike whom my heroine had mowed down with her car, and at four in the morning, before crawling into bed, I’d deleted the entire chapter.
Vero nudged me awake as she arched up in her seat, checking out the other passengers around us. “Did you know Mrs. Haggerty was coming?” she whispered.
I sat up, holding my thermos away from me as coffee dribbled from a leak in the top. “Where?” Vero pointed to a nest of gray hair a few rows in front of us. Great. The woman who’d been watching my house like it was a Netflix Original would be spending a week getting up close and personal with the detectives who were unknowingly investigating us.
“Who’s her friend?” Vero asked as Mrs. Haggerty chatted up the tall, attractive gentleman seated beside her. He looked familiar, but it took me a minute to place him.
“I think that’s her grandson.” He’d visited her over the holidays, and I vaguely remembered a rushed and clumsy introduction as he was taking out her trash and I was emptying my mailbox.
I clutched my chest as a head popped up in the seat in front of me. A young woman in tortoiseshell glasses smiled at us over her headrest. She didn’t look much older than Vero, and I wondered how she had afforded the police academy registration. The week of room and board hadn’t been cheap, and after considering the meager funds in both of our accounts, Vero and I had charged the fees to my credit card. A young man with a shock of unruly red hair popped up beside her. He extended his hand over the headrest. “I’m Riley. This is Maxine,” he said, hitching his thumb toward the girl.
“Call me Max,” she insisted. “We’re so excited for police academy! Aren’t you?”
Vero jabbed an elbow in my ribs before I could answer that.
“What do you all do?” Max asked us.
“Finlay is a famous author—”
“I’m really not,” I corrected Vero. Judging by the likely trajectory of my career, infamous was probably more accurate.
“And I’m her accountant. We’re here doing research for her next romantic suspense novel.”
Max’s eyes went wide over her seat back. “Seriously? Riley and I are in the entertainment business, too. We’re podcasters.”
“True crime,” Riley explained. “We’re recording a behind-the-scenes series about criminal investigations. We’re going to document everything we do this week for our show.”
“We’d love to feature you,” Max suggested. “You know, ask you some questions about why you came and what you hope to get out of your week here. I bet people would be really interested to hear how you get your ideas.”
My smile was so tight, it hurt. “I bet they would.”
“She’d be happy to,” Vero said, throwing me on the altar.
The bus started moving and Riley and Max turned back in their seats.
“We’re not talking to anyone this week,” I whispered. “We have one job, and that’s to findEasyClean.”
“Correction. You have two jobs. One for Feliks and one for Sylvia. You’re going to finish your revision so we can get paid.”
“I can’t do the revision.”
“Youcando it, because I’m going to help you.”
“How are you going to help?”
“I’m going to kick you in the ass until you get it done yourself. And you never know,” she said, reclining her seat as the bus bounced over the interstate, “a few days away from the kids, living in a dorm, doing hands-on research with a bunch of hot, fit police officers might inspire you.”
I didn’t need inspiration. I needed a new career. One that didn’t involve police officers, corpses, or the Russian mob.
“So what’s the plan?” Vero asked.
“Same as the bar. We spread out and get close to as many of them as possible. We ask a lot of questions and hope one of them lets something slip.”
“When do I get to snoop?”
“I’ll do the snooping.”
