Chapter Forty-Three
Harper had waited until the last minute to get ready for dinner. It wasn’t that she wasn’t looking forward to it. She was. But Kyle’s book,Cold Blue Murder, was so good she didn’t want to put it down.
At the moment, she was sitting at the kitchen counter, glued to her tablet while she waited for Frankie to come down. Willa had graciously offered to take Archie out for a bathroom break so she could keep reading.
Harper heard footsteps coming down the stairs but didn’t take her eyes off the page in front of her.
“Are youstillreading?” Frankie asked.
“Yes,” Harper muttered without breaking her concentration. “Shh. I need to know who the killer is.” She had her suspicions, but she was probably wrong. She read on, sensing her sister was hovering close by but Harper was in no mood to chat.
Frankie cleared her throat softly. “I hate to interrupt you, but what wine are we bringing? Red?”
Harper inhaled and quickly reread the sentence revealing the killer. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Okay, fine, no red.”
Harper looked up. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the book. I can’t believe what I just read. I had it totally wrong. I thought— You know what? Never mind what I thought. I don’t want to ruin it, because you should read this.”
Curiosity sparkled in Frankie’s eyes. She leaned in. “Yeah? I thought it was top secret client stuff.”
“It sort of is, but I’ll ask Mitch tonight and see what he says.” Harper held her hand up. “Hang on, I need to read another paragraph or two and make sure I truly read what I thought I did.”
“M’kay,” Frankie said. “I’ll be right here with the red wine.”
Harper took in a few more paragraphs, confirming the killer genuinely was the police officer. “Holy cow. It was him. That’s crazy.” She looked up at Frankie. “Sorry. I needed to know.”
“No worries.” Frankie held up the bottle. “This okay?”
“That’s great. Is there more than one bottle? There’s going to be eight of us.”
“Um…” Frankie bent down to look in the wine rack where the reds were. “No, but there’s two bottles of a merlot.”
“Let’s bring that.”
Archie raced up the steps. Willa was a few paces behind him. “He did his business.”
“Good boy, Archie.” Harper looked at Willa. “Thank you. Give him a cookie, then we should get going.”
Willa snagged one from the basket. “Sit, Archie. Good job, baby.” She fed him the cookie, which he carried to his blanket on the couch, then settled in to enjoy it.
Harper turned her tablet off and took one of the bottles of wine. “Are we ready?”
Frankie nodded. “I think we are.”
They headed downstairs and out the door, following Harper as she led them through the path between the trees and shrubbery.
As soon as they reached the door, she knocked.
Mitch answered, smiling at them. “Good evening, ladies. Come on in. The main event is upstairs. Lucas is already up there.”
Harper let Frankie and Willa go ahead of her so she could hang back and talk to Mitch alone. “I read most of Kyle’s book. I’m nearly to the end.”
Mitch took a breath, then seemed to hold it. “And?”
“And it wasgood. I could not stop reading. Have you finished it? Do you know who the killer is?”
“I did and I do. Crazy, right?”
