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  Bella shook her head. “I’m out of here.”

  She went back across the aisle to the bath department. Sandy and I managed to stretch out loading the merchandise until closing time so we wouldn’t have to wait on actual customers. I got my handbag—a Dooney & Bourke barrel that always lifted my spirits—from my locker in the breakroom and was headed for the front doors when I spotted Jeanette at the customer service booth.

  I knew she was counting on me to help out with the new-employee orientation and carry a full work schedule when swarms of crazed shoppers descended during the upcoming holiday shopping rush. But I wouldn’t be here. As quick as Priscilla at L.A. Affairs got the words “full-time-permanent-employee” out of her mouth, I was going to quit Holt’s

  It hit me that the decent thing to do was to forewarn Jeanette so she could either work on her the-entire-Holt’s-chain-will-collapse-without-you speech, or practice her backflip because I was leaving.

  Really, I was pretty sure I knew which she’d do.

  Of course, the timing of my resignation had taken on an additional dimension now that Holt’s was in the process of acquiring the upscale, trendy Nuovo stores. I still needed to find a Sassy satchel, and if I could get the ten-percent employee discount, that would be great. However, I didn’t know when that might happen.

  Ty flew into my head. If we were still dating, I could just ask him when the acquisition would be finalized.

  That couldn’t happen now, of course.

  I considered phoning Amber, his personal assistant. She and I were cool with each other—even after the breakup—and I knew she’d tell me. She’d probably offer to go shopping with me.

  Both of those things seemed like more than I could take on at the moment. But then something else hit me—I could ask Jeanette.

  “Hey, Jeanette,” I said, stopping next to her. “How soon before the Nuovo acquisition will be completed?”

  “Anxious to use your employee discount there?” Jeanette asked, looking very pleased with herself for some reason.

  A twinge of guilt zapped me. With my resignation from Holt’s looming on the horizon, I’d probably use the employee discount once or twice before I officially quit.

  I guess something showed in my expression—I’m usually way cooler than that—because Jeanette looked concerned.

  “You are planning to use the discount often, aren’t you?” she asked. “It is one of your favorite stores, isn’t it?”

  “Well, sure. Of course,” I said.

  Jeanette looked at me for a few seconds, like she suspected something else was going on—jeez, I’m usually a lot cooler than this—then said, “Not all of the details have been finalized, but we should know something definite in a few days.”

  “Great. Thanks,” I said.

  I made my way through the store and out the door. It had been a weird day and I was anxious to get home—before anything else weird happened.

  I crossed the darkened parking lot with the other employees. As I approached my car, I saw someone standing next to it.

  It was Ty.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  Ty and I gazed at each other, neither of us saying anything else. We were caught in some sort of mutual tractor beam that we couldn’t pull away from but wouldn’t allow either of us to think up a sentence.

  It had been a weird day. Now, it was a weird night. I didn’t know what was going on. Maybe there was a full moon.

  I didn’t want to take my eyes off Ty long enough to look.

  The lighting in the parking lot was awesome—diminished to reduce the store’s carbon footprint, supposedly, but I figured what they really wanted to diminish was the electric bill—and Ty looked great. Tall, handsome, well-groomed, wearing an obscenely expensive suit, while I looked as if I’d worked two jobs today, one of which was as a minimum wage grunt who’d spent the last four hours hauling crappy merchandise around.

  We’d broken up. I shouldn’t care how I looked. Right?

  “You sounded . . . worried . . . on the phone today,” Ty said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  That was a lame reason for him to drive all the way up here from his office downtown. Was it just an excuse to see me?

  I shouldn’t even consider the possibility. Right?

  “So are you . . . okay?” he asked.

  “I’m concerned,” I said, “about the situation with Kelvin Davis.”

  Had my reason for contacting him earlier today been lame? Had I used it as an excuse to hear his voice? Maybe see him?

  “But I guess the whole thing has been cleared up by now,” I said.

  “Very nearly,” Ty said.

  “When you talked to the detectives on the case, explained everything, they knew you weren’t involved, didn’t they?” I said.

  “I, uh, I haven’t spoken with the detectives yet.”

  Ty shifted his weight and leaned his head left, then right, stretching his neck.

  I knew what that meant.

  I noticed then that Ty’s shirt collar was open and his tie was loose. His hair fell across his forehead. For him, this was the equivalent of being a total wreck.

  “Why haven’t you been interviewed by the detectives yet?” I asked.

  “My attorneys advised against it.” Ty tried for a you-know-how-they-are grin, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  I realized that lines were etched around his eyes and mouth that I’d never noticed before. Was he not sleeping well? Was he worried more than he admitted? Or maybe both?

  “Attorneys know best,” I said. “Things like this can get out of control, if you’re not careful.”

  Ty came from an old-money Los Angeles family that had been around for generations. They were prominent and wealthy. Kelvin Davis had been a media sensation. His death could turn into a circus, with Ty in the center ring.

  “That won’t happen . . . I don’t think,” Ty said, and tried again to smile.

  The parking lot lights dimmed further. I looked around and saw that we were the only ones still there.

  “I’d better let you go,” Ty said.

  Would he ask me to go have coffee?

  I shouldn’t want that. Right?

  “Yeah, I’d better go,” I said.

  I pulled my car keys from my handbag and clicked the locks. Ty opened the door for me.

  I walked closer. The heat, the scent that was uniquely his, nearly overwhelmed me.

  “Well, good night,” he said.

  I lingered for a moment, close to him, smelling him, feeling his warmth, wanting him—

  I dropped into the driver’s seat.

  “Good night,” I said.

  I started my car and drove away.

  Before, I’d been concerned. Now I was worried.

  I pulled out of the Holt’s parking lot and headed for my apartment, my conversation with Ty—and the feelings I’d had for him—zinging around in my head.

  No way could Ty kill anybody. It simply couldn’t happen. I didn’t doubt it for a minute. Yet, why had his attorneys advised him not to talk to the detectives working the Kelvin Davis murder investigation?

  Was there evidence I didn’t know about? Something Shuman hadn’t learned or passed on to me?

  Then another thought hit me—could Ty be hiding something?

  I stopped in the line of traffic at a red light, feeling kind of icky inside. I forced myself to think back to the day when I’d been in my office and someone from the emergency room at the Palmdale hospital had called with the news that Ty had been in a car accident. I’d rushed to pick him up, relieved that he wasn’t injured.

  The car behind me blew the horn. I realized the light had changed. I drove forward.

  Ty had asked to stay at my place. Amber had brought over clothes for him, along with gifts and cards his friends and employees had sent, and his belongings she’d retrieved from his wrecked car. She’d mentioned that Ty had suddenly canceled his appointments for that aft
ernoon and had rented a car for the drive to Palmdale. I’d found a receipt in his pocket from a convenience store where he’d stopped and bought a soda—and where he’d changed out of his Tom Ford suit into jeans and a polo shirt.

  All of that could have been explained away—except that Ty didn’t explain it. And when he did answer some of my questions, I’d gotten the strong feeling that he was lying to me. Nothing about that day, or his trip to Palmdale, made any sense—especially the fact that he’d acted super strange during his stay at my place.

  I hung a left at the entrance to my apartment complex and wound my way to my building. I sat in my car. My chest felt heavy and my head had started to hurt.

  I didn’t want to get out.

  I didn’t want to go up to my apartment.

  Finally, I forced myself out of my Honda and up the stairs. I let myself in. I didn’t put my keys or handbag down, just kept going while I could make my feet move.

  When Ty had stayed here with me, Amber had brought over some of his things. We’d broken up shortly after that. Ty hadn’t known that a small duffel bag of his was in the closet of my second bedroom, so he hadn’t taken it with him. I’d found it later, but things were too awkward between us for me to attempt to return it. I hadn’t even been able to pick it up, let alone open it.

  I walked into my second bedroom, switched the light, and opened the closet door. I pulled out the duffel bag and unzipped it.

  Inside were bundles of cash and a handgun.

  It was a Gucci day. Definitely a Gucci day.

  I settled into my office, juggling the I-can-delay-starting-work-a-little-longer cup of coffee and doughnut I’d just gotten from the breakroom and the fabulous Gucci tote I’d treated myself to a couple of weeks ago. It really popped against the navy blue business suit I’d also treated myself to during the same shopping trip.

  Still, as fantastic as my ensemble looked, I couldn’t shake the worry and the icky feeling that had weighed me down since last night.

  Fifty grand. In cash. Stuffed into a duffel bag, along with a nine-millimeter handgun.

  “Ty, what did you do?” I murmured as I placed my handbag in my lower desk drawer.

  I sat back in my chair and sipped my coffee.

  In my heart, I knew Ty couldn’t have murdered anyone. But after finding the gun and the cash—I couldn’t resist counting it; who could?—I hadn’t been able to shake the notion that he’d been involved with Kelvin Davis’s death somehow. What else could I think?

  And what the heck was I supposed to do about what I’d discovered?

  I reached for my doughnut—I definitely needed massive quantities of chocolate to figure this out—and noticed a yellow sticky note on my computer. It read, “My plants are dying,” and was signed by somebody whose name I didn’t recognize and festooned with a sad face in each corner.

  Somebody’s plants weren’t doing well? And whoever it was thought I wanted to know about it?

  Jeez, what was going on in this office lately?

  I yanked the sticky note off my computer and tossed it in my trash can.

  With my coffee and doughnut in hand, I walked to my window that overlooked the busy Sepulveda and Ventura intersection. I always liked being in high places. It seemed to give a different perspective to things and make me think better—of course, the chocolate, sugar, and caffeine helped, too.

  I could go to Detective Shuman with what I’d found. I could confide in him. We shared a massive secret—long story—that was so huge we instinctively knew that neither of us could ever mention it, even to each other. Sort of like an unspoken pact.

  I knew that if I told Shuman what I’d found in the duffel bag and asked him not to tell anyone, he would respect my wishes.

  But did I really want to put him in that position?

  I thought about it for a few seconds—my reasoning powers spurred on by another bite of my chocolate doughnut—and decided I couldn’t do that to him. If the situation should blow up and it became known that Shuman possessed that knowledge, it could seriously hurt his career.

  Of course, I could always confront Ty. Maybe there was a simple explanation totally unrelated to the Kelvin Davis murder.

  I finished off my doughnut and thought about talking to Ty. In less than three seconds I decided that I couldn’t do it. Our relationship—or whatever it was—was in a weird place. I didn’t want to make it weirder by trying to discuss what I’d found. He’d probably assume I thought he was guilty of Kelvin Davis’s murder, and I didn’t want a rift between us.

  Besides, the fewer people who knew I was withholding possible evidence in a murder investigation, the better.

  There was, of course, nothing else I could do but investigate Ty’s involvement with Kelvin Davis myself.

  I returned to my desk, got my cell phone out of my handbag, and called Amber. I expected to leave a message—she’s super busy taking care of most everything in Ty’s life—but she answered right away.

  “Don’t mention my name,” I told her before she could say anything.

  “It’s cool. He’s not here,” Amber said. “How are you doing?”

  “Not that great, really,” I said.

  “You heard?”

  “I think I’m more worried about it than Ty is,” I said.

  “I doubt that,” Amber said. “The whole thing is ridiculous. Ty had absolutely no involvement with Kelvin Davis. He never invested with that creep. None of Ty’s family invested with him. Neither Ty nor anybody close to him lost a cent because of Davis’s scam. There’s no connection between them. If there were, believe me, I would know about it.”

  Apparently, Amber didn’t know that Ty’s name, contact info, and fingerprints had been on a slip of paper clutched in Kelvin Davis’s dead hand. I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell her.

  Still, I was glad to hear there was no other link between Ty—or his family—and Davis. That should go a long way toward keeping the cops at bay.

  Yet something had caused Ty to take a sudden, covert trip to Palmdale that day. Was it mere coincidence that it was around the time Kelvin Davis was murdered?

  “Remember Ty’s traffic accident?” I said.

  “That whole thing was odd,” Amber agreed. She paused for a few seconds. “You don’t think Ty was somehow involve—”

  “No. No way. Absolutely not,” I told her. “But has he started prepping for opening a store Palmdale?”

  “He’s been working almost nonstop on the Nuovo acquisition,” Amber said.

  “I heard about that,” I said.

  “This has been a tough one. A total nightmare. The Nuovo people are asking for the moon—and he’s giving it to them, for some reason.”

  “He is? That doesn’t sound like Ty.”

  “I don’t get it either,” Amber said. “But he’s determined to see this thing go through.”

  “So nothing’s going on in Palmdale?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t even know anybody there,” Amber said.

  Because she was a fabulous personal assistant, Amber kept a list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of Ty’s personal and business contacts. She kept his calendar so she most always knew where he was, who he was with, and why he was there. Amber also reviewed the monthly statements for his credit cards and cell phone, monitoring them for fraudulent charges and overbillings. So if Amber said Ty didn’t know anybody in Palmdale, I believed her.

  We were both quiet for a minute, then Amber said, “You two should get back together.”

  The notion zapped me speechless.

  “He’s been working himself like crazy since you broke up,” Amber said. “Besides, anybody can see you two belong together. You know, Haley, Ty would do anything for you.”

  I knew Amber meant well. Plus, she wasn’t the first person who’d said Ty and I should be together.

  “Let me know if you hear anything,” I said. “Will you?”

  “Of course,” Amber said, then added, “Ty hasn’t been the sa
me since you two ended things. Just think about it, okay?”

  Thoughts of Ty had been seeping into my mind during parts of every day since we’d broken up. And now, with this whole murder investigation thing hanging over us like a black cloud, how could I think about anything but him?

  CHAPTER 10

  “Haley? Haley? Hello? Haley?” Mindy said when I answered my office phone.

  I’d just hung up with Amber and I was in no mood.

  “Yes, Mindy?”

  “Oh, Haley! There you are!” She giggled. “One of your clients is here. Her name is . . . oh, now let me see, where—”

  I hung up.

  Okay, I know that was bad. But, jeez, there’s only so much I can take.

  Since I had no idea which of my clients had shown up without an appointment, I left my office and cruised past the interview rooms until I spotted Laronda Bain. She was seated in front of the desk, dressed in head to toe Michael Kors. Since her face was still in Botox deep-freeze, I had no idea what kind of mood she was in.

  Not that I really cared.

  Still, I managed to put on an I-need-to-keep-this-job smile and walked into the interview room. I dropped into the chair behind the desk and before I could say anything, she started in.

  “I haven’t heard from you,” Laronda declared. “Is there a problem?”

  It took me a few seconds to remember that she was the mom putting on the extravagant, you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me Harry Potter birthday party for her eight-year-old son. Since I hadn’t looked at her event since the last time she was here and had requested Hogwarts School be constructed in her backyard, I had no idea what was going on with it.

  So what could I say but, “If there had been a problem, I would have handled it.”

  Laronda might have been pleased with my response. I couldn’t tell.

  “I’ve decided to gift the party guests with a costume,” Laronda declared. “Each child will pick a uniform from one of the four Hogwarts houses, though I imagine Gryffindor and Slytherin will be the most popular.”

  She wanted custom made costumes? For twenty children? Now? At this late date?