She kissed him softly and she tasted the saltiness of a tear that had trickled down his cheek.
They stood for a minute clinging to each other, as if the rest of the world had faded away. Hearing a ruckus in the background, they suddenly seemed to remember they weren’t alone and stepped apart. A uniformed officer was struggling to help Fiona into the squad car.
“I want a deal!” Fiona hollered from the back of the cruiser. “I’ll tell you everything!”
“Shut up, Fiona!” Gloria screamed as Ernie aided her into the back seat on the other side of the vehicle.
Emily and Colin looked at each other. Chuckling, they wandered over to check out their suspects.
Emily approached the side of the cruiser where Gloria sat and she rested her forearm on top of the open car door. “Just between you and me—no mic this time—why did you have to kill Lucas?”
“I guess it doesn’t matter now if I tell you. It was because he and Fiona were going to disappear with all my money.”
“You took a man’s life because he was stealing your money?” Emily clarified, crouching down to her level.
“Oh, it was more than just that. It wasn’t just because he was stealing my money—he was stealing my daughter,” Gloria grumbled. “They would have run off and I’d never see her again.”
Emily grimaced.
She had seen how her beloved daughter was turning on her, but she noticed Fiona was now listening to what her mother was saying.
“She’s not much,” Gloria admitted with a note of sadness, “but she’s all I have.”
Then her voice and her eyes turned steely cold. “No one takes what belongs to me and gets away with it. No one.”
CHAPTER 27
It didn’t take long for the murder charges against Maggie’s son to be dropped, and Camille and Isabel offered to throw a big backyard party at Isabel’s house to celebrate. Maggie, of course, accepted. She had been so worried about losing Josh to prison, she decided that every moment was precious.
The night of the party arrived and Emily stood in her somewhat-organized walk-in closet, trying to choose a memorable outfit for the evening. This party would also be a farewell to Colin, who needed to return to San Francisco in the morning, so Emily took special care to look her best.
She slipped into her tight white jeans and pulled a black off-the-shoulder, short-sleeve sweater from the rack and slid it on. “There.” She fluffed her tousled blonde curls with her fingers and turned in the full-length mirror to admire her derriere. Gold hoop earrings and a little lipstick and she’d be done.
She checked her watch and realized she still had a few minutes to kill before Colin would arrive to pick her up. Traipsing through the house shoeless, she headed to the breakfast bar to fetch the lipstick out of her purse. While painting on the soft pink lip color, she noticed the stack of mail that she’d brought in earlier. She might as well sort the mail while she waited.
The first envelope was her credit card statement, the second was a misdirected piece of mail—Mr. Terrence Biggens. She marked it with “wrong address” and set it aside. The third envelope was addressed to Evan, from All Security Storage, likely a promotional piece.
She was about to toss it, but there was something about it that made her suspect it might not be junk mail after all. She slid her finger under the flap and ripped the envelope open. Unfolding the paper inside, she glanced over it. It was a letter on company stationery, informing Evan that the advance payments on his storage unit had run out and payment for the next twelve months was due the first of the following month.
Why would he have a storage unit?
The key!
Like a light bulb going on in her head, she thought of the brass key. Dare she hope her mystery was solved? She checked the coin purse on the side of her leather wallet to make sure it was still there—it was.
She didn’t have time to do anything about it right now, but tomorrow she would definitely go and check it out. She tucked the letter back in the envelope, folded it in half, and shoved it in her bag.
If her stalker broke into the house again while she was gone, she wasn’t giving him the address and unit number of the storage place. Whatever was in the unit was obviously something Evan wanted kept secret. And as for Colin, she thought