Murder in the Smokies - By Paula Graves Page 0,6
she just sounded defensive. Exactly the opposite of what she’d intended.
“Of course not.”
She pasted on a smile. “I’ll admit I’ve only been to L.A. once. And I didn’t get anywhere near Spago.”
“Same here.” He shot her a disarming grin that made her feel as if she was about to melt into a puddle on the booth bench.
She had to get a grip. She wasn’t ready to forgive Sutton Calhoun for abandoning her when she’d needed him most. And she sure as hell couldn’t afford to trust him again.
“But you didn’t invite me here to talk about travel or even peach cobbler, did you?” He took another long drink of coffee, meeting her gaze over the rim of the cup.
“Why did you really come back here?”
“I told you. I was hired to look into an unsolved murder.”
She took a sip of coffee and swallowed, letting the pause linger before she casually asked, “Since when does Cooper Security do private investigations?”
His dark eyebrows arched. “What do you know about Cooper Security, Ivy Hawkins?”
“Top-notch risk management firm. Stellar reputation for doing the tough, scary jobs that a lot of firms would never take on. Specializes in corporate risk training and dangerous security jobs.” She hid a smile at the hint of admiration in his expression. “But I’ve never heard of them doing any private investigation before.”
“We’re branching out.”
“Sounds more like a step down from all that excitement.”
“Depends on the case. We only take cases where we think we can make a real difference.” He set his cup of coffee down, running his finger over the rim. “It was our chopper pilot’s idea, actually.”
“Your chopper pilot?”
“One of the company owner’s cousins. His wife was murdered a long time ago. It took him over a decade to finally find her killer. Last year, he mentioned in passing that he wished he’d had the Cooper Security resources to work with back when the case hadn’t been quite so cold.”
“And your boss decided to open an investigations division from that one offhand remark?” She didn’t hide her skepticism. It seemed like a pretty random way to make a huge corporate decision.
“I imagine Jesse had already been considering the possibility.” This time, Sutton was the one who sounded defensive. She could tell that he respected his boss and the company. “J.D.’s remark probably just crystallized the whole idea for him.”
“So you’re here as a P.I., then. You know, it might have been nice to give the local law a heads-up.”
“Might have been,” he conceded with an unrepentant smile.
“But you didn’t. Why not?”
He took another long sip of coffee and didn’t answer right away.
Impatience clawed at her belly as she waited, until she couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “You don’t trust the local cops?”
His gaze snapped up to meet hers. “That’s an interesting question. What made you ask it?”
“Your clear reluctance to make yourself known to the local authorities, for one thing. Maybe you think we can’t be trusted.”
“I didn’t hide from y’all at the crime scene.”
“You didn’t exactly announce yourself, either.”
“And that’s your only reason for wondering if I don’t trust the local LEOs?” He was the one who looked skeptical now.
She didn’t miss his use of the acronym LEO, short for Law Enforcement Officer. He could talk the talk, it seemed. But could he walk the walk, as well? “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“No, all I did was agree that I probably should have made a courtesy call to the local police. You’re the one who ran with the idea of that the cops can’t be trusted.” He leaned toward her. “Do you think it’s possible a cop could be involved, Detective Hawkins?”
She didn’t answer.
“How’s your mama?” he asked after a few moments of silence.
“Unchanged,” she answered flatly.
“Just like my dad.”
She arched an eyebrow. Odd thing to say about his father, considering. “I suppose once you get in the habit of a certain way of life,” she said carefully, “it’s hard to make a change.”
Apparently that was one thing from their shared past that had remained the same. She still had a weak-willed, naive mother who, though she recently turned sixty, was still going from man to man in search of some ill-defined, unachievable romantic bliss, leaving Ivy to clean up her messes and, one time at least, directly suffer the consequences of her bad choices. And Sutton’s daddy had spent most of his adult life skating the edge of the law, somehow managing to avoid more than the occasional slap on the wrist and