to have to beat the boys off with a stick when she gets older.”
“If anyone can do it,” I said, “he can.”
Rafe grinned. “She ain’t going on a date till she’s twenty-five. And she’s only dating boys with pickup trucks.”
Pickup trucks? Because…?
It hit me. “No back seat?”
Yvonne was already chortling appreciatively.
“Yes, darlin’,” Rafe said, with a wink at her. “I married a lady.”
“So you did.” Yvonne grinned at me. “Enjoy your food, princess.”
“Thank you,” I said demurely, as I picked up my fork. “I will.”
We were on our way home, replete with food and the cobbler Rafe had insisted on having to finish off the meal, when my phone made a noise. I fished it out of my purse and peered at it while Rafe kept the Chevy going in the direction of home.
“It’s Charlotte. She says there’s another video up.”
He glanced at me. “Of us?”
“Maybe. Probably.” I had clicked the link and was waiting for the video to start playing. “Yes. You and me. Inside… that’s you and me inside Beulah’s.”
Where he was kissing my fingertips and the inside of my wrist, before I had taken my hand away. The heart-eyed emoji were already mounting up.
“She was there,” I said. “Inside the restaurant.”
Rafe nodded, looking faintly amused as the camera zeroed in on his face and stayed there as the video ended. “Looks that way.”
“You don’t suppose Yvonne…?”
“She’s too busy to spend her time following me around to take pictures of me,” Rafe said. “She’s got a business to run.”
After a second, he added, “And she wouldn’t do that to you.”
Good to know. “I’m sure it isn’t Mo. And she—this woman, Jessica Rabbit—was behind me, where she could zoom in your face. You don’t think Tucker…?”
Rafe started laughing. “No, darlin’. I don’t think Sergeant Tucker is stalking me and posting videos of me on social media.”
“It could be some kind of underhanded way of getting you in trouble. You know, make you enough of a public spectacle that Grimaldi won’t want you around because you’re a liability. Because you make the Columbia police department look like a bunch of TV cops, or something.”
“I’m a real cop,” Rafe said. And added, “Or at least I work like a real cop.”
But he looked good enough to play one on TV. I didn’t bother saying it. I had already offended him, it seemed.
The phone dinged again, with another message from Charlotte. I opened it, expecting a comment on the video or a question about what I was planning to get up to with my oh-so-hot husband tonight.
It wasn’t either of those things.
“She says there’s another picture that was just uploaded. Did we do anything else?” I clicked the link. “God, I hope whoever it is, wasn’t close enough to record our conversation.”
We’d been discussing serial murder and confidential information, and Grimaldi would kill me—and probably Rafe—if that conversation was made public. I could see that the idea worried Rafe, too.
And then that concern, and all the others, vanished as I got a look at the still picture that had been uploaded after the video.
A close-up of my daughter, with her glossy curls and big blue eyes and pink rosebud lips, and Yvonne’s hand wrapped around the handle of the baby carrier.
#beautifulbaby, the caption read. Looks just like her daddy!
Twelve
I was flung against the seatbelt and then side to side as Rafe whipped the car around from one direction to the other and floored the gas pedal on his way back to Beulah’s.
“Take it easy,” I told him breathlessly. “I don’t want to die on the way back there.”
He gave me a dark look, but didn’t respond.
I pushed myself upright. “She probably isn’t even there anymore. She would make sure she was long gone before the video posted.”
“She can’t be that long gone,” my husband growled. “It’s only been a couple minutes since we left.”
“Yes. But she probably left before we did.”
“Don’t care,” Rafe said. “I wanna see if anybody knows who she is. I wanna get there before anybody else leaves, so I can talk to them.”
That wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Beulah’s is a small place, and a lot of the customers are regulars. There was a good chance that somebody would know who we were looking for. Yvonne, if no one else. She’d been holding the baby carrier when that picture had been taken.
“I’m glad you’re taking this seriously, anyway,” I told Rafe. And I thought I sounded pretty placid, and not at all accusatory, but he shot me a