took a wild guess. “Your friend at the Hotel Carlton?”
He nodded and smiled, almost starry-eyed.
Okay. She was starting to get it. That’s why he’d taken her to the Carlton. “You took me out to make her jealous.” It didn’t do much for her ego but hey, if she could help out true love—
Howie shook his head.
She plopped down on the sofa. “Okay, then I don’t get it.”
“Aunt Talley asked me to take you to dinner because she thinks you would be perfect for J.T. and she wanted my opinion. I was planning to talk to you about it but then I spilled your wine and the time just never seemed right after that.”
Her head hurt. It had been a long day and it wasn’t even half over. “J.T.?”
“My cousin.”
Another of Aunt Talley’s grandnephews. She watched Howie mix the fertilizer, wondering how many nephews Aunt Talley had. Well, she wasn’t dating them no matter what her Cupid-playing neighbor tried to tempt her with.
The memory of the fried pies almost made her reconsider. What was she thinking? “Howie, I’m not going out with J.T.”
“Don’t worry,” he said as he began to water her pitiful plants. “He’s not interested, either.”
Karen winced although she didn’t know the man and knew his rejection wasn’t personal since he didn’t know her, either.
“Aunt Talley will be disappointed,” Howie was saying. “She really believes that each of us has a perfect match and that J.T. might be yours.”
Karen hoped that was meant to be a compliment. She closed her eyes. Not a good day. “Are there any of your aunt’s pies left?” she asked, opening her eyes hopefully.
Howie brought her one on a plate with a glass of milk. He was going to make someone a fine spouse.
“Aren’t you going to have one?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never cared for sweets.”
The man was an aberration. Probably ran on the male side of the Iverson family. “So—” she licked icing from her lips “—what is J.T. like, just out of curiosity?”
“He’s…interesting,” Howie said, returning to the plants.
Interesting? The kiss of death. Worse than “nice personality.” Good thing he wasn’t “interested” in her.
Karen finished her pie and milk and Howie finished reviving her plants and left. She locked and bolted the door, feeling vulnerable and a little afraid. She wished Jack would call soon.
As she showered and dressed, she kept thinking about the man she’d seen at the hotel with Liz. She jumped when the phone rang, her heart thundering, her fingers trembling as she picked up. “Hello?”
For one heart-stopping moment, she was afraid it might be The Breather again. When she heard Detective Jack Adams’s voice, a bubble of pleasure filled her. Pure helium.
He burst that bubble immediately. “I just talked to Detective Kirkpatrick.”
“Did they find the killer?” She held her breath.
“Sorry. Denny says he didn’t interview anyone who admitted to even knowing Liz.”
Karen stumbled into the nearest chair. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been hoping the killer had already been caught. “He was in the hotel ballroom this morning. I saw him.” He’d returned to the scene of the crime. Why?
She closed her eyes and tried to calm her hammering heart. “I’m the only one who can place him at the hotel last night with Liz, aren’t I?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“It looks that way.” Jack seemed to hesitate. “Karen, when you and Liz exchanged phone numbers on napkins at the coffee shop, did you see Liz put hers in her purse?”
“Yes… Oh, God,” Karen whispered, seeing where he was headed. “You think she still had my number in her purse when she was killed?”
“I had Denny look through her personal effects. No napkin was found in her purse. Nothing with your number on it. But I checked. Two calls were made from her hotel room last night. Karen, both were to your number. One before her death. The other after.”
Karen felt as if all the oxygen had been suddenly sucked out of the room. The Breather. That had been him calling from Liz’s room. She hugged herself, fighting for air. “He has my phone number.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“He just has a phone number written on a napkin,” Jack continued quickly. Liz must have left it by the phone when she’d called Karen and been interrupted by the killer. “That doesn’t mean he knows you’re the woman who saw him in the hotel hallway.”
“Yet. How long will it take him to get my name and address?” All the man had to do was look in the city