Truth, Lies, and Second Dates - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,66
how’d she find me, also in Boston?”
“It is troubling. If you’d never before met, never moved in the same circles, why would a random pilot seize her attention in such a manner?”
“Hey! No, wait. You’re right. I am a random pilot.”
“Perhaps the exposure from the belly landing flagged her attention?”
“Maybe, but that wouldn’t explain how she knew all about me months earlier, when she was applying to the airline.”
“Point. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to get some answers.”
“Have Hannah dose her with truth serum? Bug her uniform? Dig a pit and lure her into it, and refuse to let her out until she confesses?”
“Those are all terrible ideas.”
“There are no terrible ideas in brainstorming, Tom.”
“That is a lie.” He batted away the mushroom she tossed at him. “Ask her. The two of us. We sit down and we ask her. We. As in, the two of us. As in, do not rush off alone, Ava. Do not tackle this without backup. Do not—”
“O-kay! Cripes, I get it. And I’ve got to give you points for the direct approach. I like the idea of inverting a trope.”
“What?”
“Or would it be subverting? In the books, the amateur sleuths never just sit down with their suspect. They come up with all these plans to do everything but sit down with her, or him. They spy on them or follow them around or bug them somehow … everything but a sit-down.”
“What books are we talking about?”
“Ones you haven’t read, apparently. Never mind. It’s a good idea. Especially if we do it in a public place. Not a food court,” she added quickly.
Do it. Perfect opening. “Ah … Ava. About that…”
“Uh-uh.”
“… I wish to explain—pardon?”
“You don’t have to explain dick.”
“I don’t have to explain dick,” he parroted, bemused.
“You couldn’t think there. So we came somewhere you could. And, by happy coincidence, somewhere I could have you all to myself. Win-win. Case closed. Well. That case, anyway.”
Do not be fooled. It’s never this easy.
Yes, but in the past the Ava Capp factor was never in play, either.
“So I’ll reach out to Becka and we’ll set up a meet. She’s probably still doing the MSP-BOS-LAX run. We could probably meet her here in the Cities in the next couple of days. Assuming she wants to even meet with us.”
“My advice is to frame it as a meeting with you. She needn’t know I’m there until it’s time.”
“Okay. Definitely worth trying. And if she doesn’t want to get together, we can—”
“She will,” he said at once. “She will not be able to resist.”
Ava just looked at him. “Is that a fact?”
“It is.”
“So I guess that’s what we’re doing.”
“Very well.”
“This is about the time when I’d make a really clumsy innuendo like ‘so how do we kill time until then, wink-wink, nudge-nudge?’”
He laughed. “You are dazzling in your subtlety.”
“Aren’t I?” She rose, circled around the small table, came to him, rested her hands on his shoulders. Smiled down at him and—ridiculous thought—the light behind her lit up her hair like a curly halo. “I really need to kiss you right now, with your kind permission, so you’re gonna have to deal with that.”
He was already gently pulling her down, slotting her upper lip between his and gently sucking it into his mouth, encouraging her lips to part for him and then
“Oh. Yes.”
she was on his lap and wrapping both arms around him. “Oh my God,” she murmured, “I love the way you smell.”
“I love—” Every single thing about you. Even the oddities and cavalier approach to death. Especially the cavalier approach to death. Also these feelings are impossible. We only just met. “—how you taste.”
“Like steak and confidence,” she declared, and then giggled as he huffed laughter against her neck.
“Ava.” He slipped his hands under her shirt, up her back, cupped the smooth warm flesh of her shoulder blades. “I have to tell you something about myself.”
“Are you the killer?”
“No.”
“The vandal?”
“No. I don’t know why anyone vandalizes. So inefficient.”
“Planning to kill, fold, spindle, or maim me?”
“Never.”
“Do you have a secret family in Canada?”
“Not anymore.”
“Don’t care, then. More kissing, please.”
He obliged, to their mutual delight.
Forty-Two
THE LIST
Bottle Tom’s kisses somehow, market to public, make fortune
Moisturizer [sigh]
Corner Becka like a rat and wring a confession out of her
Or clear her
More kissing
She’d just finished shrugging into her sleuthing outfit (tan shorts, red sleeveless blouse, black flats, frizz going every which way because argh humidity) when she heard a brisk knock.
Excellent! And right on time, which came as no surprise. She darted across the