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The sound of a car door made him pause before he could finish typing in his reply. Someone had pulled into the driveway.
Slipping his phone in his pocket, he went to the window, where he could see the front grille of a blue van. He had his hand on the 9 mm in his shoulder holster when a woman came into view carrying two foam cups.
Not Butch. Adriana. She’d put on a little weight since that Christmas photograph had been taken, but there was no mistaking her identity.
Jonah wondered how she was going to feel about seeing him again and couldn’t imagine she’d be too pleased. But he had to intercept her or she’d wake Francesca.
“Why’d I have to come back to Arizona?” he grumbled, and met her at the door.
At first, she didn’t notice him. She was preoccupied with fixing the lid on one of the drinks she carried. But when she glanced up to reach for the door handle and found it already open, with him standing there, her jaw dropped and so did the hand holding the cups in their cardboard container. The whipped mochas she’d brought would’ve spilled all over the stoop if he hadn’t grabbed them.
“Jonah,” she breathed, and stepped back as if any kind of contact might burn her.
“Adriana.” He offered her a smile but his effort to be friendly did little to calm her.
She gave a shake of her head and self-consciously shoved the strands of hair that’d fallen from her messy ponytail back into place. Not only was she surprised, she didn’t like that he’d caught her at her worst. He knew because that was exactly how his sister would’ve reacted to the same situation.
“I—I didn’t realize Francesca had company. But that’s okay. I can come back later,” she said, and left the drinks behind as she fled to her van.
Jonah hadn’t meant to scare her off. But he let her go. Francesca needed to get some sleep. And he wasn’t eager to entertain Adriana on his own. He’d never expected to see her again. Francesca, either, for that matter.
Francesca could call her later, he decided. The fact that Adriana’s picture was on the mantel and she could walk up to the house as casually as she had indicated the two were still friends. No thanks to him, of course. But that gave him one less thing to feel guilty about.
His phone vibrated with another text message. “Damn it, Lori. When you ask someone for a favor, you’re not allowed to be so demanding.”
He went inside to put down the cups so he could check his phone, but this time it wasn’t Lori. It was Investigator Finch.
If you’re up, call me.
Going into the laundry room, he closed the door so the sound of his voice wouldn’t carry to the bedroom and dialed Finch’s cell.
It rang twice before transferring to voice mail.
Jonah didn’t leave a message. He was about to redial when the lingerie on a small rack above the dryer caught his eye. A see-through lacy black bra and matching thong hung inches from his face. They had to belong to Francesca. But who was she wearing underwear like that for? The man in the D.C. photograph?
The ringing of his phone dragged his attention away from the underwear. It was Finch. “What’s up?”
“We’ve got a body on our hands. A real one this time.”
He gripped the phone tighter. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Call came in less than five minutes ago. The owner of Skull Valley Chocolate and Handmade Gifts found a corpse slumped against her door when she arrived for work.”
“No one else spotted it?”
“This isn’t your usual downtown. It’s basically four corners with a handful of businesses that are spread out. Not a lot of people out here.”
“I see. Is the victim a man or woman?”
“Woman.”
“Any chance she could’ve died of natural causes?”
“Wishful thinking, Mr. Young? No. It’s a homicide.”
“Do we have an ID?”
“Body was naked, no purse or anything. The shop owner was so hysterical it was tough to get a description. I did get the color of hair. Brown. That’s not much, but it fits the gal Ms. Moretti’s been searching for.”
