What I wanted to do was to get her to move her hand so I could kiss her again.
Finally, losing patience and knowing we both had to get moving this morning, I tugged it in the air and dropped my mouth down on top of hers.
Things were just heating up again when we heard, “Breakfast! I’ve made pancakes and sausage. Although, if I’d known what was going on this morning, I’d probably have gone with bacon because you might be sick of sausage, Sienna.”
Tearing her mouth away from mine, she growled, “I’m going to kill her.”
All I could do was laugh. I loved the dynamic between the two best friends. It was one of the highlights of my day whenever I was around them.
I was also beyond grateful to Maddie for not letting Sienna withdraw to the point of no return, because I had no doubts this was how she’d done it and how she continued to do it. She knew her best friend better than most, and it showed because she knew exactly how much she could take. It also broke down some of her walls and reservation, giving us more of her to enjoy.
Rolling away from the woman who was fast becoming my whole world, I did it with a grin instead of irritation.
I was in between appointments and grabbing a bite to eat when my phone rang and the caller ID showed Nico’s name.
I was braced and ready to hear whatever information he had for me, but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what he said.
“You sitting down?”
“Fuck, it’s that bad?” I sighed, sinking into the chair in my office.
“Worse. Now, what I’m about to tell you can only be passed around the club, and I’ll be sharing it with the rest of my family. Monroe Mortimer was the officer who investigated the stabbing eleven years ago. He’s the husband of Hazel’s mom’s best friend.
“After harking my mind back and talking to some of the others, we remember him being pulled up for going out on long patrols with little contact, failing to attend callouts, and the sighting of his vehicle in random places.” He stopped, then added, “Including motels.”
“He was banging her mom.” It wasn’t a question, we already knew as much—or, at least, we’d guessed as much.
“Correct. I don’t know how much Hazel told you about her mom, or how much you’ve heard, but Elda Dunbar can only be described as a free bird, always dancing to her own tune, and doing who and what she wanted. When she turned up pregnant, there were a lot of rumors and finger-pointing by women in town at their husbands.”
“Jesus.” There was free, and then there was free. “Was an ID ever made on who the father was?”
“Negative. When Hazel was five, Elda met and married Chris Wong, who helped her raise Hazel. By all accounts, he was a loving stepfather who did everything for his stepdaughter. It was the stepdaughter who was the issue.
“I’ve found out today that at age ten, she slipped panties into his car for her mom to find, as well as other setups. One of our retired officers says he had to give her a warning when she was in sixth grade for stealing from patrons of the shitty motel just on the outskirts of town.”
“Money?”
“Receipts. Specifically, motel bill receipts. My best guess is that, when her mom didn’t find the other things she was leaving around, she was going to slip them into his laundry or someplace else to frame Chris for taking women to the motel.”
Blinking, I tried to summon up some sort of rational explanation for it. Maybe she was going for the money but got the receipts instead? The problem was, I didn’t doubt what Nico was saying was the truth.
“How did you find that out if Elda didn’t?”
“Seems Chris came into Daniels when it was under the old management, got drunk and divulged all of the shit he’d found.”
Christ.
“I lost touch with her mom, and never paid attention to her after we broke up. I was too busy studying at first, then came the businesses and joining the club. Are her and Chris still together?”
“Well,” he drawled, and I heard the rustling of papers. “We’ll get to that part of the story once I finish this one. I can’t say what else happened after the time Hazel was given a warning and when the stabbing happened, because she wasn’t caught again and—”
“We know what she did—she picked on and bullied Sienna.”
“I meant outside of school, Jinx. Inside it, we know what she was up to. It seems, though, that Elda was still in a sexual relationship with Monroe Mortimer. Maybe it hadn’t ever ended after the birth and her marriage to Wong.”
“He had to know Hazel was his daughter.”