Blood Orchid (Holly Barker 3)

“Will you stop me telling you, if you think it’s going to relate to your case?”

“If I did that, then you might figure out what my case is.”

“You don’t give a girl much wiggle room, do you?”

“I don’t have all that much myself. I’d love to help, if I can, but I can’t hold out on Harry.”

Holly thought about it again. “We found Carlos’s van,” she said. “We’re going over it for prints now, hoping that the killer might have left some on it.”

“That’s a good development, maybe a shortcut to solving the murder.”

“You know something?” Holly said. “I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I don’t really care all that much about the murder. Carlos played in the wrong pigpen, and he got bit. What I care about is finding out why he was in my house, and if solving the murder will help with that, then okay, I’m interested in the murder.”

“You’re taking this personally, aren’t you?”

“It is personal when somebody breaks into your house and taps your phones.”

“No it’s not, it’s work. That’s why they tapped your phones, don’t you see that? I doubt if there’s anything in your personal life that’s all that interesting.”

“Oh, thanks a lot!”

“I mean for criminal purposes. Obviously, they want to know about something you’re working on. What else could it be?”

“I know, but it still pisses me off.”

“What could it be? What are you working on?”

“Now? The murder of Carlos Alvarez and who he was working for. But I wasn’t working on that when he pulled the job in my house.”

“What were you working on then?”

“Nothing! I mean, what, a stolen car? A stickup at a convenience store? Somebody selling dime bags on the west side of town? That’s what we do around here, you know; it’s a small town, and we investigate small crimes.”

“Then it doesn’t add up.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Keep digging until you get a break.”

“I intend to.”

He reached out and put a palm on her cheek. “Truce?”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“Please, I don’t want to take the heat for the Bureau.” He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“Okay,” she said, and kissed him back.

27

Holly sat in her car half a block fr

om the church and waited. Daisy was asleep, her head in Holly’s lap, her legs moving, giving out muffled barks. “Well, your day is more exciting than mine, so far,” she said to the dog.

She still carried a rosy feeling from that morning, when she had wakened with Grant’s head on her breast. They had managed to spend the whole night in bed together, naked, without making love. She had made him breakfast and sent him back to whatever an undercover agent did with his time.

It had been wrong of her to blame him for her problems with the FBI. “Speaking of the FBI,” she said aloud to herself.