LITMIR.BIZ

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turned toward the street as a gust of wind rustled the trees and blew something through the arbor that flattened against my leg. I looked down to see a piece of paper wrapped around my shin like a pair of skinny jeans from the force of the wind. Grabbing it, I began to ball it up, until I saw dark splatter marks running across the face of what appeared to be a letter in the dim lighting.

      “What’s that?” asked Scarlet.

      Something told me the piece of paper was important, but I couldn’t make it out in shadowed driveway. “I have no idea. I can’t really see it.”

      The four of us huddled together as Jessie lit up the piece of paper in my hands with his cell phone and a collective gasp passed through us. Dark crimson splatter marks covered the letter, which was addressed to the Judge.

      “What’s it say?” asked Jessie.

      Daisy’s voice seemed to echo through the neighborhood even though it was barely above a whisper. “Is that blood?”

      “Read it, Charli,” Scarlet urged.

      I cleared my throat and looked around to see if anyone was watching, but everyone seemed to have their eyes and ears glued to the Judge’s house. “Judge,” I began to read, “I can’t take this anymore. I’m causing you problems with Isla, and John Luke is demanding I choose between him and you. I’m so sorry to disappoint you. I know this is a bad time, you must feel like you’re losing everyone, but please know you will always be in my heart. Ava.”

      “O.M.W. you don’t think that’s Ava under the . . . under the . . . you don’t, do you?” asked Scarlet.

      I looked up into her troubled eyes. “I don’t know.” I thought of the woman I’d caught making the walk of shame that morning from my daddy’s front door. “Jessie, take a picture of this.”

      “What in tarnation for?”

      “I . . . I . . .” What could I say? That my dad was having an affair with Ava and was mixed up in some kind of ugly triangle between the Judge and Ava?

      “That’s my husband.” That was Daisy’s favorite phrase. She used it to claim Jessie as hers and to tell other women to back off her man, to make fun of Jessie’s actions, or to ridicule him no end. At the moment, I was pretty sure she was using it to shame him into doing as I asked. Especially when she pushed Jessie’s hand that held his phone over the half-crumpled note from Ava and said, “Do as you’re told and take the picture.”

      Jessie snapped the picture as we all huddled over the letter. The sound of a masculine throat being cleared outside our circle caused us to jump in unison at the intrusion.

      “Charli Rae, please tell me you are not interfering with my homicide investigation.” Normally, his voice warmed me from my core out. Today, Mateo’s voice sent a shiver through my body . . . and it had nothing to do with chemistry.

      Chapter Four

      My investigation hadn’t started as planned. Mateo was immediately irritated that I’d read his piece of evidence, and when I questioned how I could have known it was evidence in the case without reading it, he immediately warned me not to meddle.

      “This case belongs to my detectives,” he said. “Keep your nose out of it, Charli Rae.”

      Mateo never used my middle name unless he was irritated or being all sheriffy. By now, he should have known all that did was raise my dander—like I’d raised his. We stared each other down like a pair of prickly pears—heat rising to our necks and sharp barbs ready to be thrown if one of us said the wrong thing. Then he pulled out a pair of gloves from his back pocket and took his anger out by snapping them on his hands with a pointed glare in my direction before he took the letter.

      “Where did you get this?” he asked.

      “It smacked me in the leg.”

      When he looked at me dubiously, Scarlet backed me up. “All she did was bend down and pick it up. It must have blown through the arbor.”

      Everyone turned and looked through the arbor that linked the two yards.

      “Did anyone see the letter before it hit Charli’s leg?” Mateo’s tone told all of us he didn’t have time for games. Jessie buckled and started to confess our crime of photographing Mateo’s evidence before turning it over.

      “I—”

      A pinch from Daisy on Jessie’s backside kept her husband’s mouth shut as he rubbed his rump and glared at his wife.

      “Did you want to add something, Jessie?” Mateo asked.

      “No, no. I just think it’s a tragedy.”

      “Yes, it is. But we’ll find who did this.” Mateo turned back to his crime scene with his piece of evidence in hand.

      Up until that point, I wasn’t sure if he’d seen Jessie taking the photo of the letter before he’d walked up and scared the bejeezus out of all four of us. I had no doubt Jessie would have confessed if not for Daisy’s warning, and I was happy she’d interfered. Yet if Mateo ever found out about the photo, he’d be more than prickly.

      In my defense, I’d planned to turn over his precious piece of evidence as soon as I identified it as an important piece to the puzzle in the murder of Ava James. Granted, if I’d been alone when I found it, I probably would have held on to the letter for a little while longer. I was well aware that would have put a hitch in his chain of custody for that particular piece of evidence, but I was worried about my daddy. I still wasn’t sure if he was a witness or a potential suspect. He wasn’t in cuffs, which was a good sign, but he wasn’t making any effort to walk across the lawn and come talk to me either.

      Knowing that Mateo’s loyalty was to the job—to the law and to justice—no matter what the cost, made me fidgety. My loyalty was to my daddy. Period. If that meant I had to clear his name, or God forbid, build his defense, then so be it. I would do what it took to take care of him. But there wasn’t a smidgen of doubt in my mind about his innocence. We’d been down this road once before when his girlfriend had been killed a little over a year ago. Now he was facing a second murdered girlfriend. The man had to have the worst luck with love of anyone I’d ever known, and I was more than a little worried about him.

      Watching Mateo walk away with the letter suddenly seemed unacceptable. I needed more information. I ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, ignoring its bold message, and took off after him.

      “Mateo, wait!”

      Sally Ferguson, the nearest uniformed deputy guarding the yellow tape border, made a quick turn in my direction, but Mateo stopped her by raising his hand. He didn’t immediately turn and face me, and that little pause suggested he was bucking up for an argument. Or maybe he was contemplating all the different charges he could use to take me to jail. I followed his path across the lawn despite a feeling of doom creeping down my back. I had questions about my dad and figured Mateo would have to get over me crossing that line in the sand, even if it was plastic and yellow and flapping in the breeze with bold letters telling me not to cross it. I also knew he didn’t like being hounded, but I needed answers.

      He turned around with a heavy sigh and a pointed look at the crime scene tape.

      “I need to know if you’re holding my daddy for questioning.”

      “Why would I do that?”

      Why indeed. “I don’t know why. Tell me why he seems to be glued to the ground near the Judge.”

      “That’s a question for him, not me.”

      His response threw me off guard. “You didn’t tell him he had to stay over there?”

      Mateo shook his head, and I looked past his shoulders to where my dad was awkwardly patting the Judge on the shoulder.

      “Bobby Ray is a witness, Charli.”

      “Oh.”

      His lips thinned

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