LITMIR.BIZ

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into the bathroom for a long, hot shower. As good as it felt, it didn’t erase my unease. I finished my shower, got dressed, and texted my dad.

      Ru okay?

      It didn’t take long for him to respond. I’m fine. I’ll be at the store a little late this morning, but I’ll be there in plenty of time for you to leave on your trip.

      My trip. I’d completely forgotten about my trip. I’d gotten a mani-pedi on Wednesday for my first romantic weekend in ages. It’d been so long, I wasn’t sure I remembered the last one. Not that I had a ton of them, but this one was supposed to be special. For my birthday, Mateo had given me a pair of tickets to see the Tony Bennett concert in Dallas. He’d told me I could ask anyone I wanted to go with me to the concert since the drive meant at least one night in the Big D, and I’d finally gotten the nerve to ask him to go with me. Since then, he’d confessed if I’d asked anyone else other than Scarlet, he might have arrested the guy for jaywalking every day just to make sure he’d have a warrant or he’d have to figure out another charge when it came time for us to leave for the concert.

      I was pretty sure he’d been joking.

      But now it felt like a weekend getaway was impossible. Not only did I have people to talk to, Mateo didn’t exactly seem like he wanted to go anywhere with me last night. I sighed and gazed at the suitcase sitting in my living room. I’d packed in the beginning of the week, anxious to really identify this thing between us as a relationship.

      As if reading my mind, my phone rang with his special ringtone about bad boys.

      “Hello?”

      “Hey. How’d you sleep?”

      “Probably better than you.”

      He chuckled. That was a good sign. “Listen, about tonight . . .”

      That was a bad sign.

      “Can we postpone our weekend?” He didn’t wait for me to balk. “This case has us pretty busy and—”

      I didn’t give him time to explain further. “I understand.”

      “You do?”

      “Of course I do.” I didn’t, but my defensive walls were building. “I should have given you the opportunity to back out last night. I’ll let you get to it.” I started to hang up, but his voice stopped me.

      “Wait, Charli! I’m not backing out.”

      “You’re not?”

      “No. I’m asking if we can leave tomorrow morning instead.”

      “Oh.”

      “Did you think you were going to get rid of me that easily?”

      “If I’d asked last night, if we were still on for the weekend, would you have said yes?” I asked.

      “Querida, it will take more than a little of your meddling to chase me away.”

      I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I was pretty sure I should be insulted about the meddling comment, but Mateo calling me “darling” was throwing me off my game. We hadn’t graduated to terms of endearment yet, and I wasn’t quite sure if querida was a word you could use for a grandmother, a niece, or someone you were about to spend the weekend with. Then again, it could be the same as a cowboy using the term “darlin’” for every woman he came across that wasn’t his real sweetheart.

      I decided to ignore it and test different waters. “Do you have any leads in Ava’s case?”

      His sigh was enough to tell me he wished I’d taken the conversation in the other direction. “Charli, this is a police investigation. Please stay out of it.”

      I pushed. It’s what I did best. “So, my daddy’s just a witness, nothing more?”

      “Is there a reason I should look for him to be something more?”

      “Don’t be ridiculous.”

      “That wasn’t an answer.”

      “That’s because your question was absurd.” Seriously, did he think I would narc on my own dad?

      “I thought we’d gotten to a point of trusting each other.”

      I thought about that for a moment too long.

      “I guess I was wrong,” he said. His disappointment hung in the air like a typical Texas storm. Building. Darkening. Turning into something larger than it should have been. Any second as the silence grew between us it could explode into a massive storm or dissipate into nothing. I prayed for nothing. Mateo was the one to finally break the dead air.

      “I’ll call you later this evening.”

      “Okay.”

      My heart wanted to skip down Main Street while my brain tried to decide if I was happy or scared witless about the weekend, or if it was the case that had me tied in knots. My body chose to work through it and ignore both organs. It was for the best.

      I made my way through the secret door in the second bedroom of my apartment above the Barn. It used to be my parents’ room when I was a kid; now it was a guest room that my cousin used when he came in town for business or a visit. He’d developed a book app that featured our bookstore and had increased our online sales tremendously.

      I made my way downstairs and unlocked the doors for a couple that stood waiting at the front door for the store to open. When I asked if they were looking for anything specific, they advised they wanted to look at our used book section and I directed them toward the loft. Then I started brewing sweet tea for the tearoom we had in the store. It wasn’t anything fancy, just rustic charm with country lace draping small tables in the largest stall on the lower level of the Book Barn Princess. I normally bought treats from Franz at the bakery across the street, but today I went with peanut brittle and chocolate turtles; comfort foods I thought everyone would need. I grabbed a turtle and took a bite, savoring the flavors of caramel-covered pecans smothered in rich milk chocolate.

      I’d chosen well.

      The door buzzed and I stuck my head out of the stall to greet my customer. Scarlet strolled in looking like a fresh spring day in Texas. Her auburn hair was curled and bouncy and accentuated her bare shoulders. She wore a blue peasant dress with a very short hemline. Her stilettos almost brought her up to my eye level and displayed an expanse of shapely legs.

      “I love that T-shirt!” she exclaimed with her ever-present grin.

      Leave it to Scarlet to compliment a stone-washed pink T-shirt screen-printed with Lit happens at the #BookBarn across my chest, while she looked like a million bucks.

      I smiled and told her the truth. “You look gorgeous.”

      Scarlet’s laughter carried through the Barn like a song. “Some of us have to work at it, while others can get away with murder.”

      “It seems murder is on everyone’s mind,” I mumbled over another bite.

      Scarlet’s mood turned somber. “As it should be. We lost a very good woman last night. That’s what I came to talk to you about.” Scarlet moved closer and looked around the Barn.

      I nodded toward the loft. “There’s a couple customers upstairs, but so far that’s it.”

      She pulled me back into the tearoom. I wasn’t sure it was necessary. For the past ten minutes, the elderly couple upstairs had been arguing over which book was a more important depiction of American history, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Each had valid points, but the one argument they were missing was the authors’ lack of perspective from the African American characters in both stories. That was a true reflection on our history that would have given both of them points in their column if they’d recognized the flaw, but they hadn’t. Which one would receive more points was a matter of perspective.

      “Reba Sue came in to get her nails done today.”

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