Cunning Attractions Read online

  Cunning Attractions

  Squeaky Clean Mysteries, Book 12

  Christy Barritt

  Contents

  Copyright:

  Let’s Stay Connected!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Coming Next:

  Also by Christy Barritt:

  Squeaky Clean Mysteries:

  The Sierra Files:

  Holly Anna Paladin Mysteries:

  Carolina Moon Series:

  Cape Thomas Series:

  Standalones:

  The Gabby St. Claire Diaries:

  Complete Book List:

  About the Author

  Copyright:

  CUNNING ATTRACTIONS: A Novel

  Copyright 2016 by Christy Barritt

  Published by River Heights Press

  Cover design by The Killion Group

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The persons and events portrayed in this work are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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  Chapter One

  “What do you think, Gabby? Does she speak English?” Sierra swirled the tea in her mug as we stared out the window of The Grounds, our favorite coffeehouse and hangout spot.

  My best friend and I had a perfect view of our apartment complex from our table and, right now, our neighbor’s new girlfriend was arriving. We’d been anxious to see what she looked like after Bill McCormick, our neighbor, had made her sound too good to be true. You’d think he was dating a supermodel from the way he described her. Then again, he also described his ex-wife like the devil, so Bill obviously had a proclivity for exaggerating.

  Gripping my ancho-chili latte—not my best choice for a drink—I watched as the woman slipped one long leg from her car. She then slipped out another shapely leg before standing at full height—full height that looked close to six feet. Long, brown hair flowed down her back. Her outfit hugged her body in all the right curvy places.

  I blinked, certain my eyes were deceiving me. Maybe Bill hadn’t been exaggerating. Did that mean his ex really was the devil also?

  “So?” Sierra asked, still staring out the window.

  I looked back at my friend, wondering what she was talking about. “So what?”

  She turned away from Bill’s new girlfriend long enough to give me a “what for?” look. “Do you think she speaks English?”

  “You can’t be serious.” It was my turn to give Sierra the look now. “You’re not really asking me that.”

  Sierra pushed her plastic-framed glasses up higher on her cute, little Asian nose, looking halfway offended as she narrowed her eyes. “It’s a legitimate question.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. I burst into laughter. “Sierra, she’s of Russian heritage, not a mail-order bride.”

  Her eyes widened, and her bottom lip dropped. “Bill is getting married?”

  On an ordinary day, I might attribute Sierra’s loopy train of thought to losing too much sleep lately because of her sweet, teething baby, Reef. My friend, who’d graduated at the top of her class from Yale, was usually sharper than a shark’s tooth during a feeding frenzy.

  However, I’d just brought her home from the doctor. She’d injured her knee while doing a stunt during an animal rights protest two weeks ago. Against all good sense, Sierra and her employees had decided to pose like lambs at the slaughterhouse. I’ll spare you the details of exactly how they’d enacted it.

  Needless to say, the stunt hadn’t closed down the new meat-processing plant, but it had torn her ACL.

  Chad—her husband—and I finally convinced her to go to the doctor. Now she was on pain medication, which I wasn’t sure she’d ever taken before, not even after childbirth.

  I looked back at Katarina and tried to clarify what I’d said earlier about the woman. “Okay, okay. Maybe I should have said: She’s not a mail-order girlfriend.”

  “Let me get this straight: she is mail-order?” Sierra didn’t crack a smile. She was dead serious.

  “No, she’s not a mail-order anything. She’s just Russian.” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realized this conversation was anything but politically correct, but I couldn’t seem to steer it in a different direction.

  Sierra propped her leg up on an extra chair and took a long, slow sip of her drink. “They did meet online—supposedly. It’s not out of the question that he paid money to bring her over. I suppose it wouldn’t be called mail-order anymore, but maybe it’s the modern-day equivalent.”

  “They met online on a dating website.” I needed to clear all of this up before any dirty, nasty rumors were started.

  Sierra shrugged, obviously still not convinced. “Or so he says.”

  I apparently had a little more faith in Bill than she did. “Maybe we should be a little nicer to our dear, loud neighbor.”

  “Nicer? He’s the crankiest man I’ve ever met—and that means a lot coming from me because I can be pretty cranky. Besides that, the man’s far from being handsome or debonair—”

  “That sounds so harsh—and that means a lot coming from me because I can be pretty harsh.”

  We both laughed. We were a pair. No one could deny that.

  I nodded toward the woman standing in front of our apartment complex looking a little lost and bewildered. “A woman who looks like that does not look like she belongs beside Bill McCormick. I suppose his newfound fame has made him a little more desirable.” I did air quotes around the last word, feeling so very adult in doing so. Probably because that’s what my sixth-grade math teacher had always done. However, she’d been annoying.

  With election season in full swing, Bill, radio talk show host of America Live!, had just released a book that had done surprisingly well. He was now a guest on talk shows and morning news programs instead of vice versa. His show had been picked for additional syndication. Sponsors were pouring in like rats out of the woodwork.

  He truly did seem on top of the world.

  Add his new girlfriend to the mix, and he should feel like a king. Based on the way he was walking around lately with his chest puffed out and his shoulders back, he did. He didn’t care if anyone knew it either.

  “Bill’s not home.” Sierra continued to stare across the street, a knot forming between her eyes.

  I stared also. His girlfriend—he’d told us
her name was Katarina Sokolov —seemed to notice that Bill’s car wasn’t there, and she stood on the sidewalk out front, checking her phone and tapping her foot impatiently. Thankfully, the day was unseasonably warm for October, so at least she should be comfortable.

  “Maybe we should go meet her,” I suggested.

  “You think?” Sierra’s eyes lit with enough excitement that she jostled her tea right out of her paper cup.

  “Oh, I think. I totally think.”

  We grabbed our drinks and sauntered—well, I sauntered; Sierra limped—outside, trying not to look overly eager. I found it hard to keep a pleasant smile on my face as the scent of trash wafted around me. Today was garbage day in the neighborhood, and disposal bins lined the street. That, mixed with the unusually humid air, made for one big, bad smell of rot.

  I comforted myself by thinking about snooping. It had been a long time since I’d meddled in anyone’s love life, and it seemed just as good a pastime as any.

  As we got closer, I observed Katarina more closely. With every new detail, my doubts about her relationship with Bill grew deeper. Her skin appeared to be olive-toned and flawless. She wore a short skirt—short enough that I knew those legs were all hers, a chest-hugging short-sleeve sweater, and high heels that just begged for male attention.

  She basically looked like a supermodel, which contrasted sharply with Bill’s pudgy, I-couldn’t-care-less-how-I-looked persona. He often had stains on his clothes, wore outfits that didn’t properly fit, and his hair was unkempt.

  The two just didn’t fit together, no matter how I looked at it.

  Not that it was my business. But going through life minding my own business had never been my M.O. Just ask . . . oh, any one of the dozens of people whose lives I’d meddled in over the past few years. Most of them loved me for it.

  Except the ones I’d put in jail. But those were stories for other days.

  “Good afternoon,” I called. “You must be Katarina Sokolov.”

  She turned her head and studied Sierra and me. Her eyebrows flickered upward, as if she didn’t approve of us, and she pursed her lips.

  In my mind, she would sound like Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

  I held my breath, waiting to see if I was right.

  “Who you are?” Her Russian accent was strong and lent a mysterious, exotic air about her. And she did kind of sound like Natasha Fatale.

  Score one for Gabby.

  “We live here.” Sierra pushed her glasses up higher again. “We’re friends of Bill. I’m Sierra. This is Gabby.”

  Her lips twisted into a half-frown. “He supposed thirty minutes ago to meet me.”

  “He must be running late,” I said.

  Her eyes flickered. “He never late. Not for me.”

  Her statement made it loud and clear that Bill was her puppy dog.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here any time now,” I assured her. I kind of hoped he was late, though, just to get her off her high horse.

  As if to show her annoyance, she glanced at her watch one more time. “I suppose I wait here in heat.”

  Sierra’s eyebrows shot up, and that dopey look filled her eyes. “You’re in heat—?”

  I had to stop my loopy friend before she said something that would deeply embarrass her.

  “She means she thinks it’s hot out here,” I quickly corrected.

  If 75 degrees was considered heat then, yes, that was what she could do.

  Then I heard the gentle voice inside me. Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

  My gut twisted. I didn’t want to do this. But I knew better than to ignore The Voice—and I wasn’t talking about the television show.

  “You can wait up in my place, if you’d like,” I finally said. The words felt like acid reflux as they came out.

  Katarina offered me that cold stare again before nodding. “Very well, then.”

  Before I could say anything else, she charged toward the door.

  Well, she was going to be fun.

  Sierra and I exchanged a look.

  I couldn’t picture Bill with someone this high maintenance. But I supposed he would put up with it if it meant dating someone who looked like Katarina. In his mind, it probably upped his social status. I could mentally hear Tal Bachman singing “She’s So High.”

  Thankfully, I heard a car pulling into the parking lot at just that moment. I turned and spotted Bill in the brand new Mercedes he’d just purchased after receiving a hefty book advance.

  Thank You, Lord.

  Now I wouldn’t have to entertain his girlfriend. I didn’t need any more opportunities to put my foot in my mouth.

  When Bill stepped out of the car, I immediately noticed the sweat across his forehead and his unusually tousled hair. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and started our way.

  Katarina stood at the front door of the building with a hip popped out, waiting for him to approach her.

  Diva.

  Something was wrong, I realized. Something bigger than him running late and facing the wrath of his new mail-order—I mean cyber-arranged—girlfriend.

  He stopped short of Katarina and turned toward me. I immediately felt Katarina’s eyes boring into me, but I had other more pressing concerns. Like my curiosity, which beckoned for answers.

  “Gabby, you’ll never believe this,” Bill started.

  “What happened?” It must be serious if he was addressing me before his girlfriend.

  “It’s my ex-wife. She’s dead.”

  Chapter Two

  “What do you mean your ex-wife is dead?” I asked. Certainly, I hadn’t heard him correctly.

  Bill squeezed the skin between his eyes. “I’m still trying to process everything. I just got the phone call.”

  Katarina clacked toward him and wrapped her long, skinny arms around his neck. “Oh, you poor thing. You are okay?”

  She made duck lips at him and stroked his cheek.

  I wanted to look away, but, like watching a car crash, I couldn’t. It was too horrifying to miss a single minute.

  “I’m okay. Thanks, darling.” Bill leaned forward and planted a too-long-for-my-comfort kiss on her lips.

  I cleared my throat, having no choice but to break them from this moment. “How did she die?”

  He tugged at his collar. “She was . . . murdered.”

  Sierra, Katarina, and I all let out a collective gasp.

  “Do the police know who did it?” I asked.

  Bill shook his head.

  “How . . . ?” I asked.

  “Bludgeoned to death.”

  My stomach turned at the thought. That wasn’t one I heard every day. I’d expected a gunshot wound or stabbing, even strangulation. I’d encountered very few bludgeonings.

  “The police don’t think you’re a suspect, do they?” I asked.

  He sighed and turned away from Katarina, but—have no fear—she kept her lanky arms around his neck.

  “Emma Jean and I had an argument the other night,” Bill said, aging before my eyes. “You know we had a tumultuous relationship. It’s not going to look good.”

  Bludgeoning usually showed some kind of personal connection and deep-seated anger. But that fact alone wouldn’t point to Bill as being the guilty party. It certainly wouldn’t help, either.

  “Did the police say when she died?” My brain went into detective mode.

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t ask. My impression is that they don’t know yet.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I just know that her other ex-husband reported her missing.”

  “Her other ex-husband?” That was the first I’d heard of that development.

  Bill nodded. “That’s right. They got divorced right before the baby was born.”

  The baby! That was right. Emma Jean hadn’t wanted kids when she was married to Bill, but then she’d remarried and had gotten pregnant right away. Bill had lamented many times abo
ut the fact.

  “Where’s the baby?” I asked.

  “Her other ex had him. He’s safe.”

  Well, at least that was good news. “Is there anything else you know?”

  He shook his head. “No, not really. It’s not like the police are going to share anything with me.”

  I let the facts settle in my mind. “Bludgeoned to death, huh?”

  That was the one thing I couldn’t get past.

  He nodded. “That’s what they said. If I were going to kill someone, I would have used one of my guns. It’s a lot less work.”

  “Do me a favor, and don’t tell the police that.” I cringed as another thought crossed my mind. “She wasn’t killed with a microphone or something of that sort, was she?”

  Bill narrowed his eyes and dropped his head to the side. “Really?”

  “I’m just checking. You never know about these things.”

  He quickly sobered. And an instant of fear flashed through his gaze. “What should I do, Gabby?”

  “Just hang tight. There are no guarantees that you’ll be charged. The police will need a lot of evidence before they’re able to get an arrest warrant.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Of course.”

  “Would you like for me to look into this for you?”

  He was silent a moment, so I waited. Katarina squeezed his arm and seemed to snap him into action. His chest puffed out again, and his shoulders went back.

  “No, I’ll be fine,” he said. “The police will figure this out.”

  I didn’t want to be offended. I really didn’t. But I was frequently sought after for investigations like this. The fact that Bill had rejected my offer stung like a friend accidentally tasering you.

  But I didn’t want him to see that, so I nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll be praying in the meantime.”

  “Thanks, Gabby.”

  With that, he and Katarina walked toward his car with their arms around each other, murmuring things undistinguishable to me. I could only imagine. I didn’t want to imagine.