McCoy back to his motel. See that he gets there without any more trouble.”
“But…” Lucy glanced at Blue, who had let go of Gerry.
Blue turned to Jenny Lee. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I am, too,” she said. She held her head high despite the tears that were in her eyes, and with a withering look at Gerry, she swept out of the room.
Blue turned and headed for the other door. Chief Bradley had pulled Gerry aside and was talking to him in a low voice. Lucy briefly considered waiting and voicing her arguments about being suddenly placed on duty during her night off, but she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Sheldon Bradley ran the Hatboro Creek Police Department according to his own set of rules. With a sigh, Lucy turned and followed Blue. She had to run to catch up with him.
“McCoy—wait!”
He turned and waited, his face impassive, his eyes expressionless. Together, they walked in silence out to Lucy’s truck.
It wasn’t until Lucy was pulling out of the country-club driveway that Blue spoke.
“I’m sorry about that,” he murmured.
She glanced at him. He was watching her in the dim light from the dashboard. “You can’t help the way you feel,” she said quietly.
He shifted in his seat, turning so that he was facing her. “You don’t think I was…” He stopped and started over. “Do you really think I would make a move on Jenny Lee at the rehearsal dinner for her wedding to my stepbrother?”
Lucy pulled carefully up to the stop sign at the corner of Main Street and Seaside Road. “Everyone at that party was waiting for something to happen between you and Jenny Lee,” she said, taking a left onto Main Street. “Everyone at that party saw you dancing with her and came to the same conclusion—that you’re here to stir up trouble, that you want to win Jenny Lee back.”
Blue’s face was in the shadows, but she knew that he was watching her.
“Everyone at the party. Including you?”
She had to be honest. “Yes.”
“And if I told you everyone at the party was wrong? That I feel nothing for Jenny Lee…?”
“I’d have to assume you were only saying that in a last-ditch effort to get me to spend the night with you,” Lucy said bluntly, pulling her truck into the motel parking lot and rolling to a stop.
“That’s not true,” Blue said quietly. “Yes, I want you in my bed, but I wouldn’t lie to get you there. Come on, Yankee, let’s just leave the past in the past.” He reached out across the cab of the truck, gently touching her hair.
Lucy shifted away from him. “Don’t.”
“Lucy—”
She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out. “I can’t do this,” she said. “I thought I could, but I can’t.” She opened her eyes and looked at Blue. “I can’t be a substitute for Jenny Lee.”
Blue laughed, a flare of impatience in his eyes. “You’re not—”
“Look, McCoy, I’ve got to go—”
“Why don’t we go get a beer and talk about this?” he suggested. “Is that roadhouse—what’s it called? The Rebel Yell. Is it still around? Why don’t we go there?”
“No. Believe it or not, I’m actually on duty now. I’ve got to go back to the station and file a report.”
“You know damn well you could do that in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said. “But I want to do it now.”
Silence. Lucy stared out the front windshield, hoping and wishing that Blue would just open the door and climb out of the truck’s cab. She heard him sigh.
“Damn Gerry to hell,” he said tiredly. “I should have wrung his neck while I had the chance.”
He opened the door and climbed out of the truck. “It was a genuine pleasure seeing you again, Lucy Tait,” he said in his soft drawl. “I’ve got to tell you—I wish it could have been an even bigger pleasure. If you’re ever in California, give me a call.”
She turned to look at him—she couldn’t help it. “Are you leaving town?”
His blond hair glistened in the cab’s overhead light as he nodded. “I’m heading out on the next bus. I don’t care where it goes, as long as it’s a city big enough to have an airport.”
He was leaving as soon as he could. Lucy looked away from him, afraid that he’d see the disappointment that surely crossed her face.
“Bye, Lucy,” Blue whispered. He closed the cab door and was gone.
* * *
Lucy’s phone rang well before dawn, waking her from a restless sleep.
It was Annabella Sawyer, the police dispatcher. “You better get down to the station,” she said in her raspy voice, without any words of greeting. “All hell has broken loose. The chief is calling in all available manpower.”
Lucy rolled over and looked at her clock. It was a few minutes after 4 a.m. “What’s going on?”
“It started as a 10-65,” Annabella said. “Jenny Beaumont called in at 2:11 a.m., reporting Gerry McCoy missing. He hadn’t come home. Fifteen minutes ago, Tom Harper came across Gerry’s motor vehicle by the side of Gate’s Hill Road. Shortly after that, the 10-65 became a 10-54. At 3:56, Doc Harrington verified it. We’ve got ourselves a 187.”
Lucy tiredly closed her eyes. “You mind translating that for me, Annabella?”
“The missing person became a report of a dead body,” Annabella said. “We’ve got a homicide on our hands.”
Lucy sat up. “What?”
“Gerry McCoy is dead,” Annabella intoned. “He’s been murdered.”
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