Page 33 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
“Uh, we’re… seeing each other,” Kate said, feeling like that was innocuous enough that she couldn’t later be accused of lying. She pulledthings out of her suitcase and held them up blindly, trying to figure out what they were by shape. Were these pants or a shirt? Only one way to know. She stripped out of what was apparently Spencer’s shirt and pulled it on before wrapping herself in the sleuthing sweater, the wool scrubbing away some of the chill still left on her skin.
“When did that start?” Spencer asked, his voice sounding awfully close. Kate paused and glanced over the stack of books, but she couldn’t see a thing. Which meant, hopefully, Spencer couldn’t, either. Not that he hadn’t seen it all anyway, but still. Things were different.
“It’s new,” Kate said, still hedging that line of truth.
“Well maybe thisflingwill finally inspire some Loretta chapters out of you,” Spencer said. “Considering you’ve been dying to put Loretta and Blake together since the beginning.”
Kate sighed toward the ceiling. “Seriously?”
“At least now you can admit it,” Spencer said defensively.
“Blake isnotbased on Jake,” Kate said.
“Oh sure, the hot British bartender who was supposed to be the murderer and go to jail in the first Loretta book that youmagicallydecided would be a better rival love interest for Loretta isdefinitelynot based on Jake.”
The sarcasm was thick enough that all Kate needed was a knife to spread it on a piece of toast. Or to stab Spencer with it.
“Their names even rhyme!” Spencer said.
“Why does everyone keep pointing that out?” Kate muttered. She felt around in the suitcase again, trying to locate a pair of pants and maybe some socks. She felt along the inside of the suitcase for the mesh pocket where she kept her bundled socks. Her fingers snagged on a little hole in the lining, the fabric making a small ripping sound. Great, now even her suitcase was falling apart. There was something wedged down in there, hard and small, and it made the sleuthing sweater itch all over.
“I ran into Eric,” Kate said casually, digging her fingers into the lining to try to hook whatever was stuck in there. “He said you bailed on him last night. Apparently, you were supposed to have bro time together? What happened?”
“Oh, that,” Spencer said, trailing off awkwardly. “Something… came up.”
“Something like… what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Spencer said, in a tone that implied it definitely did, and he definitely didn’t want to tell her. “Kate, about the speech I gave—”
“Yeah, why does your mother thinkIswitched your speech?” Kate demanded.
Spencer grunted, and she didn’t need the light to know he was tugging at his hair, another nervous habit from childhood. Kate used to tease him, saying he’d be bald by the time he turned forty if he couldn’t break the habit. “I tried to tell her it couldn’t have been you, but she’s convinced you were trying to… I don’t know. Sabotage the dinner? Embarrass me? Win me back?”
“Win you back?” Kate said, finally getting ahold of something long and thin and tugging the piece loose from her luggage. The cardigan was so itchy it was like fire ants crawling all over, the delicate chain dangling from her hand with a surprising weight. A keychain, maybe? “Spencer, that’s the most—”
Not a keychain. A necklace. Kennedy’s diamond pendant necklace.
Kate gasped, standing up so fast she knocked over one of the book stacks and sent them scattering across the attic floor.
“Kate?” Spencer said in alarm, and there he was, taking her by the arms. The necklace swung wildly in her hand, knocking into his wrist. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Spider,” she gasped, the first thing that came to mind. “I thought I felt a spider.”
Kennedy’s necklace. Hidden in the lining of her suitcase. Just like Loretta book three, when Loretta found the family heirloom ring that the groom’s sister, Lucretia, had stolen and hidden in the lining of her luggage because she had considered it her inheritance.
“Kate,” Spencer said, his grip tightening. Drawing her in closer.
“Spencer,” she said, slowly and cautiously. It occurred to her that they were alone, in an attic on the fourth floor, on a remote island severalhours off the coast of Seattle with no working phones. Spencer could be anyone in the dark, a complete stranger. A killer who had planted his fiancée’s necklace in Kate’s luggage to frame her for murder.
“Spencer,” she said again, more hastily. “We should go. This isn’t… We shouldn’t be here. You can’t… We can’t be up here. Let’s go.”
“Kate,” Spencer said again, and she knewthatvoice well enough, even though she hadn’t heard it in six months. It triggered an automatic, highly inconvenient reaction in her body, which was when Jake fucking Hawkins decided to make an appearance.
“Kate, you up here?” he called, his voice rising up the stairs. “Good news, Abraham said they found a patch for the generator, they’re powering it up now.”
At which point the lights buzzed to life, illuminating Kate in her sleuthing sweater and no pants, Spencer with his arms halfway around her, and Kennedy’s missing necklace dangling from her fist.
Chapter Eighteen