Page 46 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
She thrust one hand into his curls as his mouth and his hand met in the middle, the rough slide of his tongue over her breast sending warning prickles down her thighs. With her other hand she reached up blindly to steady herself, her legs already trembling from the effort of staying braced against the wall. She found a wooden beam and grabbed it for dear life. But the beam shifted in her hand, creaking downward, and the next thing she knew there was a cold rush of air and she was tossed out into another room.
She yelped in surprise as she hit the plush carpeted floor, the impact jolting all the sexiness out of her. Jake had fallen to his knees, still inside the hiding space, his pupils contracting quickly. It was the only part of him that was contracting, the line of his erection thick and obvious against the leg of his jeans. He looked at her in surprise, his hair pulled in every direction by her fingers, his chest rising and falling quickly. His gaze darted down, and she realized one breast was still exposed.
“Oh god,” she groaned, quickly tucking it back in. It was one thing to give in to every filthy thought she’d had about Jake when they were trapped in the dark; it was another thing entirely to look him in the eye in the broad—albeit wan—light of day. She wasn’t even sure what room they were in, if they were alone, or how they were going to get out. She glanced around, looking anywhere but at Jake, trying to get her bearings.
“Where are we?” she panted, still sprawled out on the carpet, not yet trusting her thighs to support her. All she could see from her disadvantage point was about a thousand potted plants throughout the room. “An indoor jungle?”
“Looks like nobody’s here,” Jake said, standing up and heading toward her with intent. “Which means we won’t be disturbed.”
“Wait, wait,” Kate said, scooting backward into a plant. “We should talk—”
But the weight of the plant was top-heavy, and as she reached up to steady the pot, the tree itself came crashing down on her, raining leaves everywhere. She cried out in surprise, pushing the tree away on instinct, the branches surprisingly soft and heavy. The weight rolled off, a face turning up toward the ceiling, contorted in terror, sightless eyes like glass marbles.
It wasn’t a tree. It was a body.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kate pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth to muffle her scream as she scrambled across the floor, running into Jake as he reached down to help her up. She clung to him, her skin remembering the cold, rubbery feel of the body against hers, shuddering as she pressed her face into his shoulder.
“Holy shit, is that a body?” Jake asked.
“I think it’s Rebecca Hempstead,” Kate said.
“What, the Bitch Bull of Wall Street?” Jake asked in surprise.
“Okay, I don’t love thatthat’sthe nickname you remember, but yes.” She pressed her eyes closed like that might get rid of the memory of Rebecca’s lifeless face, but nope—there it was, behind her eyelids in vivid Technicolor. The woman had been so full of vitality, such a presence yesterday, that it felt like a farce to see her reduced to a cold body.
“What happened to her?” Jake asked.
“Well, I’m pretty sure she died,” Kate said. “Judging by the way her dead body just fell on me.”
“Yeah, sure, but… how? She seemed pretty fine last night when she gave that big speech fucking over her entire family.”
“She really did, didn’t she?” Kate muttered. Jake had a point—Rebeccahad been in the prime of life last night, with no hints of health problems or impending mortality. And with Kennedy’s poisoning, it was highly unlikely Rebecca would keel over from natural causes in the same night. Which meant Kate was going to have to go poking around a dead body for the second time this weekend.
Okay, sure. She could do this. At least she wasn’t drunk and terrified like she’d been last night. And nobody was accusing her of murder—yet. Plus, at least this time she was pretty sure the body would stay dead.
What would Loretta do?
“We need to examine the body for signs of trauma,” Loretta said, using her trusty swizzle stick to lift the edge of the woman’s dress along her neck to check for strangulation marks. “No obvious signs of a struggle here, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. The killer could have cleaned up after themselves. The body will tell us—”
“Kate,” Jake prompted. “You all right?”
Right, this wasn’t a Loretta case. This was a Kate Valentine case, and Kate was going to have to do her sleuthing herself.
The sight of Aunt Rebecca was no less upsetting on second viewing. Her body had landed face up, her mouth contorted to one side and her lipstick faintly smeared along the upper lip. She was wearing a caftan in a bold, geometric print, not the same outfit she’d had on for the rehearsal dinner. So, whatever happened to her, it happened after dinner. Her hair was looser, too, shiny and slightly mussed, like maybe she’d washed it.
“Well, I don’t see any bloodstains, no obvious signs of gunshot wounds or stab wounds,” Kate said, gingerly picking up one of Rebecca’s hands. Her skin was clammy and stiff, the fingers tightly wrinkled and the palms soft. “No obvious bruising, either. She’s not warm, so she’s probably been here awhile. Her fingers are all wrinkled up, though. That’s weird.”
“So, what, a heart attack? Brain bleed? Choked on a peanut?” Jake asked.
Kate gently lifted the woman’s head, feeling along her scalp for anykind of abrasions or cuts. “She didn’t hit her head. But her hair is kind of… damp? That’s weird, too, isn’t it?”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe she was out in the storm last night?”
Kate shook her head. Rebecca didn’t strike her as the type to rough it in the middle of bad weather. She seemed far more like thetake a long, hot bath and read a stuffy book while the servants do all the storm prepkind of woman. Kate leaned in, lifting a lock of hair and sniffing as if she might catch a hint of shampoo. But Rebecca’s hair didn’t smell like shampoo.
Kate wrinkled her nose. “She smells funny.”