Page 51 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
“Which leads me to my next suspect,” Kate said, wielding her pen dramatically. “Kennedy Hempstead. She’s the heir, she just had a big falling out with her aunt over holding the wedding here, and she also seemed upset that her aunt was giving away the family farm. She said she wanted to be sure the island stayed with people who would properly care for it.”
“But we already established she was poisoned at the time.”
“Which is exactly the kind of thing a diabolical mastermind would do to escape suspicion,” Kate countered. “Consider this—it’s pretty amazing she had enough poison in her system to knock her out, but not kill her. That takes some precise measuring. Now, do I think Kennedy Hempstead is a diabolical mastermind? Behind that sweet, people-pleasing demeanor?”
Could she imagine it? Of course she could, she was a writer; she could imagine anything. It would certainly fit right into a Loretta novel. In fact, she would log that idea away for a potential book four storyline. But did she really think Kennedy Hempstead was a true psychopath, playing a role her entire life, biding her time to strike? She was the exact kind of nice that could mean she was hiding something. Kate couldn’t quite rule it out, even though it made her feel strange to put Kennedy’s name up on a fresh sheet of paper.
Jake narrowed his gaze on her. “Would that make you feel better about everything, if Kennedy did kill her aunt?”
“What?” Kate asked. “What is that supposed to mean?”
But Jake shook his head, clearly already regretting having said anything. “Never mind. Kennedy goes on the board. Who else?”
Kate frowned at him, but he refused to look at her, so she grabbed another sheet of paper. “Cassidy, the cousin. Remember, we saw her arguing with Rebecca in the garden when we first arrived. My guess is shewas begging Rebecca to put her back in the will and Rebecca refused. Apparently, she’s got some huge debts from a busted food truck business. Her life is in financial ruin, her aunt has ample means to save her, and yet she won’t over some old family squabble. Whatever she said to Rebecca was enough to make her aunt slap her. Maybe she thought if she got Rebecca out of the way, Kennedy might be more forgiving as the new heir. They’re basically like sisters, according to Kennedy.”
“Speaking of old petty squabbles,” Jake said, “what about the guy in the portrait hall? Didn’t Richie say he heard his aunt arguing with him when she left the pool room?”
“And he said the Bitch Bull was finally going to be castrated,” Kate agreed, nodding. “Marcus Sheffield. Maybe he saw his chance this weekend to exact revenge against Rebecca ruining his company and his life all those years ago.”
“Doesn’t really explain why he’d poison Kennedy, though,” Jake said. Still, he wrote Sheffield’s name beneath Cassidy’s.
“Good point,” Kate conceded. “But maybe it was the distraction he needed, like I said. And it would explain why she was poisoned enough to knock her out, but not enough to kill her. Because she wasn’t his real target all along.”
Jake gave a low whistle. “Nowthat’sa diabolical mastermind. Poisoning his son’s goddaughter so he could kill a woman he thought about marrying decades ago.”
“I know, right?” Kate said, nodding enthusiastically.
“Why set you up to take the fall for it all, though?” Jake asked. “You’ve never even met Marcus, have you?”
“No,” Kate conceded. “But even I have to admit I make a pretty good patsy. I mean, someone’s got to take the fall for a murder, and after the whole rehearsal dinner thing last night, everybody was real quick to believe I’d poisoned Kennedy. Why not her aunt, too? And this weekend is tailor-made to fit my last book. It writes itself. It’s like I wrote it as a practice run or something. Someone’s obviously setting me up to look unhinged. But they don’t know just how unhinged I can be. In a good, catch-a-killer kind of way, I mean.”
Jake gave a funny little laugh. “You really are a special breed, aren’t you, Kate?”
Kate tilted her head to the side. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
“You know, I’m not really sure, either. What I am sure of, though, is that it’s never boring with you around.”
Kate grinned, pointing at him. “Now, see, that onealmostsounded like a compliment.”
Jake smiled. “You know, I almost meant it as one.”
They stood like that, smiling like idiots at each other, and for a moment Kate could convince herself that everything was fine between them. That nothing happened two years ago, that they were still friends who hadn’t just made out in a crawl space while tracking down a murderer. That her feelings for Jake weren’t a mishmash of hope and fear and a longing so deep it scared her. But apparently she wasn’t doing any better of a job at keeping those thoughts off her face than she was at keeping them out of her head, because Jake’s expression shifted the longer he looked at her.
“Kate,” he began, and she knew she didn’t want to hear whatever words were on the other side of her name.
“We should go interrogate!” she said loudly, waving at the suspect list. “Before we, you know, run out of generator power. Or the storm destroys the house. Or the murderer figures out we’re onto them and we’re next.”
Jake took a breath, forcing it out in a sigh as he reached for her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Kate, I’m going to say something.”
“I don’t think you need to do that.”
“I do. And these things historically go tits up between us, so I’m going to try to be as clear as possible so you don’t misunderstand me. I want to have sex with you.”
She blinked several times, waiting for her brain to catch up and tell her she’d misheard, or misunderstood, or mis… something. But Jake was still there, his hands still on her arms, his gorgeously gorgeous face still looking intently at hers.
“What?”
“Normally I would think I’d made that plenty obvious, but communication with you on this topic has always been a bit dicey. So I thought, better to just come out and say it. I’d really like to have sex with you. Very badly. Right now, preferably.”