Death and a Dozen Roses by Annie Adams

Author:Annie Adams [Adams, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Annie Adams

“What is it that you think is so important, that you’d risk arrest coming up here to find it, Rosie?”

She was impressed really, at Jim’s ability to keep his composure. She’d probably have been screaming at him now if their roles were reversed. Instead, he’d led her down a hallway in the house, she assumed for privacy from the crime scene investigators, and he spoke with a surprisingly calm voice. There was something suspicious about that. She wondered what he held up his sleeve.

“The only thing the public knows about this terrible murder, is that a girl was found dead up here, by me,” she said. “The entire front page of every newspaper was dedicated to this story, and the only two pictures that were shown were of the outside of this ridiculous, tacky, excuse for a house and the front of my shop. No one is looking out for me but me. And that’s why I came here.”

She knew that last bit would hit the mark. Jim had admitted someone from his group had to have tipped off the press about Rosie’s involvement. When it came to police work, he was an honorable man, and this kind of shoddy, possibly harmful lapse in protocol that came from one of his own colleagues would not sit well with him. As for his code of honor in the romantic realm, Rosie didn’t have the same belief in his integrity. His response came just as she imagined it would. The hard veneer he was so good at projecting fell away, his eyes softened.

He stared at her for a long moment, then without a word, opened the door behind him. He waited for her to go through, then quietly shut the door. They stood in a large room near the back of the house. It hardly seemed possible, but this room was filled with more hunted and stuffed animals and animal parts per square inch than the great room in the front of the house. Leather couches grouped in one corner formed a nook where a tired hunter could look out the back window over the hot tub on the deck. A large, carved mahogany pool table took center stage in the longer part of the L-shaped room. On the other end of the L, foosball and air hockey games took up floor space, while large metal gun safes lined one wall and archery and fishing equipment hung neatly in racks on the opposite wall.

“It was that obvious, was it?” Rosie said demurely.

Jim sighed. “Look, Rose,” his use of her nickname did not escape notice. “I can’t change what happened. I’m trying my damnedest to find out who leaked your name. In the meantime, what I can do is find out who killed this girl, as fast as I can, to keep you out of danger.”

Rosie had to remind him she would keep herself out of danger, thank you very much. That’s why she was there, as she had explained only a moment ago.

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