Talk Nerdy to Me (Nerds, #5)(26)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

By the time he came back to the entryway, Eve had on her jacket and boots and was smiling brightly. She was smiling a little too brightly, as if mentioning the word love in connection with him had all been a silly misunderstanding and she was moving past that moment as fast as possible.

"After we check the car, we need to see if anything’s been disturbed in the garage," she said.

"Yep." He pretended to be all business, when all he could hear ringing in his ears was "And I love that about you."

If she only knew how close he’d come to blurting out his feelings for her, too. That wouldn’t do either one of them any favors. He tried not to think about the fact that she might be falling for him just as he was falling for her.

But he thought about it anyway as they walked out the door. She took her keys and made a production of locking up once they were outside on the porch. He was glad to see she was being extra cautious. He didn’t want to contemplate what he’d do if anything happened to her. She was fast becoming the most important person in his life.

Hell, what a mess. She was everything he’d ever wanted—brainy, fun to be with, creative, sexy. He was also aware of her beauty, but that wasn’t the tipping point for him.

He was falling for her because she got him. And he liked to think that he got her, too. They might be—what was that corny term? Soul mates. He’d never believed in the concept before, but then he’d never seriously considered Eve as a life partner. And he still couldn’t do that.

Because of the way he felt about her, he could never ask her to give up her dream of living in what she considered the ideal little town. He’d researched the area around Hoover Dam. There were no quaint little villages there.

Vegas itself was big, modern, and busy. He found the concept exciting, but she wasn’t into exciting cities at the moment. Sure, the neighboring towns of Henderson and Boulder were smaller, but they weren’t anything like Middlesex. New England generated its own brand of cozy little community, and Middlesex was a perfect example. If she loved this, he couldn’t imagine her loving Nevada.

He could change his plans and stay here, of course. That option had crossed his mind more than once, and he’d ended up rejecting it every time. The thought of staying in Middlesex forever caused something vital in him to start withering. He’d end up resenting the sacrifice, one Eve probably wouldn’t let him make, anyway.

"I don’t know which to wish for," she said as they crossed the yard.

He was startled. Had she been reading his mind? "What do you mean?"

"If the car’s locked, then we know the person has a key, so that narrows it down to Eunice."

And your sister, he thought. He didn’t say it, though. She was probably thinking the same thing. "At least then you could confront Eunice and get to the bottom of it."

"I don’t want it to be Eunice. I don’t want to think that I bought a house right next door to someone like that. This town is supposed to be my safe haven. So if the car’s unlocked, we still have no idea who’s doing this. It could still be Manny or Kyle, for that matter."

"They’d have had to make a speedy trip. When we left they were still frosting cookies." He considered how long he’d diddled around in the kitchen while he’d tried to decide how to manage the chaps. "And I hate to admit this, because I like to think of myself as having more staying power, but it wasn’t as if we spent a lot of time on the main event."

"We spent exactly the right amount of time."

"I’m glad you think so, but it still wouldn’t have given Manny and Kyle much opportunity to do anything."

"But we have no idea what they intended to do," Eve said with perfect logic. "It could have been a short-term thing."

"Yeah, but if someone had access to the garage and they were after whatever was in there, why wouldn’t they just leave the door open and go back out that way? Why bother to close the garage door and go out the front?"

They reached the driveway, where the Civic sat there looking the same as it had when they’d arrived earlier. The footprints in the thin layer of snow beside the car could have been anybody’s. Charlie supposed a crackerjack crime team might be able to take some impressions, but a crackerjack crime team wouldn’t be bothering with this trivial stuff. The cooking oil was undisturbed.

"They closed the garage door and went out the front because of what you said a while ago," Eve said. "They want to confuse us so we don’t know who it is." Grabbing the passenger door handle, she pulled it open.

Charlie took a deep breath. He’d been hoping the car would be locked. That way they could narrow it down to Eunice or Eve’s sister Denise. Because he didn’t really think her sister was the culprit, then Eunice could be nabbed and the threat would be gone.

Now they were back to square one. "Is your opener still in there?" If someone had swiped it, they had another problem.

"It’s still here." She pressed it and the garage door opened.

They stood together watching it go up as if waiting for a play to begin.

"Everything looks the same," Eve said.

"We have to check it out, though. Something could be missing."

"That’s true." She started forward.

"Wait. Lock your car."

"Whoops." She aimed her automatic key at the car and the parking lights flashed as the doors locked. "Now, see? I almost forgot that, again." She paused and looked at him. "If only I could believe I forgot to lock the front door and that we imagined the click of the door closing, we’d have no evidence of any wrongdoing."

"Except for the fact that someone took a crowbar to your back door. That falls in the category of blatant wrongdoing, if you ask me."

"Well, yeah. There’s that. I keep conveniently forgetting about the back door, maybe because I don’t want to remember." Her breath hissed out between her teeth and formed a little cloud in the air. "I really hate this."

"I know. Me, too." He let his glance rove the interior of the garage, hoping something—anything—would look obviously out of place. Instead it all looked normal, or as normal as any garage that contained a purple hovercraft.

"Well, it’s getting cold out here," Eve said, picking up the cooking oil. "I vote we go in and put down the door so we can thoroughly check out my work area. Maybe we’ll find some sort of clue as to what happened."

"Wouldn’t that be nice?" Charlie would love to have at least one of these problems solved. If he couldn’t figure out what to do about his relationship with Eve, at least he’d like to solve the mystery of the break-in.

Twenty minutes later the garage was warm and cozy thanks to the space heater. They’d both taken off their coats and laid them over his bike, and they’d scoured every inch of the garage for clues.

Eve gazed at him, her expression bewildered. "I don’t see anything different from the way we left it," she said.

"Maybe we came home before they could do whatever it was they’d planned."

"That would eliminate Manny and Kyle," she said. "No way did they beat us here." She made a face. "Shoot. I don’t want to eliminate Manny and Kyle."

"I know." He leaned against the workbench. "I’m only trying out theories. But say someone was here ahead of us."

"Which means whoever it was didn’t use the garage door opener. They had a key." She started pacing again. Apparently she liked to move while she thought things through.

"Yeah, they had a key." Eunice was still his prime suspect, and he would stick with that until proven wrong. "So if they were here and about to do something, and we came home, they’d have to run into the house and hide somewhere until it was safe to leave."

"Hold on." She stopped in mid-pace and swung to face him. "If what you say is true, then they would have had to open the dead bolt to get out. I didn’t think of that before, but the dead bolt makes just as much noise being opened as being locked."

Charlie had an answer for that one, too. "They opened the dead bolt earlier, in case they got caught and had to make a run for it. They might have thought they could get all the way out the door, but decided at the last minute it was too risky."

"But where in the world would they hide? My closets are staffed to the gills. Even the bathtub has all my dry cleaning piled in it."

If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Charlie would have laughed. One advantage of so much clutter might be that intruders had precious few hiding places. But there was still one. "She could have ducked into that little alcove where the back door is."

Eve’s gaze sharpened. "You just said she"

"That’s because I think I know who it might be."

She began nervously drumming her fingers against her thigh. "But we have no proof."

"No." He realized he was treading on thin ice. "Except that we only know of two people who have a key. And I’ll bet you’d rather pin this on Eunice."

"I don’t want to pin it on either of them." She resumed her pacing. Charlie could almost hear her thinking, trying to come up with a way that wouldn’t implicate either her neighbor or her sister.

Finally she turned back to him, her eyes alight with a new idea. "What if it’s someone who knows how to pick a lock? I mean, what do we really know about Manny and Kyle? They could have those skills. They could have criminal records, even! Rick might have no idea what kind of men he’s dealing with."

Charlie blew out a breath. "I understand that you want it to be Manny or Kyle, or both of them working together. But everything points to Eunice. She can’t be making a lot of money working at the insurance office."

"No."

"So she has motive." Charlie held up a finger. "And if money wasn’t enough motive, she also envies you."

"I guess." Eve didn’t look happy about admitting that.

Charlie held up a second finger. "She has opportunity. She lives right next door and she has access with the key you gave her."

"I just don’t see her as the kind of person to take what isn’t hers. I know she envies me, but she’s fairly open about it, and she’s already supplementing her income with the—" Eve stopped abruptly and looked away. "Anyway, I can’t believe she’d try to steal the concept for the hovercraft. It doesn’t fit."

"How’s she supplementing her income?"

She sent him a pleading glance. "I’ve promised not to say."

"You don’t have to say if you don’t want to. But it seems like we need all the info we can get if we’re ever going to solve this." Hearing that Eunice had a secret source of income only increased his suspicion.

‘This has to stay between us."

He was insulted that she’d even feel the need to say so, but maybe she was used to another kind of guy. "We already have several things that have to stay between us. Me nak*d except for a pair of chaps would be one of them."

"Good point." Her eyes sparkled. He hoped that expression meant she was remembering those moments with lust and not hilarity. The experience had been intense, but looked at from a certain perspective, it could be funny, too. Maybe someday he’d be able to laugh at what he’d done, but right now it was too sensitive a subject for that.

"Eunice takes 900 calls," Eve said.

"After the paint and the muscle stimulator, I’m not surprised." He wondered if Rick had gotten wind of the 900 calling thing. Rick was intrigued as it was, without adding another element to rope him in. Oh, well. Rick’s life. If Eunice turned out to be the person who’d been breaking into Eve’s house, Charlie didn’t have to worry. Eunice would end up in jail.

In the meantime, though, Charlie thought he should warn Rick that he might be getting mixed up with the wrong woman. "Look, I won’t tell Rick about the 900 calls." And it might be just as well if he never found out. "But I think he should know about our suspicions."

"I really hate to accuse her, Charlie. I mean, what if she’s innocent and she and Rick have a future together?"

"What if she’s guilty and somehow manages to swindle my cousin out of a bunch of money? You throw sex into the mix and his judgment isn’t all that clear."

"How would she get money out of him?"

"I don’t know." But he had a potential suspect and he wanted to be right. "Maybe blackmail. She could have taken pictures of him while they were doing weird things with green paint."

Eve started to laugh.

"It’s a decent theory."

"No it’s not." She grinned at him. "You obviously don’t know much about the L.A. lifestyle."

No, he didn’t. And his lack of big-city experience was a sensitive topic. "I’m not particularly worldly, if that’s what you mean."

Her smile disappeared. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to poke fun. It’s just that a bachelor like Rick couldn’t be blackmailed with pictures of him involved in kinky sex. Heck, he might want to show them around."

"Then maybe she’d get him to buy her expensive presents."

"Maybe." Her expression softened, as if she didn’t want to be confrontational. "But there’s nothing criminal about that, Charlie. Lots of men buy women presents."

"I suppose." He wouldn’t mind shopping for Eve, now that he thought about it. He could find a bunch of cool stuff she’d like at the hardware store. For the first time in his life he’d have fun picking out a gift for a woman,

"I have to go with my gut on this one," she said. "I don’t think it’s Eunice."

"And I don’t think we’re going to solve it tonight."

She gave him a long look. "So . . . wanna work on the hovercraft?"

Just like that, he lost all interest in the mystery and her invention, two things that ordinarily would have kept him occupied for hours. He couldn’t believe how quickly his libido short-circuited his brain and turned him into a heat-seeking missile with one goal in mind.

Her smile returned, but this time there was a seductive tilt to her mouth. "Your breathing just changed."

"If you think that’s something, you should see what’s happening to the rest of me."