What We May Be: An MMF Romantic Mystery Read online

  “Disgustingly happy.”

  Sean rubbed a hand over his friend’s biceps. “Aww, poor Marsh. Always the groomsman, never the groom.”

  Marsh lifted his chin, a little of the swagger dimmed. “I’m happy for them. Truly. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s them. But he doesn’t get to beat me at chess.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. While he’d never admit it without a bottle of whisky, and even then, he’d only admitted it once, Marsh had always carried a bit of a torch for his army buddy. But the major had always been in love with someone else to hear Marsh tell it. “Now I just have to get you sorted.”

  Sean tripped over his feet. “Wait!” He spread a hand over his chest. “How did this suddenly become about me?”

  The earlier smile might not have reached Marsh’s eyes, but his smirk now sure did. “Because I’m that good, Hale.”

  “Mr. Marshall?” a suited man called from two rows ahead, sparing Sean from further immediate torture. Standing next to a collared priest, a raised casket, and a freshly dug grave, the funeral director waved them over. Two more of his staff waited in coveralls a few rows back, wiping sweat from their brows, their shovels leaned against a nearby headstone.

  “We’re not done with this conversation,” Marsh said to him, making sure Sean knew he wasn’t off the hook. Payback no doubt for the earlier needling. As Marsh stepped forward, hand outstretched, Sean hung back. After a few words with the director and priest, Marsh circled to the opposite end of the casket and removed his hat. Sean joined him, offering silent support as the priest recited a generic service. When the five minutes were over, and Jeff’s casket was being lowered into the ground, Marsh handed his hat to Sean and knelt at the side of the grave, tossing in a fistful of dirt. With his other hand, he withdrew a rosary from his coat pocket and began the recitations in Spanish. When he was done, he stood, crossed himself, and pocketed the rosary.

  “You do that to piss him off?” Sean asked as he handed Marsh back his hat. They reversed several steps from the grave, the funeral staff coming forward to close it.

  “Mostly.” He swiped a hand over his brow and into his hair, slicking it back before resettling his hat. “That and the whole Catholic guilt thing. Hard to shake.”

  “You didn’t think anyone from the town would want to be here?”

  “I can’t imagine he suddenly stopped being an asshole.”

  Marsh’s reply garnered a disapproving glare from the funeral director, and Sean decided to wait until he and his staff cleared out before continuing.

  “From what I’ve seen of this case and heard from Trevor, he didn’t.”

  “I asked Mom if she wanted to come.”

  “Oh boy.” Sean couldn’t wait to hear the rest of this story. Marsh’s mom was a riot. So was her wife.

  Marsh grinned. “She told me she had to help Irina birth a calf, then they were gonna get drunk on Dom and fuck all night long.”

  Sean laughed out loud. “I love your moms.”

  “They love you too.” Marsh turned from the grave, moving in the direction of the exit. “Speaking of moms, anything further from Marie?”

  “Saul’s vitals are weaker, but he’s still hanging on.”

  “Doesn’t want to leave his lady. Or you.”

  Sean cleared his throat and ignored his stinging eyes. “Once we get this case and things sorted, I need to get up there. She said not to come until after, but—”

  “But you want to be there. I get it. Maybe not for that asshole”—he jutted a thumb over his shoulder toward Jeff’s grave—“but if anything were to ever happen to Mom or Irina, I’d be on the first plane out.”

  “You’re here for me, yes, but also for your dad.” Sean reached out and ran a hand over Marsh’s upper back. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “Thanks, Hale.” He patted the hand still on his shoulder. “Now, speaking of sorted, you mentioned Trevor.”

  Yep, not off the hook. Sean nudged him a different direction, physically and conversationally. “You can meet him later. Someone else I want to introduce you to first.”

  Marsh, however, wasn’t to be deterred. “Charlie’s a looker,” he said. “I can see why you’re hooked.”

  Heat hit Sean’s cheeks and he looked anywhere but at his friend.

  Marsh’s laughter boomed around the wide-open cemetery, sending several crows scattering off headstones. “That blush, Hale. There’s a reason you could never do undercover work.”

  “Says the giant cowboy.”

  “You got that right. There’s a reason I work behind a computer.” He added a quiet “mostly” that made Sean slow and loop an arm through his. That mostly had cost them a dear friend, and the loss, while a couple years old now, still stung whenever it came up for either of them. Marsh, though, as was his way, didn’t let them linger on the sadness for long. “So, where do things stand with your exes?”

  “I’m working on it.” After the scorching kiss with Trevor earlier and the heat that seemed to flare anytime he was within ten feet of Charlie, he wouldn’t deny wanting to know what would happen when all three of them were in the same room again. And with the knowledge they were going to be in DC too… Possibilities that included him in their plan to move on were hard to look away from, if he could make them happy again.

  “Am I going to be a problem?” Marsh asked.

  “You’re gay and not poly, so no.”

  Marsh lifted a brow. “Charlie know that?” And lifted it higher. “Trevor?”

  Sean blew out a breath. “No, I need to have that talk with them, but there are a few other conversations that need to come first.” He drew to a stop and tilted his head toward the angel statue in front of them.

  “Alice?”

  Sean nodded, and Marsh removed his hat, approaching respectfully. That same night Marsh had let slip about Brax, Sean had confessed the secret he’d been carrying for years. A secret he couldn’t keep from Charlie and Trevor if he wanted another shot with them. “They both deserve to know why I left and stayed away. And they deserve to know the truth about Alice’s death if they don’t already.”

  Marsh circled Cal’s grave. “You think they know?”

  “There’ve been a few times where I thought she might. And when we identified the next victim as Ophelia…”

  “Guilty of conspiracy.”

  Sean rolled his eyes. “Everyone’s a Shakespeare expert but me. I had to get the damn CliffsNotes.”

  Marsh smirked. “Probably because you were too busy chasing a certain pair in college.”

  “Oh, and you weren’t chasing all the guys?”

  He twirled his hat, caught it by the brim, and landed it perfectly on his head. “I can multitask.” He made a go-on gesture. “Now, you were saying about Alice?”

  Arms crossed, Sean rested against Mitch’s gravestone. “She tried to hide it, but Charlie reacted strongly when it was suggested Trevor could be the next victim.”

  “It could be something else.”

  “What else could there be?”

  “It’s been ten years, Sean. A lot could have happened.”

  He flew off the gravestone, bearing down on Marsh as the sting of betrayal burned in his chest. “You investigated them?”

  It was a bedrock of their friendship, one of the first ground rules he’d laid down when they’d become tight and when he’d discovered what Marsh could do with a computer.

  Marsh met his charge, and in the blink of an eye, he had both of Sean’s arms twisted behind his back and his torso forced over Cal’s headstone. Fuck if Sean didn’t forget about that whole military training thing sometimes. “You know me better than that,” Marsh hissed in his ear, all humor gone from his voice. “I only dug when you asked me to.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sean relented, justly scolded. He forced his body to go limp and waited for Marsh to release him.

  When Marsh didn’t after a few seconds, Sean twisted his head and looked back at him. “You gonna let me up sometime today?”
>
  “I dunno,” he said, humor returned like the last five seconds hadn’t just happened. “Maybe I like you there.”

  “Barbecue in it for you.”

  Marsh shifted so his hold was one-handed and doffed his hat with the other. “Did you forget I’m from Texas?”

  “Fine,” Sean sighed, knowing what his friend was really after. “A dozen chocolate glazed.”

  “Now we’re talking!” Marsh yanked him up, both of them laughing, and Sean made the extra few steps to fold his arms around him again. “I’m glad you’re here.” His parents, then Saul and Marie, had never been shy about affection, had drilled it in to him to always let the ones you love know it in case you might lose them. And he’d almost lost Marsh once. He wouldn’t hold back.

  And he was done holding back with Trevor and Charlie too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What happened to staying at the Sand Dollar last night?”

  Charlie glanced up from the stack of files on her desk to find Trevor standing in her office doorway. Dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, he held his duffel in one hand, a tray of coffees in the other, and wore an unamused expression to match his unamused voice. “You were supposed to stay somewhere safe.”

  Charlie closed the file she was working on and laid her pen on top of it. “I was safe.”

  “Charlotte—”

  “I slept there.” She pointed at the couch to his right. “Safe and sound.”

  He tossed his bag onto said couch and crossed the office to her. “You pulled an all-nighter?” He rounded the corner of her desk and rested a hip beside her, unloading the coffees to a spot she cleared for him. “Did you get any sleep?”

  “A few hours.” She spread her hands, indicating the files on her desk. “This Shakespeare case isn’t our only one. It’s summer season.” She gestured at one stack. “I’ve got half a dozen break-ins.” At another. “DUIs.” At a third. “Couple domestic disturbances.” At the tallest teetering one. “And that hodgepodge of mostly teens behaving badly. Needed to catch up.”

  “You should’ve called.” He snuck a foot under her chair and gave it a teasing push. “I would’ve kept you company.”

  She hooked her ankle around his, keeping herself from rolling too far and keeping him close. “I’m not sure how much work I would’ve gotten done with you here.” Their eyes clashed, held, and heat tumbled in her belly, remembering again that moment yesterday in the cell downstairs, remembering all those moments from a decade ago when Trevor used to try to distract her—with tickles, touches, and tastes—during tutoring sessions. She still felt bad about that C he got in calculus. If his mouth hadn’t been so damn tempting…

  Then and now, turning up in a sexy grin. Charlie suspected he was remembering the same moments she was, confirmed as he reached out and traced his fingers up her thigh. “I’ll try not to distract you too much today.”

  She tangled her hand with his but didn’t move it away. “That’s a lie if I ever heard one.”

  He shrugged, not the least bit sorry, and took a gulp from one of the coffees. “You can send me back to the motel, but fair warning, if I have to stay another hour in that room next to Craig’s as he bitches and moans about all the work he has to do, poor Wally is gonna quit from having to play referee. I can’t tell you how many times I banged on the wall the past two nights.”

  She leaned back in her chair and laughed, only righting herself when the scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted close to her nose. “Probably didn’t help your headache.”

  “Not at all.” Trevor handed her the coffee. “Think you can get this case done today?”

  “Someone’s in a hurry.” She lifted the cup and took a sip of ambrosia.

  “Sean told me about DC.”

  And nearly scorched the back of her throat. She’d expected another quip about Craig; not that revelation. How did he know? How long had he known? Was he pissed she hadn’t told him? Once she was sure she wasn’t going to choke, she set the cup down, reclaimed his free hand, and started with her last concern, the most important. “I’m sorry I didn’t—”

  “It’s fine, honey.” He squeezed her fingers. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything either. He told me Monday night, but I didn’t want you to be biased going into the interview.”

  “And then yesterday got away from us.”

  “There’s a lot going on, but when this case lets up, we need to talk. All of us.”

  Her gaze shot from their entwined fingers to his face, her heart jumping from her chest into her throat. “Trevor, what are you saying?”

  Shifting, he set aside his cup and brought his warm hand to her cheek. “I think we need to consider all our options.”

  She angled her face into the warmth, into the hope his words offered. And offered some of her own. “Then we’ll solve the case today.”

  A knock came at her door, and Trevor lowered his hand. She rolled in the chair so she could see around him and spied Diego poking his head into the room.

  “Got a lead, Deputy.”

  A good start. “I’ll be right there.”

  As she stood, Trevor lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. “Abracadabra.”

  She rolled her eyes and grabbed their coffees, shoving Trevor’s against his chest. “Shut up and drink your coffee.”

  Laughing, he slid off the desk without the proffered cup and grabbed his duffel off the couch. “Take mine to the conference room. I’m going to duck into the locker room and shower. Hot water at the motel is iffy.”

  She wrinkled her nose as she followed him out. “So that’s why you stink.”

  “Shut up and drink your coffee,” he said, throwing her words back at her. “No one needs your precaffeinated crazy.”

  He wasn’t wrong. As he headed toward the stairs, she entered the conference room, Sean holding the door open for her. “Where’s Trevor headed?” Sean asked, his eyes tracking Trevor across the bullpen floor.

  “To shower and change downstairs.”

  “Good.” Trevor disappeared down the stairs, and Sean’s attention refocused on her. Or rather the coffees in her hand. “Which one’s Trevor’s?”

  She lifted the left one and he promptly slid it from her hand, claiming it for himself. “Probably better we discuss this before he gets back.”

  She closed the door behind them. “Discuss what?”

  Marsh’s deep drawl echoed from the far end of the table. “Beth Martin’s phone records.”

  Charlie’s attention swung to him, and though he might not have liked his father much, she recognized the dark jeans, black shirt, and black cowboy hat for what it was. Mourning. She’d been there herself not so long ago; still was to a degree. She walked the length of the table and took one of Marsh’s hands in hers. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “And I’m sorry that wasn’t the first thing I said to you yesterday. It should have been.”

  Marsh’s eyes flicked over her shoulder in Sean’s direction, and if she weren’t mistaken, Charlie saw a glint of approval in them. And that same twinkle of mischief she’d glimpsed in them yesterday. He brought his gaze back to her, lifted her hand, and kissed the back of it. “He always said you were one of the good ones.”

  “I’ll try better to live up to that.” She squeezed his hand, then after a shot of caffeine, turned toward the papers he’d spread on the table. “Now, tell me what you found?”

  “Abel said you might recognize this number.” Marsh tapped a finger next to several highlighted entries on Beth’s phone records, all outgoing calls to the same local number.

  A number Charlie knew well. “Tracy.”

  “According to those,” Abel said from across the table where he stood next to Diego, “Beth called Tracy multiple times during the past two weeks, including at three o’clock the morning Julian was killed and again at nine, right after the crime scene techs cleared out of the house.”

  “Did you confirm Tracy was at the hospital that night?”

  “We did, with two nurses a
nd the surgeon she was assisting. I spoke to one of the nurses again just now, and she said Tracy slipped out midsurgery.”

  “Do either Tracy or Beth have any connection to Jeff?”

  “Both,” Sean replied from his perch on the windowsill.

  She raised a brow, prompting him to go on.

  “Going on Trevor’s tenure theory, Tracy was married to Trevor when the troubles with his tenure started, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  Abel slid another piece of paper across the table while Sean continued. “Yesterday afternoon, Trevor made a list of the female tenure candidates Jeff had railroaded. Anyone’s name look familiar?”

  Her eyes froze halfway down the list.

  Beth Martin.

  “Fuck.” She glanced again at Sean. “You still think it could be a frame-up?"

  He shrugged. “Possibly, or they may have their own motives.”

  “Is Tracy at the hospital now?” she asked Abel.

  He nodded.

  “Go. Bring her in once her shift is over. She’s less likely to be spooked if it’s you she sees coming.”

  “On it, sugar.”

  She turned to Diego. “Where’s Beth Martin?”

  “She had class at nine this morning. I diverted Jaylen on his way in to pick her up.”

  Charlie glanced at her watch. “It’s nine thirty. They should be here by now. Call Jaylen and see what the delay is.”

  Diego withdrew his cell and followed Abel into the bullpen, skirting by Trevor in the doorway.

  Trevor stepped into the room as he pulled his wet hair into a knot. “Good lead?”

  Charlie flipped over the phone records before he could see them. “Promising, though we’re going to need to keep you here a little longer.”

  “Why?” he asked, though judging by his faded jeans, flip-flops, and HU gym shirt, he’d already planned for a day at the station. Or Annie had and packed his bag accordingly.

  Diego appeared in the doorway, interrupting before she could answer. “Beth was a no-show at class. Jaylen got her address and went by her house.”