The Sweetheart Mystery Read online

  Cover Copy

  Harper Jane Evans is so over pro cheerleading but she’s not quite ready for prison. Good thing she’s got a badass ex-boyfriend ready to go to bat for her . . .

  Sure, Harper made a few unsavory threats against her team’s manager—she’d had a few drinks and she despised the skimpy uniform he expected her to wear. That didn’t mean she wanted him dead. But when the sleazy dude is found murdered in his tighty whiteys, Harper is the number one suspect—and former FBI agent Noah Slade is the one man who can help. Too bad she once told Noah she never wanted to see him again . . .

  Noah may have done a number on Harper’s heart all those years ago, but he’s determined to do right by her now. Yet the fiery beauty isn’t the only demon from his past, which makes hunting down a murderer by her side . . . complicated—never mind the powerful attraction still pulsing between them. Good thing he’s willing to do just about anything to keep from losing Harper again. And an old love just might bring her a new career—assuming she can stay out of jail . . .

  Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Books by Cheryl Ann Smith

  Brash & Brazen

  The Sweetheart Racket

  The Sweetheart Game

  The Sweetheart Kiss

  The Sweetheart Mystery

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  The Sweetheart Mystery

  Brash & Brazen

  Cheryl Ann Smith

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Copyright

  Lyrical Press books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Cheryl Ann Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

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  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

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  Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  First Electronic Edition: November 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0483-3

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0483-8

  First Print Edition: November 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0484-0

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0484-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  Readers often say that what first draws them to a book is a great cover. I’d like to thank the talented Cora Bignardi for my fantastic Brash & Brazen series covers. You’re the best!

  Chapter 1

  A cold flush of shock and panic caused Harper Jane Evans’s throat to close up and her blood to coagulate in her toes. Dizzy and unable to move, she just stared, gaped really, at the surreal sight at her feet.

  “Gerald?” For a moment, nothing in her world made sense. Was this real or some early Halloween prank? “Gerald?”

  No response. It wasn’t a prank. Her stomach sank.

  She fished for her phone in her oversized bag.

  Harper had known she was making a mistake the second she stepped into the hotel suite and smelled beer and sweat filling the confined space. Her boss was likely drunk off his butt and ready for a confrontation. The man was a surly drunk with none of the affability to make him amusing or easy to handle.

  She should have backed out first thing, but curiosity moved her forward. If her boss was passed out on the bed, the good and bad sides of her would have warred with pulling a sheet over him and letting him sleep it off, or taking a quick unflattering pic with her phone and sharing it with her friends for a giggle.

  She knew doing so would be immature, but he was such a colossal jerk. A candid pic on social media would serve him right, and produce a satisfying amount of revenge.

  But not this. Never this. She pressed a hand to her head.

  Where was that phone?

  Her mind worked through the last few minutes. She was in the center of a crime scene. Had she seen something that could help the police?

  Start from the beginning.

  “Gerald,” she’d called softly as she’d stepped over the threshold. The room was still.

  With squared shoulders, she’d moved farther into the room. Calling out to him again, she received no answer. Not making a run for it at that moment proved to be her second mistake of the day.

  She’d come to Gerald’s hotel suite to protest the proposed new cheerleader uniforms, when her instincts told her she should have met him in the lobby. The door had been propped open with the room’s Bible and that had her instinct to flee up and running. After all, Gerald was a slimeball like his uncle Willard and couldn’t be trusted.

  He could be naked for all she knew. Gross.

  Still, onward she’d gone, forgetting all her mother’s lectures about trusting your gut.

  Filled with righteous anger over the largely see-through fabric with only gold tassels for nipple coverage, she’d been spoiling for a confrontation, built up during the fourteen hours he’d been out of town boinking his mistress, Sharla. She didn’t want to wait another minute until he sobered up.

  Rather than leave the argument for later, instead, she found Gerald, all three hundred plus pounds of him, lying on the carpet behind the suite’s desk, bare-bellied up, wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whiteys, and staring blankly at the ceiling with a pair of filmy eyes.

  Dead.

  And she was alone.

  “Oh, hell,” she whispered and all her confusion fled. A large knife protruded from his chest and excluded natural causes as the manner of death. She hadn’t seen anyone fleeing the room and she wasn’t helping by standing there staring at his lifeless body like a panicked raccoon in the headlights.

  She knew enough about crime scene investigations from TV shows not to touch anything. After all, there was nothing she could do for Gerald anyway. That was obvious. There was no point searching him for a pulse.

  Snapping into head cheerleader mode, she found the phone tucked under her wallet and backed away from the body. “I need the police.” Talking out loud kept her from freaking out and helped her think. “Lots of police.”

  It took two tries for her shaking hands to swipe the phone open and pound out 9-1-1. It took another few seconds to realize she had no bars to make the connection. “Shoot.”

  A chill swept through her.

  “Concentrate,” she urged herself as she waved the phone over her head looking for bars. A concerning thought jumped forward and made her hesitate.

  Last night, after receiving the prototype of the new uniform from Gerald’s put-upon young assistant, Kimmie, and cursing him back to his knuckle-dragging ancestors—many of them still suffered from
that condition—she’d spent the better part of the evening drinking Fuzzy Navels and telling everyone within earshot that if he didn’t rethink the uniforms, she intended to kill him and dump his body parts in Lake Michigan.

  Her heart sunk as memories came back to her of a dark bar with noise from several sporting events blasting in the background.

  Oh, no.

  “Not your finest moment,” she said and closed her eyes against the crush of worry. At least a dozen football players and cheerleaders had been at that large table celebrating the game win when she’d inserted a flip-flop covered foot into her mouth and made threats. There was no way any of them hadn’t heard.

  “You made yourself suspect number one, dummy.”

  She paused for just a half a second before ignoring the feeling that the walls were closing in. Gerald was dead. She could worry about herself and her big mouth later.

  Moving closer to the door, she finally found service. Two bars appeared.

  Harper tapped out 9-1-…

  The chance to be a good citizen vanished when the sound of shuffling outside the door and a deep and authoritative voice called out, “Police!”

  The cracked-open door swung inward and a pair of officers rushed in the door, guns drawn, faces hard. She felt a rush of relief that lasted about two breaths. They appeared to have been expecting trouble. Odd. She’d just found the body a minute ago. And there was no sign any Good Samaritan had gotten there before her. Double odd.

  Her stomach tightened.

  Had they known about Gerald before she showed up? How? Her call hadn’t gone through. Something was wrong here.

  Her mind went blank.

  “Get down on the floor!” the first officer demanded. He was well over six feet tall and had a menacing face marred by childhood acne scars. The second brushed past her, holding his gun up in case of danger.

  Terrified, Harper dropped to her knees. “I didn’t do anything.” Her tight voice shook.

  The protest was ignored. Cop one stepped forward and his gun came very close to her face. She blew a brown curl out of her eyes and fought to settle her shaking body.

  “Hands up,” the cop said.

  Her phone slipped out of her hand and bounced off the carpet when her arms went up. Just like in the old mystery movies she’d watched with Gramps, she’d been found bent over the body with the knife in her hand. Figuratively, of course.

  “We have a body,” officer two said from behind her, more in confirmation than surprise. “It looks like a murder.”

  The first officer stared down at her as if mentally practicing his witness statement when he testified against her in court. This was probably his first murder.

  There was a faint and disturbing glint in his eyes. “Lady, put your hands behind your back.”

  Harper whimpered. And complied.

  Chapter 2

  “I did not kill Gerald,” Harper said for the five-hundredth time over the last six hours. Her brain felt like someone was using it for archery practice and her eyes ached under the unrelenting florescent light of the police department interrogation room.

  The space was stark and free of anything that could be used as a weapon, and her butt had gone numb from sitting all day in the same position on a wobbly metal chair.

  Detective Lance Mignon—as in the steak—stared at her through his own set of bloodshot eyes beneath bushy gray brows, assessing her as if trying to figure out the exact moment when she’d crack. His grizzled face appeared confident in his interrogation skills and his expression was meant to intimidate her into submission.

  As if. She had rights and she wasn’t about to dissolve into making a false confession. “I told you that he was already dead when I got there,” she said with a stubborn jaw set. “Check my phone. Would a killer call 9-1-1 from the scene of the crime?”

  “Ah-huh.”

  If she wasn’t already facing murder charges, she’d gladly pull off her white tennis shoe and smack the “ah-huh” right off his smug face. But since she was trying to convey innocence, it wouldn’t be in her best interest to load up on other charges, like assault on a cop, if she wanted to avoid prison.

  “How do we know you intended to call for help?” Detective Mignon said. “That failed call may have been a ruse to turn suspicion away from yourself.”

  She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t that criminally clever, but the fewer words she said, the less of a chance she’d insert her flip flop back into her mouth.

  “When exactly did I have time to plant that red herring before they took my phone? During the five seconds before they burst into the room and ordered my hands up? Or the next ten seconds when I was handcuffed and then led on the perp walk out of the hotel? I must have perpetrated the world’s fastest cover-up in those long fifteen seconds.”

  The man was annoying. Clearly repeating the same argument over and over was supposed to confuse her into making a mistake. Well, it wasn’t working. Truth was on her side. Justice, too.

  So when she finally cracked two seconds later, it wasn’t in the way he’d hoped. She’d just had enough.

  Leaning back in the uncomfortable metal chair, she crossed her arms over her chest and matched his glare. Her twisty stomach threatened to ruin the moment.

  “I want my phone call.”

  He snorted and glanced at the wall clock. “This isn’t TV. You can call your mommy when we’re finished.”

  Jerk. “I want my lawyer.” She didn’t know any lawyers but he didn’t know that. But she did know a fantastic PI who had to know someone. “I’m not saying anything else until I get representation.”

  He worked the yellow, cigarette-stained hairs of the lower part of his mustache with his bottom lip and she tried not to let it gross her out. Be tough, Harper.

  “You know that asking for a lawyer makes you look guilty.”

  She gave him a look. “You already think that.”

  Gathering up his file, he shot her one last scowl and left the room. All bravado fled. She unfolded from the chair with a pained groan and pushed to her feet.

  Her pelvis creaked as her bones moved back into place. She rubbed her butt and slowly paced back and forth across the small room. Ten gray speckled floor tiles each way. Eventually the blood circulated back into her lower extremities.

  Twenty minutes passed and she was sure Mignon had left her there to die a slow, lonely death by thirst and starvation. Then, a female officer, in a too-tight blue polyester uniform, opened the door and waved her out. The woman showed her into the hallway with a hand on her gun.

  What did she expect? An escape attempt?

  “You can use the phone over there,” the officer said, not unkindly, and pointed to the phone on the wall near the ladies’ bathroom. “It’s collect.”

  Harper stumbled to the lifeline. She wasn’t sure how to call collect or use the out-of-date machine with the metal cord connecting phone to the receiver. Thankfully, someone had typed out instructions, laminated the card, and taped it to the wall.

  Information was free. She called Brash & Brazen, Inc. in Ann Arbor and asked for Taryn Hall.

  The operator at Brash almost refused the collect call. Clearly they didn’t get a lot of calls from jail. Harper quickly explained her connection to Taryn before the call disconnected. The operator accepted the charges.

  Then the woman explained that Taryn, Summer, and Jess were at Quantico taking a course in updated forensic techniques. They wouldn’t be back until Monday. Four days from now. The idea of spending days in this cold place made her want to cry.

  She forced down that emotion.

  “I can text Taryn for you, though,” the woman offered kindly.

  Even if Taryn could help, it could take hours to get sprung and she didn’t have that kind of time. She was already losing her sanity. “No. Thanks anyway.”

  She hung up
.

  Leaning her head on the wall, she considered her options. She could call her aunt. But she was in Arizona soaking up the sun with a years-younger man-toy named Frank. Her brother lived in Oregon, so he wouldn’t be helpful. She had to go elsewhere.

  Think. Think.

  A name came to mind and she groaned under her breath. Noah Slade was the absolute last person she should call. The. Last. However, he was former law enforcement professional and she’d run out of ideas. Maybe he’d feel sorry for her and head on over to the jail on a white horse.

  Desperation returned her to the phone. Gossip from her flaky cousin Marty let Harper know that Noah was back in their home town and living in his childhood home. He’d gotten in a mess with the Feds and had been fired. Still, he knew law enforcement inside and out.

  If anyone could get her out of this fix, it was him.

  Hopefully, he still had the same home phone number. Hopefully, he’d be happy to hear from her. Hopefully, eleven years had erased old hurts. She dialed. Distracted, he accepted the call.

  “Hello.”

  Thank God. The voice was gruff and deep and familiar. Her mind flew back to high school and her knees went weak beneath her. She leaned against the cool surface of the wall, and forced herself to maintain control. The female officer stared from her place near the door but didn’t protest the second call.

  “Noah?” she said in a half-whisper. Hell, even now, with the years and the awful way they’d ended things, he still had the ability to tangle up her emotions.

  “Speaking.”

  Harper took a deep breath. “It’s Harper.”

  There was a long pause and she thought she heard a sharp intake of breath. For a moment, it seemed as if he was scanning his brain to make the connection. Fortunately, he couldn’t know that many Harpers. It wasn’t a common name.

  He was more likely contemplating whether hell had finally frozen over. That was the only reason she’d call.

  “What do you want, HJ?”