Page 19 of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Chapter Seven

Downtown was pretty busy when I pulled into a parallel parking spot in front of my office. Of course, downtown was a relative term. Sweet Briar had a population of a little over 2,000 and consisted of the two-block Main Street, and a less busy street behind it, but it had the essentials—a café, a coffee shop, a bank, a gym, and a pizza place.

And of course, Darling Investigations, the name of my PI business.

My office was one of the few things the reality show staff had gotten right. The walls were painted in shades of pale yellow and sage green, and the large windows overlooking the street offered plenty of light. The front room held our desks and some visitors’ chairs and was where most of the office scenes were filmed. Mostly because I couldn’t see them ever filming in the small bathroom, or the back room filled with a couple of tables and chairs that the editors sat at while working on the previous day’s footage. I had a real business license with my name on it—which was framed and hanging on the wall—which meant the business was mine.

It hadn’t always been like that. My producer Lauren had tried to railroad the entire thing by filming fake cases sprinkledwith a handful of real ones. I’d gone against her wishes and solved an actual murder behind her back, but it had beenthatinvestigation that had catapulted the show into success. I renegotiated my contract, and one of the sticking points was that the lease to the office was turned over to me. Lauren had tried to be sneaky and move the show to the train station during season two, but the downtown office had stuck.

I climbed out of my car and walked over to the coffee shop to pick up a latte. Main Street was lined with trees, and the leaves were changing to bright yellows and oranges. Concrete planters were interspersed up and down the block, full of mums and pansies. I hadn’t been in Sweet Briar during the fall for well over a decade. Which meant I hadn’t really had an autumn since I’d been living in LA, and I was enjoying every minute of it this year.

A couple of the townspeople were in the shop and said hello when I entered, but a tourist family standing in line did a double take when the woman realized who I was.

“Oh, my word!” she shouted, pointing her finger at me. “You’reher.” She looked to be around my age, maybe slightly younger—the core demographic for my old TV show.

I gave her a hesitant smile. Some of my old fans were a bit overzealous. “Welcome to Sweet Briar.”

“Iknewyou got coffee here,” she said, barely containing her excitement. “I saw it on your show.”

So she was aDarling Investigationsfan.

I waved a hand toward the counter. “It’s the great coffee that keeps me coming back. Are y’all passing through Sweet Briar?”

“We’re on our way to Pensacola, and I made Brad swing through.” She clasped her hands together and stepped closer to me, while her two kids hung back with their father, a guy in his late twenties to early thirties who looked like he’d rather be stalled in construction traffic on the highway than here.

“I used to love you onGotcha!,” she continued, “but I really like your new one. I’ve seen every episode. Multiple times.”

“Thanks.”

I worried what might be coming next—more people than I could count asked me to recite my old show’s catchphrase—but she surprised me by glancing toward the door. “Is Dixie around?”

“Sorry,” I said, genuinely meaning it. “Dixie’s in Atlanta today.”

She shot a glance to her husband and then back to me, lowering her voice. “What about Teddy?”

“Sorry,” I said again. “Teddy’s not around either.” I’d learned the hard way not to tell people he was out on the farm. Some of them took it as an open invitation to drop by, since the location was a matter of public record. Meemaw had run off more than a few tourists.

“Is there any way I can see him?” she asked with a sheepish look, then lowered her voice to slightly above a whisper. “He’s my free pass, and I want to take advantage of it while I’m here.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, taken aback. Was she serious?

“You know,” she said with a nod, “my freebie that’s not considered cheating.”

This was a first. Plenty of women had tried to come on to Teddy, and he’d been nothing but polite when he’d turned all of them down, even though some of them hadn’t taken it well. It pissed me off that they thought he was like a breeding stallion just waiting to be ridden.

She moved closer with a conspiratorial smile. “Do you think you can call him? Maybe have him meet me at the motel here in town?”

I blinked hard. “Say what?”

“You know.” She winked, then nodded to her husband, who was manhandling the wrapped muffins on the counter, weighingthem in each hand to see which one was the biggest while his two kids were tossing around a couple of water bottles in a game of catch. “Brad can stay busy and be none the wiser.”

I cocked my head. “I thought Teddy was your freebie.”

“Well, he is,” she whispered dramatically. “But I don’t want Brad to barge in and interrupt anything. You know?”

“What about your kids?” I asked, certain there must be cameras hidden somewhere, and I was being pranked.

“Brad can take them out to the lake. You know, where you found that body. Brad’s into those true crime podcasts, and Mo and Molly had a limited-run series about your cases. He wants to see the place where you found that poor man from the big mystery on your first season ofDarling Investigations.”

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