Page 10 of Tessa's Trust

“Yes, Grams?” Nick suddenly spoke over my right shoulder.

Heat flushed my back, even though I wore a heavy coat.

“It looks like we all need a ride home. You can drop Elda and me off and then take Tessa over the pass. I believe she has to put her apartment together tomorrow. I mean, you’re going to help her move, right?”

Oh, no. I was not being maneuvered like this. Not tonight. “Nope, that’s okay,” I said before Nick could say a word. “All of my cousins are coming to help me pack and move. Honestly, we have a full house already.”

“That’s good,” Nick said dryly. “I’m in trial this week, Grams. I really do need to get back to work.”

“Huh.” Gerty looked crestfallen. “Well, maybe you two can have a nice chat over the pass.”

Nope. There were huckleberries in my immediate future. I’d earned them. “I’m staying at my nonna’s house tonight,” I said smoothly. “She promised me huckleberry pie.”

Nonna stood and wavered slightly, looking regal. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I gave that pie to your cousin, Vince. Gosh darn it. And really, I have a lot to do tomorrow. You can stay next time, Tessa.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. She’d been quite worried about me going across the pass before.

Nick’s sigh was heavy behind me. “All right, let’s get going, ladies. The storm’s only getting worse.”

Somehow, and I had to give him credit for it, he managed to bundle all three of us into his SUV. He must not have had anything to drink because he maneuvered through the storm easily and dropped Nonna off first before taking Gerty home. Finally, it was just the two of us in the warm and quiet vehicle.

“Do you think they’ll ever give up?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t drunk so much prosecco. I needed to be on my game when dealing with Nick.

“They will never give up…unless you want to marry Bobbo.”

I laughed. “I think he might have offered, but we’re not a good match. However, maybe he found true love tonight.” We drove by my new building, and I cocked my head. “There’s a light on inside Sadie’s. I didn’t leave one on.”

Nick slowed down and parked at the icy curb. “Are you sure?”

I bit my lip. “Not really, but I want to make sure they’re off.” Had I forgotten in my haste to get to my odd date? I jumped out of the vehicle before he could respond and then hurried through the blasting snow to unlock the door and walk inside.

The place smelled like the wood polish I had used earlier, and a sense of warmth and belonging filled me. I really loved this place. I carefully stepped over to the light switch at the end of the bar and then paused, noting that the door to the stairs leading to the basement was open. “I know I shut and locked that.”

Nick came up behind me and looked down the rickety wooden stairs, snow falling off his dark hair. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I am,” I said. “I didn’t want to drop anything or fall, and I left it shut all day.” Plus, and I would never admit this to anybody, but it was a little creepy considering Lenny had been killed down there—a crime I was supposed to solve. “I’ll go check it out.”

A firm hand on my elbow drew me back. “I’ll check it out,” he said. “Stay here.” Squaring his shoulders, he pushed the door open farther and started down the wooden steps.

Oh, heck no. This was my place. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I stayed behind him as he maneuvered all the way to the damp basement. When an ex-soldier with a hard body wanted to step in front of danger, I wasn’t a dumb girl. His shoulders nicely blocked my view of the brick wall downstairs. He turned the corner and muttered something I couldn’t quite make out.

“What?” I pushed to his side and stared into what should have been an empty cellar. In the middle of the room lay Rudy Brando with a six-inch knife handle protruding from his chest. Blood pooled on the floor around him, and his eyes were wide-open in death.

“Aw, crap,” I muttered.

If Sheriff Franco had a first name, I didn’t know it. He’d been sheriff for my entire life, and I only happened to know his last name because it was stitched across his softball uniform, a game he still played, even though he was in his eighties. He had thick white hair and normally wore faded jeans and a battered cowboy hat he’d had for as long as I could remember.

My soon-to-be cousin-in-law, Heather, had bet me about his age, thinking he was only sixty, yet you merely had to stare into the man’s eyes to know that he’d lived at least eight decades.

Some of them looked to have been hard.

I sat across from the sheriff in his office. Pictures of his softball team, his grandkids, and the Seattle Seahawks covered the walls around us, except for a wide window behind him that faced the blistering storm on Main Street. He’d been questioning me for over an hour, and I’d stuck firm to my story because it was the truth.

“Are you sure you don’t want an attorney?” he asked again.

“I don’t,” I said. “I trust you, Sheriff. I know you’ll figure out who killed Rudy.”

The sheriff nodded. “I appreciate that, but again, I think you should get a lawyer.”

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