Valentine's Day Is Killing Me Read online

  “Kara Jay! Why aren’t you listening to me? You can hear a toddler drop a Cheerio from half a block away, but ‘no blind dates’ doesn’t hit your radar?”

  “It’s a totally different thing,” her sister insisted.

  “The next time your kids come over,” she warned, slashing through the new, equally awful text, “I’m stuffing them with ice cream and chocolate.”

  “You do that every time.”

  “Need I remind you?”

  “What? I already know; I’m the one who has to talk them down from the ceiling at 10:30 P.M.”

  “No, I mean, need I remind you of my track record with blind dates?”

  “A few bad experiences shouldn’t—”

  “What? Are you on drugs?”

  “That’s none of your business,” her sister said primly.

  “Remember that guy, the Iowan who took us out with your then-boyfriend? We went to the state gymnastics trials? On the way there, he talked and talked about ‘the Republican way of life,’ got out of the car to try to shoot the deer that had crossed the road—who brings a shotgun on a date, by the way?—then sulked through the sets because he missed the poor thing.”

  “He was just trying too hard.”

  “Trying too hard? I’d hate to see him slacking off. Then—remember? I make the casual comment that I think gymnasts are really gifted, and he gets all huffy, like, ‘You saying I can’t do that?’ and stomps down to the floor and tries, actually tries one of the routines, and breaks an ankle! Then got pissed when I wouldn’t ride in the ambulance with him!”

  “That just put you off Republicans,” her sister said reasonably. “Not blind dates.”

  “Okay, fine. You want to play rough? How about the model you set me up with during college?”

  “The watch model, or the dress-sock model?”

  “The entire date he kept checking himself out in the mirror behind me. I mean, he was good-looking, but nobody’s that much of an Adonis. The whole time I had the creepy feeling someone was sneaking up on me. I had to constantly fight the urge to turn around and check. Then I find out his nickname…Trojan? It wasn’t because he was a Greek major, like he told me. It was from the condom brand! Yerrrgggh!”

  “Anything sounds bad,” Kara Jay said, “when you put it like that.”

  “And you! You have no perspective when it comes to this stuff! What was it Sean told you on your first date? ‘Make yourself at home—my apartment is your apartment, my penis is your penis.’”

  “He grew on me.”

  “Like a foot fungus!”

  “What about Bradley? Bradley was okay.”

  “Ha! He spent the entire date talking about all his super-secret Army exploits, which of course he couldn’t tell me about because they were soooo secret (shyeah!). Then he started babbling about his Klingon costume for the convention, and how he was going to dress up as Data for the Star Trek convention…and then…then! Two days later, a Princess Leia costume shows up in the mail for me. After one date! Exit, stage right.”

  “But you have to admit, he was nice. You—”

  “I’ve had dates tell me I could order anything I want. Thanks, jackass, I know that. I’ve had first dates present me with written proof they have a clean bill of health…like that was going to be a huge issue. I mean, can I at least finish my risotto before I have to read about a guy’s white count?”

  “Okay, so you’ve had some bad experiences. We all have.”

  “You’re blissfully married to your high-school sweetheart, you jerk.”

  “Well, I meant ‘we’ in the…uh…universal sense. Right! I—”

  Her computer binked at her again and she swung around in her chair to see the latest horror.

  From: Scott Wythe

  To: Julie Kay About

  Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2006 4:22 PM

  Subject: How about dinner?

  The new proof looks terrific. My boss is thrilled. (I.T. guys, you should be thrilled, too.) How about dinner? You’ve probably got plans for tomorrow, but how about Friday?

  If you refuse, i’m gonna keep writing u letters like this and u will be sorry, grrrrl!

  “Oh dear God,” she breathed, hypnotized by the screen.

  “What? What?” Kara Jay squawked in her ear. “Is it the I.T. guys again? Have they mobilized? Did they feed your computer another virus?”

  “No, it’s…a guy I work with, the new guy down in Marketing, asked me out for tomorrow night.”

  “Well, there you go!”

  “He says he’s sure I’ve got plans for tomorrow so maybe we could get together another time.”

  “It’s nice that he’s not assuming you’re a mean, lonely freak,” Kara Jay observed.

  “I’m not lonely,” she said defensively.

  “But you’ll let the other two slide? You are a freak. A freak who doesn’t have a date for tomorrow. And you work with him! So that’s not a blind date at all. It doesn’t break your dumb dating rule.”

  “It is. I’ve never laid eyes on him. Eight thousand people work here, you know, and most of us aren’t here in the main building. He could walk right up to me and slap me in the face and I wouldn’t know him.”

  “Wait,” her sister said, and chuckled.

  Chapter Five

  Julie Kay spotted the crowd outside Tables of Content and hesitated. Typical V-Day mob, all right. All googly-eyed couples and starchy waiters. She definitely should have followed her instincts and stayed home. There was nothing wrong with being single, dammit! Why didn’t married people get it? Why had she weakened? Why was her bra itching? Why had she swapped her comfortable gray clogs for black flats?

  Well, there was nothing for it. Time to bite the bullet, take the bull by the horns, pick your annoying cliché. It was only one night, anyway. How bad could it possibly be? It couldn’t be worse than the Republican who brought a shotgun along. Or the model. Right? Because the chances of topping her worst date records were so slim as to be—

  The dying wail of a siren cut the air and an ambulance screeched up to the curb. She heard someone yell out, “You’re too late—the poor guy’s dead!” and someone else yell out, “No, no, hurry! He’ll be okay!” and knew. In that moment, Julie Kay About had her first and last psychic flash: her date had a date with the paramedics.

  She shoved past the crowd—there were only two officers there so far for crowd control—and burst into the small restaurant. Even in this moment of stress, she couldn’t repress a shudder at the de rigueur white tablecloths with a single red rosebud in a tall glass vase in the center of each one. Most of the tables were empty; everyone, it seemed, was grouped around her date.

  She knelt beside Scott Wythe, the artist formerly known as blind date, now known as dead date…because he was dead, all right. You didn’t have to be a health-care pro to know that. It was the peculiar gray color, the way his eyes looked like poached eggs. Oh, and the way the shrimp fork was sticking out of the middle of his chest. The blood stain was shaped like a fish on a bicycle. Were murder-scene bloodstains some sort of Rorschach test? Would a married couple see a pair of gold wedding bands? And why was she thinking of that now?

  She tried not to be selfish, but couldn’t quash the thought: worst blind date ever! Poor Scott! Poor her! Why did this have to happen? To either of them?

  “Let us through,” one of the paramedics ordered, and she obediently moved aside. Should she ride to the hospital in the ambulance with her date? Her dead date? Because that was creepy, even if it was also the right thing to do. Drive along behind in her own car? And then do what? She couldn’t even identify him for the doctors. All she could do was give out his e-mail address and tell them he had terrible grammar in life.

  “Julie?”

  And he was so young! Ridiculously, amazingly young. She knew he would have to be, but if the dead guy had seen his twenty-fifth birthday, she’d…well, she didn’t know what she’d do. He still had traces of acne on his perfectly unlined face, poor fellow.<
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  “Julie Kay?”

  “That’s enough,” someone else said, and she looked up in time to see an utterly gorgeous man being clapped into cuffs. He looked at her and even from across the restaurant…

  (their eyes met across a crowded crime scene…)

  (focus, Julie Kay)

  …she could see how blue his eyes were—the color of an Easter sky. He was hunched over slightly as the cuffs were put on, and was looking up at her with a friendly expression on his face.

  “Yes?” she asked. Wow, they’d caught the killer already! Unless the cuffs were recreational. But no, the fellow in the bad suit had a badge clipped to his belt, and the gal beside him—much better dressed—was reading him his rights.

  “I guess I’m going to be a little late,” Blue Eyes explained.

  “…the right to have an attorney present now and during any future questioning…”

  “What?” she asked. She was a little nervous to be talking to the killer.

  “…one will be appointed to you free of charge if you wish…”

  “You know. For our date,” Blue Eyes added helpfully. She noticed he was dressed in excellent first-date fashion: khakis, a dark blue work shirt, loafers, dark socks. His shoulders looked impossibly broad in the shirt—swimmer’s shoulders. He was ridiculously tall, too…he towered over the detectives. His dark brown hair hung in his eyes, and he jerked his head back so he could look right at her some more.

  “What?” she said again, catching on but not wanting to, figuring it out but not wanting a bit of this mess, not one piece—no, thank you.

  “I bought you some flowers,” he said, jerking his head at a table to her left. “But I can’t get them for you right now.”

  “You didn’t,” she said faintly.

  “Buy flowers?”

  “Kill this guy.”

  “Oh, hell no!”

  Well, that was something. Still, Julie Kay had no idea how to feel about recent events. Was it better that her date was the dead guy, or the murder suspect?

  “I thought I had a psychic flash,” she said faintly. “My very first one.”

  “Oh. Well, no offense, but I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “Me neither.”

  “That’s enough, sir. You’re coming with us now,” the lady detective said, kindly enough.

  “Oh, okay. Well, it was nice to meet you in person.”

  “Thanks,” she said through numb lips.

  “Sorry about all this,” he added, gesturing with his shoulders to the crime scene.

  “Me, too.” She sat down before she fell down.

  Chapter Six

  “At least he didn’t stand you up,” her sister said comfortingly.

  “For Christ’s sake, will you try to focus!” Julie Kay hissed into her cell phone. She slammed on her brakes so she wouldn’t hit the unmarked car in front of her. Her date had enough problems without being put in traction as well. “I have a big fucking problem here, and I’d like you to help me.”

  “Sweetie, I’m a homemaker, not Matlock. What do you want me to do?”

  “Can I go off and leave him?” she asked anxiously. “It’s not like we have this deep, meaningful relationship.”

  “He said he didn’t do it, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not Matlock, either. If he’s innocent, the cops or the D.A. will figure it out. Right?”

  “Riiiight,” her sister said doubtfully.

  “So what’s my date responsibility here?”

  “It’s a new one on me,” her sister admitted. “I’m just glad he turned out to be alive.”

  “Yeah,” she said, taking a left on Hiawatha, “there’s that.”

  “So, that’s an improvement, right? Especially if he’s telling the truth about not killing—who’d he supposedly kill?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, I hate to go all Miss Marple on you…”

  “Let me talk to him first. If they’ll let me, I guess. Man, oh man,” she muttered. “And I thought Valentine’s Day was killing me…”

  “That’ll learn you. Silver lining behind every cloud, and all that.”

  “You’ve been super-helpful. And by that I mean, of course, you have not been remotely helpful, and I’m hanging up now.”

  “Call me back!” her sister begged. “Tell me whodunit!”

  Like I’m going to have a clue myself, she thought, and slapped the phone closed.

  Chapter Seven

  “Well,” her date said cheerfully. “This is awkward.”

  “It’s not funny, Scott.”

  “I’m with you, but it’s either try to make a joke out of it or burst into unmanly tears, and I’m trying to make a good impression on you.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” she pointed out.

  “Thanks for coming to the station.”

  “Mmmm.”

  It was an evening of firsts: she was standing outside a holding cell, which Scott had all to himself. Getting in to see him had been relatively simple, once she’d signed about six reams of paperwork. It had certainly gone better than her last annual review.

  “So, what? What happens next?”

  “Well, I called my dad and he’s sending a lawyer down to try to get me out of here…”

  “You haven’t seen a lawyer yet? You saw me but not your attorney?”

  “What can I say. That black cardigan makes my heart go trippity-trip.”

  She yanked the cardigan closed. “Scott, this is serious.”

  “I know. You can tell because, the more serious it is, the more dumb jokes I’ll be cracking.”

  “How old are you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “If you’ll take a peek at my rap sheet, you’ll see I’m a doddering twenty-four.”

  “Well, even if this murder thing wasn’t hanging over our heads, I could tell you this never would have worked. I’ve got almost ten years on you.”

  “So? You speak your mind and you’ve got an ass that won’t quit. That’s really all I require in a woman.”

  “Scott, I’m not sure you’re getting exactly what’s going on here…”

  “Sure I am. Somebody killed our waiter while I was in the men’s. I fell over the body and got blood all over me.” He gestured to his dark shirt which, Julie Kay now noticed, had a dark stain on the upper left shoulder.

  “You fell on the dead guy?”

  “Yeah, and it’s as gross as it sounds, believe me. Basically, I did everything you’re not supposed to do…I mean, have I not seen any episode of the Law & Order franchise? I rolled the guy over, tried to see if he was okay, got my prints all over the shrimp fork—it was my shrimp fork, by the way—”

  She covered her eyes. “Oh, boy.”

  “—started yelling for help and, annoyingly, that’s when people noticed the body: when they looked over and saw me crouching practically on top of him.”

  “Great.”

  “Worst date ever,” he finished.

  “I was just having that same thought.”

  “Honey,” he told her, giving her a penetrating look from those amazing eyes, “you’re out there. I’m in here. So I win the Worst Date Prize.”

  “Agreed. So, now what?”

  “I tell my lawyer what happened—when he shows up—and justice prevails.”

  “It’s not like you had a motive, right?”

  “Never saw the guy before tonight. Although, I was kind of annoyed he didn’t give us a better table.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, keep that to yourself. Maybe somebody at the restaurant saw what happened.”

  “If someone did, no one said shit to the cops while I was there. Of course, they could have feared my murderous rage and clammed up as a result…”

  “Sure.” Who could fear long legs and blue eyes and a narrow waist? Scott was a little on the skinny side, but she liked tall guys. And he was really tall. Yum. “Well, I guess I’ll just wait with you until your lawyer gets around to showing up.”

/>   “Aw, you don’t have to do that,” he protested as she looked around for a place to sit. “You should go grab something to eat. Aren’t you hungry? It’s after nine o’clock and we never got a chance to…”

  “I couldn’t eat. Not after seeing that poor guy. Did you see his eyes?” She shivered. “I’ve never seen a real dead guy before. TV doesn’t count.”

  “I have,” Scott said glumly. He had a place to sit, she noticed—a small bench in the far corner, not to mention the toilet—but didn’t. Instead, he stayed close to the bars. Close enough to reach out and touch her, if he wanted. “I used to work in a funeral home.”

  “And you left to design greeting cards?”

  “What can I say? I wanted something in the fast lane.”

  She gestured to the holding area. “It doesn’t get much faster than this.”

  “Honey, that’s the truth.”

  “Don’t call me honey.”

  “Darling? Sweetie pants?”

  “I told you, this isn’t going to work.”

  “It’s the cloud of murder hanging over my head, right?”

  “No, I already told you. The age difference.”

  “Oh,” he yawned. “That.”

  “Look, let’s stay on track here, all right? Can I get you something? Or is a detective going to offer you a sandwich and then play bad cop?”

  “Honey, I have no idea. I’ve never been arrested before.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’ll go get you something to eat.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  “Stop that.”

  Chapter Eight

  “This is getting weirder and weirder. I mean, the evening just keeps topping itself.”

  “It’s like adopting a dog,” Scott said, glancing over her shoulder as she signed page after page. “Look at all the stuff you have to fill out! Is there anything there about me having all my shots?”