“Don’t tell me. Do not tell me what I think you’re going to tell me.”
“They were in Manhattan at the time of her murder. But they live in California.”
Vincent swore softly. “What the hell is wrong with these old folks, all jetting around across the country all willy-nilly?”
“Wait, and you think they’re the old folks? Are you kidding me with the willy-nilly?”
“Nonna says it,” he grumbled. “And California? Really?”
Jill smiled. “You’re going to look so great with a tan.”
She reached out to playfully poke his cheek and he batted her hand away. “Why don’t we just fly them out here?”
“Yeah, the department’s really gonna go for that. Flying out four suspects from LAX to JFK, then paying for their transportation, then hotels…”
“Well, they’re not going to go for flying us out there either.”
“Maybe not. But if we chipped in on flights, I’m guessing they’d spot the hotel room.”
“Why the hell would we do that?” he asked.
She stared at him. “Waiting for it…”
“Fuck,” he muttered the second it clicked. “You’re thinking we can see Marco.”
“Come on. You know you miss him.”
Jill knew she was right. She could see it in his stillness.
Jill didn’t know Vin’s other brother as well as she did Luc and Anthony. By the time she and Vin had gotten really close, and she’d been all but welcomed into the family, he’d already moved.
But she remembered him being a good sort—just like the rest of the Morettis.
Handsome as sin, too. Again, just like the rest of the Morettis.
“When?” he grunted.
“I was thinking next week. Enough time for us to get a plan together, but I don’t think we can wait much longer. The captain swore at me for at least an hour yesterday about how our asses were on the line if we didn’t give him an update he could, and I quote, “fucking do something fucking with.”
“I hate California.”
“Of course you do. All that sunshine,” she said sweetly.
Vin flexed his fingers on the steering wheel and then tilted his neck from side to side as though trying to work out a kink, although whether it was in his neck or his attitude, she wasn’t sure.
“We really have to go?” he asked.
“No. But I think we should.”
“Damn,” he breathed softly.
Relieved to have dropped the bomb with relatively little fallout, Jill turned her attention to the world that was whizzing by at oh, twenty miles an hour. Vin hadn’t been joking about traffic being a total bitch.
And it would be even worse in LA. Weren’t they supposed to have the worst traffic, like, ever? And crappy air quality, and…
Oh, who was she kidding?
Jill couldn’t wait to go to California, even if it was for work.
With her mother living in Florida, most of her “sunny getaways” involved the Atlantic Ocean over the Pacific. She’d been to California… once. Her parents had taken her to Yellowstone as a kid.
But she barely remembered it, and Yosemite, while lovely, wasn’t exactly the quintessential California described by the Beach Boys, or Katy Perry.
But more than the destination itself was the chance to get away. A chance to get out of her routine, to get some distance from wedding planning and the looming changes in her future.
A chance to… think.
She didn’t know what she needed to think about. Just knew that she needed to.
An hour later, California was the last thing on her mind, because she was too busy trying to stifle her laughter.
Holly Adams was every bit as over-the-top welcoming as she’d been last time they questioned her.
But she’d tweaked her approach, to play up her, um, assets.
In all their years together, Jill didn’t think she’d seen Vincent Moretti quite so uncomfortable. Hell, until today, she hadn’t realized that he could be uncomfortable.
But then, he’d probably never had an elderly femme fatale dressed in a red gown—yes, gown—draped all over him before.
“Um, Ms. Adams,” Vincent said, making yet another futile attempt to shift away from the older woman. “You were telling us about the time that Lenora won the Moonlight Damsel role?”
“Stole,” Holly said with a smile, setting her hand on Vin’s arm. “She stole my role. And my my, do you work out?”
Yes. Yes, he does, Jill thought, remembering all too vividly that moment when Vincent had opened the motel door sans shirt.
Holly’s arm ran up Vincent’s bicep. Squeezed. Vin gave Jill a panicked look, and she took pity on him.
“Ms. Adams, when you say that Lenora stole your role, what do you mean by that? Did she bribe someone? Sabotage your audition?”
Holly’s attention snapped to Jill and her eyes narrowed. “Why are you two so interested in forty-year-old films?”
“You know why,” Jill said steadily. “It’s the same reason we’re here. Again. You have a murky past with Lenora Birch, and now she’s dead.”