Janet Evanovich - Love in a Nutshell

Matt led Kate to the chair. “Bart, could you call the police?”

Bart looked shaken. “Sure thing.”

Kate settled into Bart’s chair, bent over, and untied her soggy sneakers. “Why would someone do that to me?”

Matt had his guesses, and they had to do with what-and who-he held of value.

“I don’t know,” he said. Now wasn’t the time to point out the obvious.

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She pulled off her shoes and socks. Matt noted that one sock was light blue and the other gray with little yellow ducks on it. Despite his tension, he smiled at the mismatch.

“Do you have any other clothes here?” he asked.

“No.”

He did a mental inventory of his office, then said, “Hang on.”

“Believe me, I’m not going anywhere.”

And he didn’t want her to, either. But for her own safety, she would be. After today, Matt was going to make sure Kate was far from Depot Brewing Company.

MAYBE BOYFRIEND jeans were in style, but boss-or-whatever-more-he-was-to-her sweatpants weren’t. Kate rolled the waist over as many times as possible and still she swam in the fabric. She paired the sweatpants with a T-shirt from the brewery store and did a small grimace. Okay, she thought, so she looked like a goofus, but at least she was a dry goofus.

Matt was waiting for her by the brewhouse with Chief Erikson.

“Do you feel up to answering some questions, Kate?” the police chief asked.

“Sure.”

Matt glanced toward the latest in a stream of sympathetic Depot employees who’d been checking on Kate since her big swim. “How about in my office?” Matt suggested.

Clete closed the office door behind them. “Kate, did you see your attacker?”

“I was at the bottom of a tank, Chief Erikson. It was just me and a whole lot of dark.”

The chief scribbled some notes, then turned to Matt, who’d taken a seat behind his desk. “You were close enough to be the first to Kate, Matt. Did you see anything unusual?”

“No. Bart, Floyd, Nan, and I were in Bart’s office. We’d been having a pretty intense discussion, so I didn’t hear or see anything at first.” He picked up a pen and started jotting on a legal pad. When he was done, he tore off a piece and slid it across his desk to Clete. “These are the names of the people who were here this morning at ten. The taproom was still closed, so there were no customers in the house.”

“Not paying, at least,” Clete said. “But could an outsider have gotten into the brewery?”

“It’s possible, I suppose,” Matt said. “Except it’s unlikely an outsider would have known that someone was in the tank.”

“Not so true,” Kate said. “I was singing ‘All By Myself.’ Kind of loudly, too.”

Clete smiled. “Good song. Other than the brewers, does anyone else s atouch the brewing tank?”

“No,” Matt replied. “The only exception would be if Bart has given any private tours. You’ll have to ask him about that.”

Clete nodded. “Matt, I don’t know what you had planned for that unit today, but I need to call in my fingerprint team. We’ll need to fingerprint your staff and you, Matt, though I suppose we already have your prints on file.”

Matt showed a flash of a smile at that. “Yeah, I suppose you do from way back when. The file might be a little dusty.”

The police chief rose from his chair. “Remember, no one near the brewhouse.”

Clete left, and Matt’s face grew somber.

“Kate, we have to talk,” he said.

She knew what that meant. She’d last heard those words from Harley Bagger. Would she never hold a job in this town for longer than a month?

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked. “You can’t possibly be about to fire me.”

Matt looked shocked. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want sorry. I just want my job.”

“Kate, I have to do this,” he said. “Yes, you survived this just wet and scared, but you said it earlier-this attack was aimed straight at you. I can’t keep placing you in harm’s way.”

“I know all that, but you’re forgetting one crucial thing. I can’t eat, repair The Nutshell, or begin to plan for the future without money. And I need the bonus to stop the villain who plans to take my house if I can’t get current on my mortgage by Thanksgiving.”

“How about if I keep paying you? You can have the bonus money, the whole thing.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going to let you pay me for doing nothing.”

“Why not?” Matt asked. “Apparently, I do it for Jerry all the time.”

“With you or without you, I need to find out who did this, or I’m never going to be able to put what happened in the brewhouse behind me. And what about you? You need this thing solved as much as I do. We must be getting closer if the creep’s pushed it this far.”

Matt started to speak a couple of times, but cut himself off. She waited.

“Okay. Work here,” he finally said. “But understand that means you’re going to be with me twenty-four/seven.”

She smiled. “I think they have employment laws against those sorts of hours.”

He gave her another frustrated look. “You know what I’m saying, and you yinknow why. Someone is after you, and that person isn’t messing around. So, when we’re here, you’re with me, and when we’re not, you’re in my house.”

She wanted to say he was exaggerating the situation, except that she’d just been treated like a beer additive.

“And at the risk of sounding even more like I’m trying to run your life, did you get the locks changed out at your place this week, Kate?”

“Actually, no.” She’d been in a haze of poodle contentment and had forgotten Matt’s suggestion.

“So anyone can walk in and hide until they’re ready to come out. Does that sound about right?”

“Yes,” Kate admitted.

“And do you have any walls or floors or a bathroom?”

“Jeesh. I have some walls and floors. And the bees are practically all gone.”

“You like living with ‘some’ bees in a gutted house with no locks on an isolated stretch of the lake with a psycho after you?”

Kate kicked at the floor and looked at her shoe. “It’s not gutted, it’s decorator-ready. And, besides, every house has ‘some’ bees.”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Then it’s settled. I’ll come with you while you pack. You and your poodle will stay with me until an arrest is made and your house is renovated and one hundred percent bee free.”

“That could be a very long time.”

Matt shrugged. “True.”

He’d sounded almost happy, and secretly, Kate was, too.

“And you know that we’ll probably end up wanting to kill each other,” she said.

He smiled. “Old news.”

“And that people are going to talk.”

“They always do.”

But what was gossip mere seconds ago now would be true. She, Matt Culhane, a fussy poodle, and a three-legged dog were going to be shacking up. The circus had just come to town.

Matt thought his house was pretty cool. He’d put a good couple of years into harvesting the timber from his property and then building the place. Because it had been designed to suit his needs, he’d never thought too much about how others might view it. Until now.

Kate climbed out of her Jeep, then scooped up Stella, who’d hopped into the driver’s seat as soon as it had been vacated. That was close to their actual dog/woms aer an relationship. To be totally accurate, Stella should have been driving the car.

Kate checked out his house. “I take it you had a thing for Lincoln Logs when you were a kid. This is one very impressive adult version thereof.”

“You know what they say… The bigger the boys, the bigger-”