“Only cookies. I find it therapeutic—a delicious way to relieve stress and excessive energy—two things I seem to have more than my share of.”
His mind wandered to other ways of relieving excessive energy, but figured he would keep those thoughts to himself. After taking the bread from the oven, he placed it in a basket on the table. He felt his phone vibrate in his jeans pocket. Pulling it out, he saw the caller was Frazier. He would call him back later.
“White or red wine?” he asked Lennox.
“I’ll let you decide.”
“I’ll choose red. It goes best with spaghetti,” he said, grabbing a bottle off the counter and then getting the glasses.
“Does it?”
He chuckled. “Yes. I attended this wine class a few years ago and the instructor told us it has to do with the acidic tomato sauce in the spaghetti. Any other type of wine will make the spaghetti taste bland. And we can’t have that.”
He turned to head back to the table with the wine and glasses just in time to catch her smile again. Considering everything, it looked simply adorable.
When he finally had everything on the table, he slid down into the chair across from her.
“We don’t have much time to hang out here. The only reason Joy said we could isbecause my condo isn’t really a crime scene, but the lobby is. Once the detectives havefinished up their investigation, they’ll kick us out. So, we might as well eat up.”
“Okay.”
Other than when she’d admired his condo, and cooed over how delicious the casserole was, they ate in silence. A short while later, he took a sip of his wine and, looking at her over the rim of his glass, he asked the one question that had been on his mind all night.
“So…what was in the envelope that Joy couldn’t tell me about, Lennox?”
• • •
Lennox’s fingers froze on her fork, and the words written on the sheet of paper were suddenly hurled back at her. She’d been replaying them over and over in her mind with even more clarity than before.
“Lennox?”
She glanced over at Roland. Those mesmerizing dark eyes were watching her with the intensity of a hawk. He had every right to know. Tonight, he had killed a man who had intended to end her life.
“It had been a warning,” she said softly. “A warning for me to watch my back.”
He placed his wine glass down. Those mesmerizing eyes now becoming laser-focused. Leaning toward her, he asked, “A warning from who? Why?”
Lennox thought he sounded very much like a detective. But then, he’d been a cop. And from what she’d heard from the officers who used to work with him, he’d been a good one.
She’d seen detectives in action plenty of times. However, she’d never dreamed she’d find herself on the receiving end of their questions. But tonight had changed that.
When her throat suddenly felt dry, she took a sip of her wine. A few seconds later, she said, “I honestly don’t know. I only found out tonight that someone had slipped the envelope in my bag at the Forensic Scientists Convention I attended. I was looking for something in my bag, and I’d dumped the contents out on my bed. That was the first time I saw the envelope with my name on it. And I read the note inside.”
“What did it say?” he asked, his tone going from deceptively calm to one with an edge.
“It said… “Your fiancé’s death was not an accident. He was murdered. Watch your back.””
Her words made Roland sit back and take a deep breath. What the hell? She’d been threatened? Why? Getting a hold of himself, he settled back against the chair, stared at her for a moment, and then asked, “You read that note, possibly less than an hour before that guy tried to kill you. After you found it, why didn’t you call the police or something?”
Lennox knew where his line of questioning was going. “Honestly, I thought it was some kind of sick joke. After all, DeWalt died five years ago. And I knew what happened to him. He hadn’t been in a hit-and-run, a car accident, a burglary or anything that seemed suspicious in nature. He’d eaten something that had caused an allergic reaction, at a convention that had been attended by over a thousand people. The hotel even admitted its guilt. What that note said…it didn’t make sense.”
He picked up his wine glass and took a sip, as if trying for calm. But he still seemed agitated. “So, you were going to dismiss it?”
“No. I had intended to talk to Joy about it tomorrow.” She saw his features relax. Not a whole lot, but some.
“Glad to hear that,” he said.
At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Getting up from the chair, Roland went over to answer it…but not before pulling a gun from the drawer. She wondered just how many he had. The one he’d used to kill the intruder had been turned over to the detectives as part of their investigation. “Who is it?”