Excerpt from

Dating Can Be Murder

Copyright 2002 by Jennifer Apodaca

Chapter 1

Finding out that my dead husband had been cheating on me made getting revenge harder.

But not impossible.

It took a margarita laced session with my best friend, Angel, to come up with a suitable reprisal. I sold the cheating pig’s classic 1964 fully restored Mustang Convertible. Trent Shaw had loved his two restored classic cars, but he’d had a special fondness for the Mustang over the 1957 two-seater T-Bird, white with red interior. Special enough that he had hidden a dozen or so pairs of panties beneath the spare tire.

They weren’t my panties. In those days, I had been full-sized white-cotton housewife. The panties hidden in the Mustang had been Cheap Slut.

I’m no longer white-cotton matron. With the money from selling the Mustang, I got myself a brand new pair of the latest model breasts and Tae Kwon Do lessons. A girl with a perky, recently purchased size C chest needed to be able to protect her investment.

In short, finding those panties in the Mustang was the beginning of my new-woman makeover. After buying my two sons the newest Nintendo mind-numbing unit and a bone-shattering trampoline, I used the remainder of the revenge money from the Mustang to exchange my long dresses for short skirts. With that much leg showing, I couldn’t have those dowdy gray streaks in my hair. So I went blonde.

The final phase of the margarita-induced revenge plan is how I came to be in my retro-awesome Thunderbird my panty-collecting husband never let me drive this morning. Dressed in a thigh-high pale green skirt, a tight black silk shirt and a pair of black sling backs with spiky heels, I leaned over and cranked up an old Beach Boy’s tune. Weaving my way through town, I headed for the second most important thing in my life--my career.

I am a businesswoman. Sort of. The parking lot of my company was a single row of spaces facing Mission Trail Street in Lake Elsinore, California. There’s barely enough room for two cars to pass each other. The suites are located in a decaying building that also housed a liquor store, flower shop, baseball card shop, beach and bike stuff, physic reader and a jeweler that has to buzz customers in the door. Okay, maybe not real elegant, but suite 107 is all mine. HEART MATES.

A dating service.

I bought this place with the insurance money after Trent’s untimely accident. Before I had found his panty stash, each with a Post-It Note rating the wearer. Classy. When I had still believed in love, romance, soul mates, and all that. Trent and I had met at this dating service, and when it came up for sale after his death--I bought it. Let’s just say that my good old white cottons were wrapped a bit tight.

Now that I had loosened the hold of my misguided nostalgia, I had plans and dreams. Building Heart Mates into a success was important to me. The fact that my married life had all been a lie, and that the entire town had known my husband was a cheating louse while I had not, meant I had something to prove. Buying Heart Mates would not be another in a long stream of mistakes.

Getting out of the car, I walked to the door. One day, when I was a success, I would own this entire building, not just a single run-down suite. Romance was an illusion--one that I meant to give my clients. The walls of the long hallways would be painted in romantic mist rose, and my clients’ feet would sink in the up-to-your-ankle rose carpet. Piped in lovers’ music would soothe troubled and lonely souls searching for love. A well-trained staff would move silently and efficiently, guiding prospective clients into signing with us. Heart Mates would become well known for huge mingling parties, serving wine from the local vineyards in Temecula….

But all that took work. Cutting off my daydreams, I went through the door. "Morning Blaine, any new clients?" I looked at him hopefully.

"That T’s purring today. You put that premium gas in it?"

Blaine was the mechanic my husband had used. I had lured him away to work for me. He was…well, mechanical in all ways. Very good with a camcorder and camera, to say nothing of my car. Efficient too. As my assistant, he was top notch. The fact that he was big and brawny helped in my line of work. He wore his brown hair in a 70’s feather style and gathered the length in a ponytail at the back of his thick neck. He favored jeans with blue work shirts. Guess you can take the mechanic out of the garage…

"You put gas in it for me yesterday, remember?" Blaine drove my car whenever possible. The primer-painted Hyundai two-door hatchback with missing hubcaps was all the reason he needed.

Nodding, he dragged his gaze from the T-bird. "Nice suit," he commented with much less enthusiasm for my new-woman outfit. "We got one new client in the interview room. And your mother’s in your office."

My sling backs caught on a loose thread of the wafer thin, industrial steel-gray carpet. "What’s she want?" I whispered as I reached for the doorknob of my office. It’s actually a cubicle. The suite I leased was the size of a large bedroom. Blaine sat up front with the coffee maker and file cabinets. There were a couple metal folding chairs for waiting clients and a stack of magazines on a TV tray. My cubicle was on the right side of the office. A separate cubicle divided the back of the office into an interview and media room where we could video tape or photograph clients. Behind the interview room was a small storage area and bathroom. I snatched my hand back from my office door.

Blaine shrugged from behind his oak desk. "She doesn’t talk to the help. She just told me to make fresh coffee and bring it to her." He glanced at the TV tray holding the coffeemaker by the Sparklets water cooler. There was a can of Chocked Full o’ Nuts and a glass jar of tea bags. A jar of powered creamer, and packets of sugar, both real and fake, sat next to a stack of white Styrofoam cups.

I rolled my eyes up to the yellow water stains on the ceiling and pictured my mother holding a Styrofoam cup. I could see her perfectly manicured, pearl pink nails against the white cup. My mother rearranged the world to suit her delusions. Styrofoam was beneath her. I could hear her lecture about providing my clients with the proper refreshments in proper dishes. Then without any thought for logic in telling me how to run my business then how to dump it, she would smoothly segue into why I should get out of the dating service business and into real estate. My left eye began to twitch. "I had better see the new client," I called back over my shoulder and hurried into the interview room that stretched out behind the reception area and my office.

"Chicken."

You bet, I thought as I opened the door. This cubicle was soundproof, or as close as we could get it, for the video-taping. Blaine was one of my better business decisions. Not only was he mechanically inclined, but he was handy too. Looking at the walls Blaine had extended up to the ceiling, I congratulated myself on trusting my instincts. I had met him a few times while Trent had been alive, and he struck me as calm and capable. Restoring classic cars took training, skill, and improvisation since many parts are unavailable for classics. Those things didn’t stump Blaine--he found a way around them. That was the kind of person I needed to assist me at Heart Mates. We improvised a lot here.

Closing the door to the interview room, I ran my eye over the romantic posters of couples in exotic places that covered three of the walls. The far wall was blank. A stool sat there along with the tripod and other assorted tools that Blaine used to capture the image the client wanted. Everything was in place.

I fixed a smile on my face to greet my first client of the day. "Good morning, I’m Samantha Shaw."

The man sat at an oval oak table on a single pedestal that once lived in my dining room. As he looked up from the clipboard forms he was reading, I quickly appraised him. Average. About five foot ten inches, thinning sandy blonde hair, owlish brown eyes behind John Lennon glasses, and the kind of intense look that belonged to an accountant. I pegged him for the indoor breed. Probably read Tom Clancy but had never had an adventure of his own. This was his adventure--going to a dating service. He wore a short sleeved, button-down Hawaiian print shirt. His arms were well developed, so maybe he worked out. Muscles like those didn’t come from punching a keyboard. His left arm was in a black sling.

I was beginning to revise my opinion so I decided to read the questionnaire. Pulling out a chair, I sat down and slid the clipboard toward me. "Okay, Mr.--" I looked down at the name.

It was blank. The whole sheet was blank. I lifted the first sheet to review the security check permission sheet.

Blank.

Staring at the pages, I bit down on my lips as a thread of unease curled inside of me. Just a--a what? I was being silly. A businesswoman does not let little problems throw her. I forced my mouth to relax back into an easy smile. The guy was probably having second thoughts. Most people were leery of dating services. "Well." I gave him my best trust-me smile, "Why don’t I start by explaining what we do here. You see, we’re really a matching type service. You fill out these forms"--I lifted the clip board up--"then we conduct an interview to determine your preferences, and if you want, we’ll do a video tape or photograph to go in your file. When we think we have a match that fits your needs, we check with both of the two compatible clients and give out your phone numbers. The actual contact is up to you."

I took a breath to launch into the second part of my speech. "Now we also offer some exciting dating packages that you can purchase too. Our Temecula wine-tasting package is the most popular, Mr.--" I looked down at the blank page and said, "What is your name?"

He stood up.

My fleeting moment of unease gave way to a different kind of anxiety. I couldn’t afford to lose another client! Especially with my mother in my office. Panic tested my cool businesswoman exterior. "What is it you are looking for, sir?"

He came around the table and stopped when he was standing over me. "I want the money."

I stared up at him. From where I sat in the chair, he seemed taller than I had first thought. His complexion was pasty white; that, combined with the glasses, had made had me think of an accountant. But his voice didn’t sound like a soft, fact-spewing accountant. He sounded low and threatening. I inhaled sharply, catching a big whiff of stale cigarette smoke mixed with cinnamon gum. What was going on? What money…Wait, I knew!

"Are you from the IRS?" Standing up, I explained myself. "I only got that notice of an audit! I fully intend to cooperate!"

The man narrowed his brown eyes behind his glasses. Leaning closer, he stared into my face. "Funny. Funny can get you dead, Samantha Shaw. Ask your husband."

"But he’s already dead!" Trent had died from a peanut allergy when he ate some homemade candy. What possible connection could he have to this guy? Trent had been handsome, smooth, charming slutty woman right out of their panties. This man was pasty white, with hard marble eyes and a cheesy Hawaiian shirt.

"I know." His voice took on a low menace and he dropped his gaze to my chest. "Nice rack, where’d you get the money?"

Hey, I’d dealt with a room full of women at PTA meetings eyeing me and whispering behind chocolate chip cookies after I’d had myself enhanced. I wasn’t taking this crap from an amateur.

Straightening up to my five foot five--with heels--height, I sucked up my one hundred twenty-nine and three-quarter pounds into the best posture I could manage. "You ever hear of sexual harassment?" I was picturing slapping the IRS with a whopper of a lawsuit, and I desperately wanted to believe he was from the IRS.

Because if he wasn’t from the IRS, and he wasn’t one of the polyester-suit lounge lizards that gave dating services a bad name, then I was in trouble.

Just in case, I widened my stance and said, "I know Tae Kwon Do." The truth was that I’m only a yellow belt and have trouble balancing on one foot. There were six-year-old kids passing me up in rank.

Recovering, he stepped closer. "You have something that belongs to me. I want my money or you and your kids will be visiting Trent in hell real soon."

"What money!" And what did Trent have to do with this? He’d been dead a year now. The mention of my kids scared me. Hell, this guy scared me. The feeling that I’d been ignoring since I saw the blank interview forms broke out of my control into full-blown terror. "I don’t have any money!"

Good old charming Trent, it turned out, had left us a bank account with worthless zeros and a lot of debt. I’d been forced to wake up to reality and sell the house, ripping my two sons from the home they’d been born in. We’d all moved in with Grandpa in his small three-bedroom house. But the boys and I–-we’d survived. We were making the best of it. Now, somehow, this man was threatening us.

What money? I’d used Trent’s life insurance money to buy this place and it wasn’t producing any golden eggs.

Suddenly he reached into his black sling and pulled out what looked like an electric razor. I had a sudden vision of myself bald. Was this guy here to shave my head? My heart started bouncing in my chest. I forgot every self-defense move I’d learned except how to scream. I opened my mouth and the world went black.

* * *

I came to sprawled on the floor by my dining room table with my mother and Blaine standing over me. Where was I?

"Maybe a seizure?" My mother’s voice interrupted the jerking and twitching of my arms and legs.

"Never heard of a seizure that makes someone write on themselves with a permanent black marker," Blaine replied.

Opening my mouth, I almost choked on my tongue. My muscles were not responding to my commands. What happened? Where was I? I was pretty sure I was not in my dining room despite the table. No, I remembered now, that house was gone. There had been no room at Grandpa’s for anything except bedroom furniture. I had Trent’s fancy oak desk in my office at Heart Mates, the big oak dining room table in the interview room, and the rest I had either sold or stored in Grandpa’s garage. Which brought me back to where I was–-on the floor of the interview room at Heart Mates.

"She’s coming around." Blaine hunkered down by my side. "Boss? Can you hear me?"

"What happened? I feel like a truck ran over me."

Blaine’s brown eyes looked up and down me as if I was a car. The diagnosis sprang out of thick lips. "Stun gun." He nodded his head, satisfied. "Judging by the message written on your skirt, I’d say you annoyed someone."

"What! My skirt is from Nordstrom’s!" I struggled to get my arms, which were quivering like flopping fish, under me to lever myself up on my elbows. Big black letters floated like spots before my eyes. "Tell me I’m not seeing that!" I heard myself wail.

"It’s a short message. Guess he ran out of material," Blaine commented.

"Couldn’t have been the IRS then. They’re real pros at fine print." Clearly I was not dealing with an electric razor wielding IRS agent. "What does it say?" I was having trouble getting the room to hold still. Reading, even large black letters on my pale green skirt, was way beyond my abilities.

"It says ‘Bring the money to the arcades at Mulligan’s nine o’clock Friday night, or die.’" Blain said.

Too many thoughts fought for attention in my brain. Mulligan’s was a small miniature golf and go-cart park that also had a big arcade. Why there? And what money?

"Your skirt is so short that they wrote the ‘or die’ on the bare skin of your thighs," my mother announced in a sharp voice. "Really, Samantha, a lady always wears panty hose. It’s going to take a week to get that marker off."

With that, my thoughts focused on one thing. If I held my breath, would I pass out again?

* * *

"Let me see if I understand this. An electric razor wielding IRS agent attacked you?"

A banger of a headache was shortening my temper. "Detective Rossi, why are you here? How did I rate a detective? Is there a serial stun-gunner who writes on women in permanent marker on the loose?" I looked down at my legs and wondered if my thighs would look fat in the pictures the officer had taken.

Detective Morgan Rossi was a good looking man. On the far side of thirty, he had a killer grin that dimpled his otherwise hard cheeks and pale blue eyes. He wore pressed jeans with a blazer--I could see his black shoulder holster lying starkly against his white shirt. He filled up the sturdy oak arrow backed chair.

My husband had been good looking. Good looking men were trouble.

Leaning back in the matching chair across the oak table, I closed my eyes. "Do you think this guy was some kind of nut? What money does he think I have? This place..." I sipped at my cold coffee and didn’t bother stating the obvious. I wasn’t going to be winning local newspaper’s Business Woman of the Year plaque anytime in the foreseeable future.

"You tell me."

Two things crossed my mind. First, women confessed to this man. Yessir, he just oozed charm that made you want to confide in him. And second, I didn’t know what the hell to confess since he was talking money. "I don’t have any money!"

Detective Rossi nodded and wrote something down in a small spiral notebook with a Bic pen.

My gut clenched. "You don’t believe me." Suddenly, this seemed serious. Way serious. "I mean this guy was a wacko, right? Has some sort of grudge against dating services? Maybe he used this service before I bought it and wants his money back?" I was babbling, but my whole life was tilting over.

Again, dammit. Wasn’t learning that Trent had been cheating on me all the years I played the patsy/loyal wife and mom enough? Then the notice in the mail, all in accusing red ink, telling me my check for the house payment had bounced. My headache hammered beneath that humiliating memory. Trent had been dead less than two weeks when I discovered there was no money in our checking account. I’d been left with less than two hundred dollars in our savings account and a stack of incoming credit card bills from Trent’s high living, car payments, utilities–-it didn’t begin to cover it. Checks bounced all over that month.

Rossi flicked a blue-eyed glance at me. "We’ll check it out." Standing up, he said, "By the way, we’ll need that skirt."

That snapped me out of my memories. I blinked. "Now?"

He pulled a Ziploc bag out of his jacket. His killer grin made a slow crawl over his mouth. "Now."

* * *

I was no longer was in the mood for the Beach Boys. With the radio off, I struggled to breathe as the morning summer sun cooked me inside the T-bird. Navigating the fifteen-minute drive through town on automatic pilot, I glanced in the mirror to see Detective Rossi’s white Toyota Camry behind me.

At least it wasn’t a police cruiser with screaming sirens escorting me home to confiscate my skirt.

My ruined skirt. What kind of thug writes on a woman’s skirt?

The kind who meant to get his point across. It was hard to miss thick black-marker words on your skirt and thighs. This thug wanted his money.

Taking my eyes off the two-lane Lakeshore Drive, named for the manmade lake spread out on my left, I glanced at the upside down words on my lap. Bring the money… Clearly he thought I had money. His money. Probably not money he’d earned by an income-tax paying job.

The stun gun told me that he would use whatever means necessary to get it.

I was in trouble.

Pulling into the dirt lot in front of Grandpa’s house, I parked the car. I just wanted to change my skirt, give Rossi the marker-stained one and try to figure out what was going on. Nodding to Rossi when he got out of his Camry, I hurried up the porch steps. I could feel him right behind me. Did he think I was going to escape through the back door?

I was almost to the front door when I realized that I had more trouble. The door was slightly opened about a two-finger width.

Alarmed, I stopped dead on the wood porch.

Before I could say anything, Detective Rossi slammed into me from behind, knocking me through my opened front door. Sprawled on the twenty year old brown shag carpet, I fleetingly thought that if whoever broke into my house fired a gun, at least I was a flat target.

"Nice thong."

The last thing I wanted to do was show the local police my fanny. However, before I could think of a graceful way to get up, a pair of strong hands hauled to my feet. I teetered on my heels and glared at a grinning detective. "My front door was opened."

His grin faded. "You locked it this morning?"

"Grandpa locked it when he took the boys to school. He always locks the door."

His blue gaze was searching the living room while only half listening to me. "Where’s your Grandpa now?"

I checked my watch. "On his way home from Jack in the Box." It was a morning ritual. Grandpa dropped the boys off at school, then had coffee with some cronies at Jack’s. Grandpa was a retired magician who had a new career in gossip.

"Stay here." Rossi pulled his gun out of his holster. He started moving through my house, just like on those cop shows.

I followed him past the brown-and-tan checked couch and love seat into the dining room that opened to a kitchen. His shoes squeaked on the yellow linoleum. So much for stealth, but I suspected that my less than dignified entry clued in any robber. Grandpa’s computer on the big oak rolltop was humming in time with the screen saver. Rossi moved between the desk and glass table to sliding glass door leading to the usual patio and grass backyard decorated with a big round trampoline. "Door’s secure," he said and moved through the long kitchen, went around the old white refrigerator into the hallway.

I kicked off my sling backs and hurried after him. He went into TJ and Joel’s room first. This time I hit the center of his back with my chin.

"Christ, I told you to stay put!"

"It’s my house." Well, Grandpa’s house. I looked into my boys’ room. It was larger than most bedrooms. A set of bunks stood against one wall, with a couple desks. The walls were covered in Nintendo and skateboarding posters. "Everything looks okay," I said and stepped back. The thought of some intruder in the kids’ room made my stomach churn.

Right across the hall from the boys’ room was a large sized bathroom that sported wet towels and dirty socks, but no intruder.

The next room was Grandpa’s. There was a neatly made double bed. His dresser had pictures of my grandma, who had died just before Trent. "Grandpa moved into this room after Grandma died," I explained.

The last room, the room Grandma and Grandpa had shared for decades, was mine. Detective Rossi blocked my view, but I saw his shoulders stiffen. "What?"

Slowly, he turned his body so I could see. My double bed was in its usual corner slot next to a small dresser. The rest of the room held my desk, electric typewriter, a metal filing cabinet and several bookshelves crammed with books.

The big bulletin board above my desk where I kept my calendar and deadlines was tossed onto the floor. In its place was a message scrawled in black marker: "Bring the money, or you’ll see Trent in hell."

I stood frozen to the floor while Rossi checked out the bathroom that opened off the room. He came back out. "I’m going to call this in."

"The boys! What if he has them!"

Slipping his gun back into the shoulder hostler, Rossi grabbed both my shoulders and fixed his blue stare on me. "Calm down. Tell me the name of their school and I’ll check it out. Falling apart will only make things worse."

I glared at him. "Does that speech really work?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes. Now don’t touch anything." Then he went to use the phone in the kitchen.

The stun-gun thug had been in my house, in my bedroom. A creepiness slithered over skin. Hugging myself, I shivered.

"Okay, the boys are in school. I had the someone physically check to make sure they were there."

"Thank you."

"You’re a reader." He moved past me to study the books on my shelves. I hadn’t moved from the spot in the hallway. "Romance?"

When he went to my desk and typewriter, I had calmed down enough to actually think. Uh oh.

"What’s this?"

He was looking at the sheet of paper in the typewriter. I pretended to think he meant the machine. "I’m not on real friendly terms with computers."

"Three stars? Sexual tension starts off with a bang then fizzles?"

My face heated.

When Rossi turned to meet my gaze, I refused to flinch. "I write reviews for romance novels."

"Ah."

The glint in his blue eyes darkened the color to a crackling fire. What was it about men and romance novels? They fell in three groups. The smallest group read and enjoyed them. Then there were the ones threatened by them. And the final group--sexual heat sprang from the mere mention of them. I sighed and turned to go into the kitchen.

I knew he was following me by the static electricity sizzling in the carpet from his tread behind me. The coffeemaker was on the short end of the L-shaped kitchen. Filling the carafe with water, I went through the motions. A knock came from the front door, but I knew it had to be the additional officers Rossi had called. I stood at the kitchen window over the sink while Rossi let the officers in and led them through the house.

Their voices drifted to me while I noticed the patio needed to be hosed down and the redwood picnic table could use a good scrubbing. The trampoline far out in the yard looked bare without TJ, Joel and their various friends jumping on it.

What money?

Dammit Trent, what did you do?

Tears threatened. He did whatever he damn well pleased and I knew it. I had gone into the marriage loving Trent with all of my being. Grand feelings of how we’d both gone to a dating service searching for our soul mates–what a crock. I’d been searching for my soul mate--and Trent? I think he’d been searching for the witless woman who would keep his life running smoothly while he played. And I’d thought he’d seen past my plainness to my inner beauty. The years had killed my romantic dreams and left me just existing. But I was not that woman anymore. I got out cups, sugar and milk.

"They’re gone." Rossi squeaked into the kitchen.

"Would you like some coffee?" I poured out two cups into the white with orange flowers Corelle mugs and transferred everything to the glass-topped table. Rossi sat down and pulled his little notebook out of his shirt pocket.

"In your statement about this morning, you said your attacker mentioned that you could get dead like your husband?"

"Yes." I was fighting a surreal feeling. Adding cream and sugar to my coffee, I stirred mindlessly. It was like one a terror-filled nightmare where something was chasing me, but I couldn’t see it. I just knew if it caught me, it’d be bad. Real bad. "And that if we didn’t get him the money, the kids and I would be visiting Trent in hell."

"How did Trent die?"
"An accident."

"What kind of accident?"

I looked up at him. The romance novel-induced sexual heat was gone. His blue eyes were flat and cold. Businesslike. "He was severely allergic to peanuts and ate some chocolate that had peanuts in it. By the time the paramedics got him to the hospital, he was dead."

"Where?"

"A hospital in Orange County."

He stopped writing and looked at me. "I mean, where did he get the chocolate and where was he when he ate it."

"Oh." I sipped some of my coffee. Ugh! I hate cream and sugar in it. "I don’t know really. It was homemade and it was analyzed, but all they found was traces of peanut, like someone had dipped peanut-butter balls and caramels in the same batch of chocolate. There was nothing wrong or suspicious about the chocolate."

He nodded. "No inquiry? The police didn’t try and find out who made the candy?"

I leaned back. "I doubt it. It was an accident. Trent knew better than to eat something homemade like that."

"Where was he when this happened?"

"Visiting a vendor in Orange County. One of the chain drug stores that was one of his customers."

"Customer? What did Trent do?"
Do? He cheated on me, left me broke with two boys to raise by myself and apparently owed someone money. Wasn’t that enough? "He was in distribution."

"Sales? And what, exactly, did he sell?"

I hesitated. Thing was, I’d never been ashamed of what Trent did. I’d believed his lines about public safety, and how he cared so much about people. He didn’t judge their actions, he just performed a community service that kept people from paying too a high price for any lapses in judgement.

Suddenly, with Trent dead and all that had happened–-God, had I always been so gullible?

"Sam?"

Rossi’s voice prodded me from my thoughts. I faced him and lifted my chin. "Condoms. Trent was one of the top salesmen for the Gladiator Condom Company."

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