Tribute

could speak, “a teaspoon Janet Hardy dipped into a sugar bowl would be worth a spot of breaking and entering for a lot of people.”
    “Who knows you’ve got stuff in here?”
    “Everyone.” Ford answered Steve’s question. “There’s a bunch of people working in the house, and that bunch of people saw Cilla hauling this stuff out here—even helped. So anyone any of them talked to knows, and anyone the anyones talked to and so on.”
    “I’ll get a padlock.”
    “Good idea. How about the letters?”
    “What letters?” Steve wanted to know.
    “Did you tell anyone besides me about the letters you found in the attic?”
    “My father, but I hardly think—”
    “You found letters in the attic?” Steve interrupted. “Like secret letters? Man, this is like one of those BBC mystery shows.”
    “You never watch BBC mysteries.”
    “I do if they have hot Brit chicks in them. What letters?”
    “Letters written to my grandmother by the man she had an affair with in the year before she died. And yeah, secret letters. She had them hidden. I’ve only told Ford and my father—who probably told my stepmother. But it wouldn’t go further than that.” She hoped. "Except . . .” She blew out a breath. “I realized when I was telling my father we were standing right beside an open window so I pulled him away to finish. But if one of the men was anywhere near the window, they would have heard enough.”
    She rubbed her eyes. “Stupid. Plus, I pushed my mother yesterday morning about whether Janet had a lover—and one from out here— before she died. She’d blab, if the mood struck. Added to that, she’s pissed at me.”
    Reaching over, Steve patted her shoulder. “Nothing new there, doll.”
    “I know. But in her current mood, she might have sent someone out here to poke around, looking for something of value.”
    “Give me the letters, and anything else you’re worried about. No one’s going to look at my place for them,” Ford added when she frowned at him.
    “Maybe. Let me think about it.”
    “Anyway,” Steve said, “we can cross off the wild-eyed mountain man with a meat cleaver. Right? Or we can as soon as Ford climbs up there and makes sure there aren’t any dead bodies or severed body parts.”
    “Oh, for Christ sake.” Cilla turned toward the ladder.
    Ford blocked her, nudged her back. “I’ll do it.”
    He tested his weight on each rung on the climb, as he pictured himselfcrashing through and breaking any variety of bones on the concrete floor. As he reached the top, he cursed roundly.
    “What is it?” Cilla called up.
    “Nothing. Splinter. There’s nothing up here. Not even the lonely severed head of an itinerant field-worker.”
    When he’d climbed down again, Cilla took his hand, winced at the chunk of ladder in the meat of his palm. “That’s in there. Come on inside and I’ll dig it out for you.”
    “I can just—”
    “While you guys play doctor, I’ll go strap on my tool belt and do a man’s work.”
    Cilla glanced back at Steve. “About damn time.”
    “Had to make the doughnut run. Later,” he said to Ford and strolled out.
    “Did he bring you doughnuts?” Cilla asked.
    “Yeah. A bribe for use of the gym.”
    “Mmm. Come on in, and bring the chunk of my ladder. I assume he also woke you up.”
    “You assume correctly.” Ford shoved the barn door closed behind them. “And from a very interesting dream involving you, a red room and a brass headboard. But the jelly doughnuts almost made up for it.”
    “Steve believes in the power of the doughnut. So, just what was I doing in a red room with a brass headboard?”
    “Hard to describe. But I think I could demonstrate.”
    She looked into his eyes, bold green against gold rims. “I don’t have a red room. Neither do you.”
    “I’ll go buy the paint.”
    Laughing, she reached for the mudroom door, and quickly found herself with her back to the wall of the house. It came as a constant surprise just how potent, how dangerous that mouth could be. The same mouth, she thought dimly as it assaulted hers, that smiled so charmingly, that spoke in such an easy drawl about everyday things. Then it closed over hers and spiked through her system like a fever.
    He gave her bottom lip a light nip before he stepped back. “I thought it was Steve headed to the barn last night. To bunk down.”
    “Why would Steve sleep in the barn?” It took another minute for her brain to fire on all circuits again. “Oh.