Sign Off (Caught Dead In Wyoming, Book 1)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"I wish you were the murderer." I flipped the legal pad to the coffee table. It held only doodles. "It would simplify my life considerably."

Mike Paycik, slumped so low on my couch that his very nice butt barely clung to the seat cushion and his legs stretched halfway to the kitchen door, did not look particularly willing to simplify my life. We'd been talking in circles for two hours.

"You just want me to be the murderer because you know I want to ask you out. And if I'm in jail, I can't. That would make your life simpler, wouldn't it?"

Oh, shit.

Had I known? I didn't know any more because now I did know and it colored my view of everything I'd thought before. If I had sensed something beyond ambition and professional regard, wasn't it telling that I hadn't let it come to the surface? God knows I could use some ego boosters, yet had something in me held off the recognition?

And what did it say about my frame of mind that I considered having a funny, intelligent, hot guy, ten years younger asking me out an oh, shit?

If that didn't make it clear I wasn't ready for this, I don't know what could.

"Mike, I could give you the bad-to-mix-professional-and-personal speech, and after my experience I'd mean every damned word of it. But the truth is, it's more than that. I don't know where my life is going right now. I don't know where my career is going. Until I get those things straight, I couldn't even think about-what's so funny?"

"Sorry, Elizabeth. It's just that I've given that speech so many times. First it was because I was building my football career, and then the need to stay on top. No time to even consider a serious relationship. Then my knees went, and the speech changed to needing to put everything into figuring out what I was going to do in the next phase of my life." His smile faded. "It's strange to be on the other end of it."

I didn't know what to say.

"I'll give you time, Elizabeth. But I won't give up. That's one of the things you don't know about me . . . yet." He looked at me intently a long moment. Abruptly, he sat up. "Okay, so . . . I still think the Johnsons are the most likely candidates."

He'd been saying that with some regularity since I'd reported on my meeting with Myrna Johnson, as per our agreement. With only slightly less regularity, he'd been saying I'd been damn stupid to meet her alone.

"Everybody had the means and opportunity to kill Redus," he added, "but the Johnsons have the strongest motive-wanting revenge on the man they blame for their son's death. Otherwise, why would Myrna clam up on you?"

"Because if Claustel killed Redus to keep him quiet, why Claustel wanted him quiet would be sure to come out, and then the secret Rog died for would come out. She couldn't stand that. Besides, can you see one or both of them shooting Mona in the face with a shotgun?"

"Self-preservation is a powerful motivator," Paycik said.

"Yeah, but-" I started, also not for the first time, when a knock at the front door interrupted me.

It was Jenny, the assistant from KWMT.

"Hi. I thought you might want the stuff from your inbox at the station. It's just awful what they're doing to you. Hey, Mike. Everybody's up in arms. Well, not everybody. They know Thurston's just scared of you. Because you have so much more experience . . ." She looked in my general direction for a split second as her gaze bounced around my living room with the speed, intensity and randomness of a strobe. ". . . and because you . . ." A nanosecond of attention to Paycik. ". . . are an up-and-comer, and he's afraid you'll get to a Top Ten market before him, as if he has a chance," she added with a snort.