Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) by Virginia Brown Page B

nice guy. Not that she had any qualms about investigating him. And that made her wonder—could Harry have been Darcy’s lover? Was that what she was hiding?
    “Got it,” Tootsie said, and she looked over as the monitor popped up a home page.
    “So do I,” Harley said, and stood up. “Keep my schedule flexible this week, okay? Just in case.”
    “Sure. Crimestoppers must pay more than advertised. Unless you’ve come into money and don’t need our paltry paychecks.”
    Harley made a face. “Unkind of you to remind me, but if I clear Aunt Darcy, I’ll take her entire check so fast she won’t have time to reconsider.”
    “So what happened to the five thousand for investigating Harry?”
    “Harry being dead and all, I can’t take the entire thing for just a few days’ work. I charged her a hundred instead. But if I can keep her out of jail, it’s worth at least five thousand, don’t you think?”
    “That’s one of the reasons I love you, Harley, you have scruples.”
    She shuddered. “Don’t say that. You’ll ruin my reputation as a bitch. Life is much easier when people hesitate to cross you.”
    “Don’t I know it.”
    “If I didn’t know better, Tootsie, I’d swear we were separated at birth.”
    He made a wry face. “Except that I have much better taste than you.”
    “I happen to like shabby chic, thank you very much. You’re into elegance. I’m into the right price. In fact, I think I’ll hit my favorite secondhand clothing store after I talk to a few lucky people I like to refer to as suspects.”
    “You frighten me, baby.”
    “That’s what Morgan says.”
    “He should know.”
    “Yeah, but he keeps hanging around anyway. He’s just a sucker for punishment, I guess.”
    It always gave her a warm feeling to think about Mike Morgan. She could blame it on the summer heat, but denying it didn’t change it. The man tickled her libido in the best possible way. It probably wouldn’t last. She knew she wasn’t that good at relationships. There was no reasonable explanation for that. Except maybe it had something to do with her early life, when they’d moved around a lot and she’d learned that most people were only temporary. Either they had moved on, or Harley had moved on with her parents, traveling around California from commune to commune, or someplace on a whim, the freedom of the seventies giving way at last to their more stable life in Memphis. While she’d spent nearly half her life here, the mark of the first fourteen years had left more of an impression, it seemed. Maybe there really was something to that theory that the first five years of a child’s life molded the rest of it. She hoped not. Living out of a van and eating dried seaweed really wasn’t that appealing.
    Heat struck like a closed fist when she stepped out onto the parking lot where her trusty Toyota waited in the shade of a tree. June was one of those months that could be hot as a furnace or quite pleasant. Sometimes it turned out to be both. In the same hour.
    Crossing Poplar Avenue on a Sunday was a lot easier than during the week, and she made it into the Taco Bell parking lot across from the office building with only a few annoyed honks from other drivers. Memphis drivers were notoriously impatient, ignoring Southern hospitality in favor of a two-second head start at stop lights. Southern hospitality obviously did not extend to the perils of Poplar Avenue.
    It didn’t take long to get her food, and she pulled back onto Poplar and headed toward her apartment. She needed a little quiet time to think. And plot her next move.
    Tootsie’s suggestion made sense. Aunt Darcy had to have loaned her car to someone. It made a lot more sense than another identical Lexus with an identical row of bumper stickers just happening to be in the parking lot. So now there were more possibilities, the list of suspects a bit longer than before. That was good for Darcy, bad for the police.
    When she pulled into the driveway