Ding Dong Dead - By Deb Baker Page 0,1

bad relationships; Gretchen from discovering that her longtime lover had a fidelity problem, Matt from a marriage to an unfaithful wife that had ended in a messy divorce. They had agreed to take it slowly, not rush into anything too intimate.

Slow was okay with Gretchen, but according to Nina this was getting ridiculous. “You’re adults,” she’d said. “Not teenagers. Lose the clothes.” At the moment, lying prone next to Matt on a secluded ridge on the mountain, Gretchen agreed with her aunt.

She should be savoring every moment of the romance, all the richness and wonderfully complex emotions that go with it. Instead, the sexual tension was growing between them every day. Matt had to be feeling it, too, but it wasn’t a subject she felt comfortable discussing with him.

They had taken to crawling around on mountains, observing the mating habits of other species. Not exactly the best solution to built-up frustration.

“Right there,” Matt said.

Gretchen looked in the direction he indicated, getting her bearings before leveling the binoculars. She gasped involuntarily as she trained the lenses on a mesquite bush and found it. Yes. Another bird to add to her growing life list.

A male phainopepla—shiny black with a long tail and a tall crest, just like the picture in her bird book.

“Wheeda-lay,” it called.

The female flew in and landed next to her partner.

A couple, like Matt and Gretchen. A pair. After the final heart-wrenching discoveries before her fiancé became her ex, she was staying cautiously optimistic.

Gretchen could see the female phainopepla’s signature red eyes. “How do you pronounce the name again?” She was a better climber than Matt, but he knew his birds and their calls.

“Fay-no-PEP-la. Do you see both of them?”

“Yes.” Still holding the binoculars to her eyes, she watched the pair take off together as though on cue.

“Did you see the white patch on top of the wing?”

“Yes.”

Gretchen lowered the binoculars. Matt wasn’t watching the birds fly off. He was gazing steadily at her. He flashed a smile. The guy had the best smile in the world. “Come here,” he said, sitting down and reaching out to her.

She scooted over and they kissed under an enormous saguaro cactus, its white flowers closed since late afternoon. After nightfall they would open again. The romantic in Gretchen wanted to stay, watch them reopen, let nature take its course.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Matt said.

“Really?” She hoped not.

“Let me show you.”

The second kiss should have been sweeter than the first, but instead Gretchen felt the familiar and highly annoying vibration of his cell phone.

Matt released her abruptly and raised the phone to his ear. “Detective Albright,” he said, suddenly all business.

Gretchen sat up straight and allowed herself an internal moan. She wanted to throw his phone off a cliff. She was used to long hours spent apart from Steve, her ex-fiancé. He was an attorney, driven to make partner, but Matt’s career as a Phoenix detective seemed to consume him even more. His work cut into the tiny amount of time they found for each other. It would take some getting used to.

She saw the hard edge to his jaw, the narrowing eyes. She could feel the distance between them growing as it always did when he switched into work mode.

Just great. Here it comes.

“Gotta go,” he said, snapping the phone closed and rising. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

They began the descent, Matt moving faster than she thought safe.

“Be careful,” she warned, hopping from rock to rock. “Don’t slip.”

“As soon as we’re in the car, call your mother. Ask her to pick you up at Eternal View Cemetery. I’ll be busy for the rest of the night.”

Stones gave way under his feet.

“Slow down,” she warned again.

Amateurs! They thought the hardest part of a mountain climb was the ascent, but beginners suffered more injuries on the way back down by becoming too relaxed, too careless. Gretchen took a final moment to look out over the Sonoran Desert, at the city of Phoenix spread out below. She slowed to take it in and to consider lost possibilities and opportunities.

If only she’d destroyed his phone.

“Hurry up, please.” Matt kept going.

“All right. I’m coming. Tell me what happened.”

“A homicide.”

“In Eternal View Cemetery?”

“Yes.”

Gretchen glanced at Matt, taking in his broad shoulders and lean, muscled back. How could he do this job? And could she deal with the hours and the internal baggage that had to come with his work? Was this really what she wanted? A guy who seemed to crave danger, who mingled with drug addicts and pedophiles