Murders & Romance: A Psychic Detective Romantic Mystery (Isaac Taylor Mysteries Book 5) by Lashell Collins (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

probably wouldn’t be good to just throw them in a room together and hope for the best. I thought, maybe we should… I don’t know… ease into it a little. Like with a dinner.”

“A dinner?”

“Yeah. At my place. Day after tomorrow. And I thought that maybe you and Sid might want to come. ’Cause… you know… it might help to, sort of, break up the tension.”

Isaac’s relief plummeted to the floor of his stomach.

“You expecting tension? Between the boys?”

“No. Well… a little. But not just the boys. I mean, it’s the first time Jada will be meeting my mom too. And I just thought with you and Sid there, it might help. Sidney would be there for Jada, and it would give my mom more new people to concentrate on instead of it being just Jada. You’d both be like a buffer! I mean… if you wouldn’t mind.”

Isaac sighed. He didn’t want to go to Pete’s for dinner with new people who might accidentally touch him. But he knew that if Jada mentioned it to Sidney, he’d wind up going anyway.

He slowly grinned. And he hoped it was genuine.

“I’ll have to run it by Sid, but I’m sure she’d love to.”

Pete smiled at him. “Thank you! Seriously, man, I mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Isaac turned back to his computer, but he couldn’t help making an observation.

“Things seem to be getting serious with you two.”

“Well, technically we’re just friends.” Pete’s tone was uncertain.

“Uh huh. Friends with benefits.”

“Actually, no. We put a stop to the sex so that we could slow down and get to know each other. It’s been great. I leave here most nights and go to her place. We eat sometimes. We talk for hours. We make out… fool around a little.”

“But no sex?”

“Nope. No sex.” Pete took a deep breath. “But lately, it feels like we’re heading back that way, you know?”

Isaac didn’t respond to that. He didn’t really want to discuss Pete’s sex life. He looked back at his computer.

“Anyway… thanks for agreeing to do this. I really appreciate it. And you won’t be sorry. You’ll get a fantastic, authentic Puerto Rican meal out of it!”

“I’d better.”

Pete chuckled.

“Listen, before I get to work on that high school rape case, I’m going to head over to the morgue and talk to Hiroshi about the bodies. Maybe he can give us something we can use.”

“Okay.”

Pete got to work trying to locate the third boy, and Isaac left the pit on his errand.

In the morgue, he found his friend in the lab hunched over the midsection of a body.

“Hey, Hiroshi.”

“Ike. Just the guy I wanted to see.”

“Oh? I hope that’s because your examinations of the two castrated bodies uncovered something I need to know.”

Hiroshi grinned. “Well, as a matter of fact, I do have some information for you in that regard. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“It’s not?” For the second time in less than an hour, Isaac was put on guard by a friend acting weird. He took a wary breath. “So what’s up?”

“Well, first… both of your victims were whacked in the head by a blunt object.”

“So they were dead before they were castrated?”

“No. But they were incapacitated first. Most likely so that the killer could tie them up, or transport them, or whatever.”

Isaac looked over the body of victim number two, wincing at the gaping hole where the genitals should be.

“So, the cause of death?”

“Cause of death was definitely the castration. They both bled out in mere minutes. And my guess is that they were awake at the time.”

Isaac shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment as he pieced the sequence of events together.

“Okay, wait.”

He opened his eyes and looked at Hiroshi, but he wasn’t actually seeing his friend. His mind’s eye was focused on the crime scenes. On how the victims’ last few minutes must have played out.

“So you’re telling me they were hit in the head with some blunt object. Then they were tied up and transported to the crime scenes, where they were woken up so that they could watch their killer chop off their manhoods.”

“Yep.”

“That’s downright medieval.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Can you tell me what kind of instrument was used to cut off their um… stuff.”

“Something with a long, broad blade.”

“Like a machete, or a kukri, or something like that?”

“Exactly.”

“Wow. Okay.”

His mind was reeling over the possible motives in the case, and now he was eager to get back to his desk and begin his deep dive into the old rape case that he believed was at the heart of it.

“Thanks, Hiroshi. I’ll see you later.”

He spun and headed for the door.

“But wait. Ike!”

Isaac stopped and turned to look at his friend.

“I wanted to talk to you about something. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. What’s up?”

“Well. Now it seems really unimportant after talking about your case, but... well, I was wondering what you could tell me about, um…”

Hiroshi hesitated, tapping on the edge of the metal table holding the dead body.

“About what?”

“About Miku. Miku Barlow.”

Isaac frowned. “The Realtor?”

“Yes! That’s her.”

Isaac stared at him for a second wondering if his friend was moving, or just looking for a hookup.

“Well, she’s an excellent Realtor. Sidney and I enjoyed working with her. Sid gave her a list of things she was looking for in a place, and Miku worked hard to find us exactly what we were after. She knows her stuff.”

“Yeah. That’s great. Um, what do you know about her status?”

“Her status?”

“Yeah. You know, her relationship status?”

Isaac’s gaze traveled up and over the ceiling. What was it today? Was he wearing a sign that said, ‘Please talk to me about your love life?’ Had he done something to elicit this highly uncomfortable behavior from his friends?

“I have no knowledge of Miku Barlow’s relationship status. She was our Realtor, not our friend.”

“But she was at your housewarming party a few months back.”

“Yes. We did invite her to our housewarming party. Because she was our Realtor. It was a nice gesture. A thank you,