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

sat down. Conversation stopped once all plates were full and everybody dug in. Pete glanced around the table, waiting for reactions.

“Wow. This is really good.”

“Thank you, Sidney.”

“Why am I eating raisins and green olives together in ground meat and thinking it’s delicious?” Ike asked the question with the most serious of expressions as he examined his food, and Pete couldn’t help but laugh.

“Because it is!”

“It’s the sweet and salty together. It works somehow.” Sidney nodded, agreeing with him. “What is this called?”

“It’s called picadillo. Very flavorful, but very simple. You’ll find variations of it all through Latin American cuisine. I love it over rice, like this. But it can also be used as a filling in pastelillos, or empanadas.”

“Pastelillos are the best!” Mateo exclaimed.

“My gramma makes those,” Charlie chimed in. “They’re so good.”

Pete was ecstatic to see the boys agree on something.

Jada looked at Pete, a sly smile on her face. “You cooked this?”

“I did.”

“No way.”

Her smile did things to him.

“I may not be as good a cook as you, or as mamá, but I know my way around a kitchen. Mamá made sure of that, right?”

He smiled at his mother.

“It was the only way I could be sure you wouldn’t starve once you moved out of the house.”

“And I learned from the best cook in the world.”

He winked at her. He was buttering his mother up, and she knew it. But he loved the proud smile on her face.

“Well, I would love any tips or recipes you’d care to share, Señora Vega.” Jada said. “Pete raves about your cooking all the time. I do okay in the kitchen, but I’m always looking to improve.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do just fine.”

Was Pete mistaken, or did he feel a frost moving in?

“Ah, well, Jada has a lot on her plate besides cooking, mamá. She works full time for a doctor’s office downtown. She’s the head nurse there; she oversees the other nurses and acts as the office manager. And on top of all that, she’s a great mom to Charlie.”

Charlie nodded in agreement as he chewed.

“Pete, stop. You’re making me sound like a saint.”

“Well, no, I just mean…”

“We know what you mean. And trust me, no one is as great as you just made me sound. But I do appreciate it.”

She smiled at him, and Pete’s insides turned into a gooey sticky mess.

“So, Isaac, Pedro tells me that the two of you will be getting a commendation for stopping a crime while you were off duty. What is this about?”

“Oh, well, a few weeks ago Pete and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was a sexual assault in progress. I guess the victim said some nice things about us when she gave her statement, and that prompted our Lieutenant to recommend us for the award.”

Pete listened to Ike roll out the explanation like nothing extraordinary had happened that night. Like it hadn’t been his psychic abilities that had led them to the crime in question.

“Where did that happen?” Mateo asked.

“It was outside a bar on the east side,” Ike continued.

“I thought Uncle Pete said you don’t drink alcohol.”

“I don’t drink alcohol anymore.”

“Then what were you doing at a bar?”

“We’d gotten a tip,” Pete jumped in. “About this guy, the one that was about to commit the crime. We got a tip about him.”

It wasn’t a lie. They had gotten a tip. A tip from Ike’s psychic abilities.

“But how, if you were off duty at the time?”

“You are full of questions tonight. Eat your dinner.”

Mateo made a face and turned back to his dinner plate.

“So this award?” Julieta resumed her earlier line of questioning. “There is a ceremony we can attend, yes?”

“Usually, yes, ma’am. There’s a ceremony twice a year where they hand out those things and invite the officer’s family and loved ones. The officer gets a certificate he can frame and a medal in a fancy little box to display. And the tiny bar pin that comes with the medal looks impressive on the dress uniform.”

“Ah. I bet Pedro will look very handsome with the bar on his dress uniform.”

“You know, I just bet he will.”

Isaac grinned at him, and Pete rolled his eyes. Whose idea was it to invite his annoying partner to dinner anyway?

“Yeah, like when you got that commendation for saving the drowning kid at Lake Erie,” Pete pointed out. Turnabout was fair play after all.

“You did?” Mateo asked.

“Oh. Well, it was just a freak thing, really. Sidney and I were boating with my brother and sister-in-law when I saw these two kids on another boat fall over into the water. I just dove in and helped, that’s all.”

“Don’t be so modest, Ike.” Sidney touched his arm and looked at Mateo. “He swam nearly 175 yards out to where the boy had drifted, and pulled him back to the boat. Then he administered CPR to get the boy breathing again.”

“Whoa!” Mateo looked at Ike with big, round eyes.

“That’s almost two football fields!” Charlie sounded just as shocked.

Sidney nodded.

“Sidney exaggerates.” Ike looked at her and shook his head. “It was really only a few kilometers or so.”

“Don’t listen to him.” Pete grinned. “He’s just trying to protect his secret identity. See, he doesn’t know that he can fully trust you two yet.”

“Pete…”

Isaac’s tone held a warning of some kind, Pete was sure of it. But he couldn’t let the moment slip away from him. One good tease deserved another, didn’t it?

“It’s okay, Ike. They’re cool. You can tell them who you really are.”

Isaac sat back in his chair and eyed Pete.

“Who is he, Pete?” Charlie asked, sounding properly intrigued.

Pete sent Isaac a grin that said, ‘I win’, and Isaac glowered at him.

“Boys, you are looking at… Super Cop!”

“Super Cop?” Mateo’s tone indicated he was clearly unimpressed.

“That’s right. Ike here holds the highest closed case record in the entire Cleveland Police Department.”

“What’s that mean?” Charlie asked.

“That means that Ike has successfully closed more cases than any other detective in the city.”

“Really?”