Lila was clearly pissed, but allowing the search of the vehicles was voluntary.  She had no grounds to object and didn’t want to cause a scene.  The important thing was getting the search done and getting those golf clubs.

Lane approached Detective Hunter.  “The keys are on a hook inside the door.  Could we start with the Escalade?”  She walked into the garage and stood next to the SUV.

Hunter grabbed the keys and approached the SUV on the driver’s side.

“If you’d unlock it and open the console, please.”  She watched as Hunter opened the console.  “There should be a receipt near the top dated yesterday.  It should show a set of golf clubs and a golf bag purchased at a garage sale.”

Hunter held up the receipt. “Got it.”

Ben looked at Lila before he moved into the garage.  “Detective, we’d like a picture of the receipt before you bag it.” Ben held up his cell phone.  He took a still shot of the receipt Hunter held in his gloved fingers and then turned on the video feature and recorded the scene as Hunter bagged and tagged the receipt then handed it to a uniformed officer.

Lila stalked into the garage. “Great, so you have a receipt.  Where the hell are the damn golf clubs?”

Lane smiled at her.  “My children had an early tee time.  I’d say they could be at the second or third hole by now. I’ll gladly call and ask them to return home with the clubs. Oh, and there is one more thing.  My daughter has a habit of taking a photographic history of the garage sale purchases we make.  You’ll find a montage on my laptop showing the photos not just of the purchases, but of the people we bought things from yesterday.  I got those clubs from a very nice woman who told me her daughter no longer needed them. One more thing, if the montage has disappeared, it shouldn’t be a big deal.  Jess has probably already uploaded them to Facebook.  Please, Detective Hunter, proceed with the search of the vehicles,” Lane said as she waived her hand dismissively and left the garage.

Hunter did a cursory search of the other vehicles, he opened the trunk of the Mercedes, and barely opened Jamie’s truck.

“I think we have what we came for, don’t you Detective Crane,” Hunter said as he closed the Mercedes trunk.

“Shall I have my children meet us at the station with the golf clubs, Detective?”

Hunter looked at Lila. “Crane, you want those clubs or not?”

Chapter 7

Laying some Ground Rules

Lane and Ben stood in her driveway as they watched the police cars drive away.  When the police cars were out of sight, she and Ben walked through the garage and into the house. Lane went into the kitchen and got a glass of ice and poured herself a Diet Dr. Pepper.

She looked at Ben.  “Do you want coffee or a soda?” She put her glass on the breakfast bar.

“You sit, I’ll make coffee,” Ben said.  Lane wasn’t a coffee drinker, but to Ben’s amazement she could brew a decent cup, even before she’d bought the Keurig single cup coffee maker.

Lane sat down and watched as Ben smoothly went through the motions of making his cup of coffee.  She looked at his back.  “You know we need to talk about this, right?”

He turned to face her. He knew they needed to talk about it, he was just worried about what they needed to say. Before he could open his mouth, Lane went on.

“We fell into this relationship a few months ago.  We’ve never talked about ground rules.  Maybe we need to do that now.”  When Ben started to open his mouth she held up her hand in that international stop signal.  “No, just let me finish.  You grew up Catholic.  You know there are lies of commission and lies of omission. No matter what they say, people never lie to protect the other person, they lie to protect themselves.  I don’t care what you did or with whom you did it before we became a couple.  I know you weren’t a monk, and I can tell that you’re not wild about the celibacy that I’ve imposed on you.  You know about Gus.  So I’m going to tell you some things and ask you a couple of things.”  She held up her hands and ticked off the fingers as she talked. “The first thing I’m going to tell you is this.  Trust is the most important thing to me in a relationship so you can never go wrong by telling me the whole truth. That’s not a request for a broad, sweeping blanket confession.  I don’t want or need to know about other women unless it has some impact on my life now. The first thing I’m asking is:  Did you always use protection?”

She shook her head, her eyes nailing him to the counter on the other side of the room with a look as she ticked off the second finger.  “The second thing I’m asking is that you get tested for AIDS and other STD’s. And the second thing I’m going to tell you is that I haven’t had sex in 18 years. That’s all.”  She picked up her soda and took a drink as she watched him.

“Can I come over there now?”  Lane nodded and Ben crossed the room and pulled her from the chair.  As he held her he responded.  “All right, now I have an answer for you, a couple of things I need to say and maybe a question or two of my own. Answer one:  yes, always.  Statement one:  I love you.” He bent and kissed her. “Statement two:  You’re the first woman to whom I’ve ever said that. Excluding female relatives, of course.”  He kissed her again. “Question one:  when I told you that two days ago, you gave no response.  Why?”  He kissed her again. “Question two:  are you telling me if I get a clean bill of health that we’re taking our relationship to the next level and just to be clear, I mean are you going to let me make love to you?” Before she could answer he kissed her again.  She parted her lips and he slipped his tongue into her mouth.  As if on cue she moaned and slipped her tongue into his mouth. They were standing and he shifted and pulled her closer making sure she felt the full impact of his last question.

She pulled away and laid her head on his shoulder as she whispered, “Question two:  yes that’s exactly what I’m telling you. Question one is a little more difficult.  I’ve said that to three men, and before you, only three men had said it to me.  You know how two of those relationships ended. There was someone after my divorce from Phillip.  Luckily I found out before I slept with him that David was already married. I know you aren’t Gus or Phillip or David, but there’s still a part of me that’s afraid to hear those words from a man, let alone say them back to him.”

She stood on her toes and brushed her lips against his.  He pulled back.  “So are you telling me you don’t love me or are you telling me you’re just afraid of saying it?”

Lane laughed. “I guess I forgot for a minute that you’re a lawyer who is famous for his powers of cross examination.  The latter, I’m telling you the latter.  I couldn’t move our relationship to the next level otherwise.”

He lifted her off her feet and twirled her around. He kissed her and sat her back on her chair. “I need to call Pauli,” he said, as he pulled out his cell phone.

“Why do you need to call Pauli?”  Pauli was Paolo Raffaele Bellini, Ben’s youngest brother.  Lane had met him over Memorial Day, he was a Doctor, doing his residency in St. Louis.

“He’s going to be in town tonight, staying overnight.”  Ben smiled at her.  “I need to have him call and order lab work. The sooner he orders the lab work, the sooner I get a clean bill of health.  The sooner I get a clean bill of health, well, you know the rest.”  He winked at her.  “I guess you don’t know the rest, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.” He hit the send button.

Like hell she needed to use her imagination.  For weeks now, she’d been feeling his massive erection press against her when they embraced, just as she had this morning. She didn’t need to imagine the equipment he had to work with.  She smiled.  Maybe he meant she needed to imagine how he’d use it.  She felt a blush creep up her cheeks as she wondered what he’d done that could make a woman behave as Lila Crane had been.