The boots he’d worn to wherever he’d gone were sitting on the back porch, the thin soles and battered leather calling to her like sea sirens. If he was not going to talk to her like he’d promised, she was not going to respect his privacy.
She strode out onto the porch, shoved her hands into his boots, and banged them together to dislodge the dried mud from their treads. Then she sank down on the step, raised her chin to the cold spring sun, closed her eyes to the glare, and listened. She immediately heard the roar of a train, the clatter of wheels, and the burr of soft voices. Cigarettes. Sweat. A man named Chester who insisted “the Butcher isn’t one of us,” and Malone’s musings about a hungry man named Emil Fronek.
“What are you doing to my boots?” Malone asked, his voice mild, but she jerked and yelped like he’d yelled in her ear. He’d returned without her hearing him and stood looking at her, his hands in his pockets, his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat. Spring was here. She should urge him to buy a straw one. The dark homburg was too warm for summer.
“I was c-cleaning them,” she said. She banged them together once more, quite convincingly, she thought, and set them beside her on the step. “I thought they could use a shine as well.”
“Part of the room and board?”
“I just noticed they were worn.”
“Yes. They are. Very worn, which is why they don’t need to be shined.”
“Have you h-had these ones long?” she stammered. His voice was hard, and she wasn’t wearing her glasses, so she pulled them from her pocket and sat them on her nose, needing protection from his disapproval.
“Years.”
She scrambled to her feet, but not before scooping up his boots again. “I’ll have them looking brand new . . . and I’ll bring them back when I’m done.”
“Leave them. They have a hole in the sole. Polish won’t fix that. I wear them for dirty work. Nothing more.”
She didn’t want to put them down. There was more to see from the boots.
Malone strode forward and tugged them out of her insistent hands. “I can look after my own things. And I know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
“Snooping, Dani-style.”
Her cheeks burned and tears threatened. Her reaction made her even angrier than his. “You said we would talk. We haven’t. It’s been more than a week. So I thought I would see for myself where you’d gone, so that next time you go, I’ll know where you are.” She swallowed the angry lump of emotion in her throat.
“I was riding the trains with the bums, all right? I couldn’t call. And it will most likely happen again.”
“Riding the rails and trying to find the Mad Butcher?” she challenged.
He glowered at her. “I have tried to keep my work confidential, but you don’t seem to have any concept of that word.”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said. “You haven’t come to dinner. Or breakfast. Or to the morgue, though I don’t expect that.” She bit her lip and added, “Lenka misses you.”
And she missed him. Dreadfully.
“Yes, I’ve been avoiding you,” he agreed. He tossed his boots aside and then sat down on the steps.
“Please sit, Dani.”
She sat beside him, a couple of feet between them. He reached for her glasses, slipped them from her nose, and put them in her lap. She glanced at him, surprised, but he looked away, clasping his hands between his knees.
“I’ve been avoiding you because I’m embarrassed. And I’m confused. I don’t do well with either emotion.”
“Why are you embarrassed?” she asked. She was embarrassed, but she hadn’t for a minute considered he was.
He rubbed at the grooves between his eyes. “Do you know that I have not kissed a woman in fifteen years?”
“No. I didn’t know that.” She was shocked. And thrilled.
“Really? You really didn’t know?” He sounded doubtful. “I’ve started to think I am an open book with you.”
“Yes, really. Do you assume I’m omniscient? I told you I don’t know everything. I don’t even know most things.”
“But you know so much. And I am not accustomed to it. I don’t . . . like it.”
Her heart plummeted.
“I am not accustomed to anyone knowing me so well.”
“Oh, Michael. Do you want to be like those poor unknowns at the morgue without a friend in the world?”
“I have friends,” he protested. “Just not one who . . . who . . .” He let his words trail off. She knew what he meant. He didn’t have friends like her.
“Is Eliot Ness your friend?” she asked.
“Yes,” he confessed. “I know the safety director. Eliot Ness and I grew up in the same part of Chicago. I’m older, but our families were acquainted. And we knew each other later through our work.”
“I thought so.”
“You thought so?”
She flinched. He made her squirm like the nuns at her first school. It was the way he picked apart her words, repeating them back to her with an inflection that said, Explain yourself.
She rarely could. But unlike the nuns, Michael was not in a position of authority over her, and she didn’t have to comply. She straightened her spine and glared at him.
“He’s the one who picks you up every Friday. And I saw the place where you lived,” she said.
“The place where I lived?”
“Oh, will you stop doing that!”
“Doing what?”
“Repeating everything I say.”
“I’m trying to understand. You aren’t surprised I know Eliot Ness because you ‘saw the place where I lived’?” His brows were lowered so much it appeared his brown eyes wore Russian hats. The thought made her smile, just a bit.
“Are you teasing me?”
“No. I saw . . . er . . . the connection between you when I touched the files in your room not long after you arrived. Charlie had gotten locked in there one morning and was scratching and meowing at the door. I simply let him out and did a quick turn about the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything . . . behind. I didn’t know how long he’d been in there.”
“Wasn’t the door locked?”
“Yes. But I have a key.”