The little punctuating silences he took were beginning to wear on her. She had no idea what they meant. Finally he said, “That’s why you need me. To point the cops in this wino’s direction.”
She glanced over to see him scrub one of those big hands down his face. “I figured they’d be more inclined to look for him if you told them about him,” she said.
“You figured I’d keep your pretty little ass out of jail.”
“That’s an incredibly sexist comment.” Sometimes she wasn’t quite sure how to take his backhanded compliments.
His laugh grated along her nerves. But he said nothing.
She pulled off the freeway, merged into street traffic, and headed for the alley alongside the Round Up. “Thanks, Witt,” she blurted into the relative silence of the Miata, “for not saying I’m crazy.”
“After knowing you two weeks, Max, I’m the one who’s completely lost it.”
She chanced a glance at him. “So you do think I’m crazy?”
“Nope.” He stared straight ahead.
“Do you think I’m lying?”
“Nope.”
If her hands hadn’t been on the wheel, she would have thrown them in the air. “Then what?”
“Just wondering why there’s crime scene tape around that alley by the Round Up.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and her foot slammed on the brakes.
A crowd hovered like flies twenty feet back from the mouth of the alley. Yellow tape fluttered in the breeze. An ambulance, the words MORGUE stenciled in red letters across its rear doors, was parked at an angle across the access. A black-and-white sat nose-to-nose with it. Two more were parked across the street.
Witt hunched forward in his seat, looking out the windshield. “Exactly how many of these dreams have you had, Max?”
She rolled her lips between her teeth, then blew out a breath. “There was Wendy Gregory,” the case Witt had solved last week, “and before that, a child murdered near San Antonio Park.”
He looked at her, something unreadable in his blue gaze. “Jesus, you were that lady?”
She listened for the denigrating tone, couldn’t find it, then resented the way he said “lady” on principal. “I’m surprised you didn’t find that out when you were investigating me.”
“Suppose I didn’t dig deep enough.” He yanked open the car door, climbed out, then peered in the opening. “I’ll handle this. You stay here.”
“But—”
“Stay out of it, Max.”
“You need me—”
“If I ask the questions, they’ll think I was a cop driving by who’s a little curious. You ask, they’ll bring you in for knowing too much about the crime, not to mention that smart-ass mouth of yours. Cops really hate a smart mouth.” His gaze flicked to her lips. “Even if it’s as kissable as yours.” He looked down the sidewalk at the bustling crime scene. “Doubt they’ll be as gullible as I was.” He slammed the door.
He thought she had a kissable mouth. Wow.
*
Half an hour later, Witt grabbed her arm and propelled her back toward the Miata. “I told you to wait in the car.”
She jerked out of his grasp. “I hate being left out.”
He gave her a look, definitely skepticism this time. “Right. Guess that’s why you work as a temp, live in a studio apartment with a no-name cat, and wear black all the time.”
Whoa. All this from a man whose average sentence length was five words or less, generally without pronouns. “Black happens to be my favorite color.”
“Mine, too, when you’re wearing it with those heels of yours.”
“And the cat’s name is Buzzard. Not that it’s any of your business.” She ignored his remark since it was another of his sexual innuendoes designed to push her buttons.
“Typical.”
She crossed her arms and glared. “What?”
“That you’re not content to let me do what you asked me to do.”
She sighed and looked over his shoulder at the crime scene. The number of uniformed cops had doubled. A police photographer and a tech had arrived fifteen minutes ago in a utility van. The camera had begun to flash almost immediately, covering the dumpster from every angle. The tech had armed herself with latex gloves, plastic and paper bags, test tubes, scrapers, fingerprint dust, notebooks ... an endless array of paraphernalia.
And Witt had been utterly at home talking with the two detectives.
Max felt excluded, and not just from the action. She reached into her purse for her keys, then went for overkill to hide her childish irritation. “Oh please, Detective Long, I’m so sorry. Tell me what you learned.”
The smile was slow to grow on his face, but quite devastating when complete. “Love it when you mock me. Gets me all hot.”
Her face flamed. That wasn’t quite the reaction she’d expected. Or wanted. “Be serious. What you learned was that the garbage men found her around five a.m. That she looked like she’d been there at least a day. No I.D.”
“Just what do you need me for, Max? Can’t be detecting.” Both brows went up. “Must be sex.”