She kept her mouth shut. At least on that subject. “Did you tell them about the wino?”
His mouth quirked. “You’ve got a one track mind, Max. Too bad it’s always on murder. And no, didn’t mention him.”
She pouted.
“Gotta pick up my car back at the station, handle a few things in my own jurisdiction, then I’ll be back to check on the situation.”
“I’ll come with you.“
He looked at her with a definite you-might-be-crazy-but-I-sure-as-hell-ain’t expression. “Don’t think so.”
She persevered. “Why not?”
“They flirt with pretty women. They talk to other cops. Don’t need any help.”
“That’s sexist.”
“We’re a sexist bunch.”
Wasn’t that an understatement. Max decided the better part of valor was to give in. “Fine. But you’ll remember to tell them about the wino, right?”
He gave her that smile again. Too damn cute for words. “Buy ’em a drink at the local cop hangout, see if any new details have surfaced, and the rest I’ll play by ear.” Period. Close quote. End of subject. He looked at the keys in her hand. “You want me to drive?”
She hugged the ring to her chest. “No one drives my car but me, hotshot.”
Witt walked around to the passenger side. Max put her hand on the door. Her fingertips tingled. She closed her eyes and for just a moment, something sparkled brightly against her lids.
Diamonds.
Tell him, Cameron’s ghostly voice whispered in her ear.
“Witt.”
He looked at her over the roof of the car.
“Her name is ... was Tiffany.”
Chapter Two
Witt’s reaction to the Tiffany tidbit had been an icy stare over the roof of Max’s Miata and an irritatingly uncomfortable silence the entire drive back to Witt’s station. She’d dropped him off with barely a goodbye.
And here she was on a Monday night, dateless—purely by choice, of course, nothing to do with Witt’s refusal to let her tag along on his “mission”—and jobless. Murder was hell on a steady temp job.
She’d been a damn fine accountant in her other life, having made manager before she was thirty. Two years ago, a partnership at KOD—Kirby, O’Brien, and Dakajama—had been on her horizon, too.
Then Cameron walked in on a robbery at the corner 7-11. And never walked back out. She’d suddenly become a widow, and the partnership had tasted like cardboard in her mouth. She’d quit KOD, sold the condo, the furniture, Cameron’s motorcycle, and his silver Porsche. Now she temped, lived in one room on the second floor of a renovated Victorian, and talked to her husband’s ghost. He talked back.
Being jobless meant she could sleep in tomorrow, which meant that tonight she could prowl. At the Round Up. Not for excitement, of course, but for the wino. The one who’d hidden between two dumpsters in the alley and witnessed Dracula and Frankenstein throw out Tiffany’s body like yesterday’s trash.
Wearing tennies, jeans, black turtleneck and sweatshirt, she left her twenty-by-twenty square studio apartment a little after eleven p.m. The Round Up would still be open, though on a Monday night, the crowd would be thin. But Bubba worked on Mondays, and she’d have the big bouncer to run to if she got into trouble. She believed in taking care of herself, not acting stupid.
The lot was far from full, only the spaces along the front of the bar taken and a few vehicles clustered around lamp posts lighting the parking area. Even from this distance, the music beat against the windows of her Miata. Outside, three smokers huddled around the cigarette can by the front door.
Max parked the Miata at the far end of the Round Up’s parking lot, closest to the mouth of the alley. It was darker there, eerie so far from the pools of light. The yellow crime scene tape flapped nearby. It never occurred to Max to fight the visions, to fight getting involved. At least, not this time. She’d tried before and learned there were no alternatives.
The visions would hound her until she found justice for the victim.
Max climbed from the car, armed with a heavy, black Mag-Lite.
Take the pepper spray, Cameron urged, and she felt a surge of warmth. He was near. She could be less afraid. He’d made her feel that way when he was alive, had continued after his death.
A burst of laughter blew through the doors of the Round Up, but no one paid her any heed. She held the flashlight in her left hand, the pepper spray retrieved from the glove box in the other.