“Shh.” Nikki swept the other tables, but nobody else heard.
He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Seriously. Know what kale tastes like? The Jolly Green Giant’s nether regions. Don’t ask how I know.”
They laughed and made a lovers’ tink of their wineglasses. Nikki studied him, fighting her anticipation, just as she also embraced it and felt its thrill. Then her phone buzzed. She stole a discreet look and the caller ID told her it was Detective Ochoa. “I’m sorry.”
“Please. Take it.”
Heat excused herself and whispered, “Hang on,” during her walk to the inn’s reception area. Both Ochoa and Raley were on the call and eager to fill her in.
Ochoa began, “We still haven’t turned any eyewits, and the security cams aren’t pointed in our favor. As for the Wall Street check, so far this guy was a candidate for sainthood. But we’ll still mine that shaft.”
“Now for the strange. Want to talk odd socks?” asked Raley, employing the term she had coined to instruct her squad always to look for things at a crime scene that don’t match or feel right. “We’ve spent the day here combing through everything with CSU and the inventory specialist from the victim’s insurance company. Nothing valuable got taken. And there’s plenty here. Jewelry, collector paintings, sculptures. Even some gold Krugerrands in a cigar humidor.”
“Anyway,” continued Ochoa, “drawers have been emptied, bookcases pawed, closets ransacked, you get the picture. But all this valuable stuff around, and nothing seems to have gotten boosted.”
Raley added, “Oh, and even the maid’s room got tossed. Which is odd. It’s pretty spare. Just some clothes and makeup. And no wall safe in there.”
“Somebody was looking for something,” she said.
“And we can’t tell if they found it.”
“What about the maid?” asked Heat.
“Nowhere to be found,” said Ochoa. “Missing as missing can be.”
“And here’s reason we called. The maid’s not only Haitian, but in her room we found a picture of a guy who could be a boyfriend.” Raley paused. “He’s got a tatt on his shoulder.” In butchered pronunciation he said, “‘L’Union Fait La Force.’ Pardon my French.”
They surrendered their fireside table, checked out of the room—unused—and drove west, pausing only for a pit stop in Sagapanack for takeout at Townline BBQ. “So much for our romantic dinner,” she said.
“I don’t think of it so much as a romantic dinner as an incursion. But that’s fine. Rain check tomorrow night,” said Rook as they joined the red ribbon of taillights on 495. “How do you feel about an intimate rooftop supper for two? I’m sure Alton Brown has something in his Good Eats repertoire. I’ll look in the index under ‘Fussy, and Travels Well Up a Fire Escape.’”
“Or you could just consult Alicia Delamater. I’ll bet she’s carried more than one covered dish across the lane to Casa Cosmo.”
“I’d say a hot dish. Sure explains why Keith Gilbert said his wife never goes there.”
“Come on, Rook, it’s obviously the other way around. The wife never goes there, so it’s the perfect place to stash his mistress.”
“Not so stashed, as it happens. That’s the way it is with secrets; we both know that. Sooner or later, it all comes out.”
There it was, served up like a big softball: Nikki’s opening to come clean about the task force and relieve the pangs that had troubled her all day. She almost seized it, but held back, telling herself it was too speculative, to wait and see. In truth she knew it wasn’t the job’s hypothetical nature, but its disruptive one. Her emotions were swirling enough about his potential marriage proposal, why open the touchy subject of a new gig involving lots of absences for international travel?