“Yeah, cops,” Tom supplied.
She stared at Joe. “But you’re not a cop,” she said. Her voice had changed. It had turned low and sexy. Candy Cane, not Lori Star. How did she know? he wondered. Was she really psychic? Was it his manner? Or just a wild guess?
“Mr. Connolly is a private investigator, and he’s with us,” Raif said.
Joe blessed the fact that he’d managed to keep a great relationship with the NYPD.
The woman still had the chain on the door. “I didn’t do anything illegal,” she said defensively.
“We haven’t come to arrest you,” Raif said.
“Then you should go away,” she suggested, and started to close the door.
Joe put out hand to stop it. “Miss Star, we really need to talk to you. Just for a few minutes.”
He was convinced that she didn’t have any extraordinary talents—not paranormal talents, anyway—but he still very much wanted to talk to her.
She stared at him with wide, powder-blue eyes. Then she sighed, closed the door most of the way and undid the security chain.
“Come in,” she told them resignedly.
She was a small woman, thin, but cosmetically “enhanced” in the breast department, and pretty in a hard-edged way. She wasn’t exactly a high-class hooker, but it didn’t look as if she’d hit bottom yet, either. She had blond hair—enhanced, too, but decently done—and small, sharp features. As she let them in, he saw that she was wearing a silk kimono, but beneath it she had on sweatpants and a M?tley Crue T-shirt.
“Sit down, I guess,” she said, indicating a sofa and two chairs in the living area, which was also the dining area and was connected straight to a typical studio kitchen.
He chose one of the chairs across from where she sat on the edge of the couch. Raif took the second chair, so Tom was left to sit next to her on the couch, perching uncomfortably a few feet away. She picked up a pack of cigarettes, shook one out and lit it.
“Do you mind?” she asked. “Say no—this is my apartment, and I can smoke here if I want to.”
“It’s your funeral,” Raif said with a shrug.
“I still like the smell of smoke,” Joe told her, smiling.
She flashed him a smile in return.
“How long have you been a psychic, Miss Star?” he asked politely.
She hesitated, a strange look on her face. “I’m really an actress,” she said.
Tom made a choking sound. She flashed him a cold glare. “I’ve been an extra in three movies now,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” Tom asked. “Did you play a hooker?”
Joe shook his head, tempted to put a bag over the man’s head. Tom was too used to interrogating suspects with whom it was necessary to take a hard line.
In this case, though, a hard line wasn’t what was called for.
“Miss Star, please, we need your help,” he said. He had been ready to dismiss the woman’s claims himself, but something about the way she had looked when he’d asked her how long she had been a psychic had given him pause.
After all, who the hell was he to doubt anyone? He’d thought a corpse had spoken to him from a Gurney at the morgue.
She hesitated, looking at him. “Honestly?” she asked. And at that moment, there was something raw and young and vulnerable about her features that got to him.
She was scared.
“Yes, honestly.”
She looked around at the three of them. “This is off the record, right? You guys have to keep what I say between us.”
“If you know anything about an attempted murder…” Raif began.
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about an attempted murder. Except for what I saw. In my mind.”
A shadow seemed to pass over Raif’s eyes. From now on, he wasn’t going to believe her. Tom seemed to have withdrawn, as well.
“What did you see, in your mind’s eye, and how did it all happen?” Joe said quickly, before either of the other men could say anything to shut her down.
“I was here. At home. Getting ready for the night.”
Tom made a choking sound again.
Joe flashed him a frown. “Were you here alone?” he asked.