“You don’t appear to be too concerned, either.”
Again, he shrugged. It bothered her that he seemed so distracted. “I wish I could lose sleep over every terrible thing that happened, but I can’t. We all need to keep a certain distance. It’s the key to sanity and survival.”
“I want you to take the case.”
He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “Gen,” he said softly, giving her his attention at last, “your mom isn’t one of the key players in that organization. She doesn’t write about Poe. Hell, she belongs to a zillion clubs, most of them trying to make the world a better place. I can’t see her as a target.” His argument was rational, and the same one Eileen had given her.
“You can’t know that,” Genevieve said.
He inhaled, looking off into the distance. “Gen, I’m thinking about heading out to Vegas.”
She was stunned, and upset that his sudden announcement hurt her so badly. Sure, he was tall. Rugged, handsome. Frigging charming, even.
But she had led a life that didn’t include a lot of wild dating, and that was by choice. If she had wanted…well, there had been plenty of willing men out there, if for no other reason than that she was rich. She had just thought that…
She shook her head. “Fine. Move to Vegas,” she said with a shrug. “But take this case first.”
“Gen, I’m willing to bet this murder was committed by someone who just wanted to kill Thorne—the Poe angle was just a convenient smoke screen.”
“Prove it.”
He looked away for a moment.
She leaned forward urgently. “Joe, did you know that Sam Latham was driving the first car that got hit in that accident on the FDR today?”
“What?” He looked at her with a frown.
“Sam Latham. He’s a member of the New York Poe Society, another Raven.”
“And I’ll bet that at least two-thirds of the other people involved were all members of some society or other. We’re social creatures. Usually,” he added.
She shook her head, irritated. “Joe, the New York Poe Society is not a huge group. The local membership is pretty small. Both Thorne Bigelow and Sam Latham are…were on the board. As is my mother.”
For a moment, at least, that seemed to pique his interest.
“Joe, there are only nine other board members, and two are Bigelow’s family members. Jared, his son, and Mary Vincenzo, his sister-in-law. Then there are Brook Avery, Don Tracy, Nat Halloway, Lila Hawkins, Larry Levine, Lou Sayles and Barbara Hirshorn. There were twelve in all, but Thorne is dead. And now Sam is in the hospital.”
“Genevieve…it was an accident. I’m sure I don’t know Poe’s stories as well as the Ravens do, but since he died in the middle of the nineteenth century, I don’t think any of his characters murdered anyone with a car. Somebody was probably driving recklessly, might have been drunk, might have been an asshole, but it was an accident.”
“Or maybe the driver was pretending to drive recklessly, but he was really trying to hit Sam.”
“No,” he told her firmly. “I saw it, and it was an accident.”
“You saw the whole thing?”
He hesitated. “I saw a lot of it.”
“A lot of it?”
He didn’t answer her at first. It was as if he hadn’t even heard her. He was frowning, as if he were deep in thought.
“Joe?”
“I told you, I saw most of it. And before that…before that, I saw the guy who probably caused it. He could have hit any car on that highway. He was driving like a maniac.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“A saw a car weaving through traffic, and my instinct was to stay the hell away from it. Genevieve, I’m not a traffic cop.”
He was irritated, which surprised her.
“What did the car look like?” she asked.
He shook his head, still looking irritated. “Some kind of sedan. Black, dark blue, maybe dark green.”
She wasn’t sure why, but she was certain he was angry with himself, and not with her.
Because he should have noted the car. He should have known the exact color, make and model. He should have gotten the license plate. He was an ex-cop, and in his own mind, he thought he should have done all those things, because the driver had ended up killing someone.
“It was you!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“What?”
“It was you.” She knew it beyond a doubt, without need for verification. Oh, yeah. It sounded just like Joe, saving a life, then walking away. The man hated the limelight.
“I was not driving drunk!” he said indignantly.
“I’m not talking about the driver,” she said.
A curtain seemed to drop over his eyes, along with a lock of his wheaten hair.
“What was me?” he asked warily.
“The missing hero.”
He waved a hand in the air, his gray-green eyes as expressionless as steel.