Vincent stood to stare at his board, his eyes locking on the wide-eyed stare of a deceased Lenora Birch, silently begging her to tell him her secrets.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know, man,” he told his brother with a shake of his head. “The method—shoving someone over a railing—screams crime of passion. But the complete lack of evidence, the lack of fingerprints, or so much as a hair could mean premeditation…”
“Or someone who’s remarkably cool under pressure,” Marc said. “A crime of passion followed immediately by levelheaded damage control.”
“Could be,” Vin mused. “But that’s the part that’s tripping me up. Crimes of passion generally stem from, well, passion. And Lenora Birch’s love life, while not uncomplicated, hasn’t turned up anything worth killing over. Best as we can tell, she held herself apart from other people. She was… removed.”
“Huh. Someone scared to connect, to get too close to another person,” Marc said. “Sounds… familiar.”
“I don’t think she was scared,” Vincent mused, ignoring Marc’s not-so-subtle jab about Vincent’s lack of relationships. “It’s like she focused her energy somewhere else.”
“Well, we can get that right?” Marc said. “Sure, we Morettis are all husbands or boyfriends or brothers or sons, but aren’t there times when we’re a cop first? When that takes up all of us. Those days when we’re married to the job, you know?”
Vincent froze in the middle of his pacing, a familiar prickle of knowing rippling along his spine.
“Say that last part again,” he commanded his brother.
“Um,” Marc said. “I said we were cops first… that some of us were boyfriends, although of course not you, because you just have a colleague—”
“That’s it,” Vincent said, interrupting yet another jab.
“What’s what?”
“What if it was a crime of passion,” Vincent said excitedly. “But not passion in the sense that we usually think of it. Love and sex and all that.”
“Um—”
Vincent tucked the phone under his ear, moved toward the board, and began plucking down pictures of ex-lovers.
“You said we were married to our job,” Vincent said hurriedly. “What if Lenora Birch was the same. What if the reason she held herself apart from people all those years was because her focus—her heart—was her career.”
“Not following. Remember, of the two of us, you’re the detective who solves crimes. I’m the sergeant who chases bank robbers. Spell it out for me.”
Vincent didn’t respond. His brain was humming with the hunch that had been eluding him this entire case.
“Marc, you’re a fucking genius,” he muttered.
“Thanks?”
“I gotta go,” Vincent said, hanging up before even giving his brother a chance to say good-bye.
Two seconds later, he was making another phone call, this time to his partner.
“Henley,” he said the second she picked up the phone. “Get your butt over here. Now.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jill’s place was a ten-minute walk from Vincent’s apartment, which was handy when he had what she thought of as his “fits.” Those abrupt, semifrantic phone calls that meant he was onto something.
Hadn’t happened in a while though.
Both because she’d been in Florida for three months, and because in the month she’d been back, they’d both been thoroughly stumped by the Lenora Birch case.
Funny how she’d almost missed his barked commands to drop whatever she was doing and come over.
This interruption in particular had been welcome. Jill had been sitting on the center of her bed, surrounded by bridal magazines and trying to get excited about… something. Anything.
What did it say about her that the latest trend in bridal bouquets (yellow roses were apparently “in”) didn’t even cause a blip on her radar, but a lead in a homicide case revved her motors?
Right now, Jill didn’t care.
Because she and Vin were back. She could feel it.
She knocked at his door, but he didn’t answer, so she let herself in.
“You know, you should really lock your front door,” she called, shrugging out of her coat. “Being a cop and all.”
Still no answer. She walked toward his living room and found him precisely where she expected to. Where she’d found him a thousand times before.
Scribbling frantically at his whiteboard.
She watched him for a moment. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, a surprising change from his usual black. The muscles of his back rippled beneath the thin fabric as his arm moved furiously across the board, scribbling whatever was going through his head at warp speed.
His black marker was starting to run out, and Jill wordlessly went to the small, utilitarian desk in the corner and pulled out a fresh pen.
She moved to his side, uncapping it and then fluidly swapping the dying pen in his hand with the fresh one in hers.
He barely paused. Didn’t grunt so much as a thank-you, and Jill smiled.
She’d missed this.
She tossed the dead pen in the trash and then settled down on his couch to wait.
And wait, and wait.