Vin didn’t respond to that either.
They’d given him plenty to think about. And a part of him knew they were right.
But the other part of him was itchy. Tense. As though something were wrong, but that he couldn’t place his finger on.
He rolled his shoulders, tried to shake it off as he walked back toward the precinct, but the feeling got worse.
Maybe it was all this talk about Jill, and the way that they’d left things. The things he needed to tell her…
He pulled out his cell phone and slowed to a stop in the middle of the busy sidewalk as he saw that he had two missed calls from her.
Vin hadn’t heard from her in days, and she’d called him twice in a twenty-minute span.
The itchy feeling grew worse. The way it did when he knew he was close to the killer, but didn’t know the who.
He resumed walking and called Jill back.
It rang a handful of times before voice mail picked up.
He walked faster and called again.
Voice mail.
“Damn it,” he said so sharply that a handful of people glared at him.
He ignored them. Called Jill again. “Come on, Henley—”
Nothing. No answer.
Vincent made it back to the precinct in record time, ignoring the handful of colleagues that spoke to him either in greeting or with a request.
He went to his desk only long enough to grab his car keys out of the top drawer and then he was off again, all but running toward his car.
He had no good reason to think something was wrong. She could be in the shower. Or on a walk. Or more likely, screening his calls.
But he sped all the way to her place.
Just in case.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The second Dorothy Birch greeted Jill at the door of her lovely, if modest, apartment, Jill felt like an idiot.
The woman was wearing white slacks, a pale purple blouse, and old-fashioned pearls. Her shoes were the orthopedic kind Jill’s grandparents had both used to wear.
Her expression was polite, but also bewildered.
It was so not the face of a killer.
“Hello, Detective Henley. How lovely to see you again. Won’t you please come in?”
“Thanks for agreeing to see me,” Jill said, feeling awkward as she let herself in.
“I was just making some tea. Would you care for some?”
“That’d be nice, thanks,” Jill said with a small smile.
Dorothy made a small gesture toward the living room, and Jill went to sit in the same spot she had last time she’d been here.
Only this time there was no Vincent.
She was extra glad she hadn’t called him now. Vin would never have mocked her for being wrong—but it would have been embarrassing all the same.
“I’m surprised to see you,” Dorothy called from the kitchen. “I was under the impression the police had closed the case.”
“We’ve had to expand our focus to other things,” Jill called back, fiddling with a fussy flower arrangement on the table. It made her think of the flowers Vin had bought her, and she stopped. “But all of us wish we could get a break.”
Dorothy emerged from the kitchen, holding the tray with the easy walk of someone much younger.
“And have you gotten a break? Is that why you’re here?”
Jill took a breath. “I… I don’t know. But I was doing some reading today and wanted to get your opinion on something.”
“Of course,” Dorothy said. “Sugar, if I remember correctly?”
Jill nodded, smiling in thanks as Dorothy dropped in a sugar cube and handed Jill the delicate teacup.
Jill used the adorably tiny spoon to dissolve the sugar cube as she considered her next approach.
“Where’s that handsome partner of yours?” Dorothy asked.
Jill took a sip of tea and tried to hide her wince, wondering if it would be inappropriate to ask for another sugar cube. One definitely wasn’t enough to cut the bitterness.
“Working another case,” Jill replied.
It was a risky move. If she at all thought Dorothy a suspect, she should have told her Vincent was on the way. Hell, that the whole NYPD was on the way.
But then she’d run the risk of Dorothy feeling threatened. And if she did know something… if she’d done something… Jill needed the other woman relaxed.
She took another sip of tea, bigger this time, hoping that if she drank this one fast enough, it would be easier to ask for extra sugar in the next round.
“Ms. Birch—”
“Dorothy.”
Jill smiled. “Dorothy. I was going through old articles today—hoping to uncover an old feud we may have missed before, and I came across something curious.”
“More tea?”
“Oh—sure,” Jill said, holding out her cup. “And an extra sugar cube wouldn’t go amiss. I’ve got a sweet tooth.”
Dorothy laughed. “Me too, dear. Me too.”
Jill noticed the other woman’s hands shaking a bit as they took Jill’s cup, and she looked away, wanting to spare the other woman the indignity that old age sometimes had on the joints.
“You and Lenora were from Torrence, Ohio?”
“Yes, that’s right. Just about the tiniest town you can imagine. One butcher, one salon, one market… that sort of place.”