If it was him, he’d seen her arrive home. She had no choice but to answer.
Detective Bryant stood on her step, hands in his pockets, brown leather jacket zipped tight against the cold. He cleared his throat and said her name, her full name, as if it were a question. Had he heard the Second Date Update too? What if he thought … Oh, God, what if he suspected she and Paul had been involved all along, even before Kristin’s vanishing act? She managed a blink of a “Hello” even as she looked past him, scanning the street for a vehicle she didn’t see.
“I’m around the block,” he said, following her eyes. “Going door to door is not one of the more glamorous parts of my job, but I spend more time doing it than I’ll ever admit.”
She smiled politely. “Has something happened?”
“Just doing due diligence. May I come in for a moment?”
“Of course.” Izzy led the way into the kitchen. “Coffee? Tea?”
“A glass of water would be great, if it’s no trouble.” Izzy wondered if Paul had taken her request the other night the same way the detective’s sounded—unobtrusive, as if aware that by the end of this beverage they would still owe each other nothing. The detective hung back in the doorway and took a lengthy drink from the glass she handed him as she settled herself onto a counter stool.
“I don’t suppose you have any new thoughts on the Kristin Kirkland case? Anything you’ve remembered? Or seen or heard since we talked last?”
Did Paul whisking her away on the motorcycle Kristin had forbidden him to ride count? What about him being so ready to date again, and thinking nothing of saying so publicly, when anyone in town listening might recognize him from his voice and first name alone? What about him boxing up his family’s belongings? What about the fact that Clara seemed convinced that something wasn’t right with him, that he was, at minimum, an unnecessary risk?
It was all just gossip where she didn’t have any room to talk, and judgment where she didn’t have any right to throw stones. Izzy shook her head.
He nodded, running a hand through his close-cropped hair. Leaning on the doorframe, he looked more casual and less official than when she’d seen him last, out of place at the bonfire, and a bit more fit, as if maybe he’d taken up a new regimen at the gym. “I won’t be actively working the Kirkland case beyond this week, unless something else turns up. I’m just going over everything again before I file it.”
She shifted in her seat. “Is that frustrating, having to move on from something that’s unresolved? Or is it more of a relief, to tackle something new?”
“Even when I’m tired of banging my head against the wall, it still drives me crazy,” he said. She knew the feeling.
“Do you get hunches about things?”
The memory of Paul’s forced nonchalance when he’d overheard her in the shop crawled up the back of her neck.
“In my experience, the more hunches I get, the better I am at my job. I do wish I got more of them.”
All this time she’d been priding herself on being somewhat removed from the situation—the only neighbor who didn’t take sides, didn’t speculate, didn’t butt in. But maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe what was going on across the street was, just by that very fact, her business.
And maybe there was some risk involved with proximity.
Suddenly she desperately needed to know what Detective Bryant thought of it all. So she decided to be blunt.
“If I had a friend who was interested in spending some time with Paul Kirkland, do you have a hunch how worried I should be?”
He frowned. “Too much of what I’ve said about this case has already gone public. I shouldn’t speculate more.” He looked weary, and she caught herself glancing at his hand—no ring. What must it be like to do a job like his without someone to come home to?
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes fell on the two tins she’d filled after returning from Paul’s the other night and gorging herself on the feast she’d left cooling on the counter. “Do you like pumpkin cookies?” she asked. “I overbaked. You could take them back to the station.”
“Oh, I couldn’t—”
“Take them as a token of the neighborhood’s appreciation.”
He rewarded her with a laugh. “I admit, tokens of appreciation are less common than you might think.”
She bent and rummaged through the closest cupboard in search of a disposable container with a lid, then crossed to the sink to wash her hands. Her back was to him when he said, “So as I said, I won’t be working the case anymore.”
She nodded, dried her hands, and began filling the container with cookies.
“That being a nonissue now, I wonder if you might let me take you to dinner.”
Izzy looked up and blinked in surprise, taking him in—the cut to his jaw, slightly on the rugged side of the boy next door, and the way he carried himself, as if only trying to appear as if he wasn’t on alert. In truth she hadn’t given him much thought after their initial meeting, aside from panicking and throwing her wine into the grass when he’d approached at the festival. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been caught so off guard by such an innocent request, though now she was remembering the way his eyes had lingered on hers in the glow of the bonfire, and his parting wink. Had what she’d taken as his attempts to put her at ease instead been an on-duty version of flirting?
“Maybe you don’t like formal dates,” he said quickly. “I saw the feature about you, in the new edition of that kid’s paper? Reading between the lines, I got the feeling maybe you weren’t exactly enamored with that part of your job. The radio dating thing.”
Hallie had dropped off her two “contributor copies” last week, and Izzy had been relieved at how much tamer it was than the earlier edition Clara had shown her. Still, though her own feature had been wiped mercifully clean of personality, it was nice to know he’d seen her in what Hallie had written.
She managed a smile. “You do get good hunches,” she said.
He lifted a hand as if to say, There you go.
But she was already thinking of the bleak headlines in her in-box every morning—the crimes gone wrong, the mistakes turned deadly, the errors in judgment, the evil, the corruption. She knew that the stories were already too personal to her, the way she soaked up the sadness as if it were her own. And she knew that if someone she cared about was involved with so many of them, she’d never be able to stop. She’d carry the weight of it all; she’d worry day and night.
“That’s a kind invitation,” she stalled, busying herself with the cookies again.
Not a date in years, and now two offers in the same week. One from a potential suspect, and one from the lead investigator. Izzy could picture herself as a caricature, a little angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other, her eyes looking upward for help from above.
Which she was going to need to turn him down.
“What I’m about to say is completely unfair.”
He cleared his throat. “Okay.”
“But I know myself—at least, certain things about myself—and I’m ashamed to admit that I’d be a horrible match for a police officer. I’m not built from the right stuff.”
There was a weighty pause. “In a town like Yellow Springs, the job isn’t what you might think…”
She shook her head. “It’s not just that. It’s … well, part of it comes from my own job. Some people in the media get desensitized to the news—I’d guess it’s similar in your profession. But the reverse seems to be true for me. Let’s just say I’d be the opposite of a comfort to you. And I’d drive myself insane.”
It felt good to follow through with something that was entirely the truth, for once to feel sure, even if it was with a certain sadness.
He tilted his head, then nodded once. “If that’s a line you need to draw, better to know now.”