“They did well?”
“Yes.” She might not like or trust the guy, but he’d keep her safe and for now safe was good enough.
She moved through the swinging doors and flipped on the kitchen lights, which blinked and brightened to reveal a long industrial counter, a stove designed to cook hundreds of meals daily, and a double refrigerator.
“How did you find a place like this?”
“It went into bankruptcy. A fire sale price and a low interest loan made me a landowner.”
He studied the rooms with blatant curiosity. He snapped his fingers as a memory fell into place. “Used to be a barbecue place?”
“It did. Bad management.”
“When I worked undercover, we busted drug dealers working in the alley behind the place.”
“Its checkered past is part of the reason I bought it. We fit.”
As she moved to the refrigerator, he blocked her path and pointed toward a chair. “Sit.”
Without a word, she took the chair nestled close to the bar. “I’ll be back on my game tomorrow and I won’t be easy to boss around.”
“Good.” He opened the refrigerator and studied the paltry contents. “You live on this?”
“I’m due a trip to the grocery store.”
“I’d say so. How old is the Chinese food?”
“Yesterday.”
“You’re sure?”
“For the most part.”
He left the container in the refrigerator and opened the freezer. “Frozen pizza. A step in the right direction. This been here a year, or two?”
“It might have been in there when I moved in,” she joked.
Shaking his head, he turned on the oven and unwrapped the pizza. “And they say cops are bad about eating well.”
“My mom was never much of a cook and I never picked up the habit. I eat enough to keep going.”
“Explains why you are skin and bones.”
“I like to think of myself as gristle. Tough and hard to chew.” She shifted, grimaced. “So how long did you work undercover in Nashville?”
“Ten years.”
“I’ll bet you’ve got war stories.”
“A few.” The oven beeped signaling it was preheated. “Shitty eating is going to catch up with you one day.”
“So my law partner keeps telling me.”
He put the pizza in the oven and filled two glasses with water. He put a glass in front of her and sipped his as if a thought stirred.
“So who am I keeping you from tonight, Morgan? I can’t believe you don’t have plans on a Saturday night.”
“You saved me from unpacking.”
“Saved? Don’t like the domestic chores.”
“Not a fan.”
“So where’d you move?”
“Back into the family home.”
She winced. “Ouch.”
“Exactly.” He rested his hands on his hips and let his gaze settle on her.
She arched a brow. “You trying to read my mind? I can promise it’s a dark and scary place.”
A shake of his head confirmed his agreement. “Wainwright, the idea of rambling around in your head scares me.”
“Good.” She cocked her head. “So if you’re not trying to read my mind why are you still looking at me?”
“We had a case a couple of nights ago. A homicide.”
She sipped her water. She’d seen enough crime scene photos to know that he’d witnessed the most grisly. She waited for him to decide what he wanted to share.
“The victim was a young singer. She’d been walking to her car.”
“I saw a mention of that in the paper, but didn’t have time to get past the headline.”
He hesitated as if measuring each word. “She was beaten to death. The medical examiner thinks with a long metal object.”
She straightened, making the pain in her shoulder throb all the harder. “Do you think there’s a connection to my case?”
He met her gaze. “I don’t know. Her killer’s first swing didn’t miss but landed on the side of her head. She wasn’t recognizable by the time the killer was finished.”
She set her water down and traced the rim of the glass. “Who was she?”
“A singer. Dixie Simmons. Popular at the honky-tonks and well-liked.”
“I don’t know her. Or the name. I don’t have much time for the honky-tonks these days.”
“I don’t know if there is a connection but you need to be extra careful.”
“Most women are killed by people they know. A spouse. Lover. Exes.”
“That’s what I thought. But all the men I’ve talked to have alibis. You have any exes that could be a threat to you?”
That made her smile. “I barely have time for a run in the evening. No time for men. No exes. Unless we go back to eighth grade and Jonny Danvers. He had a crush on me.” She frowned. “That sounded flip and I didn’t mean for it to. I know this Dixie woman wouldn’t be laughing.”
“Cops rely on dark humor to survive. We’d go insane if we didn’t joke.”
“Right.”
“When I received the call that you’d been attacked with a blunt object my first thought was Dixie. The similarities were too close for comfort.”
His assessment didn’t sit well.
“What about clients? Could one of your clients have done this to you?”
“It’s always possible. I do a lot of public defender work. See all kinds in that business, but I’ve not had much trouble.”
“You were visible on TV the other night.”
She grimaced. “The punch seen around Nashville. The station received unflattering emails about me.”
“That put you on a lot of radars.”
“Not my intent at all. I was trying to push you on the DNA testing.”
A smile quirked the edges of his lips. He wasn’t a handsome man. Too hard and too many rough edges. But when he smiled he had an appeal. “Really? That never occurred to me.”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor.”
“I never said I was smart.”
He’d give a fox a run for its money. “Well, if you’d answered one of my calls, I’d not have been driven to organize the vigil.”
“I answered your first call.”
“And left me a voicemail message that you’d get back.”
“I meant that.”
“That was six weeks ago.”
“I don’t have an answer from the lab.” The slow deliberate clip of his words suggested she was being childish. “What do you want me to do, call each day and chat about the weather so we can connect?”
“No. That’s ridiculous. I want an answer for Jeb.”
He cocked a brow. “Do you really believe the guy is innocent? Really?”
“My gut tells me he is.”
“Your gut?”
“What, you’ve never relied on your gut?”
An exasperated sigh seeped over his lips.
Rachel traced the rim of her glass. “And there are a lot of unanswered questions.”
“Such as?”
The letters came to mind but she wasn’t ready to tell him or anyone else about them. Definitely, TMI. “The arresting officers didn’t allow him counsel.”
“You mean my father?”
“He was the arresting officer.”
“Jeb refused counsel at first and later when he asked for it, he got it.”