“She never remarried?”
“I think she was afraid to. There were a couple guys – literally, two men she saw for a while after dad – but that was it. What about you?”
Her skin reddened a shade and she looked away. “No. No more marriage for me.”
“Where’s, ah…?”
“Danny? Oh, he’s around. Sometimes.”
“So the boys were with him last night, or…?”
“No. The neighbor came over and stayed.”
She seemed to want to drop the subject of her ex-husband so Mike switched gears. “What about your parents? How are they doing?”
“Still together, doing well. They live in Upper Jay. Dad’s a retired history teacher, mom worked at the bank for years, as a teller.”
“That’s good.”
They both settled back for a minute, looking up at the ceiling. “It doesn’t feel like we grew up in the same town,” she said.
“Well I mean, I was gone most summers and I’m what – ten years older than you?”
“Keep guessing.”
“Fifteen?”
She smiled, said, “So you got into this because of your dad.”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“I remember thinking, you know, picturing Officer Friendly, sort of walking around the community, smiling, and helping people. When I was growing up… I don’t know. My parents kept me pretty sheltered, I guess. I mean, I got into it a little bit when I was older, I partied a little bit, you know, out in the woods, kids drinking beer. Like Norman Ridge. You ever go out to Norman Ridge, drinking?”
“Sure.”
“But then, I think it was my first year, we had this huge drug bust. I didn’t go into the department straight out of college, I traveled a little, went to California – but that very first year, I’m as green as a blade of grass, and there’s this big, multi-agency sweep.”
“Cut your teeth?”
“Cut a million teeth on that one. My first year and part of the biggest roundup in county history. At least for the time. And it was fine… you know… but there were some things that just… Ugh. It was a wake-up call, know what I mean?”
“I do.”
They fell into silence for a full minute, both of them thinking about the past, Mike thinking about his long-departed wife. Then Lena said, “We should get going.”
The first hints of dawn were coming in pinkish light through the half-drawn blinds.
Lena grabbed a shower first, leaving him to sit on the edge of the bed, looking at the wreck of their clothes. This was crazy. His first time in a long time, and it was a Lake Haven detective and they were in the middle of a huge case.
But she was so damned cute. And smart. And funny. And she seemed to like him. What did it matter? Sex was no big deal.
But it felt like a big deal.
Mike pushed off the bed and looked at himself in the mirror attached to the bureau. At fifty-three, his stomach was still relatively flat. He’d started going gray in his mid-thirties but it had stayed concentrated to his chest hair, some streaks above his ears. At this point he’d outlived his father.
He hadn’t talked about his dad to anyone in a long time. It continued to stir something – he wasn’t quite sure what yet.
Maybe that his father had a reputation for being a good box man, too, and always used his first name, made it informal, drew out confessions. But Mike hadn’t gotten a confession out of Steven Pritchard.
He walked to the bathroom and rapped on the door with a knuckle.
“Yeah?”
“Permission to enter?”
“Granted.”
Steam filled the room, turning the shower door opaque. He could see Lena’s shape. She’d kept her hair up, just doing a rinse. He could stand one, too.
“Permission to enter further.”
She sighed. “Don’t get my hair wet.”
He slid the door away and stepped into the tub. Enough room in there for them to fit comfortably.
“What do you want to do next?” Lena asked, soaping up.
He dragged his eyes away from her sudsy pubic hair, wet breasts, and looked at her face. “It’s been twenty-four hours and we haven’t heard one word about Marlene Blackburn. You feel like gambling?”
“Me? Gambling? Oh, I’m down for a game of blackjack any old day of the— no. I do not feel like gambling. We’ve got the meeting with Joe Pritchard and Terry Fogarty today to go over the estate stuff.”
“I’m about to reach the terminal end of my patience.”
She blinked some water away. “You have a terminal end? You seem pretty patient to me.”
“I couldn’t wait a week to get you in bed.”
“I got you in bed, Mike. And we talked about this – the casino might as well be tribal territory.”
“Maybe I just feel like gambling, and I bump into her, casually ask her if Steve Pritchard has been shacking up with her.” He took the soap from her and scrubbed.
She pushed past him, stepped out, and wrapped herself into a towel. “No, we’ve got the meeting set for today. We need to get prepared.”
Mike ducked his face under the showerhead, then shut off the faucet and stepped out. “Maybe we split up, just for a couple hours?”
“How are we gonna do that? We took one car.”
“I could grab one of those motorcycles left behind…”
“Haha.”
“What are you doing? Are you brushing your teeth with your finger?”
She spat into the sink. Turned on the tap, splashed some water into the basin to wash away the spittle. “Look, this is your thing I’m talking about – your old scores theory. I’m with you on it, so we also need to talk to Cheever, right now, so we can take a warrant and get into Lavoie’s stuff, look at the Child Protective Services cases she shared with Harriet when they both worked in Lake Haven. I’ve got a change of clothes in my car. You?”
“You drive around with a change of clothes in your car?”
She winked at him. “You never know.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Well, then we’ll stop by your place. I think Cheever will go for it, I really do. But then that means it’s going to be a lot of ground to cover, a lot of cases to look through; we need to do it together. So after the meeting with Joe Pritchard, we spend some time on these cases. If we still haven’t heard from Perkins by tomorrow, you can head to the casino. Pritchard is in county lock-up and not going anywhere.” She headed back into the motel room and started fishing her clothes off the floor.
“He might.”
Lena stood upright, gave him a look.
“Pritchard lawyered up,” Mike said. “I just saw the email on my phone. Signed an attorney–client contract last night. The lawyer has requested a bail hearing, citing that the previous bail was exorbitant.”
“Well at least we know he doesn’t have any money.”
“Or he’s cheap.”
“So if he gets out,” she said, “we’ll tag him. A day or two, at least. He won’t go anywhere, anyway, I don’t think.”
“No?”
“No,” she said. “Maybe it was Harriet, maybe not – but he’s here for something. In the area.”
He thought about it a minute. He also thought about unspooling her from the towel, but they’d gotten sidetracked long enough. “Alright,” he said.
She came close to him and he thought she might kiss him, but she touched his arm with a demure smile then went back to gathering her clothes.
They dressed in silence – Mike figured both of them were wondering the same thing: if it had been the right idea to get in bed with a colleague, what they knew about each other, and the volumes they didn’t.
“How long has it been for you?” he asked, buckling his pants.
“What?”
“This.”
Her eyebrows went up as she buttoned her blouse. “You’re asking me how long it was since I had sex?”
“Yeah. Is that so crazy?” He held up his hands. “I’m not looking for exact figures or anything.” He nodded at the bed. “But we just pulled an all-nighter; I don’t think either of us got our breath back for more than a good twenty minutes at any point. I’m telling you, I’m not as young as I used to be. I’m sore in places where I didn’t know I had muscles.”
A smile broke over her face, but she rolled her eyes and kept dressing. “It’s been a while.”