“Done.” Del handed over the menus and leaned on his elbows on the table. “You look nice. I like the thing you did with your hair.”
“Thanks,” Olivia said with both pleasure and relief. She knew she should have worn one of her three dresses, but she planned to go directly from dinner to her mother’s rumba class. “The thing I did with my hair,” Olivia said, “is a barrette. That’s a technical term.”
“Unless it has to do with weapons, I won’t remember it,” Del said. “As promised, this meal is on me, with thanks for donating your time and cookies to help identify the man you saw leaving Charlene’s store.” Their wine arrived, and they clinked glasses. “Nice,” Del said after his first sip. He gave Olivia a smile that warmed her from the inside, the kind of smile she hadn’t seen for some time. She almost hated to pester him for information. However.
“Sorry I couldn’t positively identify the intruder as Charlie Critch,” Olivia said. “Although I liked the kid, so I’m also glad. He and Jason have become buddies. Of course, Jason likes Charlene, too, so he might not be the best judge of character.” Olivia sipped her wine and vowed to memorize the label. She wasn’t normally a fan of Chianti, but this stuff was tasty. “So do you have any specific reason to suspect that Charlie might be the intruder?”
Del’s smile faded, but at least he didn’t start ordering her to stay out of the investigation. “We don’t have much at all yet. I’ve heard a great deal of gossip about their parents, but Charlene and Charlie are both strangely hard to investigate.”
“Strangely?” Olivia asked.
“These days we can usually learn a lot about folks simply by searching for them on the Internet. But not these kids. As far as we can tell, neither of them uses sites like Facebook or Twitter or has a blog or even posts messages on anyone else’s sites.”
“Is it too much to hope that either of them has a police record? Come on, Del, don’t make that face at me. I’m not simply curious. I’m not a gossip, either. The Gingerbread House is right next door to The Vegetable Plate, plus I suspect that whoever trashed Charlene’s store did the same to our front lawn. So yeah, I need to know.”
Del took a slow sip of his wine, let his gaze roam around the restaurant, squinted at the view from the window, and sipped again. Olivia felt like canceling the pizza, pouring the wine on his head, and stalking out. Instead she said, “Nice try. Not going to work.”
Del shook his head and laughed. “Lord help me if I ever have to interrogate you.”
“I guess you’ll have to assign someone else to do it. Or a whole team.”
“You’d make mincemeat out of them.”
“Oh please. Mincemeat? Decorated cookies, maybe.” Olivia reached across the table and touched Del’s hand with her fingertips. “I know you’re worried for my safety, and I do appreciate that, but I hope you trust me to be rational. I’m not a danger addict. If a crime doesn’t affect me or those I care about, I’ll gladly leave it entirely to you.”
“Except you seem to wind up caring about everyone you meet,” Del said. “I believe you even care about Charlene Critch. Or is it really curiosity?”
Olivia drew her hand away. “A bit of both, I guess. Charlene can be profoundly irritating, no doubt about it, but there’s also something lost about her. Mom told me she’d heard that Charlene was married briefly but her father had the marriage annulled.”
Del frowned. “We looked for an ex-husband, but Charlene insisted she’d never been married, and we’ve found no record of a marriage. Usually we can unearth an annulment, but apparently the paperwork, if there was any, has disappeared. The Critch family was wealthy and powerful. Charles Sr. made it a point to curry the favor of people with clout. However, if there’s an ex-husband, we’ll find him eventually through friends and relatives.”
“I suppose you’ve dug into her brother Charlie’s past? Through official channels, I mean.”
Del had apparently decided to trust Olivia, at least up to a point, because he answered without hesitation. “I’ve been checking with my sources in the DC Police Department. Nothing solid, but one buddy of mine said he’d heard the kid had a juvie record, which would be sealed. We ought to be able to dig it up, but for some reason we’ve come up empty so far. Has Jason mentioned anything about Charlie?”
“No, but I can grill him,” Olivia said. “And speaking of food preparation, I believe that’s our pizza wending toward us.”
As their pizza and house salads arrived, Del added, “By the way, thanks for forwarding Binnie Sloan’s blog link. She gave us the original photo, and we sent it along to the crime lab in Baltimore. Their photo expert might be able to enhance the guy’s face in Charlene’s window.”
“I’m impressed,” Olivia said. “How did you snag the original from Binnie without a warrant and a lengthy court fight?” She selected a large slice of pizza, one with lots of roasted artichoke hearts, and wedged the narrow end into her mouth before it could collapse.
“Easy,” Del said. “I simply pointed out the consequences if they continued to take photos of you without your knowledge and permission. I informed them that The Gingerbread House is private property, along with your home and land, and that you had a legal right to bar both her and her niece from setting foot on or in either of them. Of course, they can still photograph you from the sidewalk, but if you forbid them from entering your store or even standing at the windows, it will seriously cramp their style.”
“Wow,” Olivia said. “Thank you.”
“All part of the service.”
As they both reached for a second piece of pizza, Olivia asked, “So does all this mean we are friends again?”
Del paused in mid-reach and raised his eyebrows. “Had we stopped being friends?”
Spreading some dressing on her salad of baby greens, Olivia thanked genetics for her blush-resistant skin. “It’s just that . . . a few months ago, it seemed maybe we were becoming more than friends. Or was I imagining things?” She wrapped her mouth around an extra-large forkful of salad in a clear case of nervous eating.
Del gave her free hand a quick, hard squeeze. “You weren’t imagining things, but . . .”
Olivia wanted to encourage him to keep talking, but her mouth was crammed with greens. She tried to say “But what?” with her mouth full. It came out as “Ga-uh?”
Del threw his head back and laughed. A couple at a nearby table glanced at him and gave each other a knowing smile. “Okay,” Del said once he’d quieted down. “If you promise not to choke yourself with green stuff, I’ll talk. It’s about your ex-husband. No, hear me out. I know you assured me the marriage is over, dead, never to be revived. And I know you were being sincere.” Del picked a bit of crust off his plate and ate it.
Olivia sipped her wine and waited for him to elaborate, though it cost her a jittery stomach.
With a sigh, Del leaned toward Olivia. “Ryan is an impressive guy,” he said. “I’ll grant you he has a controlling nature, though when he suddenly showed up in your store, he did seem to be making an effort to lighten up. I think he wants you back.”
“Not a chance,” Olivia said. Her ex-husband had driven from Baltimore and appeared at The Gingerbread House without warning in mid-summer. He had babbled nonstop about his plans for a low-cost surgery clinic for the working poor, all the while pacing the sales floor and talking over customers who had questions about store items. To Olivia, it was an example of the best and the worst of Ryan. His enthusiasm could be infectious and alluring, but he often forgot that his listeners were separate from him and might have their own plans for their lives. Worst of all, Ryan had been in full swing when Del dropped in to ask if Olivia might be interested in dinner and a movie that evening. He couldn’t find a place to break into Ryan’s monologue, so he finally left. Olivia only found out Del’s intentions much later, after the warmth between them abruptly cooled.