She batted her eyelashes. “I can hardly wait until the bill comes due, McCord.”
“Really,” said a dry voice from the doorway.
They turned and Jim Chopin was standing there.
They all wound up at the Lucky Wishbone for a late lunch. Jim was jealous of Kate’s easy camaraderie with Brendan, trying like hell not to show it, and not succeeding very well. Brendan was hugely enjoying the resulting spectacle and losing no opportunity to flirt with Kate by word, glance, and touch.
Kate was doing her best to ignore them both, which wasn’t easy, because the only other person there to talk to was Johnny, and Johnny wasn’t speaking to any of them because before Kate had left Brendan’s office, she had called his mother and set up a meeting for later that afternoon. He’d stared at her, speechless in betrayal, and had refused to listen to any explanation she had tried to give between Third and L and Fifth and Karluk. She’d given up, finally, saying the one thing she’d never expected to hear out of her own mouth: “I’m older than you are, I’m smarter than you are, and I’m tougher than you are. You’re going to have to trust me that this is the right thing to do.”
They were pulling into the parking lot as she spoke, and his eyes grew to the size of saucers. “Look! Look at that!”
“What?” She looked where he was pointing with an accusing finger.
“There’re cops all over the place!”
Three blue-and-whites were parked in front of the row of windows that separated booths from the parking lot. “So cops like fried chicken. That a problem for you?”
He’d slammed out of the Subaru without replying and stamped over to where Brendan and Jim were waiting. He’d made his displeasure known in a few curt sentences and been further outraged by Brandon saying, “Better to get it over with, kid,” and Jim saying, “He’s right, Johnny.” So he sat in a corner of the booth, face like a thundercloud, studiously ignoring the gang of men in black and badges sitting in the next booth and shoveling in fried chicken and French fries in a mechanical manner that wrung the heart of Heidi, their ebullient, redheaded server. She kept topping up his Coke and adding to his fries with a hopeful smile, which he ignored until Jim pulled his cap off and smacked Johnny with it. Even then all Heidi got was a stiff nod of the head and a gruff “thanks.” Kate longed to send him out to wait in the Subaru, but she was restrained by the fear that he would take off, and by the knowledge that his anger was caused by fear.
Brendan burped and patted his belly, of a size that barely fit between booth and table. “That was great.” He smiled at Heidi as she came to the table, and repeated the remark. She beamed at him and topped off his coffee and put a little extra into the process of walking away, which Brendan greatly appreciated and which Kate was sure added substantially to her tip. “I gotta go, I gotta girl waiting on me,” he said. “Kate, always a pleasure. Jim, likewise. Kid? Get that lower lip of yours off the floor, you’re in good hands that I don’t see letting go of you any time soon.”
With a genial wave, he was off. “I flew in a perp,” Jim said. “Brendan told me he’d be in so I figured I’d drop off the file in person.”
“Did I ask?” Kate said.
It made him nervous that the question wasn’t pugnacious. In fact, she was smiling, which made him even more nervous. Things had been so relaxed between them the night before, there was no reason for him to be nervous now. But he was. Dinah’s voice kept coming back to him. What do you want with her? He’d never asked himself that question; it seemed obvious to him what he wanted. He’d never thought about what happened after he got what he wanted.
He was thinking about it now. He cleared his throat. “So you’re going to meet with Jane.”
“Yes.”
“Want me along?”
“I appreciate the offer,” Kate said, “but let’s not make her any more insane than she is already by showing up with a trooper in tow.”
“If you need me…”
“I’ll yell for help.”
That was so out of character that he stumbled getting out of the booth. It didn’t help that she caught his arm and helped him regain his balance. “Are you in town overnight?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Got a ride home?”
“George.”
“Oh. Ah. Well. I’m in overnight, too. I’m picking up the autopsy report on Duffy in the morning.” His eyes searched the heavens for inspiration. “You could cancel George, ride with me. Save yourself some money.”
“I was planning on billing the state for the trip,” she said.
“Oh. Right. Sure. Of course. You’re here on the Duffy case. So I’ll see you back at-”
“But, okay.”
“Sorry?”
She thoroughly enjoyed his moment of blank incomprehension. She wasn’t sure she, or anyone else for that matter, had seen Jim Chopin unsure of how to act around a woman. It gave her, she admitted, if only to herself, a feeling of power. Not to mention satisfaction. Jim Chopin, the father of the Park, the cause of many a feminine flutter of heart, at her beck and call. She decided to push it, just a little. As her grandmother would have said, if you had power and didn’t use it, then you’d be giving it away to someone else, and they surely would. Kate didn’t like the idea of giving away any power she had over Jim Chopin. He’d bedeviled her long enough, he with the too-knowing eyes and the predatory grin. And the unquestioning comfort of his embrace, and the quick understanding of her loss, and-well. It was time and more than time for some payback. “Okay, we’ll ride home with you. Save the state some money.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure. Fine. Um, say around ten?”
“Plane at the trooper hangar at Lake Hood?”
He nodded.
“See you there.”
“Okay. Ten. Tomorrow. Right, see you then.”
She smiled.
He turned and blundered out of the door. His palms hadn’t been that sweaty since he was seventeen and asked Beverly Dobbyn to the prom.
Kate watched him run into the door frame, apologize to it, walk into a man on his way inside, apologize to him, and trip over the edge of the sidewalk.
Sometimes it was just too easy.
Kate had arranged to meet Jane at another restaurant, hoping that everyone would be less inclined toward making a scene in a public place. She’d picked Denny’s on Northern Lights. She’d never been there and it had a large and rapid customer turnover, which meant that the odds were good she wouldn’t see anyone she knew and that if she did see them, they wouldn’t be there for long. There were in addition two ways out of the parking lot if it so happened that she needed them. She circled the block twice but saw no evidence of massive SWAT team deployment. Maybe Jane hadn’t called the cops. She parked in the space closest to the driveway leading onto Denali Street. If they had to make a getaway and they made it as far as the car, she could duck across Denali into the Sears Mall parking lot, do a little bobbing and weaving, jump across Northern Lights onto a side street, hit Fireweed and grab the New Seward north. Of course, that wouldn’t help if they went back to Jack’s town house, where everyone in the law enforcement community knew he had lived, and it wasn’t like there were more than two roads out of town anyway. “Hot pursuit” didn’t have quite the same ring to it in Alaska as it did elsewhere.
At this point she pulled herself together and gave herself a mental scolding. There would be no question of hot pursuit because there would be no need to escape. She and Jane and Johnny were going to sit down and discuss the situation like two civilized adults and one marginally civilized adolescent. She closed her eyes to Mutt’s pleading expression, locked her into the Subaru, and followed Johnny into the restaurant.
“You bitch” Jane hissed as Kate sat down opposite her.
“I’m out of here,” Johnny said.
“Like hell you are,” Kate said, grabbing his arm and forcing him into the seat next to her.