“You mean you missed the glamorous couple on the cover of People every other week?” I can’t believe I’m spouting off like this, but once started, the sarcasm pours forth. “The actress and the football player. They were news, baby!”
David shoots me a look that’s pure poison. “That’s enough, Anna. Unless you want me to enumerate your less-than-stellar relationships.”
But his tone is more hurt than angry and I’m suddenly flooded with guilt. It was unfair to bring Gloria into the conversation. Gloria Estrella was the big, stupid, “you are the love of my life” mistake every one of us makes at least once. David loved her to the depths of his soul, refusing to see what lay beneath the gleaming façade.
Yes, she was beautiful, a successful model and actress, but she was also vain, self-centered and utterly without conscience. David is handsome, trusting, an ex–football player of some local renown. Perfect for Gloria to use as a camera-friendly public consort and since I was his partner and friend, perfect to use me to save her ass with the police when she screwed up. Which she did on more than one occasion. Big-time. But it came to an end when I saw what she was doing to David. I made a bargain with her. I’d help get her out of yet another scrape (a very big one) if she promised to let David go. I did and remarkably, she’s kept her word.
It took David a long time to get over her.
And now, I’ve raised the specter again. Just when he and Tracey were beginning a relationship of their own. Tracey is an ex-cop, almost as tough as I am, and just as street-smart. She and David do make a good couple, and she’s more than a match for any of David’s exes, except maybe Gloria.
Tracey is about to start asking questions again, I can see it in the confused way she looks from David to me.
I made this mess; I’d better clean it up.
I wave a hand and laugh. “Foget it, Tracey. Gloria is old news—a joke between David and me. It was over a long time ago.”
I see David’s shoulders relax ever so slightly.
But so does Tracey. Her eyes tighten at the corners. “Are you sure?”
And then, as if stage directed to enter at precisely the right moment, someone opens the door to our office.
The three of us swivel toward it. I might be imagining it, but a wave of relief at the interruption is so palpable, our visitor seems to feel it, too. He pauses, hand on the door, his expression curious but detached.
“Am I interrupting?” Detective Harris says.
Shit. “When aren’t you interrupting?” I groan under my breath.
He comes in and closes the door behind him. He is smiling, but he’s a cop. A middle-aged, built-like-a-boxer, craggy-faced bulldog of a cop. His smiles can’t be trusted. He was involved in the Gloria Estrella fiasco, which brings David’s shoulders up again. But we both know he isn’t here about that long-closed case.
Harris strides over to the visitor’s chair and pulls it up to the desk. He turns it around and straddles it backward, grinning. “Hope you all had a good holiday.”
Small talk? And now he’s grinning. Christ. This can’t be good. When no one follows up with the usual banalities about how good their holidays were, I pipe in. “What can we do for you?”
Harris ignores my question and directs one to Tracey. “How’s the bounty-hunting business treating you, Officer Banker?”
“Ex-officer,” Tracey spits back with the malevolence of a striking rattlesnake, her ferocity startling us all.
Jaw clenched, she adds, “As you well know since it was at your recommendation that I was granted disability retirement.”
I snap to attention at this unexpected bit of information—and at the heat in Tracey’s response. I’d assumed Tracey had agreed to retirement after an off-duty scuffle with an armed bank robber resulted in a hero’s commendation and a back injury. Should have known after seeing Tracey in action with us that it hadn’t been her choice to retire from the force.
She’s on her feet now, gathering the tax papers we’d assembled and the sheaf of receipts I was working on and stuffing them into a large envelope with jabs that would do a boxer proud. “I’ll take these downtown,” she says, jaw tight. “Finish it there. See you later.”
And she’s gone . . . fairly flying out the door. David and I look at each other and then at Harris.
“Well. I don’t think she likes you very much,” David says.
Harris shifts in his chair. The fact that he didn’t jump to defend his actions with Tracey makes me think he might realize he acted precipitously in forcing her to retire. “I’m sorry she’s still so angry,” he says.
David shakes his head. “It’s not Anna and me you should be apologizing to. It’s Tracey.” He pushes back his chair and gets to his feet. “I’m going with her.” He’s looking at Harris, daring the detective to try to stop him.
Harris lifts his shoulders. “Tell her I didn’t mean to upset her,” he says quietly.
David mumbles something that sounds a lot like “right, you fucking jerk” and brushes past Harris.
Then it’s just the two of us alone in the office.
Yippee.
“I see your social skills haven’t improved.”
Then, since I think I’m going to need fortification, I get up and head for the coffeemaker in the corner. “Want coffee?”
If Harris hears the reluctance in my offer, he ignores it. He joins me at the credenza and takes a mug off the counter. He pours creamer and what looks like a quarter cup of sugar into it before swirling the mug until I think the contents are going to spill over the sides and onto the floor. They don’t.
I watch the performance with raised eyebrows. “Ever heard of a spoon?” I ask dryly.
He’s already tipped the mug to his lips, but he allows a smile. “Haven’t spilled a drop yet.”
We take our coffee back to the desk. This time he plops himself down in David’s chair. We drink for a couple of minutes until I can stand the staring contest no longer.
“Christ, Harris, are you ever going to tell me why you’re here?”
He tilts his head back, draining his mug. “You can’t guess?”
Sure, I can guess. He’s been badgering me ever since the former chief of police, Warren Williams, was found murdered, burned to ashes, outside of Palm Springs several months ago. Of course, he doesn’t know that Williams was a vampire. But the details of his death and the unconventional forensic evidence found at the scene, two-hundred-year-old DNA to be precise, and the fact that Williams and I were known to have had a contentious relationship have elevated me to the top position in his list of “persons of interest.” No matter that there is not a shred of evidence to link me to the crime.
But I want him to bring it up so I stay quiet.
Finally, he does.
“It’s about Judith Williams.”
Not what I was expecting, though as bad luck would have it, I have knowledge of that Williams’ death, too. Warren Williams’ wife, also a vampire, met her own grisly end at the point of an arrow.
I feign innocence. “Chief Williams’ wife? Didn’t I read that she’d gone missing several months back?”
“You did. Is that all you know, what you read in the newspapers?”
Now I’ve been around long enough to know the cops don’t generally ask questions they haven’t already answered—at least to themselves—so I frame my reply around a question. “I thought the FBI had taken over the case?”
“They had, yes. But I was informed yesterday that they’re no longer pursuing it. Which means to us real cops that they hit a dead end. Decided to clear it off their books and throw it back to the locals.”
He pauses, watching me, as if waiting for some kind of response. You’d think he knew me well enough by now to know the odds he’ll get one are as infinitesimal as the odds we’ll ever share a bed. When I stare back at him, mouth clamped tightly shut, he finally gives up.