I raised one eyebrow. “You joke, but I can do the choreography.”
Gavin folded his arms over his chest and grinned across the table at me. “I’d like to see that,” he teased.
Claire was on her way from the kitchen with our breakfast. “Maybe some other time,” I said.
“Saved by a breakfast sandwich,” he countered with a laugh.
Gavin told me a little more about “Big Jule” while we ate. Julian McCrea had had an art gallery for many years. He’d represented several up-and-coming artists. With a degree in art history, he’d even been called as an expert witness in a number of cases in which the provenance of a piece of artwork was in question. Now McCrea specialized in helping a select group of clients add to their private collections. And it was clear that, like the character in Guys and Dolls, this Big Jule’s deals weren’t always aboveboard.
Gavin put down his fork and looked around for Claire. “Come with me, Kathleen,” he said. “I’m going to see Big Jule tomorrow and, well, you do know the choreography for ‘Luck Be a Lady.’”
I laughed. “I think you’ll do just fine without me.”
He leaned toward me across the small table. “Come with me,” he repeated. “I’ll do even better with you. You can talk about musicals with the guy and he’ll be a lot more susceptible to your charms than he is to mine.”
“I have work to do,” I said, using the last bite of sourdough bread to soak up a bit of tomato on my plate.
“It won’t take that long,” Gavin countered. “And I’m serious. Big Jule is more likely to talk to you than he is to me.”
Claire came to the table then and poured each of us more coffee. Marcus walked into the café as she was topping up my mug. The smile that flashed across his face when he saw me was tempered when he saw Gavin. I raised a hand in hello, and Marcus came over to us, crossing the space between the door and the table in about three strides of his long legs.
“Hi,” I said, smiling up at him.
Gavin got to his feet and offered his hand. “Good morning, Detective,” he said with an easy smile.
“Good morning,” Marcus replied, shaking Gavin’s hand and then, once he’d let it go, resting his other hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t know you two had a meeting this morning,” he said. His eyes flicked briefly to me, and while I knew the words were directed to me, he kept his gaze on Gavin.
“It was a last-minute thing,” I said. “Gavin may know someone who can help us figure out who might have wanted the Weston drawing.”
“I’m sure Detective Lind will be happy to have that information,” Marcus said.
“Actually, Kathleen and I were planning on going to talk to my contact tomorrow. No offense to Detective Lind, but I think we’d have better luck.” Gavin’s tone was offhand, but there was nothing offhand in the way he returned Marcus’s gaze.
“This is a police investigation,” Marcus said. His eyes shifted to me for a moment. “You know how this works, Kathleen.”
His hand was still possessively on my shoulder. I suddenly felt like a fire hydrant between two dogs.
I looked up at Marcus. “I do,” I said. “But Gavin has contacts the police don’t.” I couldn’t quite picture a man whose business clearly wasn’t completely legal and who liked to be called Big Jule—even if the name did come from a fifties musical—wanting to share a lot of information with the police, but I wasn’t going to say that to Marcus with Gavin standing right there.
The muscles were tight along his jawline, but he turned to Gavin and forced a cool smile. “I’m sure your contacts are more likely to talk to you than to us,” he said as though he’d read my mind. “But please let Detective Lind know if you find out anything.”
“Of course,” Gavin said.
“I need to get my order and get back to the station,” Marcus said, motioning toward the counter.
“I’ll walk you over,” I said, getting to my feet. His hand fell away from my shoulder. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Gavin. I followed Marcus to the back of the small restaurant.
“Hi, Detective,” Claire said. “Eric’s just putting your order together in the kitchen. I’ll be right back.”
I waited until she’d passed through the swinging door and then I turned my head to study Marcus. “So you’re really not jealous?”
He glanced over at the table. Gavin’s back was to us and he was talking to someone on his cell phone. Marcus’s blue eyes narrowed. “Of him? No. I just don’t want him interfering in the case.”
“He’s acting as a consultant,” I said gently. “That’s not exactly interfering.”
“I know that,” he said. He sighed softly. “Kathleen, I don’t trust him. There’s something he’s not being honest about.”
“You don’t think he had something to do with the robbery and Margo’s death, do you?” I asked.
Marcus shook his head and his gaze darted across the restaurant again for just a moment. “He has an alibi. He was in the bar at the hotel. At least a dozen people saw him, so, no, I don’t think he had anything to do with what happened at the library. Not directly.”
An unspoken “but” hung in the air between us.
I studied his face. “How about indirectly?” I asked. “Is there something about Gavin you haven’t told me?”
He swiped a hand over the back of his neck. “No. I just . . . I just get a bad feeling from the guy.”
It took effort to keep from smiling. “A feeling?” I said. “You?” Marcus was very much a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of person. I was the one who relied much more on feelings, nuance and body language. It was one of the reasons we’d butted heads so much in the past. It had taken a case that involved his sister, Hannah, for both of us to be able to see the other person’s point of view.
The corners of Marcus’s mouth twitched. I realized that meant he could see the irony of his words, too. “I guess that’s what happens from spending so much time with you,” he said, the tight lines around his eyes softening.
“I guess it does,” I agreed, wiggling my eyebrows at him.
Just then Claire came out of the kitchen carrying a large brown paper bag. She set it on the counter in front of Marcus.
He smiled at her. “Thanks, Claire. Could I get two large coffees to go, please?”
“Of course.” Claire smiled back at him. “Black with two sugars for you and one sugar no cream for Detective Lind.”
He nodded and looked at me again. “The coffeemaker at the station died. Again. And we did an extra run this morning.” He fished his wallet out of his pocket.
Hope was training for a triathlon and Marcus was running with her a couple of mornings a week. Brady Chapman was helping her with the cycling portion and I knew that Mary had been working with Hope on a strength program for her legs using kickboxing moves. It was one of the things that had made me fall in love with Mayville Heights, the way people were willing to help one another.
Claire came back with the coffee. Marcus handed her a couple of bills. “The rest is for you,” he said.
She smiled again. “Thanks. Have a good day, Detective.” She moved down the counter to the cash register.
“I can drop you at the library,” Marcus said, reaching for the paper bag of take-out food. “It looks like rain.”
I turned and looked out the front window of the restaurant. It was cloudy but it didn’t look like rain to me. And more important, my left wrist, which was a pretty good indicator of wet or snowy weather, felt fine.
I realized that maybe Gavin’s invitation to breakfast had been motivated, a tiny bit, by wanting to spend time with me. The two of us eating at Eric’s was getting to be a habit. On the other hand, I also believed that he wanted to catch whoever took the Weston drawing and killed Margo as much as I did. If I went with him to talk to Big Jule, maybe I could find out if there was anything more to Marcus’s “feeling” about Gavin than just a smidgen of jealousy that he didn’t want to admit to.