"You mean she wants to hang out with you, even while you're working?"
"She wants to watch and learn, Quinn. She told me she wants to become a cop."
Quinn sat stunned. Lauri? A cop? His own little girl? She had no idea what that meant. What she'd see and do, and how it would change her.
"She damned well better not tag along with you," he told Pearl.
She smiled. "That's exactly what I told her, Dad. Almost verbatim." She went to the door and looked back at him. "Still, I'm flattered she thinks highly of me."
"I don't want her hurt," he said helplessly.
"Neither of us does, Quinn."
"Jesus, what would May say if she knew?"
"I guess you're gonna find out."
He watched Pearl go out into the already steamy morning.
For a long time he sat staring at the closed door. Being a father-a close-by father-wasn't easy. Nothing seemed to work out as he planned. Lauri didn't act or react the way he imagined she would. Hardly ever. Turning up unexpectedly at his door, the job at the restaurant, going out with that Wormy misfit. What next, a tattoo?
He'd tried to act in her best interests, got Pearl to talk with her, the better to understand her. That had sure as hell backfired. Now his daughter wanted to be like Pearl. A cop.
Like me.
His brief flush of pride became a stab of pain.
A life like mine.
Quinn noticed he was squeezing the desk edge with both hands so hard that his fingers where white.
Daughters!
He could barely contain his frustration.
31
Pearl sat in the unmarked parked across the street from the Waverton Hotel and watched a sprinkling of raindrops dot the windshield. Rain wasn't in the forecast and she knew it would stop soon. A brief summer spritzing that would juice up the humidity and make the day even hotter.
She wasn't much concerned with the weather. Pearl hadn't yet visited any of the victims' apartments, per Quinn's instructions. She was holding her cell phone loosely in her right hand, hefting it as if contemplating throwing it.
But she didn't throw it. She used it.
Jeb Jones was in his room at the Waverton when Pearl called. When he picked up on the third ring and said hello, she said, "This is Detective Kasner, Mr. Jones."
"Ah, Pearl."
"Detective Kasner," she repeated.
"Sorry. I shouldn't have assumed we were on a first-name basis."
Pearl felt frustrated. Already she'd botched this up. "I didn't mean to sound unfriendly, just professional."
And just distant enough.
"We'll make it professional, then. I'm ready and willing to answer all your questions." He sounded more amused than miffed.
"When can we meet?"
"You don't want to do this by phone?"
"No. I like to see people when I talk to them in the course of an investigation." She sounded like a bureaucratic prig even to herself.
"Suspects, you mean?"
"For God's sake, no."
Too fast. And I shouldn't have told him that.
He laughed, gaining confidence. "I figured you were about to tell me that at this point everyone's a suspect."
"No, it's not like on television."
"Well, I can meet with you just about any time."
"Now?"
"Sure. Where?"
"How about the lobby?"
He laughed. "You like to surprise people, don't you?"
"I guess I do. It's part of my job."
"Let's meet in the hotel coffee shop in ten minutes."
Pearl told him she'd be waiting, and broke the connection.
This wasn't all professional, and they both knew it. Odd how sexual tension could make its way across a phone connection. What life was about-connections.
She turned off the engine and climbed out of the coolness of the air-conditioned car into the heat. The drizzle wasn't enough to worry about, not much more than a mist, but it sure upped the humidity. Almost immediately her clothes felt damp and as if they were sticking to her flesh.
After waiting for a bus to rumble past, she crossed the street and used a revolving door to enter the Waverton Hotel.
Cool air again. Refreshing.
She made her way across the carpeted lobby toward a wide archway and went down two steps to the coffee shop. It was surprisingly large, with rows of tables and a long counter. The floor was oversize black and white tiles in a checker-board pattern. The place gave the impression of being almost devoid of customers, but there were more than a dozen people at the tables, and three at the counter. Pearl noticed a street door at the far end of the counter and figured many of the diners weren't hotel guests.
She found a table where she could be seen. A placard propped next to a cluster of condiments said there was a sale on pie. She ordered a diet Coke.
She waited.
Jeb Jones took the steps down into the coffee shop with an athletic ease that bordered on arrogance. He was wearing designer jeans today, and a black blazer over a gray T-shirt. So was she.
"Jesus!" she said, taking in the fact that they were dressed almost identically.
He paused, not knowing what she meant at first, then he smiled. "Fate."
"If there is such a thing," Pearl said. She saw that he did have on brown loafers, while she was wearing her clunky black cop's shoes.
"Such a thing as fate, or Jesus?"
"Take your pick," Pearl said.
He sat down opposite her. His face looked scrubbed and unnaturally ruddy in a way that suggested he'd just shaved, and his wavy dark hair was damp and pushed back carelessly, as if he'd used his fingers instead of a comb or brush. "Fate might have it that we develop a relationship made in heaven-a professional one, of course."
The woman who'd taken Pearl's order came over and Jeb ordered a fountain diet Coke. Pearl didn't tell him that was what she was drinking.
When they were settled in with drinks and straws and no one was around to overhear, he said, "Fire away, Officer Pearl."
She gave him a mock angry look. "Not 'Officer Kasner'?"
"I thought this might be an acceptable compromise," he said with a grin.
"Let's make it just Pearl, if we have to compromise."
"All right. You've got me in a compromising position, Pearl."
So damned smooth. She felt a slight tingle of alarm, or was it something else? She sipped Coke through her straw, watching him watch her. "Have you thought any more about Marilyn Nelson?"
He sat back and seemed to take the question seriously. "I've thought a lot about what happened to Marilyn, especially after I read some of the details in the paper. From what little I knew of her, I liked her a lot, but to tell you the truth I'm not grieving as if she were an old and dear friend. She was a woman I dated twice."
That seemed to Pearl to be an honest answer. "Do you remember ever running into any of her friends?"
"On our first date we said hello to some people she knew in a restaurant-the Pepper Tree. It's right down the street from her apartment."
"How many people?"
"Four. Two men and two women."
"She introduce you to them?"
"Yes, but to tell you the truth I don't recall their names. They were seated at a table near ours and we stopped briefly and she said hello to them on the way out. I'd even have trouble picking any of them out of a lineup."
Pearl smiled. "I doubt it will come to that. Did she mention where she knew them from?"
"No, just said they were friends of hers. Maybe they live in her neighborhood, since they were eating at the Pepper Tree." He brightened. "If you and I had dinner together there, I could watch for them. You'd be working. It would be professional."
"Hmm. The food good?"
"Mine was. I'm sure it would be again, if you were across the table."
She sipped some more with her straw. "You seem to believe in getting to the point."