Nick made popcorn while I opened the root beer. “Do you have any real butter?” he asked, opening my refrigerator door and peering inside.
“As a matter of fact, I do. Rose insists on it for making cookies.” I pointed. “Second shelf.”
He grabbed the butter, straightened up and closed the door. “You made cookies?”
“Sort of,” I said, suddenly feeling a little defensive about my culinary efforts. “I mean I did all the work, but Rose was at my elbow the entire time.”
“And?”
I held out both hands. “And as you can see my apartment is still standing and the cookies were pretty darn good, if I say so myself.”
Nick smiled. “Good for you. Next time save me one.”
“I will,” I promised. I actually had saved him a cookie. I’d saved him six. I’d put them in the freezer so I wouldn’t eat them and then discovered that frozen cookies can be defrosted pretty quickly in the microwave.
Nick and I settled on the sofa with the popcorn on his lap and Elvis on mine.
“Have you come up with anything else on the Pearson case?” I asked.
The smile faded from his face. “I spoke to an old friend who’s an arson investigator down in Portland and got him to take a quick look at the original arson investigator’s report on the fire.” There was a moment of silence filled only by the ticking of my kitchen clock.
“And?” I prompted.
“It’s possible that Gina Pearson started the fire, but given the amount of alcohol that would have been in her system at the time he said he found it hard to believe she did.”
I sighed. “Nick, she was an alcoholic who had been in rehab more than once. She would have had a higher tolerance for alcohol than a lot of people.”
Nick nodded. “I told him that. He wouldn’t commit to anything on the record—and I can’t blame him when it wasn’t his case or even his jurisdiction—but he told me that it was possible that she was just too drunk to have started that fire.”
“Could the fire have been an accident?” I seemed to have fallen into the role of devil’s advocate, which was something Nick usually took on.
He made a face, his mouth pulling to one side. “No,” he said. “There’s evidence that the fire was set.”
I pushed my hair back off my face, tucking it behind one ear. “So if someone else started that fire that’s more evidence Gina Pearson was murdered.”
Nick nodded. “Yes.”
I stared at the ceiling, feeling a little numb. “So now what?” I asked.
“I was thinking about talking to Michelle when she gets back to see if she knows anything, but I’d have to tell her why I was asking.”
Like Nick, Michelle wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the Angels getting involved in police business.
“She’s going to find out at some point,” I said, reaching for the popcorn. Elvis shifted on my lap. He seemed to like the smell of the popcorn more than anything. It was probably all the butter Nick had drenched it with.
“I know,” he said. “I just don’t know how she’ll take finding out that for once I agree with Rose.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh, but it didn’t work. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t be laughing but who would have thought that you using Rose to apologize to me would lead to this.”
“I do see the irony of me being on the same side as Rose and my mother when in the past I was butting heads with them.”
“I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks,” I said. Elvis lifted his head and looked around. “Figure of speech,” I told him, stroking his fur.
“Rose is very observant and Mom has very good instincts about people,” Nick said. “And if you tell either of them I said that I will never buy you another plate of chips and salsa as long as I live.”
I made a show of pretending to zipper my lips together. Nick grinned and threw a piece of popcorn at me. I grabbed it midair and ate it.
“So what happens now?” I asked, settling back against the couch again. I was surprised by how much information Nick had gotten in a few hours although I really shouldn’t have been. If Rose was like a pit bull in sensible shoes when she set her mind to something, the same could be said for Nick, except he was larger and had a little stubble.
“I can’t just ignore what I’ve learned,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Claire again and I am going to tell Michelle what’s going on as soon as she gets back from seeing her mom. Maybe she’ll be open to taking a second look at the case.”
“You know the Angels aren’t just going to sit around and do nothing.”
He nodded. “I know. Between Mr. P.’s computer skills and the fact that my mother, Rose and Liz know everyone in town, maybe we’ll get something else we can use.”
I noticed he’d said “we” twice in that sentence. I didn’t point it out.
Nick’s head was on my shoulder and I thought how comfortable it was, the two of us on my couch, sharing a big bowl of popcorn as if we were a couple. Except we weren’t a couple, no matter how hard Charlotte and Rose especially had all but shoved us at each other. I’d come to see that there was no heat between us—not the way there had been when we were teenagers, which may have been mostly because, hey, back then we were teenagers.
I remembered a conversation I’d had with Liz just a few weeks ago.
When Nicolas walks into a room after you haven’t seen him for a while, do your toes curl? she’d asked. She’d gone on to explain. Sarah, a lot of people say passion is overrated but I disagree. That kind of heat between two people can keep you warm when life gets cold. And it’s going to get cold.
I took a deep breath and let it out. Ask him, a little voice in my head said. “Nick do your toes curl when you see me?” It was a bit easier to get the words out when I couldn’t see his face.
“What do you mean, do my toes curl?” He shifted his head so he was looking up at me.
I noticed he hadn’t said yes. I leaned down and kissed him. “How did that feel?” I asked. His mouth was warm and the stubble on his face scraped my chin.
He smiled. “Good.”
“You had more enthusiasm for the root beer,” I said.
He sat up. “Sarah, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “That’s the thing. We’ve both been back in town more than a year and absolutely nothing has happened, despite the best efforts of Flora, Fauna and Merryweather.”
He smiled at my comparing his mother, Rose and Liz to the good fairies in Sleeping Beauty. “I’ve known you all my life, Nick, and I can’t imagine it without you in it, but—”
“—but you want the birds to fly over the heather.”
I couldn’t believe he’d remembered. He was talking about the movie Wuthering Heights, the old black-and-white version with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. We’d watched it at a library film festival the same infamous summer that I’d boldly French-kissed him. Nick had joked at the way the filmmaker had cut to birds rising up from the windswept moors—the birds flying over the heather—when the two main characters, Cathy and Heathcliff, were intimate. He’d thought it was silly. I’d thought it was so wildly romantic
He studied my face for a long moment. “You want passion.”
“Yes, I do,” I admitted. “And I want it for you, too.” I couldn’t help feeling a little sad. Nick and I together would have made so many people so happy.
Nick continued to look at me and I had the feeling he knew what I was thinking. He put his arm around me and I leaned against him. “Do you really think that kind of thing is out there?” he asked, his voice a bit husky all of a sudden.
I thought about Mac. I’d had no idea I’d miss him so much.
“I hope so,” I said.
Chapter 5