The list was longer than that.
On the call Miss Emma had just recorded, a man with the deep voice of a radio announcer explained that Emma was about to lose her health insurance if she didn’t send money right away. Preferably by money order.
Somehow this person knew how old she was.
“Listen to me play along,” Miss Emma said proudly.
Jesse put a finger to his lips.
The radio announcer was in the process of telling her the easiest way to send the money so as not to interrupt her insurance when Jesse heard a familiar sound in the background.
Fifty-Eight
It’s late,” Molly said when she opened the front door.
“I know what time it is,” Crow said.
“You couldn’t call first?” she said.
“I was afraid you’d tell me not to come,” he said. “And I was already in the neighborhood.”
She made no move to invite him in, even though they both knew she was going to.
“You don’t have to shadow Nellie when she’s with me,” Molly said.
“She still up?”
“Actually she went to bed over an hour ago,” Molly said. “She’s just now starting to decompress after what happened to her the other night.”
“Do I have to ask you to ask me in? Or are you going to ask me in.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Crow grinned. Which was really more of a squint. “Life’s full of choices, right? Good ones. Bad ones. In-between ones.”
She walked him past the living room, and the stairs leading up to the second floor, finally into the kitchen at the back of the house.
“May I offer you a drink?” Molly asked.
“You got whiskey?”
“What kind you looking for?”
“Any kind. I haven’t had the chance to refill my flask.”
She happened to have a bottle of Macallan, the single-malt Suit had given her last Christmas, one she’d barely touched.
She poured them each a glass. It occurred to her that they had been alone like this, in close quarters, only a handful of times since they’d slept together. She was trying to assess, in the moment, how she felt about that. Mostly it felt the same to her. Being this close to Crow did not make her dizzy or silly or light-headed. It wasn’t like that.
Molly just felt slightly off-balance, the way you did on a boat rocking gently on the water.
“Aho,” Crow said as he raised his glass and leaned across the table and touched hers.
“What does that mean?”
“Thank you,” he said.
Molly raised her eyebrows. “For giving you firewater?”
“Just trying to remember my manners.”
They drank.
“Why are you here?” Molly said.
“You always get right to it.”
“I’ve found it saves time.”
“You asking why I’m still in Paradise?”
“Asking why you came in the first place,” she said. “You could have told Jesse what you found about Roarke on the phone.”
“Good that I didn’t.”
“You haven’t answered me.”
“If you’re asking me why I’m sitting here with you, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
Molly thought: Could he possibly know about me and Michael?
But how?
Nobody else knew, unless Michael had told somebody at sea.
“I’m doing just fine, Wilson.” She grinned and raised her glass again. “Aho.”
“How’s your husband?”
“I’m not talking about my husband with you,” Molly said. “Now or ever.”
“He in town?”
“Sailing the seven seas.”
“Have you gotten around to telling him about us?”
“No,” she lied.
“Change of subject?”
“Please.”
“It going to bother you if I stick around to help out Jesse?”
“Just Jesse?”
“You’re right,” Crow said. “Takes a village. Especially in this one.”
They sat in silence now, neither of them reaching for their glasses.
Nowhere for Molly to look except him.
Shit.
“I never want to make you feel uncomfortable,” Crow said.
That actually got a smile out of her.
“Now you’re worrying about that?”
“It’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too,” Molly said. “Though having told you that, I now have to kill you.”
“Easier said than done.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Molly wondered what Nellie would think if she came downstairs for a glass of water or hunting for a snack. Nellie Shofner was smart. Sometimes annoyingly smart. Molly was afraid she’d be able to read the room.
“Jesse needs me around whether he wants to come right out and ask me to stay or not,” Crow said. “Roarke is a threat to him. And if he’s a threat to him, he’s a threat to everybody, not just Nellie.”
Molly drank. She liked the taste of the scotch, liked the way it felt going down. Leveled her off, even if it was going to take more than one glass to do that. They were both keeping their voices low, neither of them wanting to wake Nellie. But it was the time of the night for quiet talk. Jesse said it was the hour when people told each other the truth.
Not bloody likely.
At least not to Wilson Cromartie.
He told her about what had happened at the Scupper.
“Nellie would probably suggest you should have had that higher up in the news story,” Molly said.
“I get to things when I get to them.”
“Well aware.”
Another silence. Molly was the one to break it.
“Is there any chance that Roarke might be telling the truth, and he really doesn’t have business in Paradise?” Molly asked him.
“Man’s got no business being in Paradise, you ask me,” Crow said. “But I have a feeling for things the way Jesse does. First Roarke gets sideways because Jesse pays him a visit. Now Roarke pays him a visit. Like the man’s running interference for himself on something.”
It was like a speech for Crow, as still as he was on the other side of the table. His background — his backstory — couldn’t be more different from Jesse’s. Yet there were similarities, too, simply no getting around that. They were both completely inner-directed. Comfortable in their own skin. Crow had been a hardened criminal when he first came to Paradise, and when he left Paradise with a boatful of money. Might still be a criminal, for all Molly knew. Jesse really was the last Boy Scout. But had also been a falling-down drunk. Sometimes a blackout drunk. Still telling Molly that he was always just one drink away.
Other than her husband, Jesse had been the most important man in her adult life.
What did that make Crow?
So glad Nellie’s upstairs.
“You had a seat at the table tonight, so to speak,” Molly said. “Did you get the feeling things might be about to, uh, escalate between them?”
“Jesse says that the high school kids are hiding something about Suit’s nephew,” he said. “Roarke’s hiding something, too. Or lying out his ass. Or both.”
“About what?”
“Two cases. Same question.”
“Jesse wants to be the one to find out.”
“Needs to find out, you mean,” Crow said.
“And now you think we need to put the band back together?” Molly asked.
“Don’t you?”
Molly said, “Has he come right out and asked you to stay?”