The estrogen level in the diner rose like fog as he walked toward me. My knife slipped so I sort of buttered my thumb instead of my biscuit. A woman across the aisle froze with her mouth open and her fork poised in midair with cheese grits dripping off it. Behind his back, Judy fanned herself with a menu.
Ethan has that effect on women.
He said, “Can I join you?”
Trying very hard to be cool, I gestured with my buttery hand toward the booth seat. “Of course.”
He slid into the booth, and Judy was beside him in an instant with a mug and coffeepot. If he’d asked, she would have run to the kitchen and brewed up a fresh batch that instant.
He said, “I’ll have my regular.”
Judy shot me a smug smile that said she knew what his regular was and I didn’t.
I said, “I didn’t know you came here often.”
“Every day. But usually a lot earlier.”
“Oh.”
I wondered if I was the reason he had come later that day. Had he known that my schedule brought me there around ten, and purposefully delayed his own breakfast so it coincided with mine?
He said, “Talked to any wanted criminals today?”
“That was nice of you to get her an attorney. I understand she turned herself in.”
“How do you manage to get involved with people like her? Do you have some kind of magnet?”
Judy skidded to his side and put down his breakfast. Tanisha is fast, but not that fast. Judy must have stolen an order intended for somebody else. Scrambled eggs, sliced tomatoes, unbuttered rye toast. The white smile he gave her sent her into a near swoon that she covered by topping his coffee.
I watched him cut into a tomato slice. He ate in the European way, both hands working knife and fork, fork tines turned down, spearing a bite of tomato and sort of stacking egg on the back of his fork before lifting it to his mouth. If I ate like that, I’d probably stab myself in the eye.
I said, “I don’t try to attract people like Briana. It just happens. She was in the Trillins’ house when I went in to take care of their cats, and then she followed me.”
“You didn’t have to talk to her.”
I shoveled up some of my own egg in the American way. I speared a bite of fried potato. I chewed, I swallowed. He waited.
“I felt sorry for her.”
His eyes were like dark pools of double chocolate fudge, warm enough to bathe nude in.
He said, “I hear that Guidry left.”
I had an almost irresistible urge to make it clear that Guidry hadn’t left me, he’d just left Sarasota.
“He was offered a job in New Orleans that he couldn’t refuse.”
Ethan nodded. His long fingers broke a triangle of rye toast in half and left both halves on his plate.
“Are you going to follow him?”
I swallowed. I hated that question.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to explain. You know how sometimes you know something is wrong for you even if everything about it seems right? I just knew I couldn’t leave my home.”
He leaned back in the booth. “That’s why I’m here. I practiced law for a while in Colorado, but the white sand and the seabirds of Florida kept calling to me. When my grandfather died and left me his practice, I didn’t think twice about it. This is where I belong.”
“Do you miss anybody in Colorado?”
“Sure. Friends, colleagues. A woman.”
“Ah.”
“She felt the same way about mountains and snow that I felt about surf and sea.”
“But now you’re with somebody else.”
“I was, but that didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry.”
That was such a lie!
I was glad it hadn’t worked out, but I felt guilty because I was glad. Anyway, the fact that he was free didn’t mean anything would happen between us.
He said, “Dixie—”
Before he could finish what he planned to say, I saw the new detective come into the diner. I knew he was a cop the minute I saw him, and probably half the other people in the diner knew it, too. Cops have an alert, watchful look, as if they can swivel their eyeballs and see through the backs of their skulls. The cop standing at the front of the diner scanning the booths also had the spine and shoulders of a career military man, that easy erectness that comes from vertebrae getting the habit of stacking themselves with the least effort.
I said, “Uh-oh, here’s the new homicide detective who took Guidry’s place. I’m supposed to meet him here.”
Ethan turned to look at the man. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
I could have offered to introduce them, but it would have been awkward for all of us. The homicide cop was there as part of an investigation into a murder that Briana might have committed, and Ethan had found a defense attorney for her.
Owens must have given him a description of me, because he started toward me as Ethan left. The two men met in the aisle and gave each other the dismissive once-overs that men do. The homicide guy was lean but not skinny, and I judged him to be midforties. He had that two-day-old beard thing going, along with dark shades and a thin leather bomber jacket. Dark hair cut short and growing gray, skin that was acquainted with sunshine but didn’t live in it. Firm mouth that probably had to remind itself to smile.
He stopped beside my booth and gave me a curt nod. “Ms. Hemingway?”
“That’s me.”
I flipped my palm toward the other side of the booth in an invitation to sit, and he slid into the bench seat opposite me. Judy was instantly at his side to gather up Ethan’s plate and mug.
“Coffee, sir?”
“Please.”
We waited until she wiped off the tabletop and returned with a mug and coffeepot.
Without asking, she topped mine off, too.
The cop said, “Nothing else for me, thanks.”
Judy gave him a megawatt smile, knocking herself out to be charming to the new cop in town, then went away still doing that extra hip-swinging thing.
He said, “My name is Steven.” He said his name with a hint of an accent, almost Stefan.
He removed his dark glasses and looked gravely at me. He had green eyes, which somehow surprised me. You don’t often see truly green eyes. I wondered if he wore colored contacts.
It’s unusual for a law enforcement officer to invite witnesses to get chummy, but I had been so intrigued by his eyes and the way he pronounced his name that I didn’t notice he hadn’t shown me any creds. I just sat there with greasy steam rising from my fries and made nice with Sarasota’s new homicide detective who had probably been born in some other country and who’d sort of been introduced to me by Sergeant Owens. I even felt a bit bountiful about it, the native putting the newbie at ease. If I noticed that his voice had an edge of agate hardness, I put it down to the fact that he was, after all, a homicide detective.
He said, “Why don’t you just tell me what happened yesterday. All of it.”
I was so nervous about my secret meeting with Briana that I talked like somebody hacking at brush with a machete, slashing words right and left, telling him every detail of what I had done at the Trillin house, what Briana had said, what Cupcake had said when I called, going on nonstop and hoping he would be so impressed with all the facts I gave him that he wouldn’t ask what had happened between me and Briana after I left the Trillins’ house.
When I finished the part about taking Elvis and Lucy to the Kitty Haven, he nodded gravely and stayed quiet. Judy swished by to take my empty plate and refill our coffee mugs.
Steven said, “Now tell me the rest.”
“That’s it.”
He made a slicing motion with the edge of his palm, and I stopped with an unspoken word still hanging on my bottom lip.