“Are you okay?”
Frost shook his head. “No.”
He said it again in a whisper. “No.”
She helped him inside. Shack followed, and Tabby locked the patio door behind them. She eased him onto the sofa, and when she started to get up, he pulled her down beside him. She didn’t protest. She sat next to him in silence and stroked his hair, until he winced when her fingers neared the bruise at the back of his head. They sat like that for a long time. Neither of them said a word.
Eventually, she got up and went to the kitchen to get him another Torpedo. She brought back one for herself, too. They sat and drank, but they didn’t talk. When those bottles were empty, she got them two more. And two more after that. And again. By the time he was able to say anything, they were both drunk. Being drunk only made her more beautiful to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
It was probably an hour later.
Tabby gave him one of her incandescent smiles. “Well, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve pointed a gun at me.”
He couldn’t help but laugh.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
He didn’t want to, but he did. It was wrong, but he did. He told her everything. He told her about Denny and Lombard and Coyle and Gorham and Mr. Jin and Filko and the snakes and Herb. He told her about the invisible fight in the darkness, Coyle with his throat cut, his fear of dying. He told her about Shack and the charm. When he did, Tabby simply undid the cat’s collar, removed the snake, and went out onto the patio. She threw the charm into the thick of the trees below the house, where it would be buried forever under mud and leaves.
She came back inside and sat next to him again. She looked calm. Brave. That was just one thing he loved about her.
“So what are you going to do?” Tabby asked him.
“I have to get him,” he said. “I have to get Lombard.”
“Frost, maybe you should stop,” she replied. “This is too dangerous.”
“I wish I could, but I can’t do that.”
Tabby didn’t look surprised to hear him say that. “How can I help?”
“You can’t. What you can do is stay a thousand miles away from this. And a thousand miles away from me.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t hear me. How can I help?”
“You. Can’t. Help. Do you understand me?”
Tabby sighed in annoyance and rolled her eyes. She didn’t like being put off, and she didn’t give up easily. “So what are you going to do next?”
Frost leaned his head back against the sofa. “I need to prove that Martin Filko and the mayor were really on Denny’s boat on Tuesday, and then I need to figure out why they called in Lombard. Obviously, something bad happened that they couldn’t let go public.”
“But how do you prove they were on the boat if no one saw them?” Tabby asked. “At least, no one who’s still alive.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
Tabby sat next to him with her hands on her knees. She reached over to the coffee table where she’d put her phone. He watched her run a search, and then she glanced over and asked, “What’s the code for blocking your number?”
“What?”
“If you don’t want your name or number showing up when you call,” she said.
“It’s star six seven. Why?”
Tabby tapped the keys and dialed a number. She put the call on speakerphone and put a finger over her lips to keep him silent. He had no idea what she was doing.
Then a voice answered. “City hall answering service.”
“I need the after-hours contact for the mayor’s office, please,” Tabby said brightly.
Frost began to protest, but Tabby reached over and put her fingers against his mouth.
Another voice picked up the call. “Mayor’s office, this is Justine.”
“Oh, hey, Justine,” Tabby announced, as if they’d been friends their whole lives. A strange little Southern accent popped into her voice. “I just knew someone would be there to help me in the evening. You all are so efficient out there. This is Lizzy in Martin Filko’s office. Martin’s got a friend coming into San Fran tomorrow who needs a good limo service. He was pretty impressed with the driver last Tuesday and was wondering if you had a contact number for the limo company. It would be a big help, hon.”
There was a long, tentative pause on the line.
And then, “Sure, Lizzy, hang on a minute.”
The minute turned out to be no more than a few seconds before Justine came back on the line. “Lizzy, are you there? It was DiMatteo Limousine. Oh, and the driver’s name was Jeffrey, if that helps.”
“It sure does, hon. You’re the best.”
Tabby hung up.
Frost stared at her. “I can’t begin to tell you how crazy that was.”
She winked. “Uh-huh. You can thank me later. Right now, how about I make dinner for the two of us? That was the whole reason I came over here, you know. Duane promised a care package, but he wasn’t sure he could leave the truck, so I volunteered. How does shrimp risotto sound?”
“It sounds great,” Frost said.
Tabby picked up Shack from the floor with one hand. “Yes, you get some, too,” she said.
She wandered unsteadily toward the kitchen, and he pushed himself off the sofa to join her. They were both feeling the effects of the alcohol. He turned on the downstairs lights, and the house looked warmer and brighter. Like the professional chef she was, despite the lack of mobility in one hand, she began to assemble ingredients from the brown grocery bags she’d brought and to manipulate everything into her mise en place. As she was heating a pan, she said, “How about some music? I like to rock when I cook.”
“Sure. Anything you want.”
Frost hooked up his speakers. He shuffled the songs on his phone, and the first song that boomed into the room was Parachute’s “Can’t Help.”
“Oh!” Tabby exclaimed happily as she recognized the beat. “Oh, I love this song!”
Her head tilted back and forth with the music. Her hips swayed, and her red hair flew. Drinking with him for an hour had erased her inhibitions. She left the stove and strutted from the kitchen into the middle of the living room. He’d never seen her dance before, and he admired the utterly natural flow of her limbs, the ease she had inside her own skin.
At the moment the words began, she surprised him by spinning around with her arms outstretched and both index fingers pointed at him. She lip-synched the song, which she knew by heart, and the lyrics crushed him. They just crushed him. Like the song said, he couldn’t help himself from falling in love with her. He found himself frozen with a smile that told her everything that he needed to hide. His emotions were like Mr. Jin’s posters of Niagara Falls, a torrent that threatened to drown him.
He tried to walk away because watching her was torture, but she grabbed his hands and made him dance with her. He couldn’t find any rhythm; he simply circled the room, nodding to the song, while she followed him and teased him. He mouthed the words to her, too, but he wasn’t pretending. He meant it. He couldn’t help it. The only thing he could think about was wrapping her up in his arms right there.
When the music finally stopped, they were inches apart. Tabby was breathless, and her flushed face beamed. They were out of control. They were drunk, they had no idea what they were doing, and they didn’t care. She slung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. He was falling, falling, falling, and there was no way she didn’t know it, no way she couldn’t see the truth in his eyes. He wanted to kiss her back hard. On the lips. He wanted to show her what he’d been feeling for months. Something in her face said she wanted it, too.