He remembered her as a drowned rat. Great. “Thank you.”
“Officer Baxter,” he said.
She cleared her throat. “I’m Sergeant Torres.”
That wasn’t even accurate, since she wasn’t in the Army anymore. Smooth, she thought. Very smooth.
He shook her hand. No wedding ring. Nice eyes, green.
Dirk herded them toward the buffet. Crab cakes, oysters, and who knew what other kinds of seafood were calling his name. She could go a long time without eating seafood again.
“That submarine you were in was quite a mess.” Baxter looked her up and down. “But you look great.”
“I got lucky. Just the arm and a cut on the head.”
“The other guy wasn’t so lucky,” Baxter said.
Dirk had found paradise. He loaded up a plate and disappeared into the crowd. She’d eaten at home. With one arm, she wouldn’t be able to hold a plate to put food on, let alone eat it.
Baxter picked up a plate.
“Were you able to bring up the body?” She moved down the food line next to him. He picked only vegetarian items. Interesting.
“Not me personally, but I was part of the team that went down to get his body.”
She shuddered. “Not sure I ever want to go back.”
“You’ll go back. There’s something enticing about water.” He pointed to her sling. “And even injured, you had nerves of steel when it counted. I’ve done a lot of rescues, and you were the most together person I’ve ever plucked out of the water.”
She shrugged away the compliment. “Did you bring up the submarines?”
“A retrieval isn’t in the budget. Someone will probably turn them into dive destinations. Not a lot of crashed submarines around here.”
“Don’t you need them to determine the cause of the crash?” If they were threatening to charge Tesla with manslaughter, didn’t they need to do a thorough investigation first? Unless the charges had been a bluff to get more information out of him. You never knew with cops.
“Pictures are plenty. Looked like you guys smashed into each other.” Behind his head, a sperm whale and a giant squid battled to the death in a diorama. She sympathized.
“We were smashed into,” she said. “You can’t believe those two tiny subs could do that kind of damage to each other, even in a head-on collision.”
“I can believe a lot of things.” He put two oysters on his plate. “But not everything.”
“You don’t believe my statement?” Her arm throbbed, and she knew that meant she was getting too upset, but she wasn’t going to back down.
“Here’s what I know.” Baxter looked certain in what he knew. “Something went wrong down there. You broke your arm, the bodyguard died, and your driver was high as a kite when we fished him out.”
“Mr. Tesla wasn’t driving in that condition. As I made clear in my statement.”
Baxter held up his free hand in a pacifying gesture. “I’m here for the food and the entertainment.”
A flash of silver caught her eye from across the room. Maeve. She and Tesla were easy to recognize — Tesla looking suave in a tuxedo and his tiny girlfriend in her super-fashionable dress and silver hair. They were turning heads all the way down the hall.
“I’m here to work, Sergeant Baxter. But thank you for coming to our assistance.”
She turned her back on Baxter and his gorgeous green eyes. He’d gotten a lot less attractive after he’d said he didn’t believe her. Funny how that worked.
Chapter 15
Joe paused at the crowd’s edge. He hated crowds almost as much as Maeve loved them. As soon as he stopped, Edison sat. Joe looked at a pod of dolphins swimming with a school of tuna, frozen in place for the exhibit. He remembered piloting his sub in the middle of a pod of dolphins once, how they’d practically danced around him, and clicks and whistles had come through his hydrophone. It’d be months before he got a new submarine and joined them again.
“I see Vivian.” Maeve was already waving. “She looks great. Really butch. She totally has the legs to pull that suit off.”
Mr. Rossi must have hired Vivian to be his bodyguard at the event. He was surprised she’d agreed. He suspected she’d be happy to kill him herself over the refrigerator, not to mention the recent headlines blaring that they were in a relationship.
Vivian came over. She did look good — tall and fit and angry. He got ready to apologize.
“Mr. Tesla.” She gave him a frosty smile.
“Uh-oh,” Maeve said. “What did you do to make her so mad?”
“I was trying to be nice.”
Maeve tilted her silvery head. “I see a client on the other side of the room. Far away from you guys. Really far.”
Quicksilver fast, she darted into the crowd.
“Your mom likes the fridge,” Joe said. “I’m sorry it caused you problems.”
“Yes.” She clearly wasn’t going to talk about the refrigerator. “They’re not bringing the subs up.”
“What?” His answer came out louder than he’d intended, and Edison leaned against him. “Someone probably murdered the bodyguard.”
“You know, murders seem to happen every time you go outside. Have you thought of staying home?”
He laughed. “I basically do. I just have a large home — especially if you count the swimming pool in my backyard.”
“I count that as the ocean. And I’m not swimming in it again until you get rid of your pet sharks.” She smiled when she said it. A good sign.
“It’s the hit-and-run drivers you need to worry about,” he said.
That prompted another smile. Eager to capitalize on her good humor, he filled her in on his findings with the video from the contest.
“I want to hire you to keep going with the investigation,” Joe said. “Are you in?”
“I’m in. I’ve been hassled by the police and mocked in the newspaper as your arm candy. I want to sort out this damn crash already.”
“Which was worse?” Joe asked.
“Interrogation while doped up on painkillers while trying to stop my mom from accepting the fridge, or the public perception we’re dating?”
She looked pretty mad about both scenarios.
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
Answer enough. “Sorry about the press. I didn’t tell them that, and I thought if I denied it, it might make it worse.”
“Let’s get this over with,” she said. “And nail whoever is putting us through this.”
Maeve was back. “They’re loaning us watches!”
“Watches?” Vivian said. “Gee whiz.”
Vivian wasn’t a gadget person.
Maeve held out her wrist to display a bulky watch with a screen on the front instead of a clock face. The screen displayed a moving aerial view of the hall. “It shows footage from the drone flying around in here. You can see everything on these!”
“So. We can spy on our fellow partygoers?” Vivian asked.
“There’s no audio,” Maeve said. “Can you believe how dusty the back of that whale is? Really breaks the illusion.”
She fastened a watch around Joe’s wrist and handed the third watch to Vivian.
“Could be useful,” Maeve said. “For increased situational awareness.”
“If you can’t beat ’em.” Vivian fumbled to put the watch on her wounded arm. It looked awkward, but Joe knew better than to offer to help.
Alan Wright appeared at his elbow. “You look pretty fit for a sub-crash survivor.”
“Assuming they don’t drown, sub-crash survivors usually look pretty good,” Maeve said. “They’re like canned fruit in syrup.”
Alan snorted and gave Maeve an appreciative look. Joe remembered, again, why he didn’t like him.