I meant your first name.”
“Oh. Raphael. Rafe’ll be fine.” Then it struck him. He hadn’t questioned her yet—that was by design. Once he’d gotten the lay of the land from Plattsmier, he’d known he’d do better to wait until midnight. But he hadn’t even asked her name. He opened his mouth, and she cut him off as though reading his mind.
“It’s Kate. Kate Mulhern.”
“Kate.” It was pretty. It made him think of sunflowers and Kansas. Oh, hell, maybe she wasn’t that bad.
She waited for him to offer to take the wagon from her. It was heavy and hard to pull. It would be an overture, she thought, an olive branch of sorts so maybe they could get through this night somewhat amicably until his superiors let him leave her alone again. But he only watched her.
Kate pulled her shoulders back. She moved around him, dragging the wagon.
“So how fast do you think you can run with that thing behind you, Kate Mulhern?” His voice took on an edge again.
“As fast as I have to. But it’s got to come with me. I’m not leaving it in the van, no matter…no matter…” She trailed off without pausing in her march.
What had happened tonight, he finished for her. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out if she was as cold as the moon in January—what kind of woman would have the presence of mind to sit on Allegra after finding a body in her salad?—or if, in fact, she was falling apart. He didn’t have the chance to ask her. She whipped around the corner of the garage entrance with the wagon, out of sight.
Raphael had to run to catch her. She stopped in front of glass doors on the corner. Pale light spilled from a dim lobby. He looked at his Explorer.
“Don’t move an inch until I come back.”
He went to the SUV. He parked it illegally in the nearest space and stuck his PPD card on the dashboard. It would do for the rest of the night.
He grabbed his cell phone and a tape recorder from the glove box and went to where she stood. She yanked open one of the glass doors and pulled the wagon in after her. It started to swing shut again before Raphael followed her, and it almost took off his nose.
He had a spare moment to look around the lobby. There were a handful of hot spots—a lot of fake ferns in one corner that could conceal a man, and a reception desk that someone could easily hide behind. There was no doorman.
Kate was punching the elevator button. He caught up with her.
“What’s through there?” He nodded at a nearby door.
“Stairs.”
“What floor do you live on?”
“The third.”
There were too many ways up, he thought. He didn’t like it.
“The elevator stops running at midnight,” she said, as though reading his mind.
“Sounds like a real witching hour.”
She looked at him quickly, and he thought she might smile. Then the elevator opened, and she simply nodded and towed the wagon inside. Raphael stepped in after her.
The elevator spit them out on the third floor. She moved down a short corridor and thrust a key into the lock of a door.
The apartment was something of a hodgepodge, and it startled him. He’d expected something stark and agonizingly organized. Rigid, maybe stuffy. Instead, there was a lot of wood, none of it matching. An old sideboard sat against one wall—it had been pressed into service as an entertainment center—and an afghan that was the color of the sun was draped casually over the back of the sofa. The rear wall was all windows, open to the summer night. The sounds of the city were close—a horn blared briefly, tires rolled over asphalt, a dog barked somewhere. It felt like a home.
“You live alone?” he asked. “No kids, no husband?” Extra people, he thought, would complicate things.
“No, there’s no one. My roommate moved out in April.”
She pulled the wagon into a tiny kitchen sectioned off from the main room by a breakfast bar. When she looked at him again, her eyes seemed very dark, almost black. She’d left one light on in the living room, but all it did was throw shadows across her face.
“How long are you going to be here?” she asked.
She bit off the ends of her words as though she was in a hurry to get them over with, he thought. But her voice was low, vaguely throaty. Raphael shrugged as though it had touched his skin. “I don’t know.”
“You’re sleeping on the sofa.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
That stung, even knowing, as Kate did all too well, that she was not the kind of woman who stirred men to passion. “I meant,” she said, “that this is a one-bedroom unit.”
“And I meant that the sofa’s just fine with me.”
Her hands were shaking again. Kate looked at them, then she fisted them on the counter. “You’re waiting to question me until after midnight, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
Kate looked at a mantel clock that sat on the sideboard turned entertainment center. Healthy green plants were piled on either side of it. She took a deep, fortifying breath. “Then I’d better put on some coffee.”
Chapter 3
The coffee was good. It was rich and dark, the way he liked it. After an hour, Raphael agreed to another pot, as much to give her something to do as for the fact that he needed the caffeine.
He watched her unload the red wagon and put things away, then rearrange it all in the cupboards and drawers. When she was done, every spice bottle faced forward, its label visible. He felt his eyes bug a little as he observed the process, and something happened to his blood pressure. Then finally the clock on the window seat began to chime midnight.
Her shoulder blades shifted under that starched white cotton as though she was bracing herself. “Okay, let’s get this over with. I’m tired.”
He wouldn’t argue with her on that one. Raphael leaned forward to take the tiny tape recorder from his jeans pocket and put it on the coffee table.
She cleared her throat carefully. “I’ll ask you again. Am I a witness or a suspect?”
“You’re a witness unless you say something that would indicate otherwise.”
“What if I lawyer up?”
It happened again, yet another facet of temper. This one was a small man standing inside each of Raphael’s temples, battering with tiny, hot fists. “Lawyer up,” he repeated.
“Ask for a lawyer.”
“I know what you meant.” He clenched his jaw. “How about if you leave the cop jargon to me?”
“Fine.”
