was why, a minute later, she agreed to meet with Rosemary’s detective friend. Adamant about not barging into the police station, she at least got Rosemary to agree to set up an informal meeting in a public place.
It was ridiculous, of course. But she’d do it. At ten o’clock the next morning, at a diner on Abercorn Street not far from her own apartment, she’d meet with this detective, carefully tell him what she knew, hear him laugh, then forget about it.
Grabbing a pen, she jotted down the man’s name, writing it on the list Paige had torn out of the notebook. For evidence.
Yeesh. Her sexual-fantasy list possible evidence. How utterly embarrassing. She could only hope this Detective Walker was as nice and fatherly as Rosemary said he was.
And that he was very understanding.
CHAPTER TWO
“WAIT A MINUTE,” Nick Walker said, eyeing his partner on the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan PD. “You’re telling me some woman thinks a chef who choked on a meatball while drunk was actually murdered? And that his death might have something to do with the death of a golf pro in Atlanta?”
Nick made no effort to keep the skepticism out of his voice as he stared across his desk at his partner. Dex didn’t flinch away from the pointed look and Nick sat back in his chair, sighing heavily. Because apparently his friend was serious.
The two of them sat in the bustling station on Habersham Street, getting ready to start another day filled with the promise of lots of crime. First up was investigating a robbery-homicide at a nearby antique store that had been filling the local media. The case had brought pressure on the whole precinct—they’d just come from a bitch-out meeting during which their lieutenant had threatened bodily injury if it wasn’t solved soon.
It was a typical weekday morning—already over eighty degrees and sweltering, with air that smelled like used motor oil and felt about as thick. The window air conditioner chugged lazily, managing to circulate a breeze that could only be described as cool by a recent refugee from hell.
At every other desk sat another member of the squad, making calls, writing reports, delaying the inevitable moment when they’d have to leave the building and venture out into the wicked September morning. Because, damn, it hurt to breathe out there. The heat wave gripping the city had lasted nine weeks now. Might be another month before it dropped below eighty.
He hated the heat and not only because his skin hadn’t felt dry since Memorial Day. The hotter it got—the stickier it got—the more people heated up and committed crimes. Quick to anger, slow to reason, the city had been on a low rolling boil all summer and September hadn’t seemed to evaporate any of the steam.
“I know it’s probably a long shot, but it’s worth a conversation, isn’t it?” Dex asked, his tone even, his voice reasonable. As usual. The guy was nearly impossible to rile, unlike Nick who, truth be told, hadn’t been too sure he’d ever make detective given his tendency to erupt every now and again. He thought he’d done a pretty good job escaping his badass teenage years, when he’d literally fought his way out of his family’s Walkers-are-all-no-good-drunks reputation with his fists. But that old Walker temper did kick up once in a while.
“You’re really serious about this?” Nick asked.
“I am. It’s a long shot, but maybe there is some kind of connection between these two cases.”
“The Chez Jacques death isn’t a case—it was ruled an accident. The investigation’s been closed for a month.”
“So this tip probably won’t go anywhere. But since you caught the original call, isn’t it worth a conversation?”
If the request had come from Draco, Jones or one of the others, he would have immediately suspected some kind of setup. A practical joke at the very least. A blind date at the worst.
As the youngest on the squad, the newest detective and one of the only two unmarried men on this floor—the other being his partner—he was the target of a lot of jokes. Not to mention a lot of schemes to get him as tied-around-the-balls as every other poor married sucker he worked with.
But this was Dex. Mr. Serious. The most straightforward, honest, no-nonsense guy in the building. And his partner.
Dex was also the only one in the building who knew that Nick had once been married. Briefly. Badly. To a woman who’d then sabotaged Nick’s relationship with his entire family, separating them for a decade with her lies. So Dex wouldn’t play some kind of setup game with him.
“I know how it sounds, but Rosemary swears it’s true.”
Nick grunted but said nothing against Rosemary. He still hadn’t quite forgiven her for the stakeout snafu a few weeks ago, when he’d nearly blown his cover trying to help some woman move her furniture.
Some woman. Yeah, she had been that.
For some reason, he hadn’t been able to put her completely out of his mind since. Occasionally he’d even considered cruising by her place, seeing how she was doing. Seeing if she had any more chairs she needed moved.
He hadn’t done it. Not only because he just wasn’t in the market to meet a woman right now, but also because she’d seemed so damned vulnerable. So hurt. So desolate.
The last thing she needed was a visit from a workaholic cop who’d deceived her about who he was on the day they’d met.
“Rosemary swears, huh?” he finally said, knowing Dex was waiting for an answer.
“Yeah. And you know how she is.”
Oh, yes, he knew. Frankly, Nick didn’t know how his friend had hooked up with the woman, who was the spoiled, pampered daughter of one of the former mayors of Savannah. Yeah, she was hot, and she managed to keep Dex a lot more on edge than any woman he’d ever dated—which seemed a good thing for someone as quiet and uninvolved as his partner. The differences in their financial situations were glaringly obvious, and Dex had made more than one comment about trying to keep up with Rosemary.
Besides being rich, she was flighty. Not to mention oversexed, bored and pretentious.
Dex was about as down-to-earth and unpretentious as they came, which was one reason he and Nick got along so well. Nick hated pretension. He had no patience for the old guard who hadn’t yet realized the Civil War was over and the grand and glorious days of plantation owners were mere textbook footnotes.
Coming from a white trash Georgia family in a small town in the northwest corner of the state, he’d never realized the elitist culture still existed elsewhere. Sure, Joyful had been full of the haves and the have-nots, like every other town—the Walkers definitely being on the have-not list. But until he’d started working to solve some of the crimes targeting the upper crust of this old, proud city, he hadn’t realized how far in the past some people seemed to live.
That was how Dex had met Rosemary. Somebody had robbed a pricey house she had listed with her real-estate agency.
“I told Rosemary you’d meet the woman today at ten.” After naming the location, Dex added, “You’ll know her by her red hat.”
Nick didn’t respond right away, merely studying his friend, watching for a shift of the eyes or a tiny grin that would say he was being had. He saw neither. Just stalwart,
