on, Ron. We’re sitting on a fucking fortune here. Sell the store, sell the building, and we can run off to Paris. I’ll take pictures and you can work on your dissertation.”
“Nat, we’ve had this conversation. I’m not selling.” She crossed her arms, hoping she looked dug in. They’d been down this road before. They sure as hell weren’t going to travel it in the middle of the night. Too many bumps, and Ronnie couldn’t afford to stumble.
His chest rose and fell. “Fine. Whatever. I mean, hey, I’ve got a fabulous apartment in Gramercy Park that I don’t have to pay a dime for. It’s not like I’m complaining.” He met her gaze, his brown eyes dark and serious. “But when my sister stays up all night worrying, I start wondering if maybe she needs a change of scenery.”
“I’m not worrying,” Ronnie said. “I was working.” A half truth. She had been working, but only because she was too keyed up to sleep. “Besides,” she added, hoping to appease her brother, “the cops are on it. There’s nothing to worry about.”
He kicked back, feet on the desk. “The cops made any progress?”
She had no idea. “Tons. They’ve got a zillion leads.” Maybe the cops just thought it was a nothing case, and that’s why they hadn’t updated her. Certainly nothing much was taken. Of course, it was that very fact that gave her goose pimples.
“Ronnie,” he said, and she snapped to attention.
“What?”
“What kinds of leads?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Just leads.” She examined her fingernails.
“For God’s sake, Ron. We live here. We have a right to know what they’ve found out.”
She shrugged, wishing she had something definitive to tell him. Hell, wishing she’d actually spoken with an officer. “You know how vague cops can be.”
“I know how vague my sister can be.”
Ronnie sighed. She knew when she was beaten. “Okay. Fine. I want you on that plane. Short of hiring a guy named Guido, what do I have to do to make sure it happens?”
A slow, smug grin spread across his face. “Well, little sister, I guess you’re going to have to hire the biggest, baddest security dude you can find to sit down here at night—”
“I don’t think so.”
“—or you’re going to have to turn on the charm for the cops, and sweet-talk some information out of them.”
“Working early or staying late?”
The voice, more or less familiar, filtered through the mush in Jack’s brain, finally spurring one cohesive thought—Irving. The voice belonged to Lieutenant Irving. With a grunt, he peeled his face off the government-issue desk and squinted up at his interrogator. “What?” he croaked. Not exactly a stunning response, but it was the best he could manage.
Dan Irving smirked and plopped down a coffee cup. “You need this more than me.” He shook a bag. “The doughnuts I’m keeping. Gotta promote those stereotypes.”
Jack took a slug of liquid heaven, closed his eyes and let the legal stimulant do its number on his brain. “Fire, I understand. What I don’t get is how man survived before caffeine.”
“You call this surviving?” Irving swept his arm to encompass the office. “The animals in Central Park got better digs than we do.”
Jack grinned and lifted his coffee cup. “But we got a much better menu.”
The lieutenant flipped a wooden chair around, straddled it, and Jack pushed a photocopy of Mrs. Crawley’s pillow greeting his way. “What do you make of that?”
Irving picked up the copy, held it farther and then even farther away as though he were doing a little trombone number, then ended up holding it at arm’s length. Jack bit back a chuckle. The lieutenant refused to give in and buy reading glasses, but if his eyes kept going south, he was going to need longer arms.
“Don’t be frightened, darling.” Irving frowned. “A threat. But there’s something else. Something about the language. It’s stilted.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
“The Crawley case?”
Jack nodded. “Third incident. This one, the perp actually got into their bedroom. Needless to say, Mr. and Mrs. Crawley aren’t too happy.” He took the paper back, frowning at the neatly typed words. “It’s...odd. Our perp seems to be quoting something, and it might be important.”
“So figure out what he’s quoting.”
“Already on it.” Jack grinned. “Or rather, Donovan is.”
Irving chuckled. “What are you up to, Parker?”
“Just doing my job. I called my partner about six-thirty this morning. Said I needed him to track us down a literature professor.”
“Don’t suppose Donovan’s girl of the week took that too well.”
“Don’t guess she did.” Jack stifled a smile, remembering the girl’s clear annoyance when she’d answered the phone. He grinned. “Well, if you can’t stand the hours, don’t date a cop.”
Considering Jack had spent the entire night buried under boxes of evidence, while Donovan had spent the night under—or on top of—something much more entertaining, Jack couldn’t feel too guilty about the wake-up call. And the fact was, he really did need to find someone who could source that quote—assuming it really was a quote. In the absence of any physical evidence, it was the best lead they had. Hell, it was the only lead.
“So how’d you pull this assignment?” Irving asked. “Sex crimes division going after scraps of paper now?”
Jack shook his head. “Our perp’s got a thing for erotica. Book passages and some pretty graphic nudie postcards.”
Irving pulled out a doughnut, then passed the bag to Jack before standing. “Pass a nudie postcard my way and we’ll call it even.”
Jack laughed, and when his stomach growled he realized he hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch. He grabbed an apple fritter and devoured half of it before Irving crossed the squad room.
Jack was wiping crumbs off his desk when Donovan appeared and dropped into the chair Irving had abandoned.
“You realize you owe me one,” Donovan said.
Jack nodded. “Story of my life. Find anyone?”
Donovan shifted smoothly into professional mode. “A tenured professor of world literature. No summer classes. Family was in the book business for years. Should be in to see you around nine.”
“Good. I’ve got to be in court on the Bleeker case at eleven,
