“I guess.” But he caught her hand. “The Vegas offer stands. You get tired of a voice on the phone, you know where I’ll be.”
“Yeah, up to your elbows in body parts. I’ll hold tight to that image. Send the report over when you get it, Joe. I’m going to try for—” she brought her watch into focus “—whoa, four straight hours of alone time. Tell Liz I’ll finish the prelims, and she should go ahead and streak her hair.”
“Are all women anal with their priorities?” Graeme wondered aloud.
Angel pulled on her gloves, worked the fingers down. “No more so than men with their HD TVs and game-day rituals. Good luck in surgery, Graeme.”
Her boot heels echoed in the empty corridor outside. Swinging her coat on, she murmured, “It’s like being the last live cell in a dead body. No way could I do your job, Dr. T.”
Still, as her newly emancipated mother liked to say, life tossed what it tossed. Go with it or go crazy.
At twenty-nine, Angel didn’t think life had tossed all that much her way yet. But three girlfriends and a messy divorce later, her father had done his level best to drive his first wife crazy. Thankfully, poetic justice had intervened. He’d wound up with a shrew for a second wife along with the proverbial stepchild from hell. As Angel saw it, occasionally life and fate got together and tossed a very satisfying fair ball into the mix.
Deep in the pocket of her black coat, her cell phone began to hum. At three-something in the morning, the news wasn’t likely to be good, but ever the optimist, she pulled it out.
The number on the screen brought a smile to her lips, even if it didn’t surprise. For all his solitary ways, the man knew everything, often before anyone else in the department.
She greeted him with an amused, “Well, hi there, tall, dark and mysterious. What’s got you up so late on a Saturday night?”
“Mostly the thought of you being up so late on a Saturday night.”
Noah Graydon’s voice flowed through her veins like honey laced with dark rum. She’d been intrigued by him since their first conversation, a year and a half ago. Today, she was as much entranced as intrigued. Unfortunately, she was also inured, or heading that way.
Noah was a man of darkness, a voice in the night. For reasons she had yet to determine, he preferred to exist in a world of shadow and half-light. No one saw him except Joe. And no one who knew him, if indeed anyone in the Boston office did, would talk about his predilection for solitude.
And so their entire relationship had evolved over the phone. Didn’t make him a stranger exactly, but if she’d been the cat Joe had labeled her, curiosity would have killed her several lifetimes ago.
Smiling, even though she knew where their conversation would ultimately wind up, Angel pushed the elevator call button, then bumped her shoulder lightly against the wall while she waited.
“I’m at the path lab and creeped out, Noah. Say something pretty so I can erase the picture of dead body parts that are whizzing through my brain.”
“Bed of roses.”
She set her head on the wall. “Been listening to Bon Jovi, huh?”
“That’s why the Boston office snapped you up, Angel. You’re all about extrapolation. Okay, pretty. Close your eyes and imagine the Cape. Turning leaves and bonfires. Think cold nights, a walk in the woods and a glass of wine waiting when you return.”
A more tranquil smile curved her lips. “You have a truly amazing voice, Graydon. I swear I can smell those leaves burning.” The elevator doors slid open, and she glanced inside. “Yuck. Empty gurney with rumpled sheets.” She sidestepped it as she entered.
His low chuckle might have brought back the Cape if she hadn’t recalled the unholy hour. A clunk of gears preceded the elevator’s arduous upward climb.
“I hear you’ve got a body,” he remarked.
“We do, and I’ve just come from a close encounter with it. It’s big, pale and hairless, a bit like that enormous baby the drunk stork delivered to the wrong people in the Bugs Bunny cartoon.”
“Well, there’s a picture. Thanks for that, Angel.”
“Welcome. Do you know what Foret’s story is?”
“He’s got ties to the White House.”
“Figured as much. Just please don’t tell me he’s related to someone who’s going to make my life hell until his murder’s solved.”
“He’s a lawyer.”
“Explains the eight-hundred-dollar suit.”
“Attached to the State Department.”
“Saw the credentials. Tell me what I didn’t see, or probably wouldn’t know.”
“He’s close personal friends with the current Secretary of State.”
At last, the inevitable X factor reared its head. “Oh, good. That means there’ll be pressure to solve and close fast. Bergman can’t be aware of the last thing, Noah, or instead of sniveling, his assistant would be apoplectic. Is there any whisper about a dockyard rendezvous?”
“Give me time, Angel. I just dug up the Secretary of State connection. Any theories yet?”
Angel caught herself stroking the bottom of her cell phone and gave her fingers a speculative look.
“Only that I don’t think he was rolled by someone hungry for a fix. It’s true, any cash he had in his wallet was gone, but he was still wearing his platinum Tag Heuer watch, diamond tiepin and ring. Signet, not wedding. So either the killer was dumb as well as desperate, or the money was taken to make Foret’s death look like a really bad mugging.”
“How did you read the pennies on his eyes?”
“I’ve heard of similar cases.”
“Yeah?”
“Three times last year. Once in Boston, twice in New York. All of the murders had gangland connections. One gang, three killers.”
“This isn’t gang-related.”
It wouldn’t be, she thought. Far too simple. “And you know that because?”
“Victim doesn’t fit the profile.”
“Yes, well, Noah, it’s late and I’m tired, and it was really cold on that dock. I wasn’t thinking profile so much as get him to Joe and find the largest possible coffee.”
Another chuckle reached her. It almost reached into her. “Don’t turn diva on me, Angel. It wasn’t a criticism. You only came to Boston eighteen months ago. You can’t know what I do.”
Eighteen months, and some odd number of days. Angel started to lean a hip on the gurney, but spied the soiled under-sheet and opted for the elevator rail instead. “Waiting, Graydon. What exactly is it you know?”
“This
