dressing in a boutique showroom. The lieutenant looked fit to be tied once he knew for certain his wife hadn’t killed herself. My guess is that he won’t be back today. You need help with something?” the man asked, giving Charley a scrutinizing once-over.
“No,” Declan answered. Turning toward the woman with him, he said, “Looks like I’m on my own here.”
“We’re on our own.” She deliberately emphasized the first word.
“Hey, Cavanaugh, wanna introduce me?” the detective he’d just been talking to asked, rising to his feet as he was taught in a bygone wonderfully polite era.
“No,” Declan replied succinctly as he walked away, headed to his desk. “Okay, let me see if I can find this Melissa Merryweather,” he said more to himself than to Charley.
He just didn’t give up, did he? she thought. Well, it was his time he was wasting. But she intended to try to follow up any shred of a lead the CSI people came up with.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she told him mildly.
He was getting tired of hearing her say that. “Well, unless and until another tree comes leaping out at me, this is all I’ve—we’ve—” he corrected himself before she could “—got. Unless you’re keeping something from me,” he tagged on.
She was, but it had nothing to do with Matt’s murder and everything to do with her being able to investigate it, so she kept the information to herself as she shook her head. “Not a thing.”
In his opinion, Charley sounded entirely too innocent when she said that and he always held displays of innocence to that degree suspect. But he had nothing to go on other than a gut instinct, one he wasn’t able to pin down or flesh out yet. Until such time, he intended to keep this detective close to him and the best way to do that was to allow her to think he was all for their joining forces.
Getting comfortable at his desk, he gestured to the somewhat scarred desk facing his.
“Spenser was moving out his stuff when I left here this morning. Looks like he’s finished so you can park yourself there for the time being if you like.”
She pulled the chair out and sank down into it. It was going to need some adjustment. This Spenser was a big man, she concluded. “Spenser your partner?”
“Ex-partner.” Declan didn’t look up, his fingers gliding along the keyboard as he continued to search for Melissa Merryweather’s address. “He decided he could make more money in the private sector.”
That wasn’t exactly a newsworthy discovery. “He probably can,” she speculated. The police department wasn’t exactly known for its princely salaries. “You two work together long?”
He had to think for a moment before answering. “A little over a year and a half.”
“Get along?”
That caught his attention. “Average,” he acknowledged, looking at her sharply. “What’s with the twenty questions?” he asked. What was she up to? Even back in the academy, he remembered that Charley had an agenda, a schedule. She went at training doggedly—a preview of how she handled everything else. He doubted that a leopard could change its spots.
“Just catching up,” she said. Moreover, if Declan was answering questions, he couldn’t be asking them.
“That works two ways,” he reminded her. “I get a chance to catch up, too.” He had a few outstanding questions about her he wanted to ask—especially about that mysterious husband of hers who had devolved into a long story for a slow night.
Rather than comment on what he’d just pointed out, Charley indicated the computer he was typing on. “Find anything yet?”
No, and it wasn’t for lack of trying, he thought in frustration.
“Program’s slow,” he said out loud. “The department’s way overdue in investing in new computers to keep us up to speed.” The fact that his department wasn’t alone in this didn’t make it any more palatable for him. Declan had never ascribed to the “misery loves company” way of thinking.
“Could be worse,” Charley offered philosophically.
He frowned at the blank screen with its maddening note at the bottom that told him it was “waiting to connect.”
“How?”
“You could still be banging out end-of-day reports on typewriters and have to make do with just one computer to a floor.”
Now she was just making things up, he thought. “Nobody’s that archaic.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she countered.
The last police department she’d considered applying to, located in a little town in New Mexico, had a force of exactly three—a sheriff and two deputies—for the entire county, and the only accessible computer was located in the town’s one-story public library. The deputies and the sheriff’s secretary did all their work on electric typewriters.
“You’ll have to tell me about it someday,” he told her in a voice that indicated “someday” wasn’t going to be anytime soon. A second later, he triumphantly announced, “Got her.”
Charley didn’t have to ask who.
Chapter 4
Melissa Merryweather tended bar in a cocktail lounge within one of Aurora’s more upscale hotels. The Aurora Maxwell was located on a major thoroughfare and was approximately a mile away from the city’s commuter airport.
Given the hour, the lounge was close to empty with only a couple of harried travelers seated at tables for one, looking to unwind.
The ambience—semidarkness—was either soothing or depressing, depending on the point of view of the person taking it in. Charley found it depressing. The thought of sitting on a stool at the bar, ruminating over a half-filled glass of alcohol only made it more so.
The less-than-genuine smile on Melissa’s carefully made-up face widened as she looked up when Declan walked into the lounge. It was obvious to Charley that although both of them were approaching the bar at an equal pace, Melissa only saw him.
It was like watching a predator come to life, Charley thought. Even Melissa’s strawberry-blond, corkscrew curls seemed to become bouncier.
“Hi, handsome, what can I get you?” Melissa asked in a husky voice that Charley thought was probably more suitable for someone making an obscene phone call, which she wouldn’t have put past Melissa.
“A few answers,” Declan replied, the width of his smile matching hers.
Except on him, Charley had to admit, the smile looked rather seductive—make that very seductive. It was obvious that Melissa was aware of it.
“How about we start with ‘yes’?” Melissa suggested, leaning in as close as she could to him, given that there was a bar between them. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that she was flirting with him for all she was worth and it was only partially to get him to spend money at the bar.
