officially off duty as of right now, and unless you’ve got a smoking gun or bloodied knife you found in the alleyway by Watson’s, I’m going to spend an hour with you trying to figure this shit out, then I’m going to go home so I can do this shit all over again tomorrow.”
SIX NEARLY black grilled cheese sandwiches later and most of two bottles of beer put O’Byrne and me in a much better space. Honey scored part of a cold sandwich, getting it offered up to her piece by piece by a well-fed O’Byrne. I didn’t mind her taking my guns. Or at least at the moment I didn’t. I would have to reevaluate that conviction if I found I would need one of them over the next couple of weeks, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have an older brother who owned a security firm with a weapons arsenal that included a helicopter with machine guns on it. And if Mike didn’t own a helicopter with machine guns on it, I was going to be sadly disappointed. What’s the use of having a security firm if you couldn’t have a helicopter armed to the teeth?
Neko deigned to drag herself out of wherever she’d been in the house, sitting on the arm of the couch at my elbow, selflessly willing to choke down a bite of gooey cheese and bread so I wouldn’t have to do it myself. There was a bit more white around her face than there had been before, and there were times she could barely stir up enough energy to open her eyes to swat at the dog, but she seemed to do okay hitting Honey in the face just by pure instinct. Of course she was a tiny thing who’d survived a building falling on her, so I suspect the only way death was ever going to come for her was if she was asleep.
And as anyone who has a cat in their life knows, they never sleep.
“Should you be feeding her that?” O’Byrne gestured at the black furball purring up a storm at my side. “I mean, is cheese good for cats?”
“She’s five days older than God, and if she wants grilled cheese, she can have it,” I explained, holding another tidbit up for Neko to chew on. “If she wants a salmon, I will fly up to Alaska, learn how to fly fish, either catch one or fight a bear for one, and bring it home so she can turn her nose up at it.”
“You must love Jae a lot,” she snorted, taking a sip from her bottle.
“I love this cat a lot,” I corrected, scratching at Neko’s ears. “Do you have space in your brain to talk about what I think is going on, or do you want to do this tomorrow morning?”
“Hit me up,” O’Byrne muttered, stealthily trying to hide a burp. But despite the lack of noise, I recognized the face she made behind her hand. “Tell me what you think is going on and then tell me who’s behind it, because right now, I don’t give a shit about the why as much as I do about who.”
“I haven’t figured out who, but I’ve got a couple of guesses. It all depends upon who they were working with, and by they, I mean Adele and Arthur.” I gave Honey the last bit of crust on my plate and leaned forward. “Let me show you something. This is a picture of the painting Dawson and I saw hanging in Watson’s apartment. It’s a little blurry because I had to take it on the sly, but there’s something weird about the signature. I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me about it until I came home and showed it to Jae. See, that’s the best thing about being married to an artist, you wind up watching some crazy shit streamed from YouTube on your TV instead of actually watching television shows. Some of the stuff is pretty interesting, but it’s not something that sticks in my head. Stupidly enough, this did.”
The iPad Jae used to sketch on was still open to the photo I’d taken at Watson’s. O’Byrne made murmuring sounds of appreciation for the painting, correctly identifying it as a Rubens. The only reason I knew that was because Jae told me. So she was one up on me there. I didn’t get a weird look until after I zoomed in on Arthur’s signature in the corner.
“Watson said