might recognize him. “He’s in the Belmont Pier shot you like so much.”
“Shit, I’m sorry. You shaved.” I tried not to look down at his prosthetic leg.
“It was time for a change,” he said.
When I’d told her that photo was my favorite of the lot, Julia had mentioned that she’d actually met Terry a few years earlier, when she’d worked at the VA hospital. She didn’t mention in what capacity they’d met, so I assumed it involved some sort of counseling situation.
The gallery manager came up and put a red sticker on a bottom corner of his picture and gave Julia a subtle thumbs-up sign. Then he motioned for her to follow him.
“Somebody likes it,” she said to Terry.
“I don’t think it’s me they’re buying,” he said as we both watched her walk across the room to another group of patrons.
I wondered how much it had sold for. Julia often gave the subjects of her photos a cut of the money if their photos sold. She said it was unusual, but not unheard of. Many of the people she took pictures of were struggling in one way or another, and she never wanted to feel like she was profiting from their misfortune.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I wondered how long it would be before I could check it without looking like an asshole.
“How do you know Julia?” he asked me.
“From work,” I said. We’d met when I was investigating the murder of a homeless man who’d been burned to death by a group of aspiring gang members.
He looked curious, but I didn’t offer any more. We stood there for a minute and I could sense he was feeling awkward. I was, too, but one of the things I’d learned in my years of detective work was how to project a kind of pleasant disinterest no matter what I was feeling. I found it at least as useful in social situations as it was in the interrogation room. No matter how out of place I felt at a party, I could pretty much always make the person I was chatting with feel like they were the source of the awkwardness between us. It was kind of a dick move, but that never stopped me from using it.
Terry looked at me with a polite expectation in his eyes, and when I didn’t speak, he said, “I’m going to go grab a glass of wine. Can I bring you something?”
“No, thanks,” I said. As he walked away, his limp was almost imperceptible.
A twinge of embarrassment lodged itself in my gut. I looked at the scar that encircled my wrist, almost hidden by my watchband, and felt the familiar tightness grabbing at my arm and shoulder.
I went outside to check my phone. Ethan, the crime-scene technician who’d collected and cataloged the evidence last night and this morning, had returned my call and left a message. So far the only news was that fingerprint evidence revealed there had been at least three people other than Bill Denkins in his apartment recently. If Lucy and Joe were two, who was the third?
When I went back inside, I saw that the gallery had filled. There must have been three dozen people crowded into the space. As I checked out the other artists’ work, I felt a trickle of sweat run down the small of my back. I found Jen studying a photo of some kind of purple flower. The richness of the color stood out against the duller and less focused tones of the background.
“That’s not as good as Julia’s,” I said.
“Not that you’re biased or anything.”
“Objectivity is the bedrock of my existence.”
“Yabba-dabba-doo.”
As things were winding down, Julia found Jen and me back at her section of the exhibit. All of her photos had been red-dotted.
“A few people are going to Thai District across the street,” Julia said.
“I made reservations at James Republic.”
“What would you think about canceling?”
“I don’t know.” I put on my best faux-disappointed face. “I was really looking forward to the grilled octopus and heirloom gazpacho.”
Twenty minutes later, Julia, Jen, and I were sitting by the window with Trev, whose name unsurprisingly turned out to be short for Trevanian rather than Trevor, and two of the other artists.
After the wine came and the server worked her way around the table to me, I said, “I’ll have the chicken fried rice.”