glass to get Max and Fred to kiss. They obliged, looking like they were about to devour each other. Much applause followed.
I found my seat and stood beside it, looking for the waiter with the drinks. Crawford came over and held my chair out for me. “Thanks,” I said, and sat down.
Crawford took his seat beside me, his hand finding my knee under the table.
My usual steely resolve weakened by the romance of the event and my surroundings, I put my hand on top of his and gave it a squeeze, first gentle, and then hard enough for him to reconsider his decision. I looked out the window at the beautiful river behind the hall and decided that I needed some time outside. I asked Crawford if he would join me.
We strolled along the walkway that ran adjacent to the room where Max and Fred’s wedding was in full swing. We stopped and gazed downtown at the lights of lower Manhattan and the beautiful Statue of Liberty in the distance, her torch ablaze. I knew that Max had compromised when choosing the location for her wedding, but at that moment, there wasn’t a more beautiful or perfect place to be.
We stared out at the river for a few long moments, enjoying our time together, away from the throngs inside the banquet hall. I decided, after a few seconds of contemplation, that it would be the perfect time to ask about Ray’s murder investigation. I thought wrong.
Crawford sighed. “Do we have to talk about that here?”
“I just…we haven’t talked…” I sputtered. “I just want to know what you know.”
“And you know I can’t tell you what I know,” he said slowly, in case I didn’t understand. The way he figured it, we’d been over that point a thousand times. I didn’t think it hurt to try.
“Did you talk to Terri and Jackson again?”
He stared down at me but didn’t say anything.
“Well?”
He chewed on the inside of his lip. “If I tell you a little bit, will you back off?”
Maybe. “Yes.”
“I don’t think it’s them. I’m more interested in the Micelis right now.”
That’s what I thought.
He put his hand on the back of my neck. “But you,” he said, kissing me, “are to do nothing on that front.” He kissed me again, a knee-weakening lip-lock that I was powerless against; I decided to go with the flow because I didn’t know how long it would be until I got to kiss him like that again. “Understand?”
I nodded. I understood. Completely. But I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t do anything with that information.
Crawford awoke to knocking. Confused at first, he couldn’t tell if it was the banging in his head or someone actually at his front door. He stumbled out of bed and took stock—he had on boxer shorts and nothing else, his tuxedo was in a heap at the foot of his bed, and his head was pounding. He pulled on the tuxedo pants and buttoned the top button, half walking, half staggering toward the door of his apartment.
The knocking was unrelenting and matched the brass band playing John Philip Sousa in his head. “Hold on!” he called, making contact with the edge of the coffee table on his way to the door. “Shit!” he said under his breath and grabbed his knee. He narrowly missed falling over his dress shoes before crashing into a chair at the dining table. Finally, he made it to the door without further incident and opened it. His wife, Christine, stood on the landing, half turned toward the stairs like she was about to leave. In her hands were the set of keys that she had kept after moving out of the apartment with the girls a few years earlier. “Wait,” he said. “I’m here.”
She turned and took a look at him, an eyebrow raised. “Rough night?” she asked, looking over his shoulder to see if there was anyone else in the apartment. She had a bemused smile on her face as she took in his unzipped tuxedo pants, bare chest, and bloodshot eyes.
He pushed his fingers through his hair and stepped aside to let her in. “The wedding.” That was enough of an explanation. She had been to enough cop weddings to know what went on and how most of them felt the day after a night of celebrating. He left out the part about the four hundred beers and celebratory tequila shots; the odor emanating from his pores probably gave some indication of that.
“Right,”