model, with the addition of a jaunty plaid lining but minus the wrinkles. Its belt was buckled behind his back so that the garment swung open, revealing the same navy slacks and brown tweed sport coat from earlier that day. Definitely not the black-leather-clad Reese she was used to seeing.
“Where’s the motorcycle jacket?” she asked, recalling how it had always made him look like a blond Mad Max. Not that she disapproved of that particular image.
Reese shrugged. “It’s in the closet. Peer pressure and all that.”
When Darla gave him a quizzical look, he went on, “It was brought to my attention by the powers that be that I’d better start toeing the line as far as departmental dress code if I want to see a promotion in my future. The old dress-for-success thing, know what I mean? Hell, I think I’d rather be wearing a uniform than be stuffed into a tie and jacket.”
“Too bad,” she said somewhat sympathetically as he peeled off the trench coat, loosened said tie, and gave a tug on his shirt collar. Feeling distinctly underdressed in her sweats, Darla shut the door and gestured toward the horsehair couch. “Go ahead, have a seat. I’d offer you some of my supper, but it’s only leftovers and there’s not much.”
“I won’t be staying that long.”
He eyed Hamlet, who gave him a wary green look from where he was stretched out along the sofa back. Apparently deciding not to test their previous unspoken détente—the two had clashed more than once, with Reese on the losing side of those battles—the cop bypassed the sofa and instead settled on one of the ladder-back chairs Darla kept for extra seating.
Darla resumed her own seat on the couch and picked up her Thai food, casually scooping up a forkful of noodles. Between chews, she asked, “So, any updates on the Curt situation?”
“Nothing yet on cause of death. If we’re lucky and the ME’s office isn’t too backed up, we might have a ruling by tomorrow afternoon. Depending on what she says, we’ll probably release your boyfriend’s building back to him tomorrow, too.”
“Barry’s not—”
She was going to say, Barry’s not my boyfriend, but Jake would probably tell her that smacked a little too much of junior high. Instead, she finished, “—not worried about that. His concern is for finding out what happened to Curt.”
“So’s mine.”
Reese leaned back in the chair, which creaked ominously. “Let’s say that your friend Mr. Benedetto wasn’t clumsy enough to fall down the stairs on his own and hit his head on that crowbar. Statistically, about half of all murder victims know their killers. So one of those police things we sometimes do is spring bad news on people we want to question. That way, we can see how they react. You know . . . mad, glad, scared. And a lot of times, the way they react lets us know if they’re telling the truth when we start asking them questions.”
He let the chair tip back down, so that it rested on all four legs again, and finished, “So a couple of hours after you leave the scene, I go to track down Hilda Aguilar, mother of the dead guy’s girlfriend. I want to ask her a few questions about the deceased and find out how to get in touch with her daughter, maybe even get a reaction. And then she tells me you already spilled the works to her, which means, no more surprise.”
Darla swallowed her noodles along with a bit of lingering guilt and tried not to sound defensive as she countered, “You didn’t tell me not to talk to Hilda . . . or anyone else, for that matter. And it wasn’t like I tracked her down. She saw me outside her shop and asked what was wrong. I wouldn’t have said anything, except that I really didn’t want Tera hearing about her boyfriend’s death on the street. I thought it would be better if her mother told her.”
“I’d probably have done the same thing in your shoes,” he agreed, lobbing her argument right back at her, untouched. As she stared at him in surprise, he went on, “That’d be pretty harsh, Tera getting a text from someone with the news, or something. And you’re right; I didn’t ask you not to talk to anyone. Technically, there’s no way I could keep you from blabbing the news all over town, if you felt like it.”
“Don’t worry, Hilda is the only one I blabbed to .