“I’m not. It’s probably a customer who doesn’t get it that closed means closed.” Pushing the intercom button, she called, “Hello, who’s there?”
“Um, Darla?”
Darla frowned. The tinny male voice sounded vaguely familiar, but she didn’t recognize the speaker until he went on, “It’s Barry . . . Barry Eisen. I know I should have tried calling you first, but I was in the neighborhood. You’re not busy or anything, are you?”
“Hi, Barry. Actually, I—”
Before Darla could finish, Reese was at her side gesturing “no” and doing the old slice-across-his-throat routine. She quickly released the button and hissed at him, “What, am I not supposed to tell him you’re here?”
“Keep me out of it. Tell him you’re eating your dinner and see if he wants to come up.”
She gave him a fair version of Hamlet’s what the heck? look but gamely pressed the “Talk” button again and went on, “Actually, I was just finishing my supper. Did you want to come up for a cup of coffee or something?”
“Sure, that would be great,” came his reply, the slight eagerness she heard now in his voice making her wonder abruptly if he thought that something meant, well, something.
Frowning a bit, she buzzed him in and then swung back around to Reese to demand, “Why am I pretending you’re not here?”
“The same reason you’re pretending he’s not your boyfriend,” the detective replied. Before she could decide if he was joking or not, he went on, “Remember that whole element-of-surprise thing we talked about? I just want to check this guy out, see if he’s on the level. Get him talking about finding the body and anything else you can think of that has to do with what happened. Now that he’s had some time to think about things, he might mention a few details he forgot to tell me—like maybe a motive.”
“Surely you don’t think Barry killed Curt?” she gasped. “Why, they’ve been friends since high school. And he and I were together when we found the body.”
“Remember what I told you? Until we know it’s an accident, we assume it’s a murder, and everyone’s a suspect.”
“Fine. And what are you going to do while I’m quizzing Barry, hide behind the curtains?”
“Nope, I’m going to hang out in the john. Remember, keep him talking,” he said, taking his coat from the chair and heading for the half bath next to the kitchen. Hamlet, following suit, leaped off the sofa and stalked toward the bedroom, apparently tired of having his evening nap interrupted. Darla barely had time to pick her remaining takeout off the coffee table and stash it in the kitchen before Barry’s polite knock sounded at her door.
“Hi, come on in,” she told him, gesturing him into the few square feet of exposed oak flooring that served as her foyer and closing the door behind him. “Here, let me take your coat.”
“I hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this,” he apologized, unzipping a drab green jacket that looked like it had come from the army surplus store and handing it to her. “I needed to talk to someone, and since you were there today with me . . .”
He trailed off, and she nodded sympathetically. “I understand completely. It’s kind of like the way you can’t really talk about surviving a disaster—a flood or a hurricane, or something—except with someone else who survived the same thing. So, how are you holding up?”
“Not too bad, I guess.”
His lips quirked a little, as if he were trying for a smile; then, giving up the attempt, he instead ran a hand through his thinning hair and shook his head. “It’s all still such a shock. Curt’s always been a phone call away ever since high school. I keep reaching for my cell to dial him, and then I remember.”
Then he paused and gave her a quizzical look. “You, um, have something there,” he added, touching his forefinger to a spot below his lower lip.
He tactfully looked away as she hurriedly used the back of her free hand to scrub away a few drops of peanut sauce that had dripped unnoticed onto her chin. Thanks a lot, Reese, she thought with an irritated frown. The least he could have done was tell her that she was wearing her supper. She only hoped she didn’t have broccoli stuck in her teeth, to boot.
“Why don’t I make you that cup of coffee, and we can talk,” Darla suggested. Which would leave Reese stuck in his bathroom