but if you’d both been using it during the remodel, then your fingerprints would have been on it anyhow,” she pointed out in a reasonable tone.
He looked up again and sighed in audible relief. “You’re right. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. It’s just that I have a really bad feeling about the whole situation.”
“It’s awful enough that Curt is dead,” she said, “but if it turns out that it wasn’t an accident, then that could mean no one in the neighborhood is safe.”
“Well, that’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about. You see, there was something I didn’t tell the police this morning.”
Darla could almost feel her ears flick forward in sudden interest, just as Hamlet’s did when he heard the sound of kibble pouring into his bowl. No doubt Reese’s ears were doing the same trick. Trying not to appear too anxious, she said, “If it’s important, you should say something. Can you at least tell me?”
“It’s about Tera.”
Barry hesitated, shifting the DVD case from hand to hand as he seemed to consider whether or not, in Reese’s words, to blab.
“It probably doesn’t mean anything, but yesterday while we were doing some work at the brownstone, I overheard Curt on the phone with her. I don’t want to repeat some of the things he said, but they weren’t exactly nice. I’ve met that girl before, and I know she has a temper. She might have tracked him down there last night to finish the fight . . . and, you know, ended up finishing it for good.”
Before Darla could respond to this unsettling revelation, the sound of a flushing toilet interrupted them. The powder room door swung open, and Reese came strolling out, coat over his arm.
“Thanks for letting me borrow the facilities, Darla,” he told her. “It’s a long way back to the precinct.” Then, to Barry, he added, “I thought I heard voices. How ya doing, Mr. Eisen? Darla didn’t tell me you were stopping by.”
“She didn’t tell me you were here, either,” the other man said with a sidelong look at her.
Darla managed an innocent smile. “Oh, I thought I mentioned it when you came in. But Detective Reese was just leaving, weren’t you?” she added with a pointed look at the cop.
Reese, however, was giving an exaggerated sniff. “Hey, Darla, is that coffee I smell? I might stick around for a cup, if you don’t mind. The stuff you brew is a hell of a lot better than what I can get downtown. How about you, Mr. Eisen? You going to join us?”
“Actually, I need to head back home.” He set down the DVD case and rose. “Darla, I apologize for not calling beforehand. I promise I will next time.”
He headed for the door, pausing to grab his jacket off the hook. “Detective, you’ll let me know as soon as I can go back into the brownstone, won’t you?”
“Should be tomorrow, probably when we know the cause of Mr. Benedetto’s death.”
“I trust you’ll let me know on that, too. Curt was . . . a good friend.”
So saying, he gave Darla a small wave and slipped out the door. She could hear the faint sounds of footsteps going down the stairs, and she went to the window to watch as he exited the front entry and started down the street.
Darla let the curtain drop again and turned back to glare at Reese, who had his notebook out and was scribbling again. “Thanks for making me look like an idiot a couple of times over. I’ll be lucky if Barry ever talks to me again.”
“You did fine,” he said in an absent voice as he flipped the page. “Oh, and I wasn’t kidding about the coffee. I could go for a cup . . . no sugar, just cream.”
Darla ran through a mental list of several rude retorts but in the end gritted her teeth and went to pour him his drink. “Why didn’t you let Barry keep talking?” she called from the kitchen as she pulled down a Twilight mug that she’d bought as a joke from a street vendor and poured Reese’s coffee into it. “I thought you wanted to see if he was on the level.”
“Yeah, well, I was getting bored. All you had in there to read were a bunch of decorating and reorganizing magazines.”
“Sorry, next time I’ll throw in a couple of Sports Illustrated copies just for you.” Still rolling her eyes, she returned to the living room