Truth, Lies, and Second Dates - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,37

attend a significant event?”

“Yeah, well, as you said: a coincidence.” But a horrid thought struck her: if she hadn’t gone to Danielle’s memorial, would someone still have trashed the place?

That way lies nuttiness.

“A terrible, shitty coincidence,” she continued. “And they must know that, or they’d have told the cops they suspect me.” She stopped in midpace. “Have the cops said anything to you about me being a psycho of interest? And before you play more devil’s advocate, that’s something an innocent person would want to know.”

“The police are pursuing all leads.”

“Great, you sound like a press release.”

“The lead detective believes your version of events—”

“My version?”

“—partly because Mrs. Monahan did not indicate, then or back then, that she thought you killed Danielle. But I believe some of them wondered if you might have guilty knowledge.”

Guilty knowledge. A phrase that never failed to make her shiver.

“Partly, huh?” She threw up her hands. “Well, I’ll take what I can get. So why would they spring this on me? Why even let me come back here tonight? Why not disinvite me, or stop me from going inside? There’s enough of them; they could have posted a guard at every entrance. And at my hotel. And in every parking lot between here and my hotel.”

“Perhaps for the same reason you and I attended: to see if we could spot a killer.”

“Yeah, except we know it’s not me.”

Silence.

She turned to face him full-on. “Uh. Tom? We know it’s not me. Right? We know that? That’s not the royal we, by the way. That’s the plural we, as in the you-and-me we.”

“Anyone looking at you for this would have to admit any evidence is entirely circumstantial.”

Good thing she’d stopped pacing, because she would have walked right into a car: bam! Instant bruises. Instead, she stared at him in his immaculate dark suit, his immaculate face, his immaculate skull, his immaculate brain, which she didn’t understand but liked enormously.

“You … think I’m the killer, too?”

“Well—”

“Not cool, Doc Baker!” God damn her arms itched. She groaned and scratched as the pieces started to fall into place with near-audible clicks. “You knew it was me following you, but you still let me walk right into the morgue.” A new thought struck her, one almost as staggering as the realization that everyone in the Crisp and Gross Funeral Home thought she killed her friend, then went to town on a bunch of folding chairs a decade later. “Jesus, no wonder you lost your shit when we ran into your family at the dog park! You weren’t worried about how it upset your routine; you were worried that you’d introduced your niece to a psychopath!”

“In this case, I think sociopath would be more—”

“Not now, Tom!” She stared at him, panting a little because the rant had left her out of breath. She now had to reexamine every moment they’d spent together and … it didn’t look good. “Is that why you haven’t tried to kiss me again?”

“No,” he replied quietly. “I haven’t tried to kiss you again because, one way or the other, you’re just passing through. Because that’s all you do: pass through.”

She decided to brush that aside for now and ponder it later, when she couldn’t sleep. “So all of it—meeting me for breakfast and then dinner and coming with me here … telling me those stories to keep my interest and pretending you liked me a little—”

“Not just a little,” he replied quietly. “And not pretending.”

“Shut. Up. All that … so did it work? Did you find out I killed her?”

“Inconclusive.”

She just looked at him until his gaze dropped. “Inconclusive. Okay. Well. For the record—since that’s all this is—I’ve never killed anyone. Not once. Not ever.” She groped in her purse, found the car key which wasn’t a key

(Ugh, I miss keys.)

and randomly pressed the thing until her door unlocked itself. She started to climb in and paused for a last look back. “It was nice to meet you, and I wish I never had. You have a lovely family, and I felt privileged to meet them. Now go fuck yourself.”

“Ava…”

“Captain Capp.”

That gave him pause, she saw at once, and his expression was that of an unhappy man being yanked in two directions.

“It’s my own fault,” she told him. “I read too much into it.” Way, way too much.

“Cap—”

“Good night, Dr. Baker.”

She was in such a hurry to slam the car door (mostly to get away from the Crisp and Gross Funeral Home but also to get the last