Truth, Lies, and Second Dates - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,53
tomato juice chaser all morning.”
“Ye gods. What is wrong with you?”
“Too many things to list just now, Captain. We’ll see you two later.”
“Bye, Uncle Tom. Bye, Ava!”
With that, Tom took her elbow while the rest of his family disappeared into the exhibition hall. “You’re truly all right? This must have been a blow.”
“Would’ve been a harder one if you hadn’t warned me. And I made time to take a meeting to get my mind serene. And just to get it on the record—”
“I’m not the killer, or the vandal, or the hacker.”
“Got it. Thanks. But now I—hey.” They’d been walking toward the street when Ava stopped, took another look, and—yep, she’d know that improbably red hair anywhere, a gorgeous mass that looked like grenadine syrup set on fire. “Becka?”
Becka turned, and the moment she saw Ava her eyes got big. She didn’t say anything or move as they approached. Frozen, the way India froze when he realized she’d bought a Christmas gift for him but he didn’t have one for her.
“Well, hey there. Tom, this is—”
“Flight Attendant Becka. She was helping your man G.B. on the flight to Boston. Hello again.”
“G.B. isn’t ‘my’ anything, unless it’s ‘my God, did you get caught in a rowing machine’? Nobody’s that ripped outside of slick magazines and action flicks. Well.” She gave him a critical up-and-down glance. “Besides you.”
“It’s far more efficient to have a muscle-to-fat ratio of seven percent, which puts me at a BMI of twenty-two point five, give or take.”
“Oh, sure. For the ratio. Very logical.”
“Well, it is,” he replied, sounding not unlike his niece. “And I make efficient use of the time in terms of transcribing and paperwork and the like.”
“Because of course you do.” Ava was trying to picture Tom squat thrusting or what have you while dryly dictating the autopsy of a guy who suffocated in a crate of tinsel. And failing. “Sounds totally normal. But we’re getting a smidge offtrack.”
“Yes, I agree. To return to the subject under discussion, your colleague, G.B., did seem exceptionally fit,” Tom said. “I’d wager his interior and superior venea cavae are pristine.”
“What a coincidence. That is exactly what I was thinking: pristine veins! But the topic under discussion was how we just now ran into Becka.” To Becka: “So! What’s up?”
“Nothing!”
Ava blinked and, when neither of them said anything, Becka elaborated. “I mean, my brother. He’s a teacher here. Gifted students. I’m not gifted. But I’m from Boston, so…” She tried a shrug, but it looked more like she was twitching her shoulders the way horses do to shoo flies. “Here I am.”
“Oh. Well, I’m not sure if you heard but I’m taking a couple of days off for personal—”
“Oh my God, did you flunk another drug test?”
That gave her pause. “No, just the one. Which was a false positive. That was the only one I flunked. Except I didn’t, not really.”
“A number of false positives,” Tom added, because he thought he was being helpful. “Apparently, PCP hit twice.”
Ava forced brisk cheerfulness into her tone. “It shouldn’t take long to straighten out. I’m sure I’ll see you at work later in the month.”
“Yes! Okay!”
Jesus. She’s almost vibrating. That’s how badly she wants to get away from me. Or this conversation. Or both. Probably both. “Well, nice seeing you again.”
“Yes! Nice! Okay. Bye!”
They watched as she practically sprinted away, and Tom broke the silence with, “How well do you know her?”
“Barely. She just started less than a month ago.”
“Hmmm.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up. Let’s catch up to Hannah and Abe. And on the way, you can tell me which of my colleagues might have murdered my friend and then came back to wreck my life.”
“Your wish,” Tom replied, still watching Becka beat her not-at-all-suspicious hasty retreat.
Thirty-Five
“Govahment Centah!”
They were on the T’s Green Line,* on their way to meet Abe and Hannah. She liked Boston’s subways, especially the way the conductor blared the names of the stops (piercing by necessity; the car was a sea of bent heads and smartphones) over the PA system in a full-on Boston accent. She knew generalizing was lazy thinking at best, but she’d never run into someone with a Boston accent who at the least didn’t have a ton of common sense.
From the Baker family’s hotel, Ava would hop a train back to her own hotel, where she’d get some sleep and then … then she’d … um …
“So what’s our next move? Since we’re both on vacation?”
“Keep trying to reach Dennis. Do whatever research