“As I recall, more than a dozen of the special agents present were female. Your point?”
“That’s a start, pathetic though it be.” She stared at his Crown Vic, and said nothing more.
“When I’m able to get rid of you later, why don’t you shovel the driveway? Or you could arrange to have some macho guys come here and do it for you. You wouldn’t want any of your mother’s lovely rich friends to break their necks, now would you?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment, then frowned up at him. “Well, of course not. That’s a good use for macho guys.”
He’d hoped she’d take the bait, but she’d turned it around on him. Well done, dammit. “All right. You were bragging about how helpful you’d be, so tell me about the four women.”
“Well, they and their families have always been in my life. The only person I don’t like is Juliette Trevor’s son. He’s a spoiled trust-fund baby, and really smart. That combination always irritated me. No, I didn’t sleep with him, but it wasn’t for his lack of trying. I remember Mrs. Trevor gave me a Hermès scarf from Paris when I graduated high school. Wasn’t that nice?”
“What’s the big deal about a Hermès scarf?”
“They’re very expensive, and so beautiful they make you weep.”
“Yeah, right, I can see myself crying over a scarf.” He gave her a look. “Only a woman.”
When he started the car, she said pleasantly, “Did I mention that you’re a pretty sharp dresser? Maybe you’d like to hear about the shoes I bought to go with the Hermès scarf?”
He groaned, rolled his eyes. “All right, I can see where this is all going.”
“Probably so. I’ve always felt sorry for guys. Even though you obviously know how to dress, are doubtless well aware of the effect you have on the female population, you still don’t have the gift of the shoe-shopping gene. No man alive has it that I’ve ever seen. That’s the gene that forces a credit card right out of your wallet when you pass a neat pair of shoes, no matter how many are already in your closet. No, all guys have is the Home Depot hard-wired into your brains. It’s really sad.” She turned the heater on full blast.
He laughed at her. “Another good use for macho guys—fixing toilets.”
“All right, you got me fair and square. Tell me everything that happened yesterday.”
To his surprise, he did. She asked questions, grew thoughtful. She said finally, “The pancreatic cancer, that will come out soon, won’t it?”
“Oh yes, too many people know. Everyone likes to talk, everyone. No exceptions to that, unfortunately.”
She felt tears sting her eyes. Her stepfather would have died in any case. But he would have had six more months to live. Perhaps he would have had a chance, with new drugs discovered every day—
“I read up on pancreatic cancer. It’s a killer, so don’t go there, Callie. Someone brutally murdered him, that’s our only concern. Whatever fate would have dealt him we have no control over.”
“My editor called again last night, on my cell, thank God. If he’d called the house, I would have freaked. I hate leaks, I really do, and if Jed Coombes had gotten the Kettering house number, I’d be doomed.”
“What has he offered you to feed them information?”
“The inside track to a Pulitzer Prize.”
He whistled. “Hard to turn down.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll earn one on my own. I nearly got one last year, it was that close.” She held up two fingers, nearly touching.
“What did you do?” He was driving very carefully even though there weren’t many cars on the road, the sun was bright overhead, and the snow was melting. But the occasional pockets of slush could take a car into a ditch with no warning.
“I have snitches, like you cops do. One of them tipped me off that a child pornography ring was operating out of the Barrington Hotel right here in Washington. I broke the story.”
He jerked the steering wheel in his surprise and nearly sent them into a telephone pole. It was dicey for a moment until he got the car straight again. “You were the one who broke the Cadillac Ring story?”
At her nod, he could only stare at her. “I’ll tell you, Callie, you had a lot of people pissed off at your paper about that. We already had undercover guys in there gathering evidence, then you had to move in with your battering ram. Lucky for the good guys we were nearly ready to close them down.”