“At least she had that,” Evelyn said, then added when Dix looked blank, “If she hadn’t had the very handy southern connection as a hook, I wonder how she would have gotten you to agree.”
“What I’m wondering,” Judge Sherlock said, slowly rising, “is what it is she has to say to you that she can’t say in front of Thomas. It may be much simpler than you think.”
Evelyn said. “Charlotte isn’t stupid—” She tapped her fingernails on the white tablecloth for a moment, then grinned over at him. “Maybe it’s all very straightforward like Corman said— Charlotte simply wants to see you—she fell victim to those French cuffs of Corman’s you were wearing last night.”
CHAPTER 14
After Dix booked a later flight, he checked in with Ruth with his new arrival time. He knew she was loaded with questions, ready to fire away, but he cut her off. “I don’t have any answers now, sweetheart, but I will.”
Sweetheart? Ruth felt honey smoothing down the bristles. Sweetheart?
Well. She sat back in her chair. “Okay, you got me. Smooth move.”
She thought she could see him grinning into his cell.
“Listen, Ruth, the thing is I don’t even have the right questions yet. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. Please be patient.”
She huffed, sputtered, and laughed. “You’re such a damned cop.”
But that was only part of it, she thought as she punched off her cell. She was a cop, too, who happened to love him.
Sweetheart. It had a certain ring to it. She was humming until she got back to the interview transcript of a drifter who’d butchered his way through the Northeast. They’d caught up with him when he’d lost his temper in a bar and broken a bottle of Coors over another customer’s head.
Dix drove Judge Sherlock’s ancient black Chevy K5 Blazer down the hill to Lombard Street.
“At noon there won’t be a single parking space within a mile of the restaurant, so don’t waste your time looking. Use the parking garage that’s in the same block,” Isabel had told him. She looked him up and down. “You look tough and dangerous— more macho without those French cuffs.”
He laughed. He wore black jeans, short black boots, a white shirt, and a black leather jacket. Usual fare. Tough? Well, okay, that was probably a good thing.
Judge Sherlock shook his hand and gave him a look clear as a neon sign: Watch your ass with that woman.
When he saw Charlotte Pallack waiting for him in front of Port Louis, he did another double take, felt the memory of the awful hollowness that had ground him under for so very long. But he got himself together quickly. She wasn’t Christie. He prayed he wasn’t making a good-sized mistake, giving her the wrong impression, making her think he was coming on to her.
He smiled, and stuck out his hand, forcing her to take it and not jump in for a hug, which he knew in his gut was what she wanted. “Mrs. Pallack.”
“No, no, it’s Charlotte, please, Dix.”
He nodded and they went in. They both ordered the blackened halibut.
“Very New Orleans,” he said as he handed the menus back to the red-jacketed waiter.
She only nodded, and immediately launched into questions, not about shared southern experience, not about the two sitting Virginia senators or the governor, but questions about him.
He went answer-lite, keeping things as impersonal as possible. She began asking the same questions again, phrasing them a bit differently. He’d give it to her, she was dogged. When, finally, she wanted to know how his wife had died, he knew Christie was who she really wanted to know about.
He looked into her beautiful eyes, eyes that didn’t have Christie behind them. He found himself watching her face closely as he said, “My wife suddenly disappeared over three years ago. She hasn’t been found.”
He stopped, swallowed, said nothing more.
Their halibut arrived. It was so hot and spicy Dix had to force himself to eat it. It roiled like nasty thoughts in his belly. He picked up a breadstick. It tasted like chalk.
“You don’t know what happened to her?”
“No.”
“You think she’s dead, don’t you, Dix? You don’t think she could have run away, nothing like that, do you?”
“No. She’s dead. Why are you so concerned, Charlotte?”
“I’m interested because it’s something that hurt you very much, Dix. I hate that.”
Maybe Evelyn was right—maybe she was interested in him. Why? Because it gave her a kick to flex her skills with a man who’d so obviously focused on her last night? She was another man’s wife, but evidently, at least on the surface, she had set her sights on him. He’d been an idiot to accept this lunch offer. But the cop part of him was curious. It was time to turn this around.