Josh immediately shot Mac a warning look. Mac gritted his teeth but he didn’t speak.
“You know how unreliable these things are,” Josh said with a shrug. “Not to mention, this ID had to have happened once it started to rain and likely after it started to get dark. If that’s all you have, I think we’re done.”
“I didn’t do anything to Erin,” Mac said. “I didn’t see her. And I didn’t talk to her.”
“Are you charging Mac with something?” Josh asked, sending Mac a look that I knew meant Stop talking.
Michelle shook her head. “No. Not now I’m not.”
“Well, then, if you don’t have anything else to share, this conversation is over.”
“For now,” she said.
“If you need to talk to Mac again, please call my office,” Josh said in the same conversational tone of voice he might have used to comment on the weather. “I think you have my number.” He moved to show her out.
Michelle looked at me for a long moment. “Good night, Sarah,” she said, and then she left.
Josh stood in the hallway watching through the glass panel in the front door until Michelle pulled away from the curb. Then he came back inside. Mac was still standing in the middle of the room, arms folded on the top of his head. I had dropped down onto one of the stools at the counter. Josh picked up the glass of root beer he’d set on my coffee table and took a long drink.
“So what happens now?” Mac asked. He was restlessly shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“What happens now is you’re in my office at nine thirty tomorrow morning,” Josh said, gesturing at him with the almost-empty glass, “because I want to hear about your entire day today, every tiny detail from the moment you got out of bed until right now.”
Mac nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“And for future reference, when I tell you not to talk, don’t talk.” There was a warning in his gaze.
“I didn’t hurt Erin. I didn’t even see her.”
Josh held up a hand to stop Mac from saying anything more. “I believe you,” he said, reaching over to set the glass on the counter. “It doesn’t change anything. Don’t volunteer any information unless I tell you to.”
“Thank you for coming, Josh,” I said, sliding off the stool.
He smiled and once again I saw the kid who had climbed trees with me in my grandmother’s backyard and who had worn a Darkwing Duck cape every day for one entire summer. “You and your friends keep my life interesting, Sarah,” he said. He glanced at Mac. “Nine thirty,” he repeated. And then he left.
I went into the kitchen. I’d remembered that I had half a pan of white chocolate bark that Rose had made and given me that morning. I took the lid off the container, took out a triangle of the candy studded with dried cranberries and pistachios, popped it in my mouth and set the tin on the coffee table. I knew I wouldn’t be stopping at just one piece. I sat on the sofa, pulling up my legs and wrapping one arm around my knees.
Mac sat down in the chair again. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in all of this,” he said. His right hand was pulled into a fist and he kept smacking it absently with the palm of his other hand.
“I’m sorry Erin is dead,” I said.
“I don’t understand what she was doing here. I told you, she sided with Leila’s parents in everything. I haven’t spoken to her in a long time.” He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed softly. “I still have to find out if anything has changed with Leila.” He stood up and I got to my feet as well. “I have to go,” he said, reaching for his sweatshirt.
“I’ll be there early to open the shop,” I said. I rubbed a dab of white chocolate off the end of my finger. “You can take the SUV to Josh’s office.”
He almost smiled. “I have the truck now, remember? And my feet work, too. But thank you. Thank you for the offer. Thank you for listening. Thank you for calling Josh.”
“Anytime,” I said. “Whatever you need.” For a moment we just stood there, looking at each other, and I had the sense that we were moving toward each other, so slowly the motion couldn’t be seen.
Then Elvis jumped down from the top of his tower. Whatever had been happening or about to happen between Mac and me passed.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “Sleep well.”
I nodded. “You, too.” I closed the door behind him and then bent down and picked up Elvis, who was at my feet now. “You have lousy timing,” I told him. He nuzzled my hand, found another dab of chocolate on the edge of my thumb and began to lick it away. Clearly he didn’t care about his timing at all.
• • •
I was just finishing breakfast the next morning—a scrambled egg with spinach, tiny tomatoes and mushrooms over an English muffin, plus lots of coffee—when I heard a knock at the door. “That’s probably Rose,” I said to Elvis, who was sitting on a stool next to me at the counter, mooching bits of egg.
But it wasn’t Rose. It was Nick.
“Hi,” he said. Nick Elliot filled the doorway. He was over six feet tall with the wide shoulders of an NFL lineman, although hockey was actually his sport. Nick was clean-shaven but his sandy hair was due for a trim. He was dressed in a blue golf shirt and black pants with a multitude of pockets—his work clothes, I knew.
“You have two minutes,” I said, turning and heading back over to the kitchen counter. I knew what was coming and I wanted my coffee.
“Two minutes for what?” he asked as he followed me, closing the door behind us.
I picked up my cup and sat down on the stool again, back to the counter this time. Elvis turned around and studied Nick, his furry black head cocked to one side.
“For your speech, the one in which you tell me to be careful and to not get involved in Michelle’s case.” I took a sip of coffee and smiled at him over the rim of the cup. “Oh, and how Rose and the Angels shouldn’t get involved, either, because that’s gone so well every other time you’ve made that suggestion.”
He had the good grace to blush. “Am I really that predictable?”
“You’re that pigheaded,” I said.
Ever since they’d taken on their first case Nick had been butting heads with Rose, Liz, Mr. P. and Charlotte—who was his mother. He thought detective work was too dangerous and the four of them didn’t have a clue what they were doing, despite the fact that Mr. P. had met all the requirements of the state to be a licensed private investigator and Rose was about to. Not to mention that they all had lots of life experience.
Nick was a former paramedic who was now an investigator for the state medical examiner’s office. He was a smart, well-educated man, but he had blinders when it came to his mother and her friends. I think what he really wanted was for them to just bake cookies and organize walkathons for new playground equipment for the elementary school, not ferret out clues and chase down suspects.
“You know Mac has a connection to the woman that was killed last night,” I continued.
“I wasn’t going to give you a speech,” he said, a note of defensiveness in his voice. “And I wasn’t going to say anything about Rose and my mother and their cohorts. I know that ship has sailed.”
“I’m glad you get that,” I said. The amusement I felt at his discomfort had to be showing on my face.
“I just want you to be careful.”
There was something stuck in his hair, just above his left ear. I slipped off the stool, reached up and grabbed a Cheerio. “Why do you have breakfast cereal in your hair?” I asked.
Nick leaned his head forward and gave it a shake. “Crap! I thought I got it all.”
“Some new styling product I don’t know about?” I teased.
He laughed. “No. It’s actually Liam’s fault.”
I folded my arms over my chest, happy to talk about something other than investigations and dead bodies. “Oh, this is going to be good, I can tell. Elaborate.”