Like right now.
I picked my coffee mug up. We drank in silence.
“I’m not out to hurt you and I never was, Clare,” Matteo said after a long pause. “I just didn’t get it, you know? I do now.” He met my eyes. “I do…right now.”
I was a little taken aback. Just when I was angry with him, he said something like that — which was about as close to an apology for his past indescretions as I would ever get.
“Maybe you can help me, then. Help me find out the truth about Bruce,” I said slowly, hopefully. “These murders, if that’s what they are, and Quinn’s suspicions about Bruce…I can’t sort it all out myself…Matt, they’re like dark clouds hanging over what could be…well, what I think could be something very important for me.”
Matteo shifted impatiently, then gulped his coffee. “I’m not a cop. You’d do better getting your buddy Quinn to help.”
“You and I did pretty good the last time…with Anabelle Hart. We solved a real crime, didn’t we? We put a real killer in jail. That was something.”
Matt shook his head. “We got lucky, Clare. We could just as easily have ended up in jail for breaking and entering, or for impersonating federal officers — and need I remind you that you almost got yourself killed?”
I sat back in my chair and ran my finger along the edge of the warm coffee cup.
“You need Quinn,” said Matteo.
“I can’t go to Quinn. I can’t trust him with this.”
I paused, then decided it was time to come completely clean.
“His marriage isn’t going well, Matt…and he was telling me about it one night, and I think he might have been interested in seeing me…or at least I think he was thinking about it…before I got involved with Bruce.”
Matteo snorted. “I told you the man wanted you.”
“Christ, I didn’t say that!”
“You said he seemed interested. What about you? Were you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Honestly.”
“Okay, I like Quinn. He laughs at my jokes, and I usually enjoy his morose sense of humor and I find him a little bit sexy — in a rumpled, hard-boiled, film noir sort of way. And, okay, we’ve been flirting pretty heavily with each other since we first met. And it’s probably Quinn, now that I think about it, who helped me start to believe that I should give the opposite sex a chance again — ”
“Clare.”
“What?”
“This is way more information than I need to hear.”
I threw up my hands. “Quinn has too much baggage. His marriage is falling apart, he loves his children and is clearly ripped up about his unresolved feelings for his wife. Anyway, I’d never get involved in a tangled mess like that and he knows it. But I also think he wasn’t thrilled to hear I was dating anybody again, let alone Bruce, and I really think Quinn’s grasping at straws where Bruce is concerned.”
“I see,” said Matt.
“I’d rather trust you with this…investigation…or whatever you want to call it. Helping Bruce is what I want to call it.”
Matteo smiled. “I’m flattered.”
“Why?”
“Because you feel you can trust me. That makes me want to help you, but the truth is you still need Quinn. He’s been investigating these crimes for weeks, he’s talked to people we don’t even know about, and he has all the facts at his disposal.”
I sat straighter and leaned across the table.
“Quinn doesn’t know everything,” I whispered. “I did a little investigating on my own. Last night, while Bruce was asleep, I logged onto his computer and read his e-mails.”
“You logged onto the man’s computer and read his e-mails? Without his knowing, I take it?”
“Of course.”
“Jesus Christ, Clare, you’ve got nerve…no wonder you found out about Daphne and me. And I thought I was so careful.”
“You were flaunting her, Matt. Even Madame knew…”
“Mother knew?”
“Yes, but she forgave you. I doubt she ever forgave Daphne, though.”
It was sad, really. Madame and Daphne had been friends for years before Daphne made a play for her best friend’s son.
The direction of the conversation was obviously making Matt uncomfortable, so he changed it.
“Clare, if you logged onto his computer, that means you had some suspicions of your own.”
“No,” I lied. (Okay so I’d had a moment of doubt after I saw the model number on his HP DeskJet, but the truth was I wanted to look for anything that might contradict the picture Quinn was trying to paint of Bruce, and I had.)
“So what did you find out from all of your investigating?”
“I think the key to this whole thing is Sahara McNeil. She was someone Bruce hadn’t seen in years, not since he was first married. He didn’t even know she was in New York until Cappuccino Connection night — ”
“And then he found out Sahara was living in the city and he killed her,” concluded Matt.
“That’s not where I was going.”
“That’s where Quinn would go. And what about the subway victim? And Inga Berg? Wasn’t Bruce connected to both of those women, too?”
I sat back and took a sip of my coffee.
“He was involved with both of those women, true,” I said. “But for a short time, and I think that’s just coincidence. New York is a big city, but the circles in some of these dating services are really quite small. Bruce admitted to me that he’d dated a lot of women since his divorce, including the dead women, but I’ll bet a lot of other men dated them, too. Inga, certainly. Ask Tucker. She used to yammer on about her dates every weekend. And Bruce told me Valerie liked the happy hour scene — and she was the one who told him about SinglesNYC.com, the on-line service where he met Inga.”
Matt folded his arms. He didn’t seem convinced yet, but at least he was still listening.
“So why do you think this Sahara person is the key?”
“Sahara McNeil sent Bruce an e-mail link to a web page. It was a promotional site for the art gallery where she worked. It’s in SoHo, a place called Death Row. Ever heard of it?”
Matt shook his head. “Never.”
“They don’t exactly specialize in our kind of thing,” I told him. “The tagline on the site said something about dealing in ‘violent art’ and ‘art inspired by lust, morbidity, and obsession.’”
Matt scratched his unshaven chin. “That’s creepy, but I still don’t exactly see where you’re going.”
“It seems possible to me that Sahara could have been done in by one of the artists her gallery represented. In fact — wait just a second, I’ll be right back.”
I rose and went to my bedroom, then returned with the Hello Kitty notepad I’d filled out on Cappuccino Connection night. I quickly leafed through the pink pages.
“One of the men I was screening for Joy called himself Mars. He had that intense kind of stalker look and said he was a painter. But the strangest thing was that he spent most of his time ogling Sahara McNeil. He kept repeating that he’d already made his ‘connection’ for the night, and Joy said he’d told her that, too, which was truly odd since she was only the second person he’d sat with. The first one was Sahara.”
“So you think that this Mars may have killed Sahara? And since he’s a painter he may have known her through this Death Row gallery thing?”
“It’s a place to start,” I replied, trying not to sound totally desperate.
Matt sat gazing in silence at the steam rising from his coffee cup.
“Look at the facts,” I said after a pause. “Valerie Lathem hasn’t been ruled a homicide. Inga Berg’s killer could have been any number of men, and Sahara McNeil…I think she’s the real key. If I can find other suspects, I’ll bring them to Quinn’s attention. I just need some ammunition to prove Bruce is being framed.”