I turned, my doubt about solving this case rising.
I walked into Detective Talon.
I stumbled back, apologizing as he reached out,
steadying me with a gentle hand.
“Thank you,” I said awkwardly, shocked by the
comfort I found in his touch.
There came a lengthening silence as he stared down
at me. His handsome face folded in, brooding, deep into a frown.
I looked at him in bewilderment. “Is something
wrong?”
“It’s the way Lipschitz talks of you. It isn’t
right and proper,” he said. “You do know he was once in love with you. And
dammit, he quite possibly still is.”
Such concern, he must have written the Bintliff
note. “There was never anything between us—why dammit?”
“A detective on a power trip, a vulnerable
suspect, and an axe to grind—never ye mind, I suspect it’s better if I say no
more,” he said, his voice steady but worried.
His assertion intrigued me on many levels. Though
loosely exercised, it was a breach of the age-old police code of silence. Even
when guilty of wrongdoing, cops don’t talk bad about other cops.
“I never encouraged Lipschitz,” I said. “He was
too busy calling me bastard baby to
realize that at the time. You should know something else. I had nothing to do
with Otto’s death.”
“No mind, I already knew you weren’t involved,” he
said. “Though it makes no sense to me, you trying to persuade your grandfather
by solving Otto’s murder.”
I raised my brows, figuring he had learned this
from Leland. “I need his blessing.”
“Answer me this: does the grape ask the yeast what
type of wine it should be?”
Puzzled by this man, by how he talked in riddles,
I stepped back, clumsily turning on an ankle. He didn’t steady me this time,
didn’t touch me. It shamed me how much I had wanted him to. “I find you so
confusing,” I said self-conscious, a bit shy.
“I cannae fault you for that. I’m up to my neck in
confusion. There is no rhyme or reason in why I’m willing to break a dozen
department rules to discuss this case with you.”
“Don’t risk your career for me,” I said too
hastily, too coolly, as one does when skeptical, for police officers carried
another burden, the binding pressure of their code of conduct.
He picked up on my doubt and gave me a half-amused
smile. “My career will survive, though my ego may not be as blessed.”
I forced myself to say, “Ego complicates things.”
“Aye, while laughing last and loudest. Petulant
thing, ego.”
He continued to look at me with his dramatic eyes.
I saw the soulfulness in them and thought back to his anger over Lipschitz’s
contempt for me. I wondered why it bothered him, why he felt the need to write
the anonymous Bintliff note. Surely, he had more to worry about than me. He was
a man of contrasts; I could see that now. The dangerous detective with a
discerning stare, concerned stranger abhorring the ways of a hateful partner. I
smiled, oddly becoming more at ease with him. But there was something baffling,
even staggering about the suddenness of this change. I was entering dangerous
grounds, I knew I was, but still I said, “Maybe yours just got out of bed on
the wrong side.”
“Innuendo?”
“No,” I said, but it had been, and I turned cold
all over at my boldness. I was acting harebrained. It had to stop. “Talon, why
are you doing this? I’m more often the friend than lover.”
