Murder 101 Part 5

I thought for a moment. Getting grilled about a murder could be mitigated by eating a big burger. I accepted, knowing exactly where I would take him.

Eight.

It was a Tuesday night and Sadie's, right in the center of town, wasn't crowded. The hostess gave us a table near the bar but tucked in a corner of the restaurant. She took our wet raincoats and our drink order at the same time.

Crawford motioned to me. "What would you like?"

I thought a moment. "I'll have a vodka martini, straight up, with a twist."

The hostess looked at him. "A gla.s.s of cabernet. Thank you."

Cabernet, I thought. I would have pegged him as a draft beer kind of guy. You never know.

He clasped his hands together in the center of the table. "I'm sorry I just showed up out of the blue."

I shrugged, like I was accustomed to homicide detectives in my kitchen every night of the week. "Not a problem. Do you live around here?"

He looked down. "Manhattan."

Hmmm. Depending on where he lived in Manhattan, he was at least forty-five minutes from home. We sat in silence until the hostess reappeared with our drinks. I was relieved when she returned; I could cease examining the painting next to our table like I was an art curator and focus on my martini instead. The uncomfortable silence would be eliminated by the slurping of alcoholic beverages. I made considerable work of preparing my drink for the first sip-swirling the vodka, taking out the twist, twisting it again. I took a drink and tried not to sigh aloud at how good it tasted. "So, what did you want to ask me?" I inquired.

He reached in the pocket of his jacket and took out his notebook. After flipping a few pages, he looked at me. The close proximity allowed me to study his face. Green eyes, angular features, and short, brown, cop hair. One ear stuck out a little bit more than the other. At this late hour, a slight stubble was beginning to appear on his jawline and under his nose, but not enough to make him swarthy. He cleared his throat. "Did you know Kathy Miceli well?"

Hadn't we done this already, like, fourteen times? I guess they didn't take the ginkgo biloba advice. I took a slug of my drink. If I was going to get grilled, I might as well be baked. "Sort of. Her mother was a few years ahead of me in school, but we overlapped at the college for two years. I saw Gianna a few times while Kathy was here, so having that connection made us a little more familiar."

"Did you know her boyfriend?"

"Vince?" I asked, and winced. "A little."

He looked at me questioningly. "What's up with Vince?"

"Vince seems like a jerk." I stopped there.

"What kind of jerk?"

I thought about how to phrase it. Vince went to Joliet, but spent a lot of time on our campus doing his Stanley Kowalski impression, screaming Kathy's name outside of her dorm room, either drunk or stoned. That's what I had heard, anyway. "He's possessive, crude, and coa.r.s.e. She was a nice girl who deserved a nice boyfriend. She never seemed incredibly happy when they were together." And you should be happy if you're in love, I thought to myself. I was nothing if not gifted in hindsight.

He jotted a few notes in his notebook. I guess a repeat of "professor thinks Vince is a jerk . . . knew Kathy a little bit." How many times was he going to write that down? The waitress appeared with menus, and we studied them a tad too intently given there were only about six choices for dinner. I settled on the bacon burger, figuring I would need my strength if I had to walk everywhere. Crawford ordered the crab cakes and told the waitress that he wanted to see a wine list.

"This calls for conjecture," he admitted, taking a sip of his wine, "but do you think that he is capable of violence?"

"Do you?"

He looked back at me. "I asked you."

I thought for a moment. "I can't say. Who knows? If someone had asked me a year ago if my husband of seven years had had a secret vasectomy and was capable of having not one but four affairs during the course of our marriage, I would have said no, but I learned the hard way." I took a deep breath and laughed ruefully. "Did I say that out loud?"

He nodded and smiled. The waitress came back to the table with the wine list. "Do you like red or white, or does it matter?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter. Whatever you like." I took a sip of my martini. I guess grading papers this evening would be out of the question, between the martini and the wine.

He chose a nice red wine that I would have chosen myself. Either the city of New York was picking up the tab, or cops got paid better than I thought; it was on the high side of the price list. He looked down, seemingly unable to make eye contact. He focused on his place mat. "How do you have a secret vasectomy, by the way?"

I laughed. "Why? You in the market for one?"

"n.o.body to keep it a secret from," he said, and drained his winegla.s.s.

That was good information to have. "You wait until your wife goes on a visiting professors.h.i.+p to Ireland for six weeks, and you schedule it. She comes home, your b.a.l.l.s look none the worse for wear, and n.o.body is the wiser. Particularly the wife." I put my napkin on the table. We were now into my "loose lips sink s.h.i.+ps" portion of the evening. "And with that confession, it seems like a good time to visit the ladies' room. Excuse me." I pushed my chair back from the table. He stood as I departed.

I went into the restroom and locked myself in a stall. I put the seat down and sat for a moment. I didn't have to go to the bathroom; I just needed a break. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and hit speed dial #1 for Max. She answered after four rings, out of breath.

"It's me. Did I take you away from someone or something?"

"I was running on my treadmill."

Liar. She doesn't run, and she doesn't have a treadmill. "Hey, you'll never guess where I am and who I'm with."

"You're right. I won't. Just tell me."

"Remember Detective Crawford?"

Her sharp intake of breath confirmed that she did.

"He came by my house right after I got home from school and said he wanted to ask me some questions. Then, he asked me to go to dinner. What do you think that means?"

"He was hungry and working overtime?"

I could tell she wasn't into this conversation. I would remember this the next time she called me from the shoe store looking for advice on two pairs of Jimmy Choo pumps. "Thanks for your help."

"Maybe he'd be a good Rebound Man," she said.

"I don't need a Rebound Man," I reminded her for the fiftieth time. Hey . . . we're breaking up," I lied, slamming my cell phone against the side of the stall. I knew where this conversation was headed. "Gotta go."

I unlocked the door of the stall and faced the huge wall of mirrors. I guess it would have helped to visit the restroom earlier in the evening, judging from my sad appearance, but what was done was done. I wet a paper towel and wiped the mascara away from under my eyes and ran the towel over my face.

I whispered to my reflection in the mirror, even though there was n.o.body else in the bathroom. "Did I just say 'b.a.l.l.s' in front of the detective?" I pushed my hair back from my face, hoping to achieve some kind of tousled coif instead of a rain-soaked rat's nest.

I had been having such a good time that I realized that I had not told him about my "meeting" with Peter Miceli. I was sure that I would get a lecture for not telling him first thing, but I could deal with that. I took a deep breath and left the bathroom.

When I returned to the table, the wine was there, as was our food. My burger looked bloated and obscene next to his three crab cakes and rice pilaf.

"Wine?" he asked, and held the bottle aloft over my clean gla.s.s.

"Sure." I started cutting my burger into smaller pieces, gave up, and put a big hunk in my mouth.

He flipped through his notebook again. "Was it common knowledge on campus that the Micelis were a Mob family?"

I thought for a moment. "It's always been rumored but n.o.body ever knew for sure. There was the thing about Peter being involved in that strip club a few years back, but I guess regular businessmen can own them? Or am I being naive?" I blushed as I flashed back to my Joyce-reading lap-dancer comment. "But it was the same way fifteen years ago when I was in school with Kathy's mother. We knew, but didn't discuss it." I took a sip of my wine. "Is that part of the investigation?" He didn't answer. "If you tell me, you'll have to kill me?"

He laughed. "Something like that."

I s.h.i.+fted in my chair, ready to tell him about Peter. "I have to tell you something."

He continued eating but looked up at me while he chewed.

"Um, I went shopping with my friend on Sat.u.r.day, and when we came back, Peter Miceli was in my kitchen." I tried to make it sound like a common occurrence, but we both knew that it wasn't. I let out a ridiculous-sounding giggle.

He dropped his fork onto his plate, making a small racket. "What? Why didn't you tell me this on Sat.u.r.day, or at the very least, as soon as I got to your house tonight?"

Because I'd had two pounds of chicken salad in my mouth? "Is it important?"

He rubbed his hand over his face. "Uh, yes," he said, as if I were an idiot. "What did he say?"

I wasn't sure how to phrase this part, so I just blurted out, "I think he's going to find out who did this and kill them." I grimaced. "I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner."

He was alone with his thoughts for a minute before he asked me to recount exactly what happened, word for word, or as best as I could remember. I told him about everything, including the weird bear hug, forehead kiss, and face holding at the end. He wrote everything down and continued writing even after I had finished.

He seemed to have lost his appet.i.te; he took his napkin off his lap and placed it next to his plate. "You have to . . . Listen, you . . ." he stammered before getting his point across, "you have to tell me everything that happens relative to this case. Peter Miceli dropping by is major. That is not something you should handle on your own."

I think I understood that now. I nodded, contrite. "I'm sorry," I said again.

"It's OK. You just have to keep me in the loop on everything." He put his napkin back on his lap. "Everything."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, eating. I was waiting for the part where he would tell me why he asked me out to dinner and why he and Wyatt just didn't come to my office to ask me the questions, but that never happened. We finished, declined dessert, and he asked for the check.

The waitress came back and dropped it on the table. I made a move to pick it up, but he was faster. "I asked you." He put a credit card on top of the check and left it on the corner of the table. The credit card was upside down so I couldn't tell if I was guest of the police department or Detective Crawford. The waitress came back and swooped it up.

"Now I get to ask you a few questions," I said, emboldened by a martini and half a bottle of wine and trying to lighten the mood.

He clasped his hands again, and said, "Shoot."

"Mets or Yankees?"

"Mets."

"Rangers or Islanders?"

"Rangers."

"Paper or plastic?"

"Paper."

"Married?"

He hesitated for just a split second. "No."

"Kids?" In this day and age, the two were not mutually exclusive.

"Two. Twin girls. Not identical. Sixteen."

"Do you live uptown or downtown?"

"Uptown. Upper West Side. Ninety-seventh and Riverside. That's where I grew up."

So, he wasn't that far out of his way. As the crow flies, or if you swam down the river, we only lived about twenty miles apart. The waitress returned with the credit-card receipt. He signed it and stood up. Unlike me, he didn't have to consult a tip card and a global-positioning system to figure out the gratuity.

He stood and touched the back of my chair. "Ready?" He put his hand lightly on my back and steered me to the coatroom. We got our raincoats and left the restaurant. I went out to the sidewalk and turned my face up to the mist that was falling. He stood directly under the streetlight and put his hand up to smooth his hair. I caught a glimpse of a very big gun on his right hip under the same tweed blazer that he was wearing the day he first came to my office. I thought about asking if that was his gun or was he just happy to see me, but I thought better of it and kept my mouth shut.

"I think I'll walk home," I said.

"It's raining and"-he lifted his sleeve to look at his watch-"nine-thirty at night. I'm not letting you walk."

"It's kind of like my new hobby," I said. "You know, no car and all." I started down the hill in front of the restaurant, more than a little drunk and hoping to walk it off.

He caught up with me and grabbed my arm gently. "You're not walking."

"Hey, this is Dobbs Ferry, not . . ." I searched my brain for the name of a bad neighborhood, but couldn't come up with one, ". . . somewhere else. I'll be fine," I insisted.

He looked at me for a long time and finally relented. "All right. Thanks for dinner and answering my questions." In a move that surprised me, he pulled my hood up over my head and pulled the zipper up to my neck. He held on to the collar of my raincoat for a split second longer than I would have expected. If I hadn't been almost drunk, I would have been able to discern what the look on his face meant. In my addled state, it looked like he was going to give me a noogie.

"No, thank you" I said. "This was much better than what I had planned to do to myself tonight." I mentally smacked myself in the head. Stupid. Sounded like I was going to eat and m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e or something equally idiotic.

His car, a brown, police-issue Crown Victoria, was parked perpendicular to the curb a storefront down from the restaurant. He opened the door and put one leg in. "Thanks, again."

"s.e.xy car," I remarked to myself as I waved and continued down the hill. I heard the car start and go into reverse. I turned around to wave again and saw that he had put the removable flas.h.i.+ng light on top of the car. The ground in front me turned yellow, then red, as the flasher on top of the car started revolving. He put the car in drive and followed me slowly down the hill. We continued like this for about two-tenths of a mile before he rolled down the pa.s.senger-side window. "Do you want to get in now?"

"Nope. Thanks, though!" I called and plodded, in my decidedly uns.e.xy, rubber-soled clogs, down the street toward my block. I turned into my street and realized that I had another quarter mile of this humiliation and now, in front of the prying eyes of all of my neighbors. I stopped, and he pulled up alongside me, opening the pa.s.senger-side door. I got in. He reached across me, but instead of acting out my fantasy and kissing me like I had never been kissed, he pulled the seat belt out of the holder and strapped me in.

"Thanks," he said.

"Are you always this controlling?" I asked.

"Are you always this stubborn?" He drove to my house and pulled up in front.

"You have my card, right?" he asked. "In case you remember anything else?" he asked pointedly, referring to what was now known as the "Peter Miceli incident" in my mind.

I nodded. "What should I be thinking about?"

"Anything. Where you were when your car was taken, who you saw, anything about Kathy . . . anything."

"Got it."