Six-1
596 Words
Six
“We got an address on Gwynne’s friend yet?” Matt asked. He stopped in front of Alice’s desk and tossed a couple of folders onto her in box.
“I’m on hold for it.” Alice lowered the telephone to answer Matt. “You finished your peerless prose already?”
He arched his brows. “How long does it take to tell someone to get her ass back in here?”
“And I was afraid you wouldn’t take the diplomatic approach.” She shook her head and almost dropped the telephone.
Feet planted and arms crossed, Matt looked at her derisively. “We don’t have time to be diplomatic. Besides, thought you women wanted to be treated like equals?”
Alice arched her brows. “Your concept of equal treatment needs some fine tuning—yeah, I’m still here,” she spoke into the phone, then straightened and grabbed a pen so she could scribble an address across the file cover. “Got it.” She tossed the telephone in the cradle. “Let’s saddle up. We got an address.”
“About time.” Matt grabbed his suit jacket off his chair and shrugged it on as he followed her out the door. This time he knew better than to let confidence run ahead of him.
Good thing, too, he thought, when they were seated across from Caroline Ryan. First they had to connect the dots between Dani and “Blossom.” Then she told them they had missed Dani by thirty minutes. When Ryan told him where Dani had gone, he choked. Hayes on her ass, she takes time to go to— “Church?”
“People do,” Ryan, an attractive brunette with a slim silhouette starting to smudge with age, looked amused.
“People do a lot of things they shouldn’t,” Matt shot back.
“Like betraying a witness they were supposed to protect?”
Matt opened his mouth to deliver a blistering rebuttal, but Alice grabbed his arm and held on. He gave a grunt that was part disgusted and part “ouch.” Alice had long nails.
“If our people had been guarding Ms. Gwynne, we wouldn’t be here, Ms. Ryan.” Alice slipped smoothly into her “good cop” role to ask, as if they were friends sharing a cup of coffee, “How long have you known Dani?”
Ryan shrugged. “I didn’t know Dani. I met Blossom on line eight or nine months ago. Wish I’d known. I’ve been reading Dani Gwynne’s books for several years now.”
“Is she as funny as her books?”
Ryan nodded warily. “You read her books?”
“I just finished Can’t Call It Loving. I swear, I cried at the end.”
Matt gave a strangled protest, but Alice’s gambit worked. Ryan’s face softened. “Caroline and Daniel were great lovers—“ She stopped, was quiet for a bit, then said, “I’m afraid she’s set on doing this without your help.”
Matt gritted his teeth, said through them, “I’m sure Ms Gwynne has this romantic idea of beating the odds—“
“Murder isn’t very romantic, Inspector. Or have you forgotten that Blossom saw Dark Lord kill that woman who looked like her?”
He hadn’t forgotten because he hadn’t stopped to think what Dani had seen that night. Abruptly he was back in that room looking down at a brown blood stain with splatters all around. Where had she been while Hayes slit Peg Oliver’s throat?
He realized he had lost the thread of the conversation and gave himself a shake.
“—from Lord of the Rings. It’s her favorite book,” Ryan was saying. “You’d have to read it to understand.”
He fought back a burst of frustration. He didn’t want to understand. He just wanted to find her and stop Hayes. End of story. “Did she tell you where she was going? What she was going to do after church?” he cut in to ask.
Ryan’s feline smile held a warning of what was coming. He didn’t say anything to Ryan. He had his pride. Three minutes later, Matt slammed the car door shut and ground out, “The zoo?”
“Even Ryan didn’t think she meant it.”
“We still have to check it out.”
“At least it’s a nice day for it.”
The firing of the engine drowned out the substance of Matt’s growled response.
- Writer
