“If you don’t even know where he works, what in the world did you talk about?” Lydia asked. “I was worried, so I got up every hour to check to see if you texted that you were home, which you had not.”
Color crept up Rory’s neck into her face, something that didn’t happen that often. “I’m sorry. I should have texted that I was fine. He’s so fascinating. Even his voice is sexy.” She pressed one hand to her hot cheek, feeling silly. “I’ve never, not one single time in my entire life that I can remember, felt this way about a man. I really like him.”
“I think we get that, Rory,” Cindy said. “I’m happy for you. We just want him to be a really good man before you go all in.”
“There are a lot ofnotnice ones,” Pam said.
“Tell us what you did,” Sally said.
“We talked about places he’d traveled that we both have in common. He really liked that I write songs by listening to birdsas well as the different surroundings I’m in when I’m writing. I could tell that he really understood and wasn’t just trying to placate me.”
“How could you tell?” Pam asked. “Men can be very deceiving when they want something, Rory.”
Rory looked around at her friends, feeling a glow of happiness. They were being protective of her. She felt that vibe. They weren’t being mean or trying to put her off Gideon. They wanted her to be cautious. They understood she wasn’t naturally trusting, because they’d been around her these last few months and had observed her. This was what it was like to have friends. She felt protective of them, and they returned those feelings. They wanted her to continue to be cautious now that she’d found someone she was attracted to, and they were right. She had to be careful.
“I know this sounds kind of crazy, but working at a bar for as long as I have and being around so many customers telling me whoppers, I’ve learned to get a good feel for the difference between lies and truth. I hear it. Gideon doesn’t give much away with facial expressions. His eyes warm up, but he’s stoic. I canfeelthe truth versus a lie. I might be wrong, because I want him to be the real deal.”
“Give it time,” Lydia advised. “You aren’t committing to anything by seeing him.”
“We’re slammed at work, and I told him that. It isn’t like I can go on dates with him for the next few days. It’s work at night and sleep during the day. I’m not comfortable enough yet to meet him at his place or to have him come to mine. He was very sweet about it. He said he’d walk me back to the apartment, and when I had a day off, we could go to an early dinner. He knows a restaurant on the wharf that’s close. He didn’t push or act upset at all.”
Pam raised an eyebrow. “A little too good to be true?”
“Pam.”Cindy hissed a reprimand. “We don’t know that. Let’sgive the man a chance. There are decent men in the world. My husband was a good man. Gideon might be as well. Besides, we need to talk to her about the other thing that happened today.” She glanced down at Ellen, who was coloring. Cindy made all kinds of hand gestures pointing toward the child.
Rory raised her eyebrows and sipped at her coffee. The circle of women instantly sobered. “What’s up?”
“The police were back today,” Cindy said, “but it thankfully didn’t have anything to do with us.” Again, she glanced at Ellen. “Someone who lived in one of the apartments on the main floor um... took his... um...” She broke off.
Lydia took up the narrative. “S-U-I-C-I-D-E,” she said, spelling out the word. “It was Dustin Bartlet. Fortunately, it had nothing to do with us, and no one came to question us. None of us live on the main floor.”
“It was weird that so many cops were here,” Pam pointed out.
“I do feel bad about all the awful things I thought about him,” Cindy said. “I could have been nicer. He just seemed like he was always leering. Was he? Did we imagine it?”
“Once in a while, it occurred to me,” Rory ventured, “that the four of them—Harvey, Ret, Dustin and Jarrod—didn’t want to get caught talking together, so they said idiotic things to get us to go away.” Now she felt guilty too.
“I guess you never know how someone is really feeling,” Sally said. “As many times as they made comments, none of them ever made a real pass, at least not at me.”
The other women shook their heads.
They hadn’t at Rory. None of them had come to the bar. The men knew the women gathered in the lounge, and they had never joined them. There had been opportunities for any of them to harass the women individually, but they hadn’t taken them. She should have asked herself why.
She took another sip of coffee. “I’m a bartender. It’s my job to read people. I failed that one epically.”
“Rory, what he did isn’t on you,” Cindy said. “We didn’t know him that well. Just enough to say hi and hurry out of the room. That was about it.”
Because she hadn’t bothered to take the time, but then during her travels she rarely, if ever, had. It was these women and the ones at her place of work who had changed everything for her. Changed her. Opened her up to new possibilities. To Gideon. And yet even with him, a man she was interested in, she hadn’t asked about his injury. She’d been closed off for so long, she’d forgotten how to talk to people.
“Where’s Janice?” Rory asked, concerned that she wasn’t with them.
Pam looked around and lowered her voice even more. “A friend of hers called and said it was important she meet him regarding the D-E-A-T-H here. She should be back any minute.”
“For a safe apartment building, things are a little dicey here right now,” Sally said.
“I’ve lived here nearly two years,” Pam said. “It’s always been quiet here. In fact, if you don’t count the fabulous four creepers—rest in peace, Dustin; and they’re really more annoying than anything else—then it was quiet until the detective was shot.”
“Do you think someone from our building had something to do with it, or an outsider?” Lydia asked.
