So I fed the dogs and hooked them up for their morning walk, this time keeping an eye out for the guy in the flat cap. Now that he’d drawn my attention, there was something about him that was familiar.
You think so, too? How long has he been hanging around?
On the return toward the apartment, we approached McPhee’s from the south, and I caught movement at the far side of the vestibule. The guy in the flat cap? I stopped, but Bear was on it. He lurched and started barking, and Lemon leapt to join him.
I couldn’t keep the dogs from pulling me a few more feet to seewho was huddled at the door. I had a brief burst of hope that it was Sicily before I realized it was Detective Aycock, leaning. “Good morning,” he said to the dogs.
“Hush, Bear!” I said. “Lemon,down. Sorry.”
“No worries.”
“They’re just really protective,” I said.
As the dogs settled at my feet between us, Aycock raised his eyes to me. “They are, indeed. They’d do anything for you, wouldn’t they?”
“Mostly the one thing,” I said uncertainly. I would have specified that the one thing was tear out yourthroat, except I didn’t think this was the time to make that joke. “They’re all talk.”
“But they’re not the only ones who would do anything for you,” Aycock said.
Were we talking about Alex? Down the street, I saw Ned coming along the sidewalk toward us, but not near enough to derail this conversation.
I realized I was trembling, and that I’d been quiet for too long.
“You don’t want to know why I’m here?” he said.
“Why? Why are you…?”
“I’ve been to see Mr. Hartnett’s sister,” he said, grim-faced. “And she reports that her brother left her home on Wednesday afternoon and didn’t return. And that she has reason—quite a good reason—to believe he might have been coming to seeyou.”
“But I didn’t. See him.” I sounded wobbly, so I added, “I’m telling you the truth.”
“I would hope so.”
Ned had ducked under the police tape into the alley. Coward.
“Have you checked with Ned? His bandmate? I thought Joeymusthave gone back to Heather’s Wednesday night,” I said. “But maybe he went to Ned’s. They go to a lot of shows together. He might have crashed on Ned’s couch.”
Aycock’s eyes narrowed. “You said back to Heather’s. Er, Mrs. Varma’s house. Back there on Wednesday.” His voice had shifted tothat notebook-open tone. “Whybackto her place, Miss Devine? If you haven’t been in touch with him, what made you think he ever left the Varma house?”
“Because… because, I mean,” I stumbled. Because I’d seen him on video that wasn’t supposed to exist? “Because I assumed he was going to work all week, right? The trampoline place. And going… back.”
Yeah, I know what I sounded like, all right? Shut up.
Aycock stared at me a long moment, then finally shifted his attention to the pub. “Black curtains at the pub today?”
“Um, what?”
“The pub, draped in mourning? You’re not opening the pub today? In memoriam, as it were?”
“I don’t actually work here. Alex will— Wait, what time is it?”
“Almost eleven,” Aycock said without looking at his watch.
“He must be running late,” I said. It wasn’t like Alex, but I didn’t know if Aycock knew that.
“It’s a good thing, then,” Aycock said, a little tweak of a smile at his lips that I didn’t trust.
“What is?”
