“And I also don’t know why they’d want to scare you,” he added. “You’re not involved in this. All you did was follow Gio Abruzzi from the Body Shop to Sambuca one day last week, and then draw Izzy Spataro’s attention by wandering into the back of the restaurant looking for the ladies’ room. That doesn’t seem like enough reason for them to try to scare you off.”
“I appreciate that,” I said sincerely. “Megan is one of yours, I assume?”
His face turned blank, in a rather disconcerting way. “One of… who, exactly?”
“Undercover cop,” I said. “Your counterpart at the Body Shop.”
“Oh.” His face cleared. I wondered what he’d thought I’d meant. “Yeah. Megan Slater. Detective in Vice.”
“So even if she noticed me tailing her home the other day—or to your place, rather—she wouldn’t have any reason to object.”
He shook his head, and this time he looked amused. “Not with red paint, for sure.”
“I don’t think Sal has noticed me, and the only other person I’ve been in touch with lately has been Mrs. Miller, in the other side of the duplex from Nick. But I don’t see her doing this, and besides, why would she? I didn’t kill him. I just found the body.”
“She would have smelled him herself soon enough,” Mendoza said cynically, “if you hadn’t found him. There could be something else going on?—”
“There could always be something else going on.”
He nodded, “—but barring that, I agree. This doesn’t seem like something she’d do.”
“My money’s on Kenny,” I said. “It’s exactly something he’d do. Although if I confront him about it, it’ll probably just make things worse.”
Mendoza turned back to the door. “It’s a shame you don’t have a proper security system. Then we might have been able to see who it was.”
“I have an alarm system,” I protested, as I followed him inside. “David put it in when we bought the place. Top-notch everything, including cost.”
“That’s a long time ago,” Mendoza said, which was a reminder I didn’t need, frankly. “Besides, I meant cameras. Motion-activated, cloud storage, the works. Feeding directly to your phone. You could have watched whoever did this walk right up to your door.”
I made a face. “Lovely.”
“It would have helped.” He shut and locked the front door and headed back down the hall toward the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s eat breakfast before it gets cold. There’s a cinnamon roll, too. We can share it.”
“You’re trying to bribe me with carbs,” I said, even as my heart did a little flutter at the idea of sharing. Ridiculous.
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Is it working?”
I made a face. “Absolutely.” Forty minutes on the elliptical. It’d be worth it.
* * *
By the time Mendoza left—after extracting a promise that I’d think about upgrading the security system—it was nearly nine o’clock. I gathered up Edwina, locked the house, and drove to the office.
Rachel was already there, and so was Zachary. They both looked up when I walked in, and I could see the concern on their faces. Rachel must have let Zachary know that something had happened, and he’d been sitting here worrying ever since.
“Let’s get this over with,” I told them both, and set Edwina down. She trotted over to Zachary, who scooped her up and clutched her to his stomach.
Then I told them everything. About finding Nick’s body, about the conversation with Mendoza and the visit to Jacquie’s apartment, about the mob connection and the undercover operation. At this point, I couldn’t remember who I’d told what, so I just let it all out. I ended with Kenny and Jacquie together at Fidelio’s, and about the paint on my door.
Zachary looked stricken. “I should have stayed. I should have—I don’t know, gone inside with him or something.”
“It wasn’t your job to go inside with him. We weren’t hired to be security. All we were supposed to do was determine whether he was cheating on Jacquie.”
“Did you notice anything?” Rachel asked. “When you left? Any cars lurking, anyone suspicious?”
Zachary shook his head miserably. “Nothing. Just a quiet street. The neighbor’s TV was on—I could see the flicker through her front window—but that’s it. Most of the houses were dark. No cars outside the duplex except Nick’s truck and the neighbor’s Pontiac. There were a lot of cars in a lot of driveways, but I wouldn’t have noticed if someone was sitting in one of them.”
No, of course not.
