“I think it’s a definite possibility. And I was thinking...”
“Yes?”
“Well, if you want to figure out why Darke is coming to the hotel, we could try to follow him next Tuesday. That’s risky, and it depends on our schedules, but beyond that, it’s still a few days from now. In the meantime, if you want to understand why someone’s doing something, you need to understand them. That means finding out what they’re like. Where they live, where they go, who they see.”
“We don’t know where he lives, though. The San Francisco address in the hotel registry is bogus.”
I leaned closer. “But wedoknow there’s a chance that Darke buys opera records somewhere in town. And I researched that. There’s a record store on Capitol Hill that boasts having the best selection of classical music on vinyl in the city.”
“All I know is Spin Cycle on Broadway.”
“This is smaller. Tenor Records. I think it’s all classical and jazz.”
“Whoa! Genius,” Daniel said. “Should we go there? Is that what you’re saying? You’re agreeing to partner up with me?”
“Justfor sleuthing purposes,” I clarified.
“Strictly business between coworkers,” he agreed. “This has nothing to do with fate.”
“No fate,” I confirmed.
“And no flirting, no touching.”
The way he said this, it was almost a question. Was he teasing me? Maybe I was imagining it. I was trying to think of a response when his foot bumped against mine under the table. And then the side of his leg.
“That was an accident,” he argued when I glanced at his face.
But he didn’t sound sorry, and he wasn’t moving. His leg was warm and heavy. Tingles erupted from the place we were joined. I should have moved away.
I didn’t.
After a moment, I picked up my fork to dig into my hash browns. But when I looked down, instead of potatoes, a half-eaten piece of pie sat in front of me. Daniel had swapped plates.
He smiled at me with his eyes. “Misdirection, Birdie. It gets you every time.”
“I like detective stories—and detectives. Brainy is the new sexy.”
—Irene Adler,Sherlock(2012)
10
Daniel was right: the pie was good. Like, life-changing, I-just-found-religion good. How in the world had I avoided it all this time? No wonder my mom had eaten it as if it were nutrition personified.
In fact, I was still thinking about it when I took an early ferry into the city the next day. I was also thinking about Daniel’s leg touching mine under the table. I couldn’t figure out why it felt more taboo than what we did in the back seat. Maybe I was just on a mystery high. Or a pie high.
Maybe both.
After daydreaming my way through a short bus ride from the downtown ferry terminal, I ended up in front of Elliott Bay Book Company in Capitol Hill. I’d been here before, and it was an excellent bookstore—two expansive stories with lots of light spilling over crisscrossed beams, wood floors, and row after row of cedar shelves. Any other day, I’d spend hours browsing. But I was headed to the café in the back of the store, where I was supposed to be meeting Daniel. I’d given him my phone number last night under the heady influence of Rainier cherries and brown-sugar crumble, and we’d been texting to coordinate our plans. When I looked around, I worried that I’d misunderstood.
Then I spotted him at the counter.
Like me, he was wearing the hotel’s required “uniform” of black pants and white shirt—it was two hours before we both had to clock in—but instead of the green Cascadia zip-up he wore when driving the hotel van, he had on a slim leather jacket with a diagonal zipper that clung to lines of lean muscle on his arms and chest. Inside my head, I had a brief, hallucinatory flash of that chest without a shirt on and quickly banished it.
As if he could sense me, he turned around and his eyes immediately found mine.
“Hello, Nora.”
I glanced behind me.
