“That’s not the point! Orzo. I have everything I need to make orzo.”
“Okay, but what is the point?”
“Taking food in a covered dish I’ve prepared myself is a courtesy, and a sign of appreciation. If I hadn’t checked, I wouldn’t have known, because you didn’t tell me.” She put a pot of water on the stove, added salt.
“I should have my ass whipped.”
“You think it’s amusing.” She gathered sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, black olives. “I may not know precisely how this sort of thing functions, but I understand perfectly well your family’s opinion of me will be important.”
“My mother and sisters already like you.”
“They may tend in that direction, until I rudely attend the barbecue without a covered dish. Just go out and pick a small head of radicchio out of the garden.”
“I’d be happy to, but I don’t know what it looks like.”
She spared him a fulminating glance before storming out to pick it herself.
That sure took her mind off illegal computer viruses and stepping into the arms of the feds, he thought. And since she was on a tear, he thought it might be wise to stay out of her way for a couple of hours. When she stormed back in, he made a mental note that radicchio was the purple leafy stuff, in case it came up again.
“I need to go into the station for a couple hours,” he began.
“Good. Go away.”
“Need anything? I can pick whatever up on the way back.”
“I have everything.”
“I’ll see you later, then.” Brooks rolled his eyes at Bert on his way out as if to say, Good luck dealing with her.
He’d barely gotten out the door when his phone rang.
“Gleason.”
“Hey, Chief. There’s a little to-do over at Hillside Baptist,” Ash told him.
“I don’t handle to-dos on my day off.”
“Well, it’s a to-do with Mr.Blake and the Conroys, so I thought you might want in on it.”
“Hell. I’m rolling now.” He jumped in the car, backed it up with the phone at his ear. “What level of to-do?”
“Shouted accusations and bitter insults, with a high probability of escalation. I’m rolling, too.”
“If you get there ahead of me, you start heading off that escalation.”
He thought, Hell—and hit the sirens and the gas when he swung onto the main road.
It didn’t take him long, and he pulled up nearly nose-to-nose with Ash as they came in from opposite directions.
“You shaved off your…” It couldn’t rightfully be called a beard, Brooks considered. “Face hair.”
“Yeah, it got too hot.”
“Uh-huh.”
As Brooks had judged, the to-do had already bumped up to a scene, and a scene was one finger jab away from a ruckus, so he decided to wait to rag on Ash about the haze he’d scraped off his face.
Lincoln Blake and Mick Conroy might’ve been at the center of it, but they were surrounded by plenty of people in their Sunday best, lathered up and taking sides on the newly mowed green slope in front of the redbrick church.
