His phone caught his attention again.He checked it and grimaced.
“I have to go,” he said.“But you did well for most of it.Next time, do well for all of it.”
“There’s going to be a next time?”Cloister asked.He didn’t really need to, but…
JJ shrugged his answer.“Look, I know he can’t prove you’re dirty.If you were, one of my clients would have let me know—”
Cloister snorted.“I appreciate that,” he said.“Not sure it’s a reference I can take to court.”
“— but the problem is that we can’t prove you’re innocent,” JJ said.“Well, it’s not my problem.Legally, I don’t need to prove that.It’s just a lot of shit getting thrown at you by someone with authority.The assumption is going to be that he must have something to go on.”
His phone actually rang this time.JJ made an aggrieved face as he answered it.
“I’ll be touch,” JJ said as he lifted the phone to his ear.“I’m already at the sheriff’s department.Just tell him to shut up and—”
“I’m not sure I can afford for you to be in touch,” Cloister pointed out to JJ’s back as he walked away.“I’mnotdirty, remember?”
JJ gestured over his shoulder.“Merlo’s problem,” he said as he let himself out.As the door swung shut behind him, JJ snapped into the phone.“Yes, that goes for you, too.Just in a different way.”
Despite everything, Cloister felt his shoulders go up at the idea of Javi paying for him.He hadn’t asked for that…but he’d not turned down the hour of JJ’s time he was already going to be billed for, either.
A nudge of a cold nose at his fingers interrupted Cloister’s mental budget—it wasn’t like he lived an expensive life, hehadsavings—and he looked down at her.
“I know,” he said.“We’ll work it out.”
He clipped her lead on and headed out of the kennels into the comparatively fresh air of a midsummer day in Plenty.As he stepped down into the parking lot, he heard raised voices.
“Nobody asked you people to get involved,” a man’s tense, agitated voice delivered the condemnation.“But you did, and now you can’t even provide me any reassurances about our safety?You just make things worse than they already were and then wipe your hands of them?My husband ismissing, and you don’t care, but the civil rights of ourstalkeris your first concern?”
Under the rant, Cloister picked out Tancredi’s voice as she tried to placate the man.
“You have to understand…we don’t have any…I assure you…”
She sounded stressed but not worried.Still.Cloister headed around the side of the building.As he squinted against the sun, he saw a vaguely familiar man gesturing in frustration as Tancredi tried to usher him back inside the station.
It took a second.The last time Cloister had seen the man he’d been in his pajamas, but he’d been as loud and irritated.The homeowner from the stalker case.
Cloister hesitated for a second.He was suspendedandunder investigation, but…it would feel good to do something stupid.
“Mr…” he hesitated a beat as his brain fished up the name.“Lassiter.It’s…I was one of the responding officers the other night.Is anything wrong?”
Lassiter turned around to glare at him, his face flushed and jaw tight.
“My husband is missing,” he snapped, and then he gave Tancredi a dirty look.“And according toher,it’s not a problem, even though you let the fucking creep that was in our house go already.Does that sound likeanythingis right?”
Chapter Eleven
“Idon’tthinkLimehousewasdoing anything clever, if that’s any consolation,” Sean offered.He took a drink from the milkshake on the table, sucking up the Pepto-Bismol pink mixture while keeping one eye on the hotel opposite.“I mean, there’s a pretty good selection of private investigators in Plenty—all those commuting spouses who only come home on the weekend needsomeoneto keep an eye on their partners—but I’m pretty much the only old-school one.”
He paused and then waved his finger in the general vicinity of his nose before nodding at Javi’s face.
“Does that hurt?”
It did.Javi didn’t want to go into it.
He was sitting opposite Sean, in the shade of the awning rolled out from the bougie cafe on the sea front.He lifted an eyebrow as he looked the private investigator over.He wasn’t one to throw stones about dressing well, and Sean’s new look was an improvement over their first meeting, when he was fresh off a divorce and in a not-so-fresh pair of boxers, but cuffed black jeans and a self-consciously cool, uncreased graphic tee didn’t exactly have the old-school cred of a crumpled trench coat.
“Old school?”
