outside.”
“It’s a little chilly out, down here near the water,” he said. “The guest room would be fine.”
“Do you want us to leave?” Jack asked me, earning a dark look from Rachel.
“No. Please stay. I mean — if you’re tired, don’t let me keep you. Same with you, Rachel. If you need to go home to Pete—”
“Pete’s on his way to Riverside,” she said. “I’d be up anyway. I can never go to sleep until I hear his car—” She clasped a hand over her mouth. Tears started welling up in her eyes.
“Hear his car pull into the driveway?” I asked. “Yes, I’m the same way. It’s good to have you here with me, Rachel. But I’ve never seen you cry, and this would be a stinking time to start.”
“I’m not crying,” she said. “I thought I was going to sneeze for a minute. That’s all.”
I nodded and walked off toward the guest room, Reed in tow. I could hear Vince ask Rachel something in a low voice and heard her reply loudly, “Did you see her face? Did you? Of course she didn’t call the newspaper, you clueless pinhead!”
If Vince said something back, I didn’t hear it. He followed us into the guest room.
I motioned Reed and Vince to the two chairs in the room and then sat on the edge of the bed. With three of us in there, it was pretty crowded. The door creaked open, and we turned toward it in expectation. Cody came sauntering in, then jumped on my lap. I was going to have a friend in the room after all.
Vince stood up, closed the door, and leaned against it, arms crossed. He ignored a look from Reed. Reed sighed and took out his notebook. The warm-up speech — how sorry they were to be in this situation, were doing everything they could but needed help from me — was quick and painless. It gave me a little time to pet Cody, to try to go numb. Reed did the talking. Once he had my (previously undreamed-of) permission to allow my phone line to be tapped, he worked his way to the questions.
“When was the last time you saw Frank?”
“This morning, when he left for work.”
“About what time was that?”
“About seven-thirty.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A suit. Gray suit. White long-sleeved shirt. A dark red tie.” One I bought for him. He looked good in it. He looked good no matter what he wore. “I’m sorry, what were you asking?”
“Shoes?”
“Yes, he had shoes on.” I felt my face turn red. “Sorry. That’s not what you meant. Black leather shoes.”
“Was he armed?”
“Yes, he had his shoulder holster on, his gun in it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I watched him dress.” I looked down at Cody. “I — I saw him put the shoulder holster on. The gun was in it.”
“Did you talk at all this morning?”
“Yes.”
There was a brief silence.
“What did you talk about?”
“Personal matters.”
They waited. So did I.
“Could you be more specific?”
“No. Contrary to your lieutenant’s opinion, we don’t tell other people what we talk about privately.”
Vince snorted.
“Vince, get me a refill, would you?” Reed asked, lifting his mug.
Vince gave him a stubborn look, got one back, and relented. When Vince had gone, Reed said, “Look, Pete told us you two had a hellacious fight this morning.”
“As Frank has said so often, Detective Baird has a big goddamned mouth.”
Reed sighed. “Yeah, he does, and he sticks his nose into everybody’s business. And right now, we are all just as worried as Pete is about Frank. Pete may be his partner, but the rest of us are sick about this, too. I figure there’s only one person on the earth who’s more worried than we are right now, and that’s you. Help us. Don’t let Vince and his attitude get in the way.”
So I told him, in a nutshell, about the argument — not all of it, I admit. But I told him about two out of three bones of contention. If he already knew about the third, a Harriman family secret, he would have to give me some hint of that knowledge before I talked about it. My own connection to that family might be only by marriage, my opinion about such secrets contrary to the Harrimans’ own — none of that mattered. I owed it to Frank to keep my mouth shut.
Reed kept his face completely impassive. If he agreed with Frank about asking Mark Baker for his sources, Reed never let any judgment show. If he thought Frank was crazy to let his wife know the former fiancee was beckoning, he kept it to himself. If he knew the family secret, he wasn’t letting on.
