Murphy looked up at the front of the room where Peter and Morley were talking. Then he shrugged again. “You need to be very careful, Jeanine,” he said, and then he turned and walked away.
Chapter 30
IT WAS SEVEN in the morning, a week after Elena’s funeral, when I heard the engine on Peter’s Stingray growl to life. Coming out of the shower, I dropped my towel and ran to the window.
Through the blinds, I saw a man rolling a large cooler across our backyard toward Peter’s fishing boat. A tall man with cropped gray hair. It was Chief Morley.
As he boarded the boat, I remembered Peter’s strange phone call:
There was a soft knock on the bedroom door.
“Jeanine! Whoa!” Peter said, poking his head in and seeing that I was naked. “You made me forget what I was going to say. Oh, right. I totally forgot to tell you that Chief Morley and I are going on a fishing trip.”
A what?
“I know, I know. I should have said something. Bad Peter,” he said, slapping the back of his hand. “It was the chief’s suggestion. He thought this would give us a chance to clear our heads after the shooting and maybe get to know each other a little better. Sounds good, right? Hanging with the boss man. Who knows? Maybe it’ll lead to a promotion. Don’t worry about my shoulder. I’ll let the old buzzard do most of the heavy lifting.” Peter kissed me on the forehead softly and let me go.
“Thank you for being so supportive this week, Jeanine. You’re the best. I can’t wait to go to the Breakers with you. Steak au poivre, a nice red. Love you,” Peter said, closing the door behind him.
“Wait,” I said.
Peter smiled as he came back in.
“What is it? A quickie?” he said, hugging me. “Sure, but we need to hit it double time. Can’t keep the boss waiting.”
“No, idiot,” I said, giving him a faux pound on his chest. “This is so sudden. What time will you be back?”
“I don’t know. The usual. Sundown?” Peter said. “We’ll grill. We badass about-to-be-promoted cops like to eat what we kill, you know.”
I nodded. “See you at sundown,” I said.
“Not if I see you first,” Peter said, pinching my butt before he left.
Chapter 31
TWO HOURS LATER, sweating not just from the rising heat, I waited on the coral pink steps of Key West’s public library on Fleming Street. At nine thirty on the dot, I finally heard the lock turning behind me, and I jumped up, lifting the couple of large Dunkin’ Donuts coffees I’d brought.
The tiny librarian, Alice Dowd, smiled in surprise as I approached the reference desk and handed her one of the coffees.
“Jeanine, bearing gifts,” my elderly friend said with a smile. “What can I do for you, my dear, on this lovely morning?”
“Actually, Alice, I needed to do some research on my late father,” I lied.
“Research, I see,” Alice said, placing the coffee I gave her onto a tissue she produced from her desk. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Where do you want to start?”
“Do you have access to the Boston papers?” I said.
“You’re in luck,” Alice said, standing. She gestured for me to follow her through a book-lined corridor behind her desk and into a little room. “We just got these new computers with new software called Netscape. It helps you surf the World Wide Web, thousands of newspapers and magazines and databases and archives. Here, let me show you how to use it.”
After setting me up at one of the computers, I waited until Alice was back at her desk before I took a sip of my bitter black coffee and contemplated my next move.
Then I made it.
I took out the card that Bjorn, or Agent Theodore Murphy, or whoever he was had given me at Elena’s wake.
Then I turned it over and read what was handwritten on the back.
I’d felt disoriented and tense ever since he’d given me the card. What did the
I didn’t have answers, but I had kept the card hidden.
I took a breath and typed “Peter Fournier” along with “Boston Globe” into the search engine and hit Enter.
The screen blinked. I began to cough as two links popped up.
Both were from the
I quickly clicked on the first one before I could think of a reason not to. The screen blacked out for a second, and a little hourglass icon appeared. I was about to get up to ask Alice what was wrong when an image appeared.
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERY
Chapter 32
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERY
