politics? Fact was, he wanted to go home. Even if he caught the ten o’clock flight, Dix would still miss Rob’s baseball game, but at least he’d be home. “I have to get home, Mrs.—Charlotte. I have two teenage boys waiting for me, and a baseball game.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “It’s only one lunch, Dix. Like I said, I’d like to have a brief visit with someone from back home, share experiences, you know, stuff only someone who lives there would understand. And of course my husband dines on political scandal and intrigue. As a sheriff you surely know what’s going on in Richmond.”
She was digging the hole deeper. Why was she doing this? Had she really been coming on to him last night? If so, what in heaven’s name did she expect from him today? It sure wasn’t a small-town sheriff’s perspective on Virginia political malfeasance. Maybe it was something else, maybe there was something she could only tell him in private, without her husband around. He said, “All right. I’m sorry, but I don’t know any restaurants in San Francisco.”
“Do you like fish?”
At his yes, she said, “How about Port Louis on Lombard Street. It’s not very far from the Sherlocks’ house. They have some of the best seafood in San Francisco.”
“Okay. Give me the address and tell me how to get there.”
A few minutes later, Dix walked back into the dining room. He looked at the Sherlocks. “That was Charlotte Pallack. She wants to have lunch, talk about shared southern experience, Richmond political scandals, whatever.” He streaked his hand through his hair. “I’m driving myself nuts, driving you nuts too. I doubt seeing her is one of my best ideas—actually, it might very well be the stupidest thing I’ve agreed to in a very long time.” He frowned. “My gut is doing the salsa, but—what I’m saying is, I think I should meet her, see if maybe there’s something she wants to tell me that she couldn’t with her husband here.”
“At least she had that,” Evelyn said, then added when Dix looked blank, “If she hadn’t had the very handy southern connection as a hook, I wonder how she would have gotten you to agree.”
“What I’m wondering,” Judge Sherlock said, slowly rising, “is what it is she has to say to you that she can’t say in front of Thomas. It may be much simpler than you think.”
Evelyn said. “Charlotte isn’t stupid—” She tapped her fingernails on the white tablecloth for a moment, then grinned over at him. “Maybe it’s all very straightforward like Corman said— Charlotte simply wants to see you—she fell victim to those French cuffs of Corman’s you were wearing last night.”
CHAPTER 14
After Dix booked a later flight, he checked in with Ruth with his new arrival time. He knew she was loaded with questions, ready to fire away, but he cut her off. “I don’t have any answers now, sweetheart, but I will.”
Well. She sat back in her chair. “Okay, you got me. Smooth move.”
She thought she could see him grinning into his cell.
“Listen, Ruth, the thing is I don’t even have the right questions yet. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. Please be patient.”
She huffed, sputtered, and laughed. “You’re such a damned cop.”
But that was only part of it, she thought as she punched off her cell. She was a cop, too, who happened to love him.
Dix drove Judge Sherlock’s ancient black Chevy K5 Blazer down the hill to Lombard Street.
“At noon there won’t be a single parking space within a mile of the restaurant, so don’t waste your time looking. Use the parking garage that’s in the same block,” Isabel had told him. She looked him up and down. “You look tough and dangerous— more macho without those French cuffs.”
He laughed. He wore black jeans, short black boots, a white shirt, and a black leather jacket. Usual fare. Tough? Well, okay, that was probably a good thing.
Judge Sherlock shook his hand and gave him a look clear as a neon sign:
When he saw Charlotte Pallack waiting for him in front of Port Louis, he did another double take, felt the memory of the awful hollowness that had ground him under for so very long. But he got himself together quickly. She wasn’t Christie. He prayed he wasn’t making a good-sized mistake, giving her the wrong impression, making her think he was coming on to her.
He smiled, and stuck out his hand, forcing her to take it and not jump in for a hug, which he knew in his gut was what she wanted. “Mrs. Pallack.”
“No, no, it’s Charlotte, please, Dix.”
He nodded and they went in. They both ordered the blackened halibut.
“Very New Orleans,” he said as he handed the menus back to the red-jacketed waiter.
She only nodded, and immediately launched into questions, not about shared southern experience, not about the two sitting Virginia senators or the governor, but questions about him.
He went answer-lite, keeping things as impersonal as possible. She began asking the same questions again, phrasing them a bit differently. He’d give it to her, she was dogged. When, finally, she wanted to know how his wife had died, he knew Christie was who she really wanted to know about.
He looked into her beautiful eyes, eyes that didn’t have Christie behind them. He found himself watching her face closely as he said, “My wife suddenly disappeared over three years ago. She hasn’t been found.”
