For You(87)

“Julie McCall in today?” Colt asked.

“Sure, she’s in,” Dave answered, ever helpful.

“Sorry to trouble your business, Dave, I know you’re busy but you got a place where I can talk to Julie in private?”

Dave did what Colt expected he’d do. He jumped up and rounded his desk, bobbing his head. He didn’t care if his customers had to wait in line for a teller. He just cared that his life, which was mostly the same every day and he was too lazy to do shit about it to make it better, was suddenly filled with something more important, no matter he didn’t know what that something was.

“Conference room,” Dave motioned to a big windowed room in the corner of the bank.

“Private, Dave.”

Dave’s eyes got big. “Oh! Yeah, right.” He thought about it and Colt clenched his teeth, thinking the guy was half moron. He had to know the bank like the back of his hand. “Staff room!” Dave announced. “Basement. No windows.”

Jesus, this guy was annoying him. Unfortunately, he also needed him.

Dave led Colt to the windowless, vacant room and said he’d be right back with Julie. He didn’t lie. Five minutes later Dave walked in with one of the two Julie tellers.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Dave said with extreme consideration and closed the door behind him.

Julie McCall eyed him up the way a lot of women did, interest and appreciation clear on her face and she was sure to take in his ring finger. He’d had that kind of thing all his life, even when everyone knew his mother and father were drunk and no good and even when everyone knew that he was taken by Feb or, later, Melanie.

He wasn’t interested in Julie McCall and there were a lot of reasons why. Most of them obvious but they also included the fact that she was unattractive and he knew she thought the opposite. She was lean and fit, not from being an athlete, from working out way too much to keep thin, going well past the good look of healthy to hit gaunt. She probably felt disgust for anyone overweight and had no problem saying it or showing it, mostly with her eyes, he was guessing. She was the kind to be able stare at anyone she thought inferior, do it openly and do it in a way that made them feel low. Her hair was two shades too blonde, looking false and not suiting her coloring. It was arranged in a style too young for her years and, unlike some women whose youthful personality let them not only get away with this kind of thing but it was appealing, it made her look desperate.

Colt found even though he hadn’t spoken a word to her or she to him, he didn’t like her and he couldn’t have been more surprised that Amy apparently did.

“How can I help you?” she asked, solicitous and even a bit suggestive, she had all day if he wanted to take it.

“I’m Lieutenant Alec Colton.”

She smiled and it was wincingly shrewd. “I know who you are.”

Definitely suggestive and he didn’t like that she knew who he was when he didn’t know her. But then again, most everyone in town knew him. It came with his history and with the job. The last mainly because any time Monica Merriweather reported on a case he was working and she made certain his picture was included with the article in the paper.

He motioned to the table. “If you don’t mind, Ms. McCall, I’d like to ask a few questions about Amy Harris.”

Her eyebrows shot up, she might have thought a lot of things about him wanting to talk to her but pathologically shy Amy wasn’t one of them.

“Amy?”

“Yes, Amy,” he waited until she sat and he sat close to her, not because he wanted to but because playing her game would get him what he needed.

“You want coffee?” he asked, his glance moving to the staff coffeepot in the corner.

“Nah, that coffee’s terrible. I always wait,” she eyed his cup, “I usually go to Mimi’s on break.”

Shared tastes, she was telling him, they had something in common.

He took a sip from his coffee before stating, “Amy’s no call-no show today.”

“Yeah, weird,” Julie said.

“Dave says you two are close.”

“Wouldn’t say anyone was close to Amy but, yeah, we have a laugh every once in awhile, me more than any of the other girls.” She was reconsidering her casual friendship with Amy, pleased that it finally bought her something she liked.

Colt caught his lip curl and kept going. “You speak to her recently?”

“Not since we left work Friday night.”

“She seem to be acting different lately?”

“How ‘different’?”

“Anything.”

She shook her head. “Nope, except she took that Maroni woman dying pretty hard.”