He put water on to boil and found the little box of coffee bags he’d learned to use instead of the percolator. He did not remind himself that Tibor could murder even coffee bag coffee. He got a clean mug from the cabinet and a clean spoon from the drawer. He put them down on the table and found a little stack of glossy paper next to a purple-and-gold box. BOX HILL CONFECTIONS, the box said. Then there was a web address: www.boxhillconfections.com.
He pulled the purple-and-gold box to him and opened it. It was full of small, intense-looking chocolates made into balls and pyramids and rounds. There were only a couple of pieces gone from the top, which had to be big news. An upset Bennis was a Bennis eating a lot of chocolate. He checked the second layer. It was full.
“There was another box,” Bennis said, her voice coming from behind him at the kitchen door. “I finished those last night.”
“Ah,” Gregor said. His kettle was going off. He turned around and got it off the burner.
“I came back to see how you were,” Bennis said. “You were gone all night. Although my guess is not with a woman named Alison, since she’s looking for you, too.”
“I was out at a crime scene,” Gregor said, filling his cup so close to the brim only surface tension kept it from spilling. “Russ was there with me, in case you feel like checking up on my movements. Along with Rob Benedetti, who’s the district attorney, and about ten thousand Philadelphia cops.”
Bennis came to sit down at the table. She reached into the purple-and-gold box and got a chocolate with a molded head of King Tut on the top of it. “Lemon cremes,” she said. “The best lemon cremes you can get anywhere. Godiva doesn’t even make lemon cremes any more. I really wasn’t checking up on you. You were gone all night. You had me worried.”
“I know.”
“You know, I don’t have to stay,” Bennis said. “If you’re that upset about it, I can move back up to my own apartment. Or take off for London, if you’d prefer. You don’t have to stop going to the Ararat for breakfast because of me.”
“I didn’t not go to the Ararat for breakfast because of you,” Gregor said, trying the coffee. It wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t lethal, the way he made it when he tried to percolate it himself. “I was just tired, I’d been out all night. I hadn’t had much sleep. I’m completely messed up, and I can’t afford to go back to sleep.”
“Why not?”
“Because John Jackman’s idea of a good time is to assign two guys who hate each other to partner each other, and then assign that partnership to the head of the most serious case in the city right in the middle of his run for mayor.”
“Did John really do that?”
“Not quite,” Gregor conceded. “There are discrimination lawsuits and court decrees involved. With the partnership anyway. The case is something else. I’m supposed to be getting a call from Rob’s office letting me know when I can go down there and start shifting through the material they’ve got. Assuming they’ve got any.”
“They’ve got a serial killer case, and you think they won’t have any material?”
“I think that the two idiots who’ve been in charge of it until now are capable of anything, including not bothering to do the paperwork because the other guy was supposed to do the paperwork, and you can’t blame either of them for the paperwork not being there because it was the other guy’s—”
“Wait.”
“Sorry. That’s the kind of thing it is. We’ve got eleven people dead who have been connected to the Plate Glass Killer case. I assume we’ve actually got some dead bodies who fit a pattern you could call the Plate Glass Killer pattern. After that, I don’t know. Here’s the thing, Bennis. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t want to talk about the Plate Glass Killer case?” Bennis looked surprised.
Gregor shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about us. I’ve been thinking about it. I was wrong before. You don’t owe me an explanation. We’ve been living in each other’s laps for years but, you know what, I don’t have a franchise. So I don’t want to talk about how you feel and how I feel. I don’t want to explore our emotions. I never want to explore anybody’s emotions. Reading Jane Austen makes me nervous. I just want to let all that go.”
“Yesterday, you wanted a complete explanation, with footnotes.”
“I know. I was wrong. I was very wrong. The whole thing was impossible. I think you were right. I think we need to get married.”