“I’m gonna put her in the crib. Fix me one, too, would you? Not quite that much,” Kelly said.
He gave her a surprised look. “You don’t drink this stuff.”
“Tonight I do.”
Deborah went into the crib with another mutter, but no more. Kelly hurried back to the kitchen. Colin handed her the dose of scotch. That was how she thought of it, all right. They clinked glasses. She drank. She still didn’t see how he could enjoy the taste, but she wasn’t drinking it for the taste. She was drinking it for the booze.
“How was the rest of your day?” she asked. “Better than this, I hope.”
“Not so you’d notice,” Colin answered. “Darren Pitcavage . . . deals everything this side of real estate and old Buicks. Setting up a buy is gonna be a piece of cake, looks like. Not just a felony bust—a big-time felony bust.”
“I’m sorry.” Kelly felt the inadequacy of words.
“Yeah, me, too.” Colin’s eyes slid toward the stairway. “But I’m not sorry Vanessa doesn’t know thing one about this. Way she is right now, if she did she’d probably get hold of Darren and let him know we were looking at him.”
“She wouldn’t do that!” Kelly exclaimed.
“Oh, I think she might,” Colin said.
“But that’s illegal, isn’t it?”
“Sure, if you get caught. Lots of things are illegal if you get caught.”
“Mm,” Kelly said. “Uh, does Marshall know not to talk with her about this?”
“Well, I haven’t told him not to,” Colin answered. “But I don’t think he wants to talk about it with anybody. He wants to make like it never happened and he never had anything to do with it. And he doesn’t talk to Vanessa any more than he has to, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I did,” Kelly said. “I wondered if you had. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?”
“She will get a place of her own pretty soon,” Colin replied, which might or might not have been a non sequitur. “We’ll all be happier once she does, too. She’s okay in small doses—and she’ll decide we’re okay in small doses, too.”
“I’m sorry,” Kelly said once more.
He shrugged. “Nothing to be done about it. Yeah, she’s prickly. But she’s honest as the day is long. I don’t have to worry that Mike’s getting ready to come after her the way I’m going after Darren.”
“That’s so,” Kelly said, which was as much praise as she felt like giving Vanessa just then. She changed the subject, or at any rate deflected it a little: “What will Mike do after you grab his son?”
“I’m not looking forward to that.” By the way Colin set his jaw, he really wasn’t looking forward to it. He went on, “When Darren got in trouble before, Mike always dickered it down to a misdemeanor. Five gets you ten he tries it again. But I don’t care how hard he tries. Not a chance in church the DA will play along, not this time.”
“Can he stay chief if his son gets arrested for something like this?” Kelly asked. Under that question lay another one, one she left unspoken. If he does have to step down, will they offer you the job? Will you want it if they do?
“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any rule that would make him quit, but it wouldn’t be easy for him to go on like nothing was wrong.” Colin also heard the underlying question, which surprised Kelly very little. He went on, “If he does resign, I wouldn’t take the slot on a bet. No way, not after I went and knocked him off his perch. Besides, I don’t want it any more.”
He’d told Kelly the same thing before, and more than once. But when he’d told her before, he’d had about as much chance of being elected Pope as of being named Chief of the San Atanasio PD. If Mike Pitcavage did have to resign now, in offspring-induced disgrace, the city council and the DA and the other people who ran San Atanasio might well want to put him in charge of the department for a while so he could straighten it out and get it back on its feet.
And she could see how, with his strong sense of duty and responsibility, he’d be tempted to accept the job, at least as a caretaker. But his reasons for steering clear looked good to her. There was also one he hadn’t mentioned: “If they did name you chief, you’d start telling them to piss up a rope in about three days. Or if you didn’t, you’d want to so bad you’d explode like the supervolcano.”
“I wouldn’t tell ’em to do that in three days.” Colin affected righteous indignation—brief righteous indignation. “I’d hold out for a week, easy. A week and a half, if everything went good.”