On the way out of the studio, I had the happy realization that the police station was exactly on my route home. Before I returned to the boat to take a nap, I’d swing by to talk to Nate in person. I was feeling just this side of euphoric, happy and generous enough to realize that I’d been brusque with him lately. Maybe I’d overread his comments and his reaction to me the other night—he was only trying to do his job. And a brutal job it was. Just seeing the photo of the hanged man up close was devastating—how must it feel to be sifting through every detail of that murder?
I decided I would tell him everything I’d learned about the case so far, and then see if he might like to come over for dinner. But what to fix? I could try re-creating the seafood diavolo that Henri Stentzel had prepared for the first leg of the contest. But without the squid. I was off them after watching an Animal Planet rerun about their intelligence—how they watched humans with as much curiosity as the humans watched them.
What had the detective eaten the one time we’d been out to dinner? Nothing too unusual. But the spicy red sauce—no man could resist that. It would warm him from the inside out. I felt a small tremor of excitement, thinking about what might follow.
Maybe Miss Gloria could be persuaded to spend the evening with her friend Mrs. Dubisson, especially if I sprang for takeout. Or two tickets to the Tropic Cinema. And a cab to get them there. Or all of the above.
I parked my scooter in a visitor’s spot outside the station. Luckily another civilian had just been buzzed in through the locked front door, so I tripped in behind her, and was saved the awkwardness of calling and explaining myself to the clerk on duty. And I’d never, not once, had an easy phone conversation with the detective. In person was definitely preferable.
I followed the hallway around to the back of the first floor, and took the elevator to Nate’s second-floor space. Outside his office, I fluffed my hair and applied a quick layer of lip gloss. The thought flitted through my mind: Would he kiss me right now? Then I remembered the video camera hidden in his wall clock and had to laugh. He wouldn’t want the first stirrings of romance caught on videotape, fodder for the other cops’ teasing. I took a deep breath, arranged a sweet but flirty smile, and tapped on his closed door.
My heart galloped as I waited, then the door swung open. “Yes?”
Surprised didn’t begin to describe Nate’s expression when he saw me in the hallway. But he recovered quickly, smiled back and reached out to shake my hand. Behind him, in the chair beside his desk, sat a woman—a beautiful woman with enormous brown eyes, black hair, and radiant skin. The kind of gorgeous but slightly foreign-looking woman who tended to take first runner-up in the Miss America pageant, back when I was a girl watching the TV show with my mother. Stunning, but a little too ethnic to represent the US of A.
“Hayley. Did we have an appointment?”
Of course we didn’t have an appointment. “N-n-n-no,” I stammered. “I was driving by and just thought I’d stop in.”
The beautiful woman lifted one dark eyebrow, her perfectly shaped lips pursing like a resting bow. Yes, stunning.
After an excruciating pause he said, “Hayley Snow, meet Trudy Bransford, my wife.”
“Ex-wife,” she said to him, but added a smile that would have melted a softer man to a helpless puddle. In the running for Miss Congeniality, too.
She rose to her feet, crossed the room in two quick steps, and placed a slender hand in mine, which was still outstretched after the shock of the detective’s handshake, and then his announcement. I looked down. Her nails were capped with perfect pale half-moons. No chips in the polish. No ragged cuticles either. She wore an eye-popping diamond engagement ring on her right hand.
“Your island is so lovely,” she said in her contralto voice. She barely reached his shoulder. Looked like she would fit perfectly tucked under his arm. “Have you lived here all your life?”
“Uh, no,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. “New Jersey. Recent transplant. My boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—invited me down here. The truth is we didn’t know each other well enough to weather that much intimacy—”
Nate cut in: “Can I help you with something?”
But other than this incessant babbling about my story of moving to Key West, my brain was firing blanks. “Just checking in about the murder. Any news?”
“Still following leads.” He bared his teeth into a feral grin.
Trudy grinned, too, a wide, generous smile that reached all the way to her eyes, lighting her face up along the way. She tipped her head and tapped two fingers on his chest. “He was never too good at sharing information. I can see that hasn’t changed. He doesn’t like to talk about his feelings either.”