Deja New Page 16

  “Quiet, you. Anyway, when he got to her box, it was empty. He quit on the spot. Left the cemetery, never even went back to the security office. Just walked out and never went back.”

  “He went home without his car?”

  “Jeez, Jason, I didn’t take down the incident report. Anyway, the next day the statue was back like it never left.”

  “Possibly because it hadn’t,” Jason said dryly.

  “And the legend grew,” Angela finished. “I’ll take a vanishing statue over the friggin’ creepy Eternal Silence ghoul in green. Who wants to see their own upcoming death? Bad enough most of us see the ones we already endured. ‘Oh, great, look at that. I’ve drowned twice, but apparently I’m due to be trampled by elephants this time around.’ Blech!”

  He seemed to falter a bit, but perhaps that was because they’d gotten to the footbridge over Lake Willowmere to Burnham Island. Even the most sedate walkers sounded like horses galloping across the small wooden bridge.

  He cleared his throat. Angela tried to think of a single instance when someone cleared their throat and it wasn’t to broach a difficult subject. Maybe the last time Jordan had a head cold . . . “Speaking of past lives, and endurance, you should know I’ve been diagnosed with dysthymia. It’s—”

  “I know what it is.” She’d looked it up after Leah told her how to spell it. To her credit, Leah hadn’t asked questions. Just said, “D-Y-S-T-H-Y-M-I-A,” from her side of the bathroom door. (Reason #262 to never ever gestate: You had to pee every sixteen seconds.)

  “Oh. Well.” He paused and she had the sense he was mentally squaring his shoulders. “You should know I take medication for it, I’m currently on—”

  “Sorry to interrupt. Again, I mean. But it’s fine. And—don’t get mad—but I already—don’t be upset, please, but the thing is, I already knew about your depression. Dysthymia.”

  He stared at her. “How could y— Leah Nazir.” He frowned as he worked it out. Hopefully it was a frown of concentration as opposed to a “I never want to see you again” scowl. “She shakes my hand every time she sees me. She probably knows my life history.”

  “All seven of them. That was a guess, by the way. She didn’t say seven. I don’t know how many lives you’ve had. It’s none of my business.”

  “But you’ve got the same ability.”

  “No. I have a sense of your past, but not the details. And I didn’t want to pry. I wasn’t prying,” she rushed to assure him. “She just came out with it.”

  “When?”

  “The day after she met you.”

  “You’ve known for over a week?”

  “Yes.” He seemed puzzled, and she wasn’t sure why. Better explain. Try to, anyway. “Leah wasn’t—y’know, she didn’t say it like it was a negative. Because it’s not. A negative, I mean. She said it to cheer up my brother, Jack. He said he thought you were sad, and she backed him up. Which is all kinds of weird, now that I think abou— Never mind. It’s none of my business anyway.”

  “And if it was?” he asked quietly.

  What? How could it ever be my business? He’s making it so easy for me to read more into this. If that’s what he’s doing. I’m confused, and it’s barely noon, I haven’t even had any wine yet. “If it was, I’d be glad you got a diagnosis. And I’d be extra glad you’re getting help. And I—I’d consider myself lucky. That you thought something that personal was my business. That you trusted me with that.”

  “Oh.” The frown was gone, replaced by his slow

  (dimple!)

  sexy smile. “Well. That’s all right, then.”

  “Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay.”

  They got to the other side of the bridge, and Angela was determined to fill the silence before it got (more) awkward. “Did you know, a guy’s whole family is buried on this island? How do you even broach that subject? ‘Kids, we’re all mortal and death is relentless but we’ll eventually be together on our own private island. We can have Family Game Night for eternity!’ Is that great or disturbing?”

  He appeared to give the matter serious thought. “That would depend on whether or not you were a fan of Family Game Night.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” I can’t take it. And I’m not fourteen, for God’s sake. It’s ridiculous to be agonizing over this. Just do it. At least I’ll know. “That’s it,” she announced, then seized his hand and laced her fingers with his. “If you don’t like this—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “—no problem, just tell me and I’ll drop you like a hot rock. I might drop you like a hot rock either way, I’m freaking out a little, this has been a confusing month.”

  “I like this.”

  “But the thing is, I’ve been dying to do this all d— You do?” He did? “Great. Okay.”

  They walked for a few seconds in silence and then Jason made the oddest noise, and she realized he was giggling. “You’re right,” he managed, “this is much less awkward.”

  “Oh, shut up. I’m kind of clueless about the etiquette here.” Among other things.

  In next to no time, she was shaking out the blanket beneath a gorgeous willow tree while Jason unpacked a tremendous amount of food. “I’m not much of a cook,” he warned her. “Most of this is store-bought.”

  “I’m not, either. My whole family’s going to lose weight when Jack goes to college,” she predicted happily. “It’ll be a disaster.”

  He chuckled. “You seem rather cheerful for someone expecting a disaster.”

  “Drakes fending for themselves because Jacky’s at school forging a new life will be a good thing, believe it.”

  “Does he know where he’d like to go?”

  “He thinks he’s staying in Chicago,” she replied, eyes narrowing at the thought of it. The only thing Jack loved more than cooking was chemistry. UMass offered a fine food science program, one of the oldest in the country, and was in close proximity to Pioneer Valley, which was Foodie Central. The University of Minnesota was another example, and offered food science majors the chance to study their craft abroad in France, Thailand, England, etc. Cornell, Purdue . . . plenty of good programs Jack had the grades to get into.

  And they were all a minimum of a two-hour flight from the sprawling red ranch where he’d grown up.

  “Pardon me,” she said. Jason had pulled out plates, cutlery, a tiny cheese board, a tiny cheese knife, sturdy wineglasses, napkins, a corkscrew, and a tiny black Hefty bag for the scraps/garbage. Then he moved on to food and had just pulled out the fourth—fifth?—plastic container. “Is that a magic backpack? It’s like one of those clown cars. Or a bag of holding.”

  “‘Bag of holding’?”

  “Paul and I went through a D&D phase . . . Wow! Everything just comes piling out.”

  “I wasn’t sure what you’d like.” So I bought the entire store was probably the end of that sentence. Rare roast beef sandwiches with watercress on crusty baguettes. Tiny packets of mustard and mayonnaise. Tiny salt and pepper shakers, no bigger than her thumb joint. A Caprese salad with fresh basil. A Ziploc bag stuffed with peeled eggs she assumed were hard-boiled, with a teeny-tiny packet of seasoned salt. Two layered cobb salads in Mason jars. Four chive biscuits. A small selection of cheese (cheeses?), a waxed roll of crackers, a pint of blackberries. A small container of Kalamata olives. Chocolate chip cookies the size of her hand. Chocolate-dipped strawberries. An egg carton with a macaron nestled inside each little cup. Wine. Sparkling water. Half dozen nectarines.

  “This . . . looks . . . ggnnn.” Drooling. She was drooling like a farm animal. “Really good. Is what I meant.” She managed (barely) not to snatch the plastic plate Jason was offering, and had it loaded in no time. She politely declined the booze. “It looks great, but I’d rather not rub the whole ‘the cop you’ve got no use for and I enjoyed a wonderful picnic on my way to
visit you in your cage, sorry about my booze breath, how was your horrible day?’ thing in his face. Especially since we need his cooperation.”

  “A fair point,” he conceded, and the wine went back into the backpack, to be replaced with the sparkling water. “Perhaps next time.” Pause. “Unless you feel I overst—”

  “Pass me another egg and enough of the overstepping fretting. This is wonderful. It’s all wonderful—all the macarons are different colors! Agh, so cute! This is turning into a great, great day.”

  He lobbed an egg at her which she snatched out of the air and—miracle of miracles!—it didn’t squirt through her fingers and slither off the blanket to land on the grass (bad) or ricochet off her fist to smack him in the eyeball (worse). He shifted around so he was leaning with his back against the trunk, then stretched out his legs, giving what he probably thought was an unobtrusive twitch that hiked up his pants leg, displaying his socks.

  Monet’s Water Lilies.

  “Brilliant,” she pronounced.

  “I have several,” he murmured in a voice so intimate and confiding, he might have been coaxing her to let him take her to bed and ravish her. “Monet. Van Gogh. Picasso. Munch. Klimpt. Degas. Botticelli.”

  “The rampant eroticism of Jason Chambers’s barely contained sock drawer.” She couldn’t say it with a straight face, and by the time she got to “barely” he was laughing so hard he choked on a biscuit.

  When neither of them could eat another crumb, he packed everything away. She stretched out on her back, staring up through the feathery willow fronds to the clear blue sky beyond. Even though they were in public, they were nearly invisible to anyone walking by. She liked that. It was like they were on their own private planet. A planet littered with buried corpses, but still.

  “Angela.”

  “Mmmmm?”

  “What does this mean?”

  “It means it’s a great, great day. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

  “I don’t, either. Though I enjoy seeing you in a social context as opposed to a work context. Not that I mind the latter,” he assured her.

  “So you like hanging out with me even if you don’t have any crime-scene photos to show me?”

  “Miraculously . . .” His tone was so dry, he could have used it to make beef jerky. “Yes.”

  “What if you came over for dinner again?”

  He flashed the dimple. “That would be my pleasure.”

  “Or you and I went out somewhere. Would you get in trouble?”

  “No. Your father’s case was never mine to begin with, and it’s not open.”

  “Oh. That’s good.” Argh. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes.” He was wriggling a bit, trying to get comfortable—the blanket was a good idea, but it was thin and scratchy. She finally reached out, gently grabbed his ear, and tugged until he was lying down with the back of his head on one of her thighs. “Thank you. I wasn’t sure—”

  “I know. It’s fine.”

  “A great, great day.”

  “Yeah.”

  Later, she’d be grateful. It was the last “great, great” thing to happen for a long time.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  They made it to ICC by four o’clock. Barely.

  “I can’t believe we both fell asleep,” she muttered as they hurried through the parking lot and into the building.

  “I can. We were tired, we had a good meal—”

  “A delicious egg-laden meal.”

  “It was a beautiful day.” He showed the guard his badge, she showed her ID; they were allowed to go back. “It would have been odder if we hadn’t dozed off.”

  She laughed. “Only you can make not falling asleep in a cemetery seem weird. And I’ve got to get a haircut.” She was trying to scrape her bangs out of her eyes (fashionably long and too long were not the same thing) and repeatedly failing.

  “Your hair is lovely.”

  “Drake genes—we’re all shaggy. Like bison!” Stubborn, willful, argumentative, meat-eating bison.

  Archer and Leah were waiting for them. They must have just gotten there, as they were still holding the forms ICC needed to authorize their visit. Whew!

  “Mr. Drake. Ms. Nazir.”

  “Hello again,” Leah replied. “I almost didn’t recognize you in jeans.”

  Archer was staring at Angela. Don’t squirm. Don’t fidget. Don’t look away. Drakes can smell fear, and also eggs.

  “Sorry to keep you guys waiting.”

  “We only just got here,” Leah assured her, but Archer was having none of it.

  He took a step closer. “You look great. You’re glowing.”

  “That’s a disgusting lie and you know it.”

  His nose was five inches from her own. “You’re glowing.”

  “You’re wrong. That’s not my glow. It’s Leah’s! Because, y’know, the pregnancy. Right?” Not my best off-the-cuff defense.

  “What, because one of you is glowing that means nobody else in the vicinity can? And then there’s this clump of”—he reached out and brushed his fingers over the top of her head—“bark?”

  “So?”

  “In your hair.”

  “So?”

  “And you seem so . . . Hmm, the word’s on the tip of my tongue.” He rubbed his forehead and gave the impression of someone thinking hard, which was annoying. “What’s the opposite of grimly driven and obsessed?”

  “Happily comatose?”

  “Happy!” He snapped his fingers. “That’s what it is. You’re glowy and smiley and happy.”

  “So?”

  “You’re never happy here. None of us have ever been hap— Oh. My. God.” Archer seized her elbow and hauled her a few feet away from Leah and Jason.

  She shook free of his grip. “You know they’re only five feet away, right? If your goal is not to be overheard? Because they can hear us.”

  “You got laid!” he hiss-screamed.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. Wait! Not so much with the defensive body language. Then she dropped her arms and just sort of stood there. Oh, yes, very natural. Cripes. “I did not.”

  “I can’t believe this. It’s almost unprecedented. Your sex life—”

  “Which I won’t be discussing with you today or ever, so put that thought out of your teeny-tiny mind forever.”

  “—is your business.”

  “How wise of you to know it.”

  “But is he such an improvement over Klown that you banged him within days of meeting him?”

  “Technically it’d be within a month of meeting him. And I didn’t bang anyone! In the last month, I mean.” There’d been the lawyer who was clerking for Judge Finney last spring, but Angela had made the classic American error of mistaking an accent for a personality. He had Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice, Moriarty’s conscience, and Mycroft’s bedroom skills: chilly and to the point.

  Archer pointed to her head. “Your post-sex hair says otherwise.”

  “My hair isn’t post-sex. And even if it was, my hair wouldn’t say one damned word to you.”

  “So does your pleasant expression. And the fact that you’re not looking around for a brick to hit me with. You definitely slept with him ow-ow-ow!”

  She’d reached out and pinched him on the bicep and, when he jerked back and rubbed his arm, she hissed, “I did not!”

  “My fault, I shouldn’t have used the past tense. You are sleeping together.”

  “We are not sleeping together! In the present tense or otherwise. We are napping together.”

  “Spare me the lugubrious details, pervert.”

  “We cleaned up Dad’s grave and had a picnic and fell asleep under a willow tree on an island full of dead Burnhams and then had to sprint to his car so we weren’t late. Which is why I’m a mess.”

  “Wow
.”

  “Yep.”

  “So much to process.”

  “I’m not asking you to process.”

  “Well, you’re a cute mess,” Archer said, smiling. “Listen: I couldn’t give a shit who you’re banging.” When she opened her mouth, he added, “Or nap-banging. I just want you to be with someone who gets how great you are.”

  “You take that ba— Oh. And?” She braced herself for the punch line. Great at nagging? Great at obsessing over a decade-old murder? Great at hiding the tape measure from Paul? Great at designing a chore board they all loved and hated in equal measure? What?

  “And nothing. You like him, he likes you and gets you, that’s all I’d ever want for you.”

  “Oh. Well. Thanks.”

  “And I’m not going to ask, because I already know the answer.”

  “You’re losing me. Ask what?”

  “If you’re nap-banging him because you think it’ll help Dad’s case.”

  “Oh. Good call on not asking.” She gave him a narrow look. “I’d hate to break your nose.”

  He nodded. “But you know who will assume that. Right?”

  She sighed. “Mom.”

  “Auntie Em, yup. She’s always so weird around cops, it’s almost like . . .” He trailed off.

  “There’s no need to cut yourself off. I’ve been having the same thought lately: It’s almost like she’s afraid they’ll discover a deep, dark secret. But what could be worse than Dad’s murder?”

  “That’s nuts and you know it,” Archer told her bluntly. “She was home with all you kids that night, the cops checked her alibi first thing.”

  Relieved, she nodded. “You’re right, I remember.”

  “For whatever reason, she won’t like you going out with a cop. So here’s some unsolicited advice—”

  “Most of what comes out of your mouth is unsolicited. I’ll put it at eighty-five, maybe ninety percent.”

  “Keep it to yourself for a while.”

  As it happened, she was on board with that advice. Although . . . “Archer, there’s really not anything to keep to myself yet. It was one date. I think it was a date. Maybe it was an outdoor luncheon?”