Leda nodded. “Right, but what if she didn’t care about inheriting all his money and stocks and things? What if she just wanted him gone? Even if it meant she’d be broke? Some people are just that terrible—it doesn’t matter how you get away from them, as long as you get away.”
“I’ve rarely seen it play out that way in real life, except in cases where there’s a lot of abuse. But anything’s possible. I’ll talk to her again, if she’ll agree to see me. I’m not sure where she is right now. She left the country for a while—I believe she had family in England—but I think she’s back in town. I’ll find out for sure—”
Leda interrupted. “Once you get back to the precinct, I know, I know. You’ll go do all the real detective work downtown without me.”
“Yeah, I will. And don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not a real detective.”
She folded her arms and sank back into the seat. “Says you.”
“Says literally everybody, including the city of Seattle, King County, and the great state of Washington. Don’t get all huffy on me. I let you come along for the interview, didn’t I? Even though I said no way, at first.”
“Yes, but come on. You’re as close as I’ve ever gotten to any answers about what happened to Tod. You’ve put actual vengeance on the table for the first time, and I don’t want to just… walk away and let you do it all yourself. This is my murder, too.”
He looked like he really wanted to beat his head on the steering wheel, but traffic was too bad to allow it. “Okay, first. This is not your murder, Leda. This is a murder to which you might possibly have a tangential connection. And second, vengeance? Is that really what you want?”
“Justice, whatever. I deserve justice.”
“I never said you didn’t. I just don’t know how much I can help you find it if I get fired from the force and you go to jail for obstruction of justice.”
“I’m not obstructing it, I’m hunting for it!”
“That’s not how the authorities will see it. What you’re doing looks like meddling, you understand? It looks like interference, to a certain sort of district attorney. I’ve enabled it. I am trying to keep you as far away from trouble as I can, while still keeping you involved. You’re just going to have to get okay with that.”
Her posture in a full-body sulk, she stared out the windshield. “I’d be okay with you letting me go meet the widow.”
He squinched his lips and said, “Hmm.” He straightened them out again. “We both know that I shouldn’t let you, but I probably will—if for no other reason than having another woman present might put her at ease. I remember her being jumpy, but that might have only been the timing of our introduction. I got the impression she didn’t like or trust most men, me included. Maybe she was always high-strung, or maybe Christopher really did a number on her psyche.”
“Why don’t we go see her next? Like, right now? Today?”
“No.”
“Why not? We’ve got momentum, baby!”
“For a variety of reasons.” He tapped them out on the steering wheel. “One, like I said—I have to go look her up. Two, I don’t know if she’ll agree to an informal conversation about her husband’s death with an unknown third party in tow. Three, it’s already, what? Almost three in the afternoon? By the time I can scare up her contact information, call her up, and show up in person, it’ll be a little late in the day for police business.”
“Okay, I get it. Why don’t we go to Detective Whiteside’s place instead? I want to talk to him again, but with you there this time. I never felt like he took me very seriously. He might actually tell you something useful.”
“I know what you mean. He had a bad habit of calling his fellow officers ‘little lady,’ if you know what I’m getting at.”
“Then let’s go to his house. I want to pet his dogs.”
He sighed wearily and sang the same tune as before. “We can’t just show up on his doorstep unannounced. I don’t even know where his doorstep is, exactly. I know you don’t like it, but your investigatory work is finished for today. We’ll circle back around to retired Detective Whiteside and widowed Janette Gilman another day.”
“Which other day?”
“Whichever one is convenient for them, for me, and for you.”
Leda batted her eyelashes slowly, sweetly, ridiculously. “You swear to God you won’t go see them without me?”
“Nope. But I’ll try, and that has to be enough right now. I have other work to do, too. You do realize that I’m an active-duty police officer. I have open cases to work, and you have travelers to shepherd through airports, and visas, and travel vouchers, and rental-car agreements. I already paid your fee the other day, and you volunteered for this particular run. This is now an unpaid side hustle for both of us.”
“Right. You’re absolutely right. I do have clients. I have a job. I earn money.”
He hit a stop sign and took the pause to give her some stink-eye. “Now that you put it that way, I have to wonder.”
“Okay, it’s a fairly new enterprise,” she said with a touch more defensiveness than she liked to hear in her own voice. “My job is both taking care of clients and getting more clients to take care of. You’re right. I have work to do. You can drop me off back at my office, and we can both return to being full-time professional adults.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
She dipped into her best Captain Picard impression, which was terrible—but it got the job done. “Make it so, Number One.”
He banged the back of his head gently on the seat rest. “I will, but not because you told me to. And not because you called me… Number One? What?”
“It’s a Star Trek thing. You must not be a fan.”
“More of a Star Wars guy, to tell you the truth.”
She groaned. “This is never going to work.” She said it half joking, but the words sank into her soul regardless. If they couldn’t agree on which sci-fi memes to deploy in conversation, how could they work together long enough to fix anything? Solve anything? Save anybody? “We’re never going to solve these murders—Tod’s, or the Gilmans’, or anyone else. We are wasting our time, and we’re going to get each other in trouble, I can feel it.”
“Like, feel it feel it?” he asked. But something about the look in her eyes must’ve told him no, and she didn’t answer otherwise. Her frown declared that this wasn’t the time to ask. This was the time to agree. So he agreed, for practically the first time all day. “You’re absolutely right. We haven’t got a chance in hell.”
12.
Grady dropped Leda off at her office door, gave her a wave, and disappeared back into traffic. As soon as he was out of sight, she wandered around the corner to get some coffee. She didn’t really want to sit down and work. In fact, she didn’t have any work to sit down and do. She hadn’t sprung for the Google keyword ads yet, or the Facebook ads, or even the Craigslist ads for Foley’s Far-Fetched Flights of Fancy, even though they were all queued up and ready to go. It seemed like a waste to run them this late in the afternoon. It did not seem like a waste to go visit more suspects, but she’d made a deal with Grady when it came to investigative work—none without him, period—and she had to respect that deal. For now.