The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

She put her hand out and touched his cheek.

“My God, I think I do love you,” she said.

“You wash my back, and I’ll let you have the asparagus,” Matt said, and took her hand and pulled her out of the bed.

“We have to get that money out of your safe-deposit box,” Matt said as he was toweling himself in the bathroom and shamelessly watching Susan do the same.

“What did you say?” Susan asked, her voice muffled by the towel she had over her head.

He didn’t repeat the statement; he had thought of something else.

“Just before we came in here, you said Poor Pathetic Jennie called you. What did she want?”

She took the towel off her head and looked at him. “Do you have to call her that?”

He shrugged but didn’t reply directly.

“What did she want?”

“She said she had another package she wanted me to keep for her—”

“From the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Clinton, New Jersey, no doubt,” Matt interrupted. “And when did you tell her you were going to meet her?”

“I told her I wouldn’t,” Susan said. “I told the both of them that. She put him on the phone.”

“Why not?”

“I thought, so soon after I was in Philadelphia, that it would be suspicious. And I told them I had a cop on my back.”

“Jesus! But you said you didn’t—”

“At the time, I believed you,” Susan said. “At the time, I thought you were what your friends told me you were.”

“Which friends? What did they tell you I was?”

“Your two old school pals at Daffy’s party. They told me you were a mixed-up screwball playing at being a cop. To prove your manhood. You’re not, are you? You’re really a cop, and what you’re playing at is being a screwball. It’s a good act. It had me fooled.”

“And now that my facade has been torn away, what do you think?”

“I’m afraid about how much I like what I see,” she said. “I’m afraid that it’s going to be taken away from me.”

“You want to go back in the shower?” Matt asked.

“No. God, I can’t believe we did that. I didn’t think it was possible.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to spread this around, but that was a first for me, too.”

“Really?”

“Of course, I never had a woman look for asparagus bits in my—”

“Stop!”

“Yeah. We have to stop,” he said seriously. “But let’s finish Poor . . . What happened when you were on the phone with Jennifer and Chenowith?”

“That’s it. He asked about you. He said you might really be an FBI agent, and I assured him you were just a cop.”

“When are you going to meet with them?”