Rory Smilow closed the car door quickly to extinguish the dome light. Reaching above the steering wheel, he slid the closure back across the vanity mirror, eliminating that light, too.
His compliment spread through Davee like a sip of warm, very expensive liqueur, although she tried not to show the intoxicating effect it had on her. Instead, she spoke crossly. “What’s up with the cloak and dagger stuff, Rory? Running low on clues these days?”
“Just the opposite. I have too many. None of them add up.”
Her comment had been intended as a joke, but of course he had taken her seriously. Disappointingly, he was getting right down to business, just as he had the night he came to inform her that her husband was dead. He had behaved exactly as protocol demanded. Professionally. Courteously. Detached.
Never in a thousand years would Steffi Mundell ever have guessed that they had been lovers who had once knocked out the glass door of his shower while making love. That a picnic in a public park had ended with him sitting against a tree while she rode him. That one weekend they had subsisted on peanut butter and sex from after classes on Friday afternoon until classes began on Monday morning.
His behavior the day Lute died had betrayed none of the romantic craziness in which they had once engaged. It had broken Davee’s heart that he could maintain such goddamn detachment when with every glance she had wanted to gobble him up. His control was admirable. Or pitiable. So little passion must make for a very lonely and sterile life.
Trying to harden her heart against him, she said, “Mark it up to a lapse in good judgment, but here I am. Now, what do you want?”
“To ask you some questions about Lute’s murder.”
“I thought you had the case sewed up. I saw on the news—”
“Right, right. Hammond’s taking it to the grand jury next week.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Before today, when you saw the news story, had you ever heard of Dr. Alex Ladd?”
“No, but Lute had a lot of girlfriends. Many of them I knew, but not all, I’m sure.”
“I don’t think she was a girlfriend.”
“Really?”
Turning toward him, she pulled her foot up into the car seat, settling her heel against her bottom and resting her chin on her knee. It was a provocative, unladylike pose that drew his gaze downward, where it remained for several seconds before returning to her face.
“If you’re coming to me for answers, Rory, you must truly be desperate.”
“You are my last resort.”
“Then too bad for you, because I’ve told you everything I know.”
“I seriously doubt that, Davee.”
“I’m not lying to you about this Ladd woman. I never—”
“It’s not that,” he said, shaking his head impatiently. “It’s something… something else.”
“Do you think you’re after the wrong person?”
He didn’t respond, but his features tensed.
“Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? And for you, uncertainty is a fate worse than death, isn’t it? You of the cold heart and iron resolve.” She smiled. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, darlin’, but this little tête-à-tête has been a waste of time for both of us. I don’t know who killed Lute. I promise.”
“Did you speak to him that day?”
“When he left the house that morning, he told me he was going to play golf. The next time I even thought about him was when you and that Mundell bitch showed up to inform me that he was dead. His last words to me were apparently a lie, which more or less summarizes our marriage. He was a terrible husband, a so-so lover, and a despicable human being. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass who did the deed.”
“We caught your housekeeper in a lie.”
“To protect me.”
“If you’re innocent, why did you need protecting?”