Dead by Wednesday. Beverly Long

seemed so sincere in his praise. She hadn’t told him to impress him. She’d just wanted him to understand.

      “I’ll figure something out,” she said, trying to change the subject.

      “I could talk to him,” Robert said.

      It was a nice offer but it wouldn’t work. “He doesn’t know you. He’s not going to trust you.”

      Robert shrugged. “Okay. So I get to know him. Invite me over for dinner tonight. I’ll pick something up on my way—maybe Chinese?”

      “That’s impossible,” she blurted out.

      “Okay. No Chinese. Italian? Although we just had pizza,” Robert said.

      He was deliberately misunderstanding her. “I’m sure you have better things to do than have dinner with a paranoid twenty-nine-year-old and a snarling teenage boy.” When Liz had first started dating Sawyer, she’d confided that Robert was a bit of playboy.

      “You’re not paranoid, and unless he’s rabid, I can take a little snarling from a fifteen-year-old.”

      “I don’t know why you’d want to do this,” Carmen said, shaking her head.

      “Come on. It’s my version of community service,” he said easily. “You’re not going to deny me the opportunity for that, are you?”

      Chapter Four

      From Carmen’s apartment, Robert drove directly back to the police station. When he got there, he saw that Alderman Franconi was in Lieutenant Fischer’s office. The door was closed, but the blinds were open just enough that Robert and every other person in the squad room understood that Alderman Franconi wasn’t happy.

      He made eye contact with Sawyer, who was sipping on a cup of coffee and eating some kind of pastry. He had a newspaper spread out on his desk. The headline said it all. Police Frustrated with Lack of Progress.

      Frustrated? Oh, yeah.

      As was the alderman, who spent another three minutes in the lieutenant’s face before turning and leaving. When he walked through the squad room, he didn’t look at or talk to anyone. Once he was out of the room, all heads turned toward the lieutenant’s office. The man was standing in the door, not looking any worse for wear. It would take more than a frustrated alderman to rattle him.

      “Well,” Lieutenant Fischer said, his tone dry. “As you may have gathered, Alderman Franconi wants us to find the killer and string him up at Daley Plaza. Or we’ll all be looking for new work.”

      Nobody reacted to the last line. It was this particular alderman’s style to threaten jobs. He did it when the crowd control at the summer festivals didn’t go well. He was certainly going to do it now. The alderman was a jerk about most things. He did have a dead nephew, however, so everybody was more inclined to cut him some slack.

      Robert didn’t have to have family to understand family. It had just been his mom and him, with a progression of husbands and live-ins over the years. His mom had been married five times, no, make that six. He sometimes forgot number four. That one had lasted less than six months. One had continued on for five years but Robert was convinced that was because the man was an over-the-road trucker and gone most of the time. That was actually the one guy he’d liked.

      The weird thing was, his mother wasn’t a bad person. People generally liked her. She was the life of the party. Had a good sense of humor, knew how to tell a joke. She drank too much, perhaps. But she was a pleasant drunk, not a mean one. She mostly made bad choices. Because she couldn’t stand being without a man, couldn’t stand being alone. And so whatever loser came along got credit for having testosterone, and was immediately a viable prospect.

      Robert had been three when his biological dad had been killed in a car accident. His mother, who had been a beautiful woman with her blond hair and green eyes, had remarried within the year, although Robert didn’t even remember that guy.

      Now, if he felt inclined to ever look back, which he did not, the only way he could keep the parade straight in his head was to go to the pictures that his mother had stuffed in a shoe box. Every year, on his birthday, she’d taken a picture. And the man of the hour had always been in one of the shots.

      None of them had been inclined to adopt him, or maybe his mother had never wanted that. He wasn’t sure. From a very early age, before he even knew what the word meant, he’d considered them boarders in his home. There but not important. Certainly not family.

      Her latest husband was retired military. He wore black shoes that always had a nice shine and he grew orchids in the small garden behind their house. His name was Norman. She called him Normie.

      The man didn’t say much when Robert visited. But then again, getting a word in edgewise was a feat when his mother was revved up. As Sawyer would say, she could talk the ears off a chicken.

      Robert sat down at his desk and was surprised to see two pink message slips in Tasha’s scrawling handwriting. Hardly anybody left messages anymore. They either knew him well enough to call his cell phone or they left a voice mail on his office line.

      These were both personal. One from Mandy, the other from Janine. They both had his cell number.

      But then again, he hadn’t been answering any of their calls for the past couple of weeks. He looked up when a shadow crossed in front of his desk. Tasha, an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth, was buttoning her coat. Every morning at exactly ten o’clock, their department clerk went outside to smoke. It didn’t matter how hot or how cold. “Who’s the lucky one tonight?” she asked.

      He shrugged.

      “When in doubt,” Tasha said, “use FIFO. First in, first out. Janine gets the nod. Your phone was ringing when I got here this morning. If you ask me, she’s a bit needy.”

      He folded the slips and put them under his stapler. “I’ll give them both a call later.”

      Tasha frowned at him. She leaned over and laid the back of her hand against his forehead. “Are you sick?”

      “I’m fine. Busy.” Robert yanked open a file drawer so hard that it jarred the pencil holder on his desk.

      Sawyer folded his paper and frowned at him. “Everything okay?” he asked. Then his expression changed. “Damn. Something happened at the coffee shop, didn’t it?” He pushed his chair back and started to stand up.

      “I handled it,” Robert said, motioning for Sawyer to sit back down. “Everybody is okay, but I don’t like the dad. Frank Sage is a big guy and I think he’s used to intimidating people with his size.”

      “I’ve known you for a long time, Robert, and I’ve never seen you intimidated by anything.”

      Good thing Sawyer had no idea how nervous he’d been last night, when suddenly it was just him and Carmen sitting in Sawyer’s living room. He’d felt as if his tongue had grown until it was too big for his mouth. Then she’d broken the tension and everything had been fine.

      Better than fine. It had been one of the nicest nights that he’d spent in a long time. And he hadn’t wanted it to end. When it had and he’d offered to follow her back to her apartment, he’d been afraid that she might have been offended.

      She’d been on her own for a long time, successfully supporting her brother and herself. He understood feminism. Other than Sawyer, his two best other partners had been women. Both highly skilled and competent as hell.

      And Carmen Jimenez was likely every bit as smart as they had been. But she didn’t have the same training and she sure as heck wasn’t packing a gun. A lone female, traveling at night, was a target.

      It had just made sense for him to offer to follow her home. What hadn’t made sense was that for the entire drive he’d debated whether he should ask to come in. In the end, he’d decided against it. Maybe it had been the memory of her running into the bathroom to avoid dancing with him. Maybe it had