LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

wrapped this yourself, didn’t you, Lurleen?”

      “Of course I did. Now where is that fine helper of mine, Lucie?” Lucie appeared as if from nowhere and Lurleen dramatically kissed both her cheeks. She held her out at arm’s length and twirled her around. “Tres jolie,” she said. “That means very pretty.”

      “I know,” Lucie said and blushed.

      “And now you must leave us alone,” she said to me. “Au revoir. Tout a l’heure and all that.”

      I left them to it and took Jason outside to play. He dashed around the front yard, chasing Hermione until she finally flopped down in the shade.

      Detective Garrett arrived moments later with a ball and bat in one hand, a mitt in the other. He looked better than the last time I’d seen him. More rested, clean-shaven, with what looked like a new corduroy jacket over a black turtleneck and gray khakis. His bald head and sympathetic eyes were unchanged.

      “I’m Detective Garrett,” he said, kneeling down in front of Jason, “and I brought you a birthday present.”

      Jason looked stunned.

      “You do like baseball, don’t you?” Garrett said.

      Jason nodded. “For me?” he asked, eyeing the gifts.

      “For you.” He handed them over. “Wanna play?”

      Jason’s head bobbed up and down. Then he hesitated. “I don’t know how.”

      Good grief, I thought. Ellie didn’t even teach Jason how to throw and catch a ball?

      “I’ll show you,” Garrett said. He gave the mitt to Jason, made sure it fit on his hand, and stood five feet away from him. “Here,” he said, lobbing the ball into Jason’s mitt.

      “I caught it!” Jason said.

      If I ever needed something to endear me to Detective Garrett, I’d just found it. Good with kids? That was an understatement. Of course, good with kids might mean he had a few of his own. Which meant he might have a wife somewhere lurking in the wings. Of course he had a wife. How could he not have a wife? What had I been thinking?

      He and Jason played ball for a few more minutes. Then they moved on to batting practice. Lurleen stuck her head out the front door. Did we want an aperitif? Did we want to come inside? We could do that as long as we stayed out of the kitchen and dining room.

      “We’ll be right there,” I said. “Lurleen, this is Detective Garrett. You met him briefly Friday night.”

      “Enchante,” she said. She looked as if she might rush up and kiss him on both cheeks, but she restrained herself. I was a little disappointed—that would have been a sight to see. Instead, she stood at the door and directed traffic as we came inside.

      “No peeking, Jason,” she said as he started for the dining room. “All in good time.”

      Lucie stood just inside the door.

      “This is Detective Garrett,” I said.

      He held out his hand and she shook it.

      Detective Garrett patted a place on the sofa. “Sit with me for a bit, Lucie? You too, Jason.”

      I went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Then I found the cell phone and took it out to him.

      He placed the phone in a plastic bag and put it in his pocket.

      “Are you a real policeman?” Jason asked.

      “I am, Jason. Do you know what detectives do?”

      “They ’rest people. They rested my mom once.”

      “Arrested, you mean,” Lucie said. “And they never arrested our mom. They just asked her some questions.”

      “When was that?” Detective Garrett asked.

      “A couple of weeks ago,” Lucie said.

      “Do you remember the name of the policeman who spoke to your mother?”

      Lucie thought for a moment. “His name was Schmidt. Detective Schmidt.”

      “Schmiddy,” Garrett said and paused. He looked at me and nodded toward the kitchen. “I think the coffee may be ready. Could you pour me a cup?” I jumped up and followed him through the dining room and into the kitchen. “Remember, no peeking,” I said to Jason, who was about to join us. “We’ll be right back.”

      Huddled together over the stove, Garrett whispered to me as I poured two cups of coffee and some tea for Lurleen. “Schmidt was killed a week ago in a drive-by shooting. He was following up on a lead in midtown. We don’t know yet if they meant to hit him or someone else.”

      “You think his death is connected to Ellie’s murder?” I asked.

      “I don’t know. But it’s an unusual coincidence. I’ll go over his cases when I get back to the station. We still haven’t found out who did it. No one claims to have seen anything.”

      “You think this is some kind of gang or drug killing?”

      “Schmidt worked on white-collar crime—not drug enforcement. He was in the Cyber Crimes Unit.”

      We walked back into the living room where Lucie was sitting expectantly on the sofa and Jason was zooming action figures up and down over Hermione’s back. Fortunately, she was a kid-friendly dog, the only kind I would have. I handed the cup of tea to Lurleen, who sat demurely in the big red chair, her long legs crossed.

      “Can I see those?” Garrett asked, pointing to Jason’s action figures. “My sons used to play with them.”

      So there were children. No ring on his finger but children.

      Jason proudly showed him his Superman and Spider-Man figures.

      “I have a new one,” he said excitedly. He ran into the bedroom and brought out the slightly larger figure. “It’s the Transformer. See, it turns into a man when you do this.” Jason flipped it around, and there was a man.

      “Wow, my sons would have loved this.”

      “May I see?” I asked. Jason handed it to me and stood nearby, probably to make sure I wouldn’t wreck it. It looked brand new. “Where did you get this?”

      Jason looked at Lucie and hesitated for just a second.

      “Secret,” he said.

      “Secret?” I repeated. I’ve never known a five-year-old who could keep a secret.

      “Promise not to tell? My daddy give it to me.”

      “Your daddy?” Garrett and I said together.

      “He means a friend of our mom’s,” Lucie jumped in. “He gets that mixed up sometimes.”

      “Do you know the name of this friend?” Detective Garrett asked.

      Lucie shook her head slowly. Lucie was not a good liar, and for some reason she was lying now.

      I examined the figure more closely. “Can you show me how it works?” I asked Jason.

      “Like this,” he said. He could have added “silly” because it was clear he thought anyone should be able to turn it inside out as quickly as he did.

      I played with it for a while. I got pretty good at flipping it back and forth. On my fourth flip, I noticed a tiny compartment in the midsection of the Transformer. I pushed up the latch that kept it closed and found a paper stuffed inside.

      “What’s this?” I asked as I carefully unfolded it. Jason looked as dumbfounded as I did.

      “Someone played with my Transformer,” Jason said. He was angry. “You, Lucie?”

      Lucie shook her head.

      The message was

Скачать книгу