LITMIR.BIZ

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she coming to stay with you soon? Your daughter?”

      “For the weekend. Next weekend.” He glanced at the bare table in front of her. “Aren’t you getting anything?”

      Okay, not much of a bond, she thought wryly. He still wouldn’t discuss his family with her. “Tim’s bringing me orange juice.”

      On cue, the bar owner appeared, a well-built, closely shaven man in his forties.

      He offered her a tall, cold glass and a smile. “Here you go, Tess. You get home all right last night?”

      Tess thought of Carolyn Logan and shivered. “I… Yes, I did.”

      “Just wanted to be sure. It was pretty late when you left.” He turned to Jarek. “How’s the coffee?”

      “Fine. Thanks. You Tim Brown? The owner?”

      Tim looked surprised. “That’s right.”

      “Jarek Denko.”

      “The new police chief,” Tess contributed.

      “Yeah, I heard,” Tim said. He stuck out his hand. The two men shook.

      “Well…” Tim hesitated. “Can I get you folks anything else?”

      “We’re good, thanks,” Jarek said.

      Tim went back to the register. Tess waited for Jarek to say, “Nice guy,” which is what everybody always said when they met Tim. When he didn’t, she said it for him.

      “Tim’s a nice guy.”

      Jarek took another sip of coffee. “He grow up here, too?”

      “No. He moved here from Chicago. He did something for the city. Sanitation? Firefighter? But he married a local girl. A cheerleader, even.” Jarek raised his brows slightly. Tess explained. “Heather Brown went to school with my brother.”

      “Wouldn’t that make her a little young for him?”

      Tess thought so. But she said, “Not really. Tim had the looks to attract her and the money to keep her. The bar does very well during the season.”

      “And the rest of the year?”

      “It pulls in enough locals to stay open. The after-shift crowd from the paper mill, mostly. There’s not much to do in Eden on a Friday or Saturday night. Except the Algonquin lounge, and most people can’t afford to drink there. I can’t, anyway.”

      “Is that what you were doing here last night? Drinking?”

      Tess suppressed a flash of annoyance. “No. I was meeting someone.” When Jarek didn’t react, didn’t say anything at all, she sighed. “My brother. I was meeting my brother. He’s a bartender here.”

      “What’s his name?”

      “Mark.” Tess scowled. Jarek had actually taken out a little notebook and was writing stuff down. “But he doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

      “Was he here?”

      “Yes. He was working.”

      “Did you talk to him?”

      “Well, yes. I told you, I came here to meet him.” Because Mark, irresponsible, unreliable and infuriating as he was, could always make her feel better. And since her abortive kiss with Denko on Wednesday night, Tess had been feeling pretty lousy.

      None of which she was confiding to Jarek Denko.

      “Was that before or after you saw Carolyn Logan?” he asked.

      “Before. We were talking, and then I went to the ladies’, and when I got back, she was sitting at the bar.”

      Denko scratched something down. “What time would that have been?”

      Tess did her best not to be intimidated by the damn notebook. Reporters used notebooks, too. It wasn’t as if anything she said was going to be used against her. “Ten? Around then, anyway.”

      “Was she with anyone? Friends? A boyfriend?”

      Tess shook her head. “She was alone. She had plans to come up with her roommate, but they fell through. She told me she didn’t want to waste a guaranteed reservation, so she decided to make the trip alone.”

      “A reservation? You know where?”

      Tess frowned. “The Bide-A-Wee, I think. In the lodge.”

      Jarek made another note. “Anybody hit on her while you two were talking?”

      “I…” Tess stared into her orange juice, trying to recreate the scene in her mind. At the cash register, Tim Brown hunched over a calculator and a legal pad, reconciling the previous night’s take. “Not really. She left a couple of times to dance. We both did. But mostly we just talked.”

      “We? You and Carolyn?”

      No point in muddying the waters, Tess thought. “Yes.”

      “And your brother?”

      Tess felt sick. Stupid. She had nothing to worry about. The years when she had to protect Mark were over. He was a grown man, a former marine who had returned from overseas with a chip on his shoulder, a tattoo on his arm and training in weapons and self-defense. None of which she needed to share with Denko. “I told you. He was tending bar.”

      “Right. He drive you home?”

      “No. He lives at the other end of the marina. He’s got an apartment over one of the boathouses.”

      “But you stuck around, maybe? Till he got off work.”

      “No.” She wished to God that she had. “I left early. Around midnight.”

      “And was the victim, Carolyn, still there at ‘around midnight’?”

      “Yes.”

      “Still alone. Sitting at the bar?”

      “Yes.”

      “And you don’t know what time she left.”

      Tess picked at her paper napkin. “No.”

      “You okay?” Denko asked gruffly.

      She straightened defensively against the vinyl seat back. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “Maybe because an hour ago you saw somebody you knew, somebody you’d talked with, hauled off in an ambulance?”

      She was getting used to his perception. She wasn’t quite as prepared for the way it made her feel: naked and warm.

      But then he spoiled it all by adding, “Or could be there’s something you’d like to tell me you haven’t gotten around to yet.”

      “You have a nasty, suspicious mind, did you know that?”

      His smile glimmered like a break in the ice. “Goes with the job.”

      “I’m not sure I like your job.”

      “Are you going to tell me about your ride in the police car when you were fourteen?”

      Ouch. “No. Are you going to tell me why you cleared all your officers from the scene and called in the state crime scene investigation team?”

      Something gleamed in his eyes. Respect, maybe. Or annoyance. “Noticed that, did you?”

      “Yes. Is it relevant?”

      “Relevant to what?”

      She pulled out her own notebook. Let him see how he liked being the one questioned for a change. “To my story about the attack.”

      “Police blotter stuff,” he said dismissively. “Not much of a story.”

      She tapped her pen against the blank page. “Maybe not in Chicago. But if tourists are getting

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