Yep, definitely some sexual tension.Read on...
****
“For being an ass!”
“I wasn’t being an ass,” I protested gamely. “I was -”
“Showing off like a teenaged boy,” she interrupted, finally catching sight of the position of my legs under the wheel. “Freaking figures.”
“Who, me?” I replied as innocently as I could, continuing to work the pedals but leaving the steering now to her. “Hey, you know, we make a pretty good team. We should drive like this more often.” I draped a friendly arm over her shoulder and grinned my best idiotic smile.
She twisted her head around to give me a dark look. “So help me, if you don’t take this wheel and start driving when I let go . . .” She paused to dig a pointed, but not painful, elbow into my bad leg just above my knee. “Then I’m going to just let you go and kill your knees using them to drive the whole way home,” she picked up again. “And you’re not going to get any sympathy from me when you start limping and whining.”
“Hey, I -”
“You could warn me next time before you decide to try any more high school tricks,” she added, shrugging my arm off her.
It took me a guilty second to realize she had been referring to driving with my knees and not the arm I had put around her. “Me? High school?” I protested. “I did no such thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I bet you never tried that on any of your dates to get them to lean over and have to practically sit in your lap.”
“You’re not sitting in my lap,” I pointed out. And then, before I could stop myself, I added, “. . . Want to be?”
“Oh, shut up.” She released the wheel without warning, and like a good, chastened partner, I grabbed for it.
“You’re such a jerk,” she reminded me without any real heat as I took up all the driving again. “You’re lucky I’m not going to hold that against you and file harassment charges.”
I hit the brakes abruptly and screeched the car to a halt on the side of the road to stare at her. I hadn’t actually considered that, but she was right - what I’d just done could definitely be construed wrong by someone who was overly sensitive. “I didn’t mean -”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, not allowing me to finish. “Lucikly for you, I both have a sense of humor and understand yours. Instead of being pissed, I’m just going to plot ways to get back at you.”
“Um . . . thanks?” I ventured, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Should I be scared?”
She smiled smugly. “Yes. Very. Now, how about driving again so we can get back to headquarters sometime before bedtime?”
I gave her a salute and took my foot off the break. “Yes, ma’am.”
Friday, September 28, 2007
Chapter 6, beginning
Mmm, do I smell the beginnings of some sexual tension?
Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 6
Excerpt length: 447
Current novel length: 12,580
CHAPTER SIX - Monday Afternoon
“Talk about clingy,” Hashek remarked, buckling her seatbelt a few minutes later.
“Her?” I asked as I started the car. “Or him?” I checked over my shoulder, put the car into reverse, and starting backing out of our narrow parking space.
She considered that. “Both! He looked like he hated to go thirty seconds without touching her, and she looked like she preferred it that way.”
I palmed the wheel in a circle and headed out onto the road. “You noticed that too, huh?”
“Of course I did.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her directing a haughty look in my direction. “I’m every bit as observant as you, you know - if not more so.”
Keeping my eyes on the road, I lifted both hands off the wheel in ostensible surrender. “Hey, no offense intended.”
She eyed my upraised hands, then the road. “Uh, Tony.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re supposed to be driving, remember? It helps to be touching the wheel when you do that.”
She sounded nervous. But then, she had no idea that as a teenager on Long Island, I’d perfected the art of steering with my knees for short periods while my hands were otherwise occupied with my girlfriend in the passenger seat. I had the fight back a grin as I decided to not reveal this talent, and instead milk this opportunity to get my partner’s goat. “Really?” I asked casually, keeping my hands up.
“Yes,” she said firmly, and waited for me to obey the command in her voice.
I, of course, didn’t. I was good with just my knees unless we came upon sudden traffic or curves in the road.
“D’Argenzio!”
“What!”
“You’re going to hit -” she began, sounding just slightly panicky, then stopped, reconsidered her strategy, and glared at the side of my head. “Stop being an asshole and drive!”
“Hey, I’m just emphasizing my surrender, here, and I think -”
“Fine, if you’re not going to do it,” she said, talking over me and at the same time physically leaning over me to take the wheel she thought I wasn’t controlling, “then I will be the one to make sure that Mack truck coming up in the other lane doesn’t end up wearing us.”
I surreptitiously pulled my knees back and let her make sure we stayed out of the truck’s way, which she did. When we were clear of its grill, and I was trying not to laugh at the bewildered look the trucker had given our two-person driving method, she took one hand off the wheel to smack me in the side of the head.
“Ow!” I yelped. “What was that for?”
Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 6
Excerpt length: 447
Current novel length: 12,580
CHAPTER SIX - Monday Afternoon
“Talk about clingy,” Hashek remarked, buckling her seatbelt a few minutes later.
“Her?” I asked as I started the car. “Or him?” I checked over my shoulder, put the car into reverse, and starting backing out of our narrow parking space.
She considered that. “Both! He looked like he hated to go thirty seconds without touching her, and she looked like she preferred it that way.”
I palmed the wheel in a circle and headed out onto the road. “You noticed that too, huh?”
“Of course I did.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her directing a haughty look in my direction. “I’m every bit as observant as you, you know - if not more so.”
Keeping my eyes on the road, I lifted both hands off the wheel in ostensible surrender. “Hey, no offense intended.”
She eyed my upraised hands, then the road. “Uh, Tony.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re supposed to be driving, remember? It helps to be touching the wheel when you do that.”
She sounded nervous. But then, she had no idea that as a teenager on Long Island, I’d perfected the art of steering with my knees for short periods while my hands were otherwise occupied with my girlfriend in the passenger seat. I had the fight back a grin as I decided to not reveal this talent, and instead milk this opportunity to get my partner’s goat. “Really?” I asked casually, keeping my hands up.
“Yes,” she said firmly, and waited for me to obey the command in her voice.
I, of course, didn’t. I was good with just my knees unless we came upon sudden traffic or curves in the road.
“D’Argenzio!”
“What!”
“You’re going to hit -” she began, sounding just slightly panicky, then stopped, reconsidered her strategy, and glared at the side of my head. “Stop being an asshole and drive!”
“Hey, I’m just emphasizing my surrender, here, and I think -”
“Fine, if you’re not going to do it,” she said, talking over me and at the same time physically leaning over me to take the wheel she thought I wasn’t controlling, “then I will be the one to make sure that Mack truck coming up in the other lane doesn’t end up wearing us.”
I surreptitiously pulled my knees back and let her make sure we stayed out of the truck’s way, which she did. When we were clear of its grill, and I was trying not to laugh at the bewildered look the trucker had given our two-person driving method, she took one hand off the wheel to smack me in the side of the head.
“Ow!” I yelped. “What was that for?”
Friday, September 21, 2007
Finally catching up
...with all the hand-writing I've done the past few weeks. And now, without further ado, the end of chapter 5! Omg!
**************
Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 2372
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer
“Tony, that’s rude!” Claire scolded automatically. “I’m sorry,” she told us. “He’s just upset for me.”
“Hm.” I wasn’t terribly impressed by that excuse. After all, it wasn’t his mother who someone beat up and then shot. In fact, I decided, I wasn’t terribly impressed by this guy in the first place. I just wanted to talk to Claire and get out of here. I that end, I looked pointedly at the mug Claire was still clutching. “How’s your tea, Claire? Feel ready to talk?”
She thought about that for a second, then nodded. “Ask whatever you need to.”
Hashek, who has been looking bored, perked up and whipped out her notepad. “When was the last time you saw your mother?”
Claire sighed and took an unsteady sip of tea to fortify herself before answering. “Last night.”
“What time?”
“About eight-thirty.” She paused, looking indecisive, then shook her head slightly and closed her mouth.
“She sees her mother every Friday night,” Tony explained for her. “They have a ‘girls night’.”
“Girls night?” I asked blankly. Sounded arcane.
“Pizza. Chick flicks.” Tony glanced at Claire, but she remained stubbornly silent. “You know,” he told me, “girl stuff.”
“Uh, right.” I stole a glance at my partner, who looked thoroughly unsurprised by this definition. “Girl stuff,” I repeated. “So you arrived at what time, Claire?”
“About five,” she replied, and looked at Tony, who nodded almost imperceptibly in reassurance. “Tony dropped me off.”
“And you left at eight-thirty?”
Claire nodded.
“Did Tony pick you up, too?” Hashek asked.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not that far away . . . I could walk if I had to, but I don’t really like going out in the dark. You . . .” She paused to lick her lips. “Anything could happen out there in a dark alley.”
Hashek and I exchanged a sideways look. In this town, the worst thing that was likely to happen to someone out after dark was a close encounter with a racoon. Still, it wasn’t unwise to play it safe, especially when one was smallish and female. And especially on the night when one’s mother was busy getting murdered. Which reminded me... “When you left, was your mother home alone then? Or were there other guests, or your father, or anything?”
She shook her head. “My dad makes himself scarce when Mom and I have one of our nights. I don’t actually know where he was, but he definitely wasn’t home, or else he’d have said hi to me.”
“And there was no one else at the house, either?” Hashek pressed.
“Just, uh . . . Tony, when he came to pick me up.”
Hashek looked at Tony, who looked mildly alarmed to have heard his name. “Did you go inside the house when you picked Claire up and dropped her off? Or did you just wait in the car?”
He studied her face for a few seconds before answering, “Are you asking whether I’ve ever beein in the Young’s house? Like for fingerprints and stuff?”
Hashek raised an eyebrow. I mentally followed suit. A little jumpy about fingerprints, wasn’t he? “Not specifically,” she said to him. “Why, do you think we’re going to find yours somewhere important?”
She’d gotten him on that one. Tony, looking shocked, could only sputter a denial.
My partner was clearly starting to enjoy herself. She raised her eyebrow again, this time higher. “No? Does that mean you’ve never been in the house, or . . .?”
“No! I mean, I’ve . . .”
Claire had watched this entire exchange with rapidly widening eyes, but now she spoke up as her boyfriend seemed to run out of steam. “Tony’s been in my parents house lots of times, so whether you find his fingerprints there or not doesn’t mean anything.”
“ ‘Lots of times’?” I echoed. “And does that include last night?” Enough fun, it was time to get back on topic.
“Yes, but only for a minute,” Claire said. “Because my mom was there, and she -”
We didn’t get to hear the end of that sentence, because as she spoke, Claire abruptly began crying again, even harder than she had been before.
All three of us sprang into action. Tony pulled his hand from the curve of her neck to snatch the teacup out of her hand before she could spill it on herself as she trembled. I whipped out the spare, clean handkerchief my mother had taught me to always carry. Hashek, not as well-prepared as I, reached for the box of tissues that sat on the coffee table.
We moved to hand her the tear-drying implements at the same time, and Claire looked confusedly from my handkerchief to Hashek’s tissues, then promptly wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“You ok?” I asked her, forcing the hankie into her hand before she could use her wrist again.
She sniffled and turned her head to look at Tony, who had set the teacup safely down on the same table the tissues had come from. He gave her a reassuring smile and resumed his position on the arm of the couch. “She’d be a lot more ok if you’d just -”
“ ‘Get out,’ we know,” Hashek finished for him. “Trust me, we’re not enjoying this any more than you guys are, but it needs to be done.”
Tony scowled, but subsided quickly. “Ask your stupid questions,” he grumbled.
“Thank you,” Hashek said with perfect poise, then turned back to Claire. “Did you get along with your mom, Claire?”
Claire took a gulping breath and nodded. “Yes. Oh, yes. My mom and I . . . I called her every day. I went over there at least once a week.” She smiled wistfully. “We’d go shopping sometimes, just for fun, even though neither of us really needed anything . . .”
“And how about your father?”
Claire blinked. “He doesn’t like to shop.”
I could tell Hashek had to fight the urge to roll her eyes in response to that one. “No, I meant, did your father get along with your mother?”
“Oh. Of course,” Claire said apologetically. “They’re married; of course they get along.” She paused. “Got.”
“Some married people don’t,” I pointed out.
Claire’s eyes narrowed on me. “Well these married people did!”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Ok, I believe you. Sorry.”
She huffed and lifted a hand to put over her boyfriend’s where it lay on her shoulder.
“Did your mother have any enemies?” I tried again in my most polite voice. “Anyone who didn’t like her, or vice versa?”
Claire looked horrified. “Enough to, you know, kill her? No. No way.”
“What about not quite enough to kill her?” Hashek suggested before Claire could add to her dismissal of my question.
That seemed to penetrate the girl’s defensiveness, and she looked thoughtful. “Well, I mean, there’s Allen Gray and Ton Wisniewski.”
I recognized the first name, but I let Claire speak for herself when Hashek finished writing down the names, looked back up, and said, “Who are they?”
“Lawyers,” sniffed Tony before Claire could speak. She gave him a quelling glance, but then agreed, albeit more politely, “Allen Gray is a partner at a rival firm of my mom’s. They used to have a friendly rivalry going, where they’d meet for lunch a few times a year to argue about who pulled off the best win.”
“Ok,” said Hashek, still writing. “And Wisniewski?”
Tony snorted again, bringing our attention back to him. “He could have killed her. Dude’s got issues, man.”
“Oh?” I asked curiously.
“Tony,” Claire admonished in a low voice. “Everyone’s got ‘issues’ of some kind, you know. Tom Wisniewski just happened to have had his ‘issues’ in front os us.” She looked at my blank look and went on, explaining, “Tom works - worked - with my mom. She beat him out for a partnership and he was seriously pissed off. He showed up at our house one night and raised a big stink until my dad had to call the police to get rid of him.”
Well that got out attention. Both Hashek and I jerked out heads up and stared at her. A jealous rival who’d acted out against her in the past? Sounded like a winner! “How long ago was that?” I asked Claire eagerly.
“Has he given your mother any trouble since that night?” Hashek asked at the same time. “And do you happen to have a case number for the police incident?” she went on when I trailed off.
Claire stared from Hashek to me, startled by the sudden intensity of our interest. “It was . . . maybe a month ago. And -”
“A month and a half,” corrected Tony.
“Ok, a month and a half,” Claire agreed without argument. “I have no idea if there was even an actual police report from that night.”
“If they came,” Hashek assured her, “they filed a report. Even if your mother didn’t press charges or anything.”
“Oh. Well, they definitely came, so . . .”
Hashek nodded and made a note on her pad. “Can you think of any other enemies your mother might have had?”
Claire shook her head. “No. People liked my mom, I swear it.”
“Yeah,” Tony interjected, “but your mom didn’t necessarily like all people in return. She -”
“Stop it!” Claire hissed at him.
Looking taken aback by her scolding, which was more vehement than all of her previous admonitions put together, Tony raised his eyebrows and shut his mouth.
“My mom got along with people,” Claire repeated, more firmly.
Hashek’s right eyebrow twitched, but she didn’t attempt to disagree. “How about the people your mom got along with best? Friends? Did she have any close girlfriends we could talk to to get more background on her?”
“That Cabrera woman,” Tony spoke up without hesitation, apparently having conquered his shock at Claire’s reprimand.
Claire nodded. “Yeah, Jackie. She’s my godmother, too,” she added. “I can give you her phone number, if it helps.”
“It would definitely help,” I assured her. Hashek, nodding her agreement, handed Claire her pen and a piece of paper torn from her notebook. “Could you write it down for us?”
“Sure.” Claire did so, then handed the pen and paper back to Hashek, who tucked them in her pocket.
“Did your mom have any other close friends?” I asked when they were done.
Claire pulled the afghan up to her shoulders and looked at Tony, who shrugged. “Maybe Sophie Drake? I don’t have her number, though. She’s a supervisor at the Met; maybe you could find her in their directory?”
“Ok, we’ll look her up. Anyone else?”
Claire shook her head. “There were lots of people she was friendly with, but not so many actual friends. I could ask my dad for more, if you want . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hashek told her. “We can check with your father when we speak to him.” She paused, thinking, and seemed to come up blank. She looked over at me and said slowly, “I think we’re just about done here . . . Detective D’Argenzio, do you have anything else?”
I started to shake my head, then changed my mind and nodded. “Yeah, one more thing - Claire, what was your mother wearing when you left the house last night?”
She blinked. “Um . . . wearing? What?”
“Yeah. Was she dressed? Wearing a nightgown? DId she have on any jewelry?”
Hashek, catching on to my point, nodded her approval to me.
Claire continued to stare at us. “Um, she was wearing . . . her pajamas. Blue silk. You know, a boxy top and loose pants?”
Hashek, more the expert on female nightwear than me, nodded knowingly. “Did she have on any jewelry? And what was her hair like?”
“Just her necklace, i think,” Claire said slowly, thinking. “A gold heart locket. It was a present from my dad for their last anniversary. A lot of nights she didn’t even bother to take it off to sleep.”
I’d gotten up close and personal with Gabrielle Young’s corpse, and it had not been wearing a locket. I tensed in excitement.
Hashek, who hadn’t gotten so close, was momentarily oblivious and continued trying to pin down how much time might have passed between Claire’s departure and her mother’s death. “And her hair?”
“Um . . . down. She had it in a French twist for work, but she took it down when we were watching the movie.”
Her hair had been down when she lay dead on the living room floor. If Claire had said her mother’s hair was still up when she left, we might have been able to build a portion of a timeline off how long it took to take down and brush out her hair. The fact that it was already down, however, didn’t help us at all. Damn.
I looked at Hashek, who looked back at me and shrugged. Can’t win them all.
“I think we’re done here,” I said when Hashek hadn’t jumped in with another question after a minute. “Claire, this is my card.” I handed the rectangle of heavy paper to her. “If you or Tony think of anything else, anything you think might help us - names, times, facts - please don’t hesitate to call either me, at the number on there, or the main police department number, if you can’t get in touch with me. That’s in the phone book.”
Claire took the card and nodded. “Did anything I said . . . did it, you know, help?”
“We don’t really know yet,” I said gently. “Things like this, a lot of times you don’t see what individual facts are worth until you try to start putting everything all together.”
“Oh.” She sighed dejectedly. “I guess I knew that. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize,” I told her. “We’re working for you. You have questions, you ask them.”
“Ok. I will.” She sounded a little more confident now. “Thank you, Detective . . . s.” She added the plural marker belatedly, glancing at Hashek, who had kept quiet during my little pep talk. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”
“Ok Claire,” I moved to shake her hand, but she kept both arms under the blanket and I pulled my hand back. “Thanks for your time.”
Tony Parker, who had been so eager to precede us into the room, didn’t bother to show us out.
**************
Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 2372
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer
“Tony, that’s rude!” Claire scolded automatically. “I’m sorry,” she told us. “He’s just upset for me.”
“Hm.” I wasn’t terribly impressed by that excuse. After all, it wasn’t his mother who someone beat up and then shot. In fact, I decided, I wasn’t terribly impressed by this guy in the first place. I just wanted to talk to Claire and get out of here. I that end, I looked pointedly at the mug Claire was still clutching. “How’s your tea, Claire? Feel ready to talk?”
She thought about that for a second, then nodded. “Ask whatever you need to.”
Hashek, who has been looking bored, perked up and whipped out her notepad. “When was the last time you saw your mother?”
Claire sighed and took an unsteady sip of tea to fortify herself before answering. “Last night.”
“What time?”
“About eight-thirty.” She paused, looking indecisive, then shook her head slightly and closed her mouth.
“She sees her mother every Friday night,” Tony explained for her. “They have a ‘girls night’.”
“Girls night?” I asked blankly. Sounded arcane.
“Pizza. Chick flicks.” Tony glanced at Claire, but she remained stubbornly silent. “You know,” he told me, “girl stuff.”
“Uh, right.” I stole a glance at my partner, who looked thoroughly unsurprised by this definition. “Girl stuff,” I repeated. “So you arrived at what time, Claire?”
“About five,” she replied, and looked at Tony, who nodded almost imperceptibly in reassurance. “Tony dropped me off.”
“And you left at eight-thirty?”
Claire nodded.
“Did Tony pick you up, too?” Hashek asked.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not that far away . . . I could walk if I had to, but I don’t really like going out in the dark. You . . .” She paused to lick her lips. “Anything could happen out there in a dark alley.”
Hashek and I exchanged a sideways look. In this town, the worst thing that was likely to happen to someone out after dark was a close encounter with a racoon. Still, it wasn’t unwise to play it safe, especially when one was smallish and female. And especially on the night when one’s mother was busy getting murdered. Which reminded me... “When you left, was your mother home alone then? Or were there other guests, or your father, or anything?”
She shook her head. “My dad makes himself scarce when Mom and I have one of our nights. I don’t actually know where he was, but he definitely wasn’t home, or else he’d have said hi to me.”
“And there was no one else at the house, either?” Hashek pressed.
“Just, uh . . . Tony, when he came to pick me up.”
Hashek looked at Tony, who looked mildly alarmed to have heard his name. “Did you go inside the house when you picked Claire up and dropped her off? Or did you just wait in the car?”
He studied her face for a few seconds before answering, “Are you asking whether I’ve ever beein in the Young’s house? Like for fingerprints and stuff?”
Hashek raised an eyebrow. I mentally followed suit. A little jumpy about fingerprints, wasn’t he? “Not specifically,” she said to him. “Why, do you think we’re going to find yours somewhere important?”
She’d gotten him on that one. Tony, looking shocked, could only sputter a denial.
My partner was clearly starting to enjoy herself. She raised her eyebrow again, this time higher. “No? Does that mean you’ve never been in the house, or . . .?”
“No! I mean, I’ve . . .”
Claire had watched this entire exchange with rapidly widening eyes, but now she spoke up as her boyfriend seemed to run out of steam. “Tony’s been in my parents house lots of times, so whether you find his fingerprints there or not doesn’t mean anything.”
“ ‘Lots of times’?” I echoed. “And does that include last night?” Enough fun, it was time to get back on topic.
“Yes, but only for a minute,” Claire said. “Because my mom was there, and she -”
We didn’t get to hear the end of that sentence, because as she spoke, Claire abruptly began crying again, even harder than she had been before.
All three of us sprang into action. Tony pulled his hand from the curve of her neck to snatch the teacup out of her hand before she could spill it on herself as she trembled. I whipped out the spare, clean handkerchief my mother had taught me to always carry. Hashek, not as well-prepared as I, reached for the box of tissues that sat on the coffee table.
We moved to hand her the tear-drying implements at the same time, and Claire looked confusedly from my handkerchief to Hashek’s tissues, then promptly wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“You ok?” I asked her, forcing the hankie into her hand before she could use her wrist again.
She sniffled and turned her head to look at Tony, who had set the teacup safely down on the same table the tissues had come from. He gave her a reassuring smile and resumed his position on the arm of the couch. “She’d be a lot more ok if you’d just -”
“ ‘Get out,’ we know,” Hashek finished for him. “Trust me, we’re not enjoying this any more than you guys are, but it needs to be done.”
Tony scowled, but subsided quickly. “Ask your stupid questions,” he grumbled.
“Thank you,” Hashek said with perfect poise, then turned back to Claire. “Did you get along with your mom, Claire?”
Claire took a gulping breath and nodded. “Yes. Oh, yes. My mom and I . . . I called her every day. I went over there at least once a week.” She smiled wistfully. “We’d go shopping sometimes, just for fun, even though neither of us really needed anything . . .”
“And how about your father?”
Claire blinked. “He doesn’t like to shop.”
I could tell Hashek had to fight the urge to roll her eyes in response to that one. “No, I meant, did your father get along with your mother?”
“Oh. Of course,” Claire said apologetically. “They’re married; of course they get along.” She paused. “Got.”
“Some married people don’t,” I pointed out.
Claire’s eyes narrowed on me. “Well these married people did!”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Ok, I believe you. Sorry.”
She huffed and lifted a hand to put over her boyfriend’s where it lay on her shoulder.
“Did your mother have any enemies?” I tried again in my most polite voice. “Anyone who didn’t like her, or vice versa?”
Claire looked horrified. “Enough to, you know, kill her? No. No way.”
“What about not quite enough to kill her?” Hashek suggested before Claire could add to her dismissal of my question.
That seemed to penetrate the girl’s defensiveness, and she looked thoughtful. “Well, I mean, there’s Allen Gray and Ton Wisniewski.”
I recognized the first name, but I let Claire speak for herself when Hashek finished writing down the names, looked back up, and said, “Who are they?”
“Lawyers,” sniffed Tony before Claire could speak. She gave him a quelling glance, but then agreed, albeit more politely, “Allen Gray is a partner at a rival firm of my mom’s. They used to have a friendly rivalry going, where they’d meet for lunch a few times a year to argue about who pulled off the best win.”
“Ok,” said Hashek, still writing. “And Wisniewski?”
Tony snorted again, bringing our attention back to him. “He could have killed her. Dude’s got issues, man.”
“Oh?” I asked curiously.
“Tony,” Claire admonished in a low voice. “Everyone’s got ‘issues’ of some kind, you know. Tom Wisniewski just happened to have had his ‘issues’ in front os us.” She looked at my blank look and went on, explaining, “Tom works - worked - with my mom. She beat him out for a partnership and he was seriously pissed off. He showed up at our house one night and raised a big stink until my dad had to call the police to get rid of him.”
Well that got out attention. Both Hashek and I jerked out heads up and stared at her. A jealous rival who’d acted out against her in the past? Sounded like a winner! “How long ago was that?” I asked Claire eagerly.
“Has he given your mother any trouble since that night?” Hashek asked at the same time. “And do you happen to have a case number for the police incident?” she went on when I trailed off.
Claire stared from Hashek to me, startled by the sudden intensity of our interest. “It was . . . maybe a month ago. And -”
“A month and a half,” corrected Tony.
“Ok, a month and a half,” Claire agreed without argument. “I have no idea if there was even an actual police report from that night.”
“If they came,” Hashek assured her, “they filed a report. Even if your mother didn’t press charges or anything.”
“Oh. Well, they definitely came, so . . .”
Hashek nodded and made a note on her pad. “Can you think of any other enemies your mother might have had?”
Claire shook her head. “No. People liked my mom, I swear it.”
“Yeah,” Tony interjected, “but your mom didn’t necessarily like all people in return. She -”
“Stop it!” Claire hissed at him.
Looking taken aback by her scolding, which was more vehement than all of her previous admonitions put together, Tony raised his eyebrows and shut his mouth.
“My mom got along with people,” Claire repeated, more firmly.
Hashek’s right eyebrow twitched, but she didn’t attempt to disagree. “How about the people your mom got along with best? Friends? Did she have any close girlfriends we could talk to to get more background on her?”
“That Cabrera woman,” Tony spoke up without hesitation, apparently having conquered his shock at Claire’s reprimand.
Claire nodded. “Yeah, Jackie. She’s my godmother, too,” she added. “I can give you her phone number, if it helps.”
“It would definitely help,” I assured her. Hashek, nodding her agreement, handed Claire her pen and a piece of paper torn from her notebook. “Could you write it down for us?”
“Sure.” Claire did so, then handed the pen and paper back to Hashek, who tucked them in her pocket.
“Did your mom have any other close friends?” I asked when they were done.
Claire pulled the afghan up to her shoulders and looked at Tony, who shrugged. “Maybe Sophie Drake? I don’t have her number, though. She’s a supervisor at the Met; maybe you could find her in their directory?”
“Ok, we’ll look her up. Anyone else?”
Claire shook her head. “There were lots of people she was friendly with, but not so many actual friends. I could ask my dad for more, if you want . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hashek told her. “We can check with your father when we speak to him.” She paused, thinking, and seemed to come up blank. She looked over at me and said slowly, “I think we’re just about done here . . . Detective D’Argenzio, do you have anything else?”
I started to shake my head, then changed my mind and nodded. “Yeah, one more thing - Claire, what was your mother wearing when you left the house last night?”
She blinked. “Um . . . wearing? What?”
“Yeah. Was she dressed? Wearing a nightgown? DId she have on any jewelry?”
Hashek, catching on to my point, nodded her approval to me.
Claire continued to stare at us. “Um, she was wearing . . . her pajamas. Blue silk. You know, a boxy top and loose pants?”
Hashek, more the expert on female nightwear than me, nodded knowingly. “Did she have on any jewelry? And what was her hair like?”
“Just her necklace, i think,” Claire said slowly, thinking. “A gold heart locket. It was a present from my dad for their last anniversary. A lot of nights she didn’t even bother to take it off to sleep.”
I’d gotten up close and personal with Gabrielle Young’s corpse, and it had not been wearing a locket. I tensed in excitement.
Hashek, who hadn’t gotten so close, was momentarily oblivious and continued trying to pin down how much time might have passed between Claire’s departure and her mother’s death. “And her hair?”
“Um . . . down. She had it in a French twist for work, but she took it down when we were watching the movie.”
Her hair had been down when she lay dead on the living room floor. If Claire had said her mother’s hair was still up when she left, we might have been able to build a portion of a timeline off how long it took to take down and brush out her hair. The fact that it was already down, however, didn’t help us at all. Damn.
I looked at Hashek, who looked back at me and shrugged. Can’t win them all.
“I think we’re done here,” I said when Hashek hadn’t jumped in with another question after a minute. “Claire, this is my card.” I handed the rectangle of heavy paper to her. “If you or Tony think of anything else, anything you think might help us - names, times, facts - please don’t hesitate to call either me, at the number on there, or the main police department number, if you can’t get in touch with me. That’s in the phone book.”
Claire took the card and nodded. “Did anything I said . . . did it, you know, help?”
“We don’t really know yet,” I said gently. “Things like this, a lot of times you don’t see what individual facts are worth until you try to start putting everything all together.”
“Oh.” She sighed dejectedly. “I guess I knew that. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize,” I told her. “We’re working for you. You have questions, you ask them.”
“Ok. I will.” She sounded a little more confident now. “Thank you, Detective . . . s.” She added the plural marker belatedly, glancing at Hashek, who had kept quiet during my little pep talk. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”
“Ok Claire,” I moved to shake her hand, but she kept both arms under the blanket and I pulled my hand back. “Thanks for your time.”
Tony Parker, who had been so eager to precede us into the room, didn’t bother to show us out.
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