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Kate broke all her own rules. She chucked the shells from the oysters Rockefeller into her client’s trash—he was hardly in a position to pass on word of her unprofessionalism. She dumped the rock salt back into its bag without checking off a use on her master list. She did a cursory cleanup and grabbed a wine bottle off the counter on her way out the back door. She paused in the alley and chugged from it.
Then she looked around quickly to make sure no one—heaven forbid, Montiel—had seen her. She was alone.
Everything went out of her. Kate leaned weakly against her panel van. What had happened here tonight? And why was it necessary for that cop to follow her home? Kate could not remember a plot she’d ever read that had involved the authorities baby-sitting a witness, unless that witness had turned State’s evidence. But she didn’t have any evidence to turn.
Suddenly, her heart nosedived into her stomach. Was she actually a suspect? Did they think she had killed that man?
She needed a lawyer.
“Okay, Betty Crocker, lead the way.”
Kate came away from the van quickly as Montiel left the kitchen door and came into the alley. She tucked the wine bottle behind her. “Do I need a lawyer?”
“What for?” He jiggled the handle of her panel van. “Unlock this thing.”
“Absolutely not.”
He turned back to her slowly. There was a streetlight on a nearby corner. It flung mild light into the alley, just enough that she could see something tic at his jaw.
“You don’t want to push me right now.”
Kate held her ground but her voice quavered a little. “I simply want a few explanations before I allow you in my vehicle—and besides, you said you had your own.”
“I do. It’s out on Willings. You’re going to drive me around. And damn it, you’re going to stop elocuting while you do it.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, he came toward her and he did it fast. Kate gave an involuntary cry and took a step in retreat. She brought her hand up to ward him off.
Unfortunately, it was the one with the wine in it.
His gaze flashed to it. “Misdemeanor. Slap on the wrist if you have no priors.”
“What?”
“For stealing the wine. Is that why you wanted a lawyer?”
“I brought the wine!”
“Did you charge McGaffney for it?”
“Of course!”
“Then you’re a criminal if you leave here with it. Unless he gives his permission.”
“He’s dead!” Then she realized that he was deliberately provoking her into forgetting her question. “Why won’t you just talk to me?”
“Because you do it funny.”
“I do not!”
He turned his back to her. “Come on. Drive me around to Willings and give me some vague directions in case I lose you in traffic.”
“Some cop,” she muttered.
A stillness came over him. “Come again?” he said neutrally.
In for a penny, she thought. “Aren’t you trained for this? For tailing people?”
“What I’m trained for,” he said without looking at her, “what I’ve spent fourteen years working my way up in the ranks for, is a hell of a lot more than what I’m doing right now. I’m not happy about that. So if you’re smart, you’ll stop ticking me off.”
Kate knew suddenly that that wouldn’t happen if they stood out here for days. She rubbed him the wrong way, and that made her heart sink in a way that was all too familiar.
“I just want to understand,” she said quietly.
He finally looked at her. “Do you know who that guy was? The dead one?”
“Of course. Phillip McGaffney.”
“Not his name. Who he was.”
“I—” She broke off, took a deep breath. “No.”
“Second in line for the O’Bannon throne.”
“O’Bannon?” She knew the name from somewhere, but couldn’t place it.
“Some say third in line. There are probably a hundred or so gun-wielding idiots in this city who think that Charlie Eagan damn well ought to replace O’Bannon instead. Ten to one, those are the guys who killed McGaffney.”
Kate finally understood what he was talking about, and it almost knocked her legs out from under her. “You’re talking about, like…the mob?”
“I’m talking about like the mob.”
Kate gave up the effort. She sank slowly to sit on the street. “I served dinner to a member of the mob?”
“Don’t lose any sleep over it. They eat just like the rest of us.”
“I served dinner to a member of the mob.” She looked up at him. “The woman?”
“She’s known in these circles, too.”
“I tackled her.”
Though Raphael had thought five minutes ago that he would never smile again, he felt a grin pull at his mouth. “Wish I could have seen that part.”
“She was being stupid.”
“Allegra is known for it.”
“Allegra…” Kate whispered it, giving a name to the very strong, very tall woman who had been trying to fling herself all over Phillip McGaffney’s body. “I don’t feel very well,” she murmured.
Raphael lost the urge to smile. “You’re about to feel worse.”
“Why?”
“The way the department has it figured—and I agree with them—is that something went way wrong here tonight.”
“Then tell me.”
“McGaffney is…was…flamboyant. It wasn’t his style to entertain ladies at home, especially when they look like Allegra. If he was home, he was alone. Everybody knew that. So tonight was out of pattern.”
She still didn’t get it.
“His killer—or killers—didn’t know you or Allegra were there.” He fought the urge to ask what exactly she had been doing there. He hadn’t seen anything in that house that would have required a caterer. But that would come later, after midnight. “We can’t keep a lid on both of you being here. Not indefinitely. The press are vultures. That’s why I’m going to stick close to you for a while until this either blows up or cools down.”
He reached and gave her a hand up. Kate came to her feet unsteadily. “They’ll try to hurt me?”
“Honey, you’re as good as dead unless someone is around to stop it.”
Kate looked at him sharply. When she did, something happened to the streetlight in the distance. It blurred and tilted.
Raphael’s instinct to protect started in his toes. She swayed, and he grabbed her shoulders. “Hey—”
“Don’t touch me.”
Raphael jerked his hands back. Anger drummed behind his eyes, giving him a headache. “That should be no problem.”
“I didn’t…I mean…” Kate trailed off and closed her eyes. Damn him. He had all the compassion, the sensitivity, of a rock. He’d laughed with that other cop in the dining room with a dead man no more than two feet away. She could talk until sunup, and he wouldn’t understand that she felt as though any kindness right now would shatter her.
In all her twenty-eight years, she had never really known fear. Now it made her palms sweat even as everything rational inside her struggled with what he’d just said, picking for some way to convince herself it wasn’t true. You’re as good as dead.
She couldn’t believe any of this.
Kate stepped around him, holding herself together. “I’m going home.”
“And that might be where?”
Did she have a choice? She’d let him tag along, she decided, until she could figure this thing out. “South on Second. The corner of Bainbridge. I rent space in a garage on Bainbridge for the van. It’s called Lucky’s.”
“Not tonight it’s not.”
Kate made a strangled sound.
She went around to the driver’s side of the van. When she got behind the wheel he tapped on the passenger side window. Kate ground her teeth together. She shot the key into the ignition and let the big engine rumble. “See you on Willings,” she muttered. Then she put the van in gear and rolled off, resisting the urge to look at him in the mirror.
Raphael jogged through the town house and out the front door onto Willings Alley. Until this night, until this very moment, he hadn’t known there could be so many facets to his temper. He felt reasonably sure that in the last hour he’d experienced all of them. The little fool! She’d driven around to the main alley by herself like there was no possibility whatsoever that someone could have waited on the corner for her, to end it then and there.
His Explorer waited for him. Raphael jumped behind the wheel with a second to spare before her atrocity of a vehicle lumbered into the alley. She beeped at him and kept on driving. Raphael swore and made an illegal U-turn to follow her. She was the most irritating, stiff-spined, starched, tsking, hardheaded, cop-show-watching, nosy fool he’d met in his fourteen years on this job. And she’d sat on Allegra.
Raphael grabbed the radio handset from his dashboard. “Who’s got Allegra?” he demanded when he got reception and was patched through to the watch commander.
“Vince Mandeleone,” said a disembodied voice.
Mandeleone. Fox’s rookie partner for the month. He wasn’t a rookie to the department, but to the Robbery Homicide Unit. “I’m back with Fox in two hours.” Even Raphael thought he sounded like a jealous lover.
“Yeah, that’s the word,” came the voice soothingly.
“So how come they’re not sending Mandeleone back down?”
“He did some good stuff this last month. They’re keeping him up.”
That was okay. Raphael didn’t want to hurt the kid, he just wanted his own space back. But something stuck in his craw. “They’re letting him question Allegra?”
“Hell, no. I thought you meant who was making sure she doesn’t get whacked over this. Fox is going to spend some time with her first before Mandeleone takes her home and bunks on her sofa.”
“That’ll last one night.”
The voice cackled. They all knew Allegra, by reputation if not by experience.
“Anyway, Fox said to tell you to keep your cell phone with you. He’ll touch base as soon as he’s finished with Allegra.”
“Will do.” Raphael signed off.
He was beginning to get a feel for things here. When Plattsmier had assigned him to the caterer, all he’d heard was his own blood rushing in his ears. But now he could see how things would play out.
In two hours, he and Fox were legit again. They would be running this investigation. Raphael was just going to have to do his part with the rigid little brunette in tow.
She was going to be his personal albatross for a while. There was no getting around that. The commissioner wasn’t going to let bygones be bygones quite yet. But Plattsmier, damn him, had accommodated them all—Raphael and the commish and himself as well. The commissioner would get his extra ounce of Raphael’s blood by saddling him with the witness. And Raphael was on the case so it had a prayer of getting solved.
The panel van tucked into the driveway of a garage just ahead of him. He stopped the Explorer in front of the entrance. A moment later, he saw her heading up the tunnel again, coming toward him on foot. Her head was down and too much of that crazy hair spilled forward to hide her features. Not bad features, he thought grudgingly, as he remembered them. Small, almost delicate. Then his eyes narrowed. For the first time he realized that she was towing a small red wagon behind her, and it was loaded.
Raphael drove a shoulder against the Explorer’s door and flung it open. He left the SUV idling in the street and jogged around it to meet her.
Whatever he had been about to say died in his throat when she looked at him. Her eyes were huge and bleak. They were indigo, he realized, more blue than blank.
“I don’t even know your name.” She whispered it as though it were the saddest thing in the world.
“Montiel.” His voice was hoarse. Probably, he thought, with the restraint it took not to try to comfort her again. Don’t touch me. He never made the same mistake twice.
“No, I meant your first name.”
“Oh. Raphael. Rafe’ll be fine.” Then it struck him. He hadn’t questioned her yet—that was by design. Once he’d gotten the lay of the land from Plattsmier, he’d known he’d do better to wait until midnight. But he hadn’t even asked her name. He opened his mouth, and she cut him off as though reading his mind.
“It’s Kate. Kate Mulhern.”
“Kate.” It was pretty. It made him think of sunflowers and Kansas. Oh, hell, maybe she wasn’t that bad.
She waited for him to offer to take the wagon from her. It was heavy and hard to pull. It would be an overture, she thought, an olive branch of sorts so maybe they could get through this night somewhat amicably until his superiors let him leave her alone again. But he only watched her.
Kate pulled her shoulders back. She moved around him, dragging the wagon.
