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He doesn’t touch me, now that we’re exposed again, but he drops his hands in his pockets and shrugs, walking as close beside me as propriety allows. “You automatically think she’s innocent?”
“Well… no. But I think it would be foolish to assume, just because she was on the scene. Women are sneakier than handprints on the walls and calling their own crimes in, Detective.”
He drops his gaze to his feet to hide his smile from the few curious reporters who would rather show us on the news instead of the homicide they came to report on. “You’d know,” he smarts quietly. “Wanna make a friendly bet?”
I stop on a dime ten feet from the front door. “Excuse me?”
“A bet.” He stops, too, and turns to give our crowd his back. To use his body to shield me from the news reporters. Our conversation is wildly inappropriate. More so than sneaking away to a victim’s garage to neck for a minute. “I prove it was her, you lose.”
“Hardly an unbiased investigator. You wish for me to prove it was someone else? Sounds like you’re fobbing your job off to me, Detective.”
He brings a hand up to cover his mouth. It would be ill-advised to show up on the six o’clock news with a smile on his face. “I’ll run the case, Chief. Fletch and I will do it right, and we’ll find our killer. I just meant… if our killer just so happens to be the wife, then I win.”
I don’t want to ask it. I don’t want to play into his game. And yet… “What exactly do you win, Detective? What do you want from me?”
Tilting his head to the side, he considers. It’s his thinking pose. His concentration face. “I want a honeymoon.”
“A…” Stunned, I jolt back a step. “What?”
“A honeymoon. We’ve been married four-and-a-half months now, Chief. No honeymoon.”
“We’ve been busy!”
“I want a month. Just you and me. No one else.”
“No chance,” I scoff. “I have work to do, Detective. A building to run. You have a barely legal mafioso brother living on our couch who demands round-the-clock supervision, or we risk him burning the city down. There’s no way we can take a month away.”
“Three weeks,” he counters without pause. “An island. Alcohol. Bikinis.” His eyes wrinkle, proving he hides a smile behind his hand. “You could be naked the whole time, I don’t mind.”
“You can have a long weekend.” I straighten my back and stare down my nose at the man we both know is attempting to play me. “Friday to Monday at best.”
“Two weeks.” He glances over his shoulder as the transport van comes to a stop within feet of the Alves’ front door, then looking back to me again, he raises a brow. “Quick, Chief. We have a murder to solve.”
“One week. Final offer. And we’ve yet to discuss what I win when I’m correct and Mrs. Alves is an innocent woman.”
He grabs my hand and shakes it—cameras snap, snap, snapping, because although I’m an inherently private woman, the press still find themselves interested in the marriage of a chief medical examiner and a former mafioso, turned homicide cop. “Our honeymoon is your prize too, Chief.” He keeps his back to the cameras, so when he winks, I’m the only one privy to the action. “One week. You can choose the destination if you want. But if you prefer, I can organize?—”
“You plan it.” I drop his hand and place mine on my hips. It’s too hot for a coat these days. Not even my ratty, too-thin, poor-excuse for a coat I cling to despite its complete ineffectualness in the winter. So although I’m used to slipping my hands into the pockets when I need somewhere to place them, I’m robbed of that pleasure today. “Seven days, Archer. Go find your killer.”
I step around him as our transport driver inches closer, then I stride onto the small, concrete, two-step porch and head back inside the house. “He wanted seven days all along. Bastard.”
Aubree spins on her heels and follows me back to the living room. “What?”
“Archer.” I shoot a venomous glare back toward the front of the house. “He roped me into a deal where he wanted a seven-day vacation. He started high, asking for a month, knowing I’d say no.”
“You’re going on a vacation?” She skips over my plight and stops on her own issue. “Without me?”
“Oh, for god’s sake. Yes, Doctor Emeri. I may go, at some point in my life, on a honeymoon with my husband. Without you.”
“I’m hurt.” She takes a black bag from our supplies and prepares it to transfer our body back to the George Stanley. “You didn’t even stop to consider my feelings in all this?”
ARCHER
Adrianna Alves is our endgame for today. An interview we’ll conduct down at the station inside a room built to intimidate killers and maybe, right or wrong, scare battered women into confessing that they’ve cracked and killed their husbands.
But before we get to her, we canvass Groster Street, speaking to each neighbor who wishes to provide a statement, and construct an image of a young family.
Broke.
