The bartender came back with a club soda and another shot. Before Angela could grab her drink, I quickly took both and reversed their positions.
“Hey—” she protested.
“Why don’t you pace yourself. So we can talk.”
“Is talking all we’re gonna do?”
“Yes.”
She rolled her eyes and drunkenly sipped the club soda before sticking her tongue out in disgust. She was pretty trashed, so it was difficult to tell if she knew what I looked like—who to expect when the door had opened—or if my physical appearance was a surprise. Therewasthe possibility that even if she were the Collector, she hadn’t necessarily ever seen me in person. Reputation and all that. Folks remember my name, not my face. It was also tricky trying to determine if she was aware that I was gay, or if she was simply so sloshed that her knee-jerk reaction to any perceived letdown was to hurl homosexual insults.
Either way. I didn’t like her.
“About Edward Cope,” I tried once more. “My studies led me to your boyfriend—Dr. Newell? It seems like he’s been organizing—”
“My boyfriend,” Angela said slowly and methodically, but his name dripped from her tongue like snake venom, “was a sack of shit.”
Was.
“Really?” I asked. “Why?”
“Have you ever been cheated on?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I was no saint, but my college boyfriend, Brian, had been a real ass.
Angela pouted and touched my chest. She tried to wriggle her fingers in between the buttons of my winter coat. “You poor thing.”
I politely pushed her hand away again. “I’m quite okay, Ms. London.”
“Well, I’m not,” she clarified before slurping the club soda again. “Frank slept with his intern.It’s so cliché!” And without warning, she burst into loud, drunken sobs.
Startled, I grabbed a wad of napkins from a nearby dispenser and offered them.
She took the cheap, thin paper and wiped her face. “Hismaleintern,” she added before looking at me. Her eye makeup wasn’t waterproof. “But I’d guess you know what that’s like.”
“I don’t sleep with male interns.”
Angela snorted. She scrubbed her cheeks and tossed the napkins to the floor without second thought. “I should have known. They got along so well, after all.”
“When you worked at the Museum of Natural History?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Er—I mean, a lot of names and titles and big dinosaur words got hurled at me while I was looking up details on Cope,” I said, stumbling to recover.
I’m not sure she bought my attempt at feigning stupidity.
Angela reached over my arm on the counter, picked up her shot, and finished it in a single gulp. “Sure, I worked there,” she hissed. “So did Frank. So didDaniel.”
“Daniel was the intern.”
“Hm-hm.” Angela licked some spilled drink off her fingertips.
“What can you tell me about the Cope exhibit?” I asked.
“Why aren’t you askingFrank?” she shot back.
Tread carefully. Shit-faced or not, she might be trying to trap me. I couldn’t trust her. For all I knew, those tears had been that of a crocodile.
