I walked up the steps and stood at the counter, staring at the bouquet. They were wrapped in cheap plastic to hold them together, but they looked wilted, as if they’d been out of water for too long. I took a picture of their position beside the register with my phone before moving them.
Paranoid? I was starting to get there.
“Well?” Max asked expectantly.
I lifted the flowers with a tissue and found a slip of paper sitting underneath. “‘We grew in age—and love—together—Roaming the forest, and the wild; My breast her shield in wintry weather—And, when the friendly sunshine smil’d, And she would mark the opening skies,Isaw no Heaven—but in her eyes.’”
“Shakespeare?” Max asked.
“No.” I put the flowers down. “Poe. This is from his poem ‘Tamerlane.’”
“I don’t think I read it,” Max answered. He sounded a little nervous.
“I wrote a paper on this poem in college,” I said, bending down and grabbing a big paper bag. I gently slipped the note and bouquet inside. “I need to bring this to Calvin.”
“Ginger cop?”
“Yeah, that one,” I answered, standing. “Will you be okay here alone for a bit?”
“Sure, but if I have to call 911, at a certain point, the police will be convinced this address is cursed and will stop coming by.”
“Very funny.”
“Poe died under mysterious circumstances, didn’t he?” Max asked as he walked up to the counter beside me, taking the moneybag and putting the change into the register.
“Yes, why?”
“Maybe a curse killed him.”
“Oh, don’t start, Max.” I shook my head and walked down the steps.
“Hey,” he called, leaning over the counter to watch me go toward the door. “Since when do you call that detective by his first name?”
I paused and turned around. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
I couldn’t see Max’s expression all that well from afar, but I figured he had to be grinning when he said, “You slept with him.”
“W-What!”
“Damn, Seb. The sheets from Neil aren’t even cool yet.”
“Don’t joke about that.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“I… may… have,” I muttered. “A little.”
“How was he?”
“Max, keep it in your pants and cover the shop. I’ll be back in an hour.” I stopped by the front door, rushing to put my coat and scarf back on.
“I wish you weren’t colorblind!” Max called. “I need to know if the carpet matches the drapes!”
“For the love of God, Max!”
I TOOKa taxi to the address on Calvin’s business card, which I now carried in my wallet. I had thought I’d be doing him a favor, coming to drop off suspicious evidence so he wouldn’t need to drive over to me, but once I walked into the precinct, I wasn’t so sure. Like so many of my ideas, I hadn’t thought this one through. Would he even want to see me after yesterday? Could he separate professional and private life enough to be gentle with me as the officer involved in my—this—case?
The lights of the building were excruciatingly bright, and I had to keep my sunglasses on.
