“Let me finish,” I gently chastised. After a moment, I continued. “I have a master’s degree in Art History from NYU, and if you’ll allow me to be a total braggart for a second, I’m one of the country’s leading experts in my field. I started as an assistant in someone else’s shop, answering the phone and dusting bookends for a living, and now I authenticate, research, hunt down artifacts for clients across the country, and act as an auction agent for people who have more money than God. Granted, this is a first with having the police as a client, but they are literally wanting to pay me to do my job. That’s all. If they can’t ask me about spiritoscopes, who’ll they turn to?”
“Greg Thompson,” Calvin immediately answered. “From Marshall’s Oddities.”
I snorted at the mere thought. “You once said to me I knew a thing or two about most everything.”
Calvin added, “I think I also said something like that fact made it difficult to argue when you’re wrong.”
“I still don’t know if you meant that as a compliment or not.”
Calvin expelled a heavy breath. “I don’t know….”
I kissed his mouth once, twice, three times for good measure, then said, “We make a good team.”
“The best.”
“Let me help. So you can close this case quickly, before it ever has a chance to turn into something more.” I kissed Calvin a final time. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
CHAPTER THREE
Upon verbally accepting Ferguson’s request and warning him of my consultation fee, which I don’t think he entirely believed but would realize I was quite serious about after I sent him the invoice, I was left to wait in Calvin’s office as he and Quinn were brought up to speed on the case. After being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, denied caffeine, then left in a quiet room with the lights off, it was inevitable that I’d doze. And when I was awoken, I was curled into some yoga-pretzel position in Calvin’s chair, with Radcliff leaning over me.
“Fuck’s sake,” I said in a low, startled voice, jumping and causing the chair to roll backward a few inches.
“Sorry,” Radcliff said with an amused lilt to his voice. He straightened and flashed another one of those killer smiles. He was probably great at playing the politics that Calvin wasn’t interested in. “They’re about finished with the briefing. Want to join us?”
“Right. Yes.” I took my sunglasses off, rubbed carefully at my left eye until the red-tinted contact resettled, then put the shades on. Radcliff offered a hand, but I was already halfway to my feet while grabbing my bag off the desktop.
“So….” He walked to the door, opened it, and looked over his shoulder. “Fan of Corey Hart?”
“Never heard that one before,” I said dryly. “No. I have a light sensitivity. Overheads wash out my vision and give me headaches.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
Radcliff didn’t say anything else as he led the way across the hall and into a conference room big enough to accommodate the total number of Homicide detectives around an oval table. Ferguson was absent—maybe he intended for his star detective to handle the situation, now that Calvin had been briefed. At the front of the room was one of those whiteboards on wheels, covered in a number of crime-scene photographs that Calvin was removing at random—likely anything that was a dead body and not the spiritoscope. He didn’t need to worry—I was distracted by the scent of coffee and egg and cheese settling over the room like a warm blanket. My stomach growled on cue.
Quinn glanced up from a plastic bag with the I Heart NY decal. “I heard that.”
“It smells like street cart in here.”
She nodded and slid a foil-wrapped sandwich across the tabletop. “Don’t say I never did you any favors.”
Score.
I put my bag on an empty chair before unwrapping the bagel sandwich and taking a big bite. I watched as Quinn slid one toward Radcliff as he dropped back into a chair, then set aside one for herself and Calvin where two small, takeout coffee cups marked their occupancy. I took another bite, swallowed, then asked, “How much am I allowed to know? About the case?”
Calvin turned. He’d ditched the suit coat and stood there, studying me from across the length of the room, with his sleeves rolled up and holstered weapon on display. He tapped the edges of the photographs against the tabletop. “You get to know nothing.”
Okay. Let’s try that a different way.
“I mean, I’ve already given a rundown on the spiritoscopes to everyone. What else do you need from me?”
Calvin moved to his chair, sat, and set the photos—image-side down—atop a folder. He leaned back, pointed to the remaining pictures on the whiteboard, and said, “You’re welcome to take a look at those and let us know if anything stands out.”
I pursed my lips a little. “Can I buy a vowel?”
Radcliff chuckled.
