“Death waits for no man, Ira.”
“He’s gonna have to—this is the public relations office.” Doyle tapped Accept and, still sprawled on the bed, put the phone to his ear.
Larkin sat up on his knees and began to unbutton his own shirt, saying, “Like fresh-cut flowers, ripe fruit picked from the tree, burning candles, and overturned hourglasses, my existence on Earth is also limited—”
Doyle put a hand over the mouthpiece and made a shushing noise.
But Larkin ignored him and continued, “And Debra Baan has insinuated herself between me and an evening of hedonistic desires, which included making out with my boyfriend.”
Doyle was trying very hard not to laugh as he covered the phone a second time and whispered loudly, “It’s not Debra.”
“Who is it. No, it doesn’t matter. They’ve given me metaphorical blue balls and are no longer on my holiday card list.”
“I bet you don’t even have a holiday card list,” Doyle countered before saying into the phone, “Really? Wow, that’s great.”
“I don’t,” Larkin agreed, climbing off the bed in order to remove his belt and finish with his shirt. “But they could’ve been the first.”
Doyle made a shooing motion at Larkin and said, mostly containing that warm, rich chuckle that was always so close to the surface, “Yeah, email it to me. I’ll give her a call right away. Thanks so much.” He hung up and said, “So, we might have a solid lead on Joan Jett’s identity, Greta is now under the impression that I suffer from conniptions, and you are being a tease,” he finished when Larkin dropped his trousers to the floor and stepped out of them.
Standing in nothing but a pair of low-rise black trunks, Larkin said, “Go back.”
Doyle scooted to the foot of the bed, saying, “Your underwear has relatively little real estate in comparison to its surrounding geographical properties.”
Larkin raised an eyebrow.
“But they make your thighs look incredible. Well, more than just your thighs….”
“Thank you. I meant, go back to Joan Jett.”
Doyle gave his thighs a brief squeeze, then let go when Larkin turned to fetch a pair of pajama pants from the dresser and pulled them on. “We’ve gotten a few dozen tips in so far, ranging from ‘she’s my neighbor’ to ‘I saw her on the Downtown 6 last week’—”
“Impossible. Jane Doe was clearly deceased in that video.” Larkin lifted a few folds of bedding before finding his gray T-shirt.
Doyle stood, finally losing his shirt and tossing it into the laundry basket. “—to a particular lead that Greta wanted to put on the top of the stack.”
Larkin put his arms through the sleeves before tugging the shirt over his head. He stared at Doyle expectantly, brushing a few errant hairs back into his side part.
“A woman claimed her to be a former lover.”
Larkin made a sound in the back of his throat.
“And get this,” Doyle continued as he finished undressing in favor of pajamas too. “She asserts her girlfriend—Esther Haycox—vanished in 1982, and after eight years of searching both for her or any living family, petitioned to have Esther declared as legally dead in 1990.”
“This claimant never buried a body.”
Doyle shook his head. He looked through the open dresser drawer for a moment, found a black T-shirt, and yanked it on before saying, “I didn’t even mention the best part.”
“Now who’s being a tease.”
Doyle grinned but said with noted seriousness, “She says Esther used to work in Times Square—as a burlesque dancer.”
Chapter Twelve
Larkin was awake at 3:49 a.m., listening to the second hand of his wristwatch make its sixty turns around the clockface.
Tick,tick,tick.
He’d been listening to it for the last forty-seven minutes, in fact.
