Once the waitress was gone again, Quentin leaned forward, watching Nicola’s placid face. “The man who contacted us,” he said. “He claimed to know for a fact that Renee is April Cooper.”
Nicola stared at him frozen, butter knife poised in her hand.
Quentin started to explain more but she stopped him. “I know who April Cooper was.”
“Oh. Well then...”
“Who is this man who contacted you?”
Quentin took a sip of his coffee. “I’m sorry. That’s the one thing I can’t tell you,” he said. “But I will tell you this. He claims he met her after her death.”
“After.”
“Yes.”
She took a bite of toast, her face relaxing. “He’s insane.”
“You’d think so.” He poured syrup over his pancakes and started to cut them up in pieces. Nicola didn’t say anything, but he could feel her watching him, waiting. She wanted more information from him. But he wasn’t here to answer her questions. That wasn’t how this worked. You have to give information to get it. He cut off a perfect bite of pancake—just the right size, the right amount of syrup,topped off with a sliver of turkey bacon. He put it in his mouth, taking his time to savor it fully before he put the fork down and met her gaze. “How long have you known Renee?”
She took another sip of her coffee. “Since we were children.”
Quentin’s eyes widened.
She smiled. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s just... You’re the first person I’ve met who can even prove to me she had a childhood.”
She shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t the happiest childhood.”
Quentin’s phone was in his lap. He picked it up and tapped at it a few times, trying to make it look as though he was receiving a text. “One sec,” he said, as she watched him with her ice-blue eyes. Discreetly, he turned on the voice recorder, then placed the phone facedown on the table. “Please,” he said. “Please tell me about it.”
Nicola took another bite of her toast, the cream cheese thick, the jam drizzled on. She chewed politely and swallowed, dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. Nicola Crane had the look of a frontierswoman but the manners of a debutante. “This was Renee’s favorite dish, you know, when we were kids.”
“Really?”
“We used to eat it all the time together—cinnamon raisin toast, cream cheese, strawberry jam. She used to make it for me, which is probably why I’m finding it so comforting now.”
“So you’re not blood relatives,” he said. “You and Renee.”
“We were in the same foster home back in the mid-’70s. Little town in Arizona called Brittlebush.”
Quentin drank his coffee. “How old were you both?”
“She was older than me—maybe seventeen? There were a lot of kids in that house, but she was...” Quentin watched her face, the way her eyes clouded, then stopped, shifting back to the present. She took her napkin and again dabbed her mouth.
Nicola said, “You know what oscars are?”
“Academy Awards?”
She laughed a little. “No, no. Fish. Big ugly, mean-looking things.”
“Oh. Yeah, I think so.”
“Our foster dad kept two of them, in a tank in the kitchen. Funny. I can’t remember what he looked like—the foster dad. But those awful fish... I still have nightmares about them.”
Quentin took another bite of pancake. “Oscars.”
“They eat living things,” Nicola said. “I guess all fish do, but these... the foster dad fed them live goldfish. Renee and I were in the kitchen—I think we were the only ones who saw. I was young and very sensitive. I’d lost both of my parents and I was still... hurting.”
