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Louise ate hungrily, and nodded her head in thanks when he gave her half of his sandwich.
She drained her glass of milk, then wiped her lips with a gesture Peter thought was exquisitely feminine.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about me and Dutch?”
“Dutch is dead,” Peter said.
“I never slept with him,” Louise said. “But I thought about it.”
“You didn’t have to tell me that,” he said.
“No,” she said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t. I wonder why I did?”
“I’m your friendly father figure,” he said, chuckling.
“The hell you are,” she said. “Now what?”
“Now we see if we can find you a pair of pajamas or something—”
“Have you a spare T-shirt?”
“Sure, if that would do.”
“And then we debate who gets the couch, right? And who gets the bed?”
“You get the bed,” he said.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“No pass, Peter?” she asked, looking into his eyes.
“Not tonight,” he said. “Maybe later.”
He walked into his bedroom, took sheets and a blanket from a chest of drawers, carried them into the living room, and tossed them on the couch. Then he went back into the bedroom, found a T-shirt and handed it to her, wondering what she would look like wearing it.
“I’ll brush my teeth,” he said. “And then the place is yours. I shower in the morning.”
Brushing his teeth was not his major priority in the bathroom, with all he’d had to drink, and as he stood over the toilet trying to relieve his bladder as quietly as possible, the interesting fantasy that he would return to the bedroom and find her naked in his bed, smiling invitingly at him, ran through his head.
When he went back in the bedroom, she was fully dressed, and standing by the door, as if she wanted to close it, and lock it, after him as soon as possible.
“Good night,” he said. “If you need anything, yell.”
“Thank you,” she said, almost formally.
As if, he thought, I am the bellhop being rushed out of the hotel room.
He heard the lock in the door slide home, and remembered that both Dorothea and Barbara were always careful to make sure the door was locked; as if they expected to have someone burst in and catch them screwing.
He took off his outer clothing, folded it neatly, and laid it on the armchairs.
Then he remembered that he had told the cop in the basement garage to tell Lieutenant DelRaye that he was taking her to the Roundhouse. He would have to do something about that.
He tiptoed around the living room in his underwear until he found the phone book. He had not called Homicide in so long that he had forgotten the number. He found the book, and then sat down on the leather couch and dialed the number. The leather was sticky against his skin and he wondered if it was dirty, or if that’s the way leather was; he had never sat on his couch in his underwear before.
“Homicide, Detective Mulvaney.”
