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"Less button-down?"
He shrugged. "It's been all right so far."
"It was very generous of Mr. Mitchell to let you leave to come here on such short notice."
"As bosses go, he's okay."
She rearranged her legs beneath the table and took great care with smoothing the napkin in her lap, keeping her eyes down. "Do you have a family?"
"No."
She raised her head and looked across at him. "You never married?"
He replied with a guffaw. "Don't I wish."
She appeared on the verge of giving way to natural curiosity and asking about his marital status but didn't. Wisely, he thought.
Instead, she said, "You didn't know until last night that I was a widow."
"Nope."
"I'm still in real estate. Did you know that?"
"Figured as much."
"I thought you might have. ... I mean, your being an investigator by trade, I thought you would have--"
"Kept track of you over the years?"
"Frankly, yes."
"Frankly, I did. For a while. Then I ... stopped."
"Lost interest?"
"Lost hope."
He sounded pathetic even to his own ears. Practically growling, he said, "I don't suppose smoking is allowed in here."
Her head went back several inches. "You smoke?"
That caused him to laugh. "I don't actually smoke. I just inhale. Smoking takes too long to get the nicotine into my bloodstream."
"When did you start smoking?"
"Thirty years ago."
The significance of the time frame didn't escape her. She held his gaze for several beats, then said, "You should quit."
"What for?"
Their stare held until the waitress returned with her tea and his Coke, which was served in one of the vintage bottles accompanied by a slender glass of ice sitting on a little china plate with a white paper doily underneath it. They didn't have Coke in ordinary cans in Merritt, Texas? He didn't touch anything, afraid he'd break something.
Caroline thanked the waitress, spooned sugar into her cup, then poured steaming tea out of a little white pot with pink flowers painted on it. "It's still weak. I didn't let it steep long enough," she remarked.
Okay, enough of this bullshit. "You gonna talk to me, or what?"
She set her spoon in the saucer. It clinked against the cup as though her hand might not have been quite steady. She looked across at him. "Last night, in my house, a man was shot and seriously wounded. Berry was there."
