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“Sure.” They went upstairs to the apartment and Delaney pulled two beers from the fridge. She offered one to the detective, but he shook his head. Delaney motioned for him to sit and while he settled in the recliner she sipped and tried to decide if she was surprised or not that Callahan was a cop. The answer was both yes and no. No, in that he had that rough edge to him that would be required for his job and was common at the types of gyms Delaney frequented. He took his physical health at least semiseriously and he was built like a brick house, to use a cliché she liked particularly well, because brick houses were old-fashioned, sturdy, tough and attractive. Right now the detective wore a white dress shirt with slacks and a jacket, his badge around his neck on a chain and presumably his weapon holstered at the waist, but Delaney had seen him at the gym, in shorts and T-shirts. She knew his clothes covered an impressive set of muscles, even if he was clumsy at body-weight movements and a little rusty overall. Those were all the reasons Delaney was not surprised that Detective Callahan was a cop.
What did surprise her was this immediate situation. Detective Callahan, sitting in her living room, regarding her with a hint of softness in his gray eyes as they talked about the missing motorcycle. Delaney knew Callahan was the guy who should be downstairs, checking out the site where the bike got nabbed, looking for tire tracks out front, combing around for clues or whatever it was detectives did in these situations. She knew it by his partner’s reaction when Callahan suggested they switch roles and she knew it by what little she had learned about this guy at the gym. Detective Callahan liked to be the guy on the trail with the magnifying glass, not the guy on the couch talking to the upset victim, refusing to have a beer, even if he wanted one, because he was on duty.
“What’s the history of this bike?” Callahan pulled out a notepad and pencil. “Just, nuts and bolts. How long you’ve had it. Where you got it. That kind of thing.”
“It was my great-grandfather’s, originally. I never met him, but the story was he won the bike in a poker game. I have no idea if that’s true, but I do know that he wouldn’t have been able to just go out and buy the bike. We’re a long line of mechanics. The ’33 is a four cylinder, made at the height of the Great Depression, so it was a luxury item. No way my people had four hundred dollars to drop on a motorcycle, so my great-grandfather definitely got it otherwise. After he died, the bike became my grandfather’s, who I also never met, then my father’s. When my dad died, the bike became mine. I just had it shipped here from Omaha.”
“Who knew about the motorcycle?” Callahan knocked out a couple of tiny mints from a plastic container hidden in his breast pocket and popped them in his mouth. “Mint?”
“No, thanks.”
Callahan put the mints away and waited.
“All my father’s biker friends knew the ’33 well. That’s a long list, and they’re all over the country.” Delaney honestly couldn’t think of anyone who would steal Dad’s bike, off the top of her head, even though plenty of his friends had wanted to buy it. Some of Dad’s crew had been shady, but they were blue collar kind of shady, not the type to steal from one of their own.
“Anyone show any particular interest in the bike, out of that group?”
“Everyone in his core riding group. The guy that owns the shop he worked at and three other guys. They all asked, each in their own way, if I was going to hang on to the bike after Dad died. They were willing to buy it if I wasn’t. They’re like family, though. Like my uncles. They helped raise me.”
Detective Callahan was quiet, writing in his pad. “Those the guys downstairs? In the photo of you as a little girl, surrounded by five men?”
“Yeah, that’s them.” Delaney tried to keep her surprise to herself.
“I’ll need those names.”
“Sure.” Delaney didn’t repeat,they’re like family. The detective was only doing his job. She was, however, dreading the fact that Boom, Zip, Donnie and Sal were going to find out she’d lost ’33. She needed to give Detective Callahan alternatives. “The guy who delivered the motorcycle was really into it. And I just had a grand opening two weeks ago,” Delaney added. “At least a hundred people came to that, throughout the day. The bike was parked right downstairs and everybody liked checking it out. People even took pictures of it.” Delaney swigged her beer and wallowed in the bitter aftertaste. She normally didn’t day drink, but she needed something to keep her hands busy if she was going to sit here and be judged by a cop who was probably thinking she was asking to get her bike stolen by leaving a door wide-open. Not to mention this was the same guy she’d raced in a 5K last time she’d seen him, and their parting hadn’t exactly been friendly.
Callahan kept writing. He had the perfect poker face, with his hard, square jaw, lips that didn’t turn either up or down at the corners, and eyes that went between her, the pad and the apartment, like he was recording information, scoping out the place and watching her reaction all at the same time. “Did you keep a list of people who came to the grand opening?”
Delaney’s lips paused at the edge of the beer bottle. “I did. I had a registry book. Like when you go to a funeral. People were supposed to sign it. I thought it would be a cool keepsake, plus I’d have names and phone numbers of potential clients. It’s downstairs.”
“I’ll need that book.”
“Definitely.” Delaney rose, but Callahan motioned with his hand for her to sit back down.
“Later. We’ve got more to talk about.”
Delaney hesitated, then sank back down. This was a side of Callahan she hadn’t seen. This whole cop thing. At the gym, he kept to himself, even though he seemed to know everyone. He wasn’t loud or flashy, rude or bossy. Just quietly confident and possibly a little bit jaded with life. Now, as a detective, he was still quietly confident, but with a huge edge. Callahan was laser focused and completely in charge. None of his baggage came with him to the job.
He leaned forward. “Anybody close to you have a reason to take the bike? Other than your...uncles?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “I’m not close to anybody but my uncles.”
“No disgruntled ex? Somebody who had a score to settle or a debt to pay? Knows your routines closely?”
Delaney shook her head. “My last serious relationship was in Hawai‘i, years ago. Quantico was my last tour before retirement. I had my head down, all business, just to make my twenty, get out and open my shop. I’m not on Tinder and I’m not in any knitting circles. The only person I was close to in any meaningful way is dead.”
Callahan looked up from his notepad, and for a flash of a second, his emotions peeked out from behind his cop persona. A change that ran through his eyes, like a single sparkle in a far-off ocean. He cleared his throat and changed topics. “What’s the bike worth, Miss Monroe?”
Delaney let out a great gush of air. She’d been waiting for this part. She felt stupid enough already for leaving the door open, inviting anyone and everyone to steal Dad’s prized bike. Which is all Delaney cared about—the bike she and her father had worked on together and shared since she was knee-high. Detective Callahan was about to learn just what an idiot she was. “Depends. But...anywhere between twenty and sixty grand.” With the amount of work Dad had put into it, the care he and Delaney had taken with it, they were probably talking near the higher end. Delaney kept that to herself because frankly, she didn’t care. ’33 was priceless.
Detective Callahan leaned back in the recliner. He squared his shoulders and eyed Delaney like he’d read every word that ran through her mind. “Who do you think did this? Any idea at all?”
Delaney polished off her beer and set the bottle on the edge of the coffee table. She’d gone through that very question multiple times ever since the shock of seeing that empty spot of concrete next to Wyatt’s dog bed.
“It’s such a small window of opportunity,” Callahan repeated what his partner had said. “Less than an hour between when you last saw it downstairs and when it went missing. What it boils down to is this—who steals a bike, in the rain, while the owner is gone for less than an hour?”
The silence ticked by, seconds weighted by concrete.
