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“Such as it is.” She waved the nail file around. “It ain’t much, but it’s home.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a file on the Chavez case, by any chance.”
She made ahelp-yourselfgesture. “I imagine it’s in one of the boxes in the back room there. Simon would’ve taken copies, left the originals. He was real careful about stuff like that.”
After an hour of pawing through boxes haphazardly stacked around a desk that still had Simon Phillips’s nameplate on it, Alex came up with the file. He sneezed twice and wiped the dust from his face with the back of his hand before he sat down in the only chair in the room.
Bingo. He had to read the certificate and Phillips’ notes twice before it sank in. A marriage certificate issued in Dickinson County, Kansas, to Clarisse Berger and Ezra Dodge. Phillips had been unable to find any record of a divorce or of Dodge’s death.
Clarisse Dodge slash Chavez was a bigamist.
Phillips further theorized that when she disappeared it was to go back to her first husband.
In Abilene, Kansas.
Chapter Twenty-one
Deborah slammed the cookie tray on the kitchen counter and jerked off the oven mitt. She’d burned another batch, filling her apartment with the acrid smell of burnt peanuts. She should’ve gone to the movies instead of pretending to be Betty Crocker. An hour of AA at the crack of dawn followed by another hour in her therapist’s office, and two hours at the gym, and then another hour of AA—that left an endless nineteen hours of everyday to fill.
A rap on the door sent the thought careening away. Someone—she didn’t care whom it was at this point—to interrupt the dreadful, lazy tick tock of the clock. Deborah sped to the door and flung it open. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Hey.” Alex shifted from one foot to the other. “Nice to see you again, too.”
“Why—never mind. Come in. Please.” She whipped the door wide, glad to have something besides her own insidiously dangerous thoughts to entertain her.
“Here.” He thrust a brown paper bag at her as he slipped through, within inches of touching her even though the doorway was plenty wide for both of them.
She took the bag and backed away from him. “What’s this?”
“Candy.”
“Thanks. Did it occur to you that you might want to call before coming over?”
“I did. There was no answer. The candy is supposed to be to help you quit smoking.”
Belatedly, Deborah remembered she’d unplugged the phone after the third “just wondering how you’re doing call” from Teresa and Omar and Ray—everyone but Daniel.
“Candy’s bad for my teeth. I chew sugarless gum.” She peered inside the bag. Peppermints, lemon drops, root beer balls, an assortment of Brach hard candies. Not bad.
“All that chomping is so attractive.” He plopped down in the only decent chair in her living room before she could offer him a seat. He looked good. Dark blue shirt. Gray dress slacks, nice silk tie. “What smells? Like something burned?”
She popped a peppermint in her mouth and headed for the mini-kitchen without answering. Normally she liked the tight efficiency of her tiny apartment. Now it seemed way too small for her—and him. He filled up the space with a coiled energy that radiated masculinity. No one would ever accuse Alex of being a shrinking violet. She peeked at him over the counter as she swept the burnt cookies into a wastebasket and stuck it under the sink. “Aren’t you working?”
“I’ve been running all over the place and I realized I forgot to eat. So I thought . . . well . . .” He ducked his head and looked at his shoes.
Deborah took the opportunity to study his face He looked exhausted. Dark circles around big dark eyes in a face that didn’t seem as plain to her as it had before. “So what are you doing here?”
“Inviting myself to have a late lunch with you. Or an early dinner.” His tone sounded more resolute. He stood and followed her into the kitchen. The passage between the counter and the sink shrank. “You have the makings for sandwiches by any chance? I’ll make one for you, too. Or we could go to the deli, if you’d rather. I’ll buy.”
“Why me?” The question was out before she could reel it in. Nice. Couldn’t she be nice just once?
He didn’t seem deterred. “I—”
“I don’t care why,” she interrupted him. She knew why. Sarge sent him to make sure she wasn’t backsliding with a bottle. To baby sit her. “You promise to tell me what’s going on with the investigation and I’ll feed you. You can even have a homemade cookie.”
“You made cookies?” He laughed. “I get it—hence the burnt smell.”
“Why are you laughing? Some of them turned out okay.”
