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He openedhiswindow and started the car. “Hotel? Or somewhere else?”
She yawned. “I need to talk to this guy. Victor something. Only name I could get, and only because I did the Columbo thing. I don’t have an address, so I need to call him. Boy, does detective work take a long time.” She pulled out her phone.
“Wait,” Beckett said. “Who’s Victor? And what Columbo thing?”
“It was a TV show. Remember when I was lying on my couch eating ice cream from the carton and cookies out of the bag for months? I watched a lot of TV. A lot of reruns, including Columbo. He was a detective. He wore a trenchcoat.”
“And?” Beckett was trying to stay patient. It wasn’t easy.
“He would finish the interview and turn around at the door and ask one last question, like he’d just thought of it. People would be taken off guard, and they’d answer it. So, hey—the most unproductive and frankly disgusting period of my life accomplished something after all! It took fifteen years, but it finally paid off. Who knew?”
He peered at her more closely. “You seem jittery.”
“You’d be jittery too if you’d ingested about a thousand milligrams of caffeine in the last few hours. Come to think of it—let’s go someplace with a bathroom first. My bladder cannot take all this tea. Also, if I’m going to wheedle information out of a man, I need to figure out how to look more appealing. I’m not sure the capsule wardrobe’s going to do it. You’re going to have to give me some tips.”
51
IN THE STUPID SANDALS
Quinn sat at the outdoor table—had nobody in this Godforsaken country heard of staying inside in the air-conditioning?—and crossed her legs in her skirt, then shoved her hair back with one hand and sighed, letting her sandal dangle off her foot as she took a dainty sip of her white wine.
She’d arranged to meet Victor at a pub, because Beckett had insisted, and besides—wouldn’t the guy be suspicious if she invited herself over to his place? Women didn’t normally do that. It was five-thirty, and they were someplace called the Pig ‘n’ Whistle, on, yes, the Brisbane River. The most exotic place she’d been so far, because there was a huge fig tree growing up in the middle of the courtyard, with enormous chittering bats walking around up there in the branches, presumably eating figs.
Yes. Giant bats the size of cats. Flying foxes. She’d have thought she was hallucinating from fatigue, but Victor had told her that was what they were. She’d decided a feminine woman would be a little scared, so that’s what she’d been. He’d seemed convinced, too.So there, Martin.
It was the capsule wardrobe to the rescue again. Just the gray tank and its matching skirt, but a new pair of shoes. Sandals with heels, but a ridiculous kind that flapped against your foot when you walked, slap-slap-slap. The high heels were bad enough, but this? She’d said, “These make no sense.”
“They’re hot,” Beckett had said. They’d had lunch that she’d fallen on like a starving wolverine, and then three hours of sleep in the hotel, which was about fifty stories high, made of glass, andalsoon the Brisbane River—poor Beckett. She’d have moved, too, if every single place was on the frigging river where your wife had drowned! She’d taken a shower, so at least she didn’t smell, and then they went shoe shopping.
“The skirt’s OK, barely,” Beckett had said, “because of your arse and your legs and it being a bit tight around the hips, but you need better shoes to show off your legs. Your trainers aren’t going to do it.”
“Shouldn’t I pad my bra or something, though?” she’d asked dubiously.
“If we had time to buy you the right kind that looks real, but we don’t. Scent and shoes, I reckon. Anyway, your arse is enough.”
“Funny, that’s what Martin said.”
“I don’t even want to know. You sure you’re still good to do this?”
“I told you. You get in the water no matter how you’re feeling. I’m good. Let’s buy shoes.”
So now, here she was, the possessor of stupid shoes, wearing enough perfume to choke a horse, her eye makeup way over the top and her hair more tousled and messy than she ever allowed it to be, and crossing her legs in the way Beckett had told her to do. “If your skirt rides up when you do it,” he’d said, “that’s better. You may want to wriggle a bit, too.”
“Like I have a yeast infection?” she’d asked. “That’s sexy? I cannot believe you fell in love with me. I so clearly have no clue.” But he’d just smiled.
Victor said, “So. You heard about me from Samantha and wanted to meet me. I’m intrigued. I’ve met women in some mad ways, but …”
She said, “You’re thinking I’m forward. I probably am,” looked down and ran a finger around the edge of her wine glass—another coaching tip from Beckett—then looked up again slowly.
Definitely the hardest disguise yet, but she thought it was working. Probably because she hadn’t really started talking yet. Also, Victor was a susceptible audience. He was close to her age and wearing shoes with long, pointed toes and pants about two sizes smaller than an American man would have, like they’d shrunk in the wash. Both of those things seemed to be the Australian style, and he was also wearing a very close-fitting dress shirt. His hair was cut extremely short and neat, too. He was probably Martin’s dream man, except that this was, weirdly, the Australianstraightlook. Dockers had clearly never reached these shores.
Oh. She should say something else. She said, “I’m— well, I was— I have been— in a relationship with Beckett Hughes. Samantha’s brother-in-law. Late brother-in-law? I’m not sure how to say it.”
“Neither am I,” Victor said. “Is it ‘is’ or ‘have been’? So you and Samantha are …”
Wait, what? She decided to ignore that. “I think Beckett and I are going to break up.” She sighed and did the wine-glass thing again. Also the foot-swinging. “Because I started wondering about him. About his wife, and how she … how she died, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.” She looked up again and hoped she looked femininely helpless and beseeching. Her voice should also be breathy, but she didn’t know how to do that. “You heard about how she died? The night of the party?”
“I did, yeah.” He was doing the manspreading thing, drinking a beer and looking at her breasts. Which unfortunately weren’t going to hold his attention for long. She wished she’d had time for the push-up bra. “Pity.”
