“Ah, sorry. She was telling the truth—about some things, anyway. The coins exist. She believes they’re worth a million dollars, and her daughter did visit. She believes Eduardo has been in contact with Angie. All that’s true. She was lying about one thing, though.”
“What?”
“She didn’t merely ‘forget’ to tell Eduardo about giving the coins to her sister. I think she deliberately kept the information from him. Their marriage was on the skids. But she couldn’t just divorce him—he was violent. She might have wanted to keep those coins for herself, so she could escape and make her own fresh start.”
“Forgive me for pointing this out, but a million-dollar coin collection is a nice motive for murder.”
“She believes he’s alive,” Claudia said flatly.
“Then she’s delusional. The blood evidence was clear-cut. Maybe she had some sort of psychotic break and she forgot she murdered him.”
“Give me some credit. I think I would notice if the subject was psychotic.”
Their food arrived, and for a time they didn’t speak, focusing on filling their empty stomachs. Once Billy had taken a few bites to dull the edge of his hunger, he sat back and observed Claudia as she devoured her chicken fingers, coating each one with a few dribbles of ranch dressing. She took small bites, closing her eyes to savor each one.
He again wondered why this place was special to her. He tried once more to picture her as a little girl. Long blond hair in pigtails, maybe. She had such a slight build now, she’d probably been thin as a child, all knees and elbows. Had she been a tomboy, or a Little Miss Priss? Probably the latter.
“You’re smiling again.”
Billy quickly schooled his features. Damn, that was careless of him, letting his musings show on his face. His life no longer depended on hiding his true self every waking minute. But he still preferred to keep his feelings out of public view, and the one person he ought to be more careful around was Claudia Ellison. He might not believe in her body-language junk science, but she was perceptive.
They finished and paid with a company Visa, then headed back into the sizzling hot afternoon. Claudia removed her pale blue suit jacket. Her blouse was damp, clinging to her breasts in a way that made Billy’s mouth go dry despite the huge soft drink he’d just sucked down.
“So you’re going to recommend Project Justice not take on this case?” Claudia asked.
“It’s kind of fantastical.”
“Yes…but don’t you think we should at least check a few things out? For example, let’s sic Mitch on Eduardo. If the guy is alive, he’s leaving signs of his presence somewhere in cyberspace. Mitch is so amazing when it comes to that, and we have that list of friends and associates Mary-Francis gave us.”
“I guess that would be okay, if Mitch doesn’t mind.” Mitch Delacroix was Project Justice’s resident computer geek and missing person locator. “I can put Daniel off about a decision for a few days.”
“And I want to visit Theresa and see what she has to say about this illustrious coin collection.”
“Yeah, I’ll admit I’m curious. If Theresa has some supervaluable artifacts in her home, we should advise her to take them to the bank and put ’em in a vault. Especially if her drug-addict niece wants them.”
As Claudia climbed into the passenger seat of Billy’s truck, she offered him a healthy flash of thigh, and his heart leaped into his throat…was that her panties he just saw? Then he realized she was wearing a lacy-edged slip.
How Victorian. How…intriguing.
“She was definitely concealing something,” Claudia said once they were back on the road. “She gave at least a dozen signs of it.”
“A dozen? Come on.” No one could give themselves away that thoroughly.
“You knew she was lying. How did you come to that conclusion?”
“’Cause she told a stupid story about a million-dollar treasure and a dead husband come back to life. Doesn’t take an expert to figure out it’s a crock.”
“My hunch is, you read all the body-language signals on a subconscious level—the direction of her feet, the angle of her body, voice inflection, how fast she talked, where she looked, what she did with her hands, nostrils, lips, whether she swallowed a lot—”
“It would take me a year to catalog all that. Isn’t it easier just to listen to what a suspect says?” Yet merely listening to the words someone spoke hadn’t always told him what he needed to know. He’d missed some vital clues during that last operation with Sheila.
Just thinking about Sheila filled him with a profound sadness. “Hey, Claudia, can you tell what I’m thinking now?”
“I read body language, not minds,” she said tartly.
“What’s my body language telling you?”
She actually took him seriously, studying him from head to toe in a slow perusal that made him hot—checking him out the way a woman does at a bar when she wants you to return the favor. If he was as good as he thought he was, though, Claudia would have no idea how badly he’d like to kiss those moist, full lips of hers and muss up that elegant blond hair.
“You’re bored,” she finally said. “You don’t like this assignment, you don’t like Mary-Francis, and you’d rather be working on something else.”
“Uncanny,” he said as relief washed through him. He still had it. He could still hide his true feelings.
“I’m not so ready to wash my hands of Mary-Francis,” Claudia said, abruptly returning to business. “I’m going to talk to Angie. If she’s in contact with her supposedly dead father—”
“Whoa, wait, Claudia. You probably shouldn’t confront her. She could be dangerous.”
Claudia seemed insulted. “I know how to deal with addicts, even violent ones. I’ve had clients come at me with knives, try to choke me with drapery cords—”
“In a clinical situation, where I’m guessing you have a panic button, or people waiting in the next room who’ll come running if you scream.” Jeez, and he thought his job was dangerous.
“I know a little something about dangerous people,” she said. “I wouldn’t be dumb enough to confront her in an unsafe environment.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said, surprised at how happy it made him to have an excuse to spend more time with Claudia. Now that he knew for sure she couldn’t see inside his head as though it was a fishbowl, he wouldn’t be so irritated if he caught her studying him again. In fact, he might not be irritated at all. Did she always wear lacy slips? What was that about?
“I’m sure you have better things—”
“Once Daniel makes up his mind to check out a potential client, he wants it done right. It’s my job to run around interviewing people connected with the case. It’s what I’m being paid to do.”
“I’m on a hefty retainer,” Claudia reminded him.
“Then we’ll confront Angie together,” he said, settling the matter.
* * *
“GOOD MORNING, CELESTE,” Claudia said as she entered the Project Justice lobby the next morning. “I’m here to meet Billy Cantu.”
Celeste Boggs, Project Justice’s office manager and self-proclaimed head of security, looked up from her Soldier of Fortune magazine with a stern expression and pointed to a clipboard. “Sign in there, please.”
“Oh, but I’m not—”