Barbara came running with a towel. “Don’t worry, it happens all the time,” she reassured Alice. She glanced at Harley, put some figures together and chuckled. “Ah, romance is in the air.”
“It is not,” Alice said firmly. “I offered to take him to a movie, but I’m broke, and he won’t go dutch treat,” she added in a soft wail.
“Aww,” Barbara sympathized.
“I don’t get paid until next Friday,” Alice said, dabbing at wet spots on her once-immaculate oyster-white wool slacks. “I’ll be miles away by then.”
“I get paid this Friday,” Harley said, straddling a chair opposite Alice with a huge steak and fries on a platter. “Are you having a salad for lunch?” he asked, aghast at the small bowl at her elbow. “You’ll never be able to do any real investigating on a diet like that. You need protein.” He indicated the juicy, rare steak on his own plate.
Alice groaned. He didn’t understand. She’d spent so many hours working in her lab that she couldn’t really eat a steak anymore. It was heresy here in Texas, so she tended to keep her opinions to herself. If she said anything like that, there would be a riot in Barbara’s Café.
So she just smiled. “Fancy seeing you here,” she teased.
He grinned. “I’ll bet it wasn’t a surprise,” he said as he began to carve his steak.
“Whatever do you mean?” she asked with pretended innocence.
“I was just talking to Hayes Carson out on the street and he happened to mention that you asked him where I ate lunch,” he replied.
She huffed. “Well, that’s the last personal question I’ll ever ask him, and you can take that to the bank!”
“Should I mention that I asked him where you ate lunch?” he added with a twinkle in his pale eyes.
Alice’s irritated expression vanished. She sighed. “Did you, really?” she asked.
“I did, really. But don’t take that as a marriage proposal,” he said. “I almost never propose to crime scene investigators over lunch.”
“Crime scene investigators?” a cowboy from one of the nearby ranches exclaimed, leaning toward them. “Listen, I watch those shows all the time. Did you know that they can tell time of death by…!”
“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!” Alice exclaimed as the cowboy gaped at her. She’d “accidentally” poured a glass of iced tea all over him. “It’s a reflex,” she tried to explain as Barbara came running, again. “You see, every time somebody talks about the work I do, I just get all excited and start throwing things!” She picked up her salad bowl. “It’s a helpless reflex, I just can’t stop…”
“No problem!” the cowboy said at once, scrambling to his feet. “I had to get back to work anyway! Don’t think a thing about it!”
He rushed out the door, trailing tea and ice chips, leaving behind half a cup of coffee and a couple of bites of pie and an empty plate.
Harley was trying not to laugh, but he lost it completely. Barbara was chuckling as she motioned to one of her girls to get a broom and pail.
“I’m sorry,” Alice told her. “Really.”
Barbara gave her an amused glance. “You don’t like to talk shop at the table, do you?”
“No. I don’t,” she confessed.
“Don’t worry,” Barbara said as the broom and pail and a couple of paper towels were handed to her. “I’ll make sure word gets around. Before lunch tomorrow,” she added, still laughing.
Chapter Four
After that, nobody tried to engage Alice in conversation about her job. The meal was pleasant and friendly. Alice liked Harley. He had a good personality, and he actually improved on closer acquaintance, as so many people didn’t. He was modest and unassuming, and he didn’t try to monopolize the conversation.
“How’s your investigation coming?” he asked when they were on second cups of black coffee.
She shrugged. “Slowly,” she replied. “We’ve got a partial number, possibly a telephone number, a stolen car whose owner didn’t know it was stolen and a partial sneaker track that we’re hoping someone can identify.”
“I saw a program on the FBI lab that showed how they do that,” Harley replied. He stopped immediately as soon as he realized what he’d said. He sat with his fork poised in midair, eyeing Alice’s refilled coffee mug.
She laughed. “Not to worry. I’ll control my reflexes. Actually the lab does a very good job running down sneaker treads,” she added. “The problem is that most treads are pretty common. You get the name of a company that produces them and then start wearing out shoe leather going to stores and asking for information about people who bought them.”
“What about people who paid cash and there’s no record of their buying them?”
“I never said investigation techniques were perfect,” she returned, smiling. “We use what we can get.”
He frowned. “Those numbers, it shouldn’t be that hard to isolate a telephone number, should it? You could narrow it down with a computer program.”
“Yes, but there are so many possible combinations, considering that we don’t even have the area code.” She groaned. “And we’ll have to try every single one.”
He pursed his lips. “The car, then. Are you sure the person who owned it didn’t have a connection to the murder victim?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Ever considered a career in law enforcement?”
He laughed. “I did, once. A long time ago.” He grimaced, as if the memory wasn’t a particularly pleasant one.
“We’re curious about the car,” she said, “but they don’t want to spook the car’s owner. It turns out that she works for a particularly unpleasant member of the political community.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Who?”
She hesitated.
“Come on. I’m a clam. Ask my boss.”
“Okay. It’s the senior U.S. senator from Texas who lives in San Antonio,” she confessed.
Harley made an ungraceful movement and sat back in his chair. He stared toward the window without really seeing anything. “You think the politician may be connected in some way?”
“There’s no way of knowing right now,” she sighed. “Everybody big in political circles has people who work for them. Anybody can get involved with a bad person and not know it.”
“Are they going to question the car owner?”
“I’m sure they will, eventually. They just want to pick the right time to do it.”
He toyed with his coffee cup. “So, are you staying here for a while?”
She grimaced. “A few more days, just to see if I can develop any more leads. Hayes Carson wants me to look at the car while the lab’s processing it, so I guess I’ll go up to San Antonio for that and come back here when I’m done.”
He just nodded, seemingly distracted.
She studied him with a whimsical expression. “So, when are we getting married?” she asked.
He gave her an amused look. “Not today. I have to move cattle.”
“My schedule is very flexible,” she assured him.
He smiled. “Mine isn’t.”
“Rats.”
“Now, that’s interesting, I was just thinking