“Not normal?” she inquired.
Knowing danger when he saw it, Diaz ignored the honk of some idiot who was in a hurry.
“You don’t do stuff like that,” he blurted.
“Because it’s a waste of time for me? Are you suggesting I’m hopeless?”
“Because you just don’t do it!” he all but shouted.
Somebody rapped on his window. “Hey, buddy, you want to quit arguing with your girlfriend and get a move on?”
Diaz hit the down button and fixed an icy stare on the red-faced Yuppie who thought the world would end if he was held up two minutes.
“Maybe you want to rethink interfering with law officers in the performance of their duties.”
“You’re cops?” His stare took in the grill between front and back seats, the radio and the gun that Caldwell displayed as she bent forward, casually letting her blazer fall open. “And you’re sitting at the stop sign…why?”
“I’m afraid that’s not your concern, sir.” Caldwell had a gift for cool dismissal. “Please return to your car.”
Diaz zipped the window back up, glanced both ways, and started across the intersection. His mouth began to curve into a grin before they made it across.
He turned his head to see his partner’s mouth twitch.
“God knows what he thought.”
A laugh bubbled out of her. “That we were conducting a stakeout?”
“Squabbling like a long-married couple is more like it.”
She drew back instantly without seeming to move a muscle. He just felt it; her contracting into her space, a turtle making sure its shell was ready and available. Diaz thought a faint flush touched her cheeks, too.
“You made me mad.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t very tactful,” he admitted. He took another glance. Definitely pink cheeks. And the eyebrows… Much as he hated to admit it, the shaping had the effect of opening her face, emphasizing eyes he’d always known were spectacular. “Actually, uh, I like what you did. It looks good.”
“Really?” She couldn’t know how uncertain she sounded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just not used to my partners having a makeover.”
“I didn’t go that far,” she said, really quickly, the pink in her cheeks deepening. “I only did my eyebrows.”
Uh-huh. She was hiding something. God. Had she had a bikini wax, too? Was that why she was embarrassed?
He felt a surge of lust that shocked him. It was all he could do not to let his gaze lower to her crotch. Just for a second, he’d imagined her naked, a thatch of silky dark hair at the vee between smooth thighs and a flat, pale belly.
He looked away from her so fast, something cracked in his neck. Don’t think of her that way, he ordered himself. She’s a cop, your partner. Never, ever, imagine her naked again.
Keeping himself from thinking anything at all seemed to be the only way he could prevent pictures from forming before his mind’s eye. But sustaining a giant blank like a dry-erase board where he normally had a tangle of thoughts and plans and images took an enormous effort. His palms grew sweaty.
“I made a few calls,” she said, breaking the silence and bailing him out.
“Calls?”
“About Dad. And Leroy Pearce.”
“Right.” He relaxed fractionally. He could think about this. “What’d you learn? Wait.” He put on his turn signal. “Let’s stop for a cup of coffee.”
No espresso here. The truck stop café had padded booths patched with duct tape, middle-aged waitresses in starched pink uniforms who willingly refilled white china mugs whenever the level dropped, and French fries that tasted so good, they were probably still being made in beef fat.
Reluctantly, he skipped the fries. Breakfast hadn’t been that long ago. But he figured a piece of pie would settle.
One of the things he liked about Ann Caldwell was her appetite. Most women were on a perpetual diet. She never seemed to give a thought to calories.
When he said, “Pie sounds good,” she agreed.
“Make mine cherry,” she told the waitress. “Warm.”
“À la mode?”
“Why not?”
“Boysenberry,” he said. “I’ll take the ice cream, too.”
“Okay,” he said, once the waitress had left them alone in a booth in the far corner. “Find out anything?”
“That scrape along the driver’s side door and fenders bothered the mechanic who looked at the truck after the accident. He mentioned it in his report, but no one picked up on it.”
“Who would remember if the scrapes were there before that night?” Diaz frowned. “Where was your father going?”
“He was on his way home from The Blue Moon.” The tavern was a popular hangout for the older cops. “He had a blood-alcohol level that would have gotten him in trouble if he’d been pulled over, too. That’s one reason ‘accident’ was the obvious answer. He was speeding, lost control on the curve…” She shrugged.
“What do you think?”
Her voice was clipped. “Dad liked his beer. But I never knew him even to wander across a center line when he was behind the wheel. He carried it well. You know?”
“That’s what they all say,” Diaz reminded her.
She grimaced. “Yeah, I know. But, see, he drove me places a lot when he’d had as much as a six-pack. And, if anything, he’d slow down. Get more cautious. He never speeded. He said he’d picked up too many body parts off highways. When I got my license, he told me that if I was ever ticketed for speeding, I wasn’t driving again for a year. If I was lucky.”
“He wasn’t, um…” Diaz tried to think how to phrase his question without offending her. “He hadn’t been feeling low about anything?”
His meaning sank in and her voice rose. “Low?”
The waitress brought their pies, but neither of them picked up a fork or broke their locked stare.
“You’re asking if he was depressed?” She flattened her hands on the table. “You think he might have committed suicide?”
“He drove at high speed into a tree. Yeah, the thought occurred to me.”
Her face worked, and he braced himself for the blast.
“No! He’d never do that!” She breathed heavily. “How can you even suggest…?” She broke off with a lurch, as if a sob had torn at her throat.
In alarm, he said, “Jeez, Caldwell. Don’t get worked up. I just figured I should throw the possibility on the table.”
“It’s a horrible thing to say!”
“I’m not making an accusation. I just asked. Cops commit suicide, just like other people.”
“Not my father!” she yelled.
Heads on the other side of the diner turned.
“Okay, okay,” Diaz soothed. “Had you seen him in the week before he died?”
“I talked to him the day before.” She glared at him as if he was going to argue. “He was feeling good about an arrest, and he claimed he had a break in the Lofgren case. He wanted to know why my arrests were so low for the month.” She swallowed. When she continued, she’d stripped