Suddenly furious for reasons he hardly grasped, Diaz asked, “Then he what?”
She stared at him.
“Tell me.”
“What difference does it make?”
“I want to know,” he said, rough and unyielding.
Just audibly, she said, “He laughed. ‘Hell, they wouldn’t take you once they got a look at you.’ That’s what he said. But by God, if I couldn’t use the advantages he’d given me to do the job, I’d better start exploring other career paths.”
Diaz wished the son of a bitch was alive so he could plant a fist in his face. “He just couldn’t admit you might be his equal.”
“But why?” she whispered, as much to herself as to him. “Did he hate me?”
Diaz couldn’t remember ever hearing Sgt. Caldwell talk about his daughter. “Maybe,” he suggested, “he desperately had that urge men sometimes do to live on through a son. He couldn’t see himself in you, so you wouldn’t do.”
“I tried.” The two small words were as desolate as anything he’d ever heard.
“If he wasn’t proud of you, he didn’t deserve you.”
She looked at him with those vivid, desperate eyes. “You have a son and a daughter both, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Picturing his kids, dark-haired and bright-faced, smart, mischievous, all bony elbows and knees and warm cuddly bodies at the same time, Diaz knew his voice softened. “Can I live again through my son but not my daughter? Is that what you’re asking?”
She glanced down, saw the ice cream melting in pale rivers around her pie, and picked up her fork. “I guess.”
“No.” He couldn’t imagine the concept, not the way she meant. “Actually, I see more of myself in Elena than Tony. He looks like his mom, loves to talk like she does. He’s creative, too, like she is. Elena’s more for mulling things over before she gives an opinion and takes action. Tony’s the rash one.”
Around a bite, Caldwell asked, “You were a cautious kid?”
“Yeah, I hung back.” Damn, this was good pie. “I can remember every time Mom served a new dish, I’d watch my sisters’ faces as they tried it before I put a bite in my mouth.”
Caldwell laughed, and he saw that some of the misery had left her face.
“Back to your father. We need to hit up his drinking buddies. Find out if anybody knows about the scrape on his truck.”
She nodded. “I can do that. I know his friends.”
“While you’re talking to Roarke, see if his story about the car that landed on his face has changed.”
Another nod.
“I’ll tackle Leroy’s neighbors. Talk to the widow, the EMTs. You never know. Someone might have noticed something.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “Do we tell the lieutenant what we’re doing?”
“Not until we have something to go on. He’d say the whole idea is wacko and tell us to drop it.”
She laughed. “I told you I’d have let it go if you’d just said that in the first place.”
“The way you let the Lofgren thing go when I didn’t back you?”
His honest answer to their superior that he didn’t think the case justified reopening had been a betrayal, as far as Caldwell was concerned. Partners backed each other, she’d said. In general, Diaz agreed. Truth was, he didn’t think they’d find anything this time, either, in investigating the two deaths and the one near-miss. But Caldwell would feel better if she wasn’t left wondering, and that was good enough for him.
“That was different,” she said.
“This matters, too.”
Pushing her empty plate away, she cleared her throat. “I didn’t say it the other day, but I want you to know I appreciate you taking me seriously.”
“Yeah, yeah.” They were descending into Hallmark territory, which made him uncomfortable. If he’d talked about his feelings more readily, he might still be married. “Good cops have hunches. I figure this one might be legit.”
“Yeah.” She looked grateful. “I mean, I hope it’s not, but I’d like to be sure.”
Grateful. That stuck in his craw. Her bastard of a father had never respected her opinions or worth, so she was pathetically grateful when someone did. He almost liked it better when she snarled.
“You done?” he asked abruptly.
“What? Oh. Sure.” She drained her coffee and slid from the booth. “Pit stop.”
He made his own, taking a second to frown at himself in the blotchy mirror above the sink in the men’s room as he washed his hands. The face that looked back at him was older than he remembered being, grimmer. Every one of his thirty-six years showed today. He wondered how Ann Caldwell saw him, whether she ever…
No, damn it. He wasn’t going there. He didn’t want to know if she ever had moments like he’d had in the car, when she felt a flash of intense sexual awareness. Hell, he’d rather not know if she didn’t, either. A man had some pride.
NOT UNTIL late that afternoon could Diaz get over to Pearce’s house.
His widow answered the door, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed, her stare vague.
“Mrs. Pearce, I’m sorry to disturb you,” he began. “But I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”
“Questions?”
“About your husband’s accident.”
“But…why?”
He came up with something slick about tying up loose ends, and she finally nodded and stood back.
The living room was dim with drapes drawn and only one lamp on. She sat in the large brown recliner that dwarfed her, and he guessed it had been her husband’s. A basket at her feet overflowed with crumpled tissues.
She wrapped an afghan around her shoulders as if she were chilled despite the warm room. “What do you want to know?”
Diaz flipped open his notebook and held his pencil above a blank page. “Were you home at the time of the accident?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what he was doing. I was sewing in a room on the other side of the house. I heard a few thumps and vaguely wondered what he was up to.”
“I understand he had somebody stop by to speak to him?”
“Did he? I guess he might have.”
“Were both ladders his?”
She nodded, her mouth crimping. “I told him to call a service. Those gutters were so high off the ground, but he was determined…” She groped for a tissue.
Diaz gave her a moment to blow her nose and compose herself. “Did you hear him fall?”
She sniffed and shook her head. “I…I had the sewing machine running. I thought I heard a bellow and I stopped to see if Leroy was calling for me, but then when he didn’t again, I finished the seam.”
“You couldn’t have done anything,” he said gently.
Tears overflowed. “I’d have held the ladder if he’d asked. He was so stubborn!”
That was one way of putting it.
“How