“Don’t thank me yet. Depending on the outcome, you may not want to thank me at all.” He rose and walked her to the door. Their shoulders brushed as he reached for the knob. She moved away quickly and muttered an apology. But in that fleeting moment of contact, awareness sizzled. Nick found himself breathing in her scent. She smelled of raindrops and vanilla. A clean fragrance with more than a hint of mystery.
He cleared his head as he pulled open the door. “It was good seeing you again, Dr. March.”
“You, as well. It’s been a long time. And please call me Catherine.” She smiled for the first time since entering his office. “I was surprised to hear you’d left the police department.”
“Were you?” His smile felt brittle. “No one else was.”
“Charleston PD’s loss is my gain.”
“We’ll see, I guess.” He handed her a fresh business card. “My cell number is on the back. Call me if you need anything or if you have questions.”
She pocketed the card. “We haven’t talked about financial arrangements.”
“Jackie at the front desk will explain our terms.”
“Thank you again.”
Nick waited until he heard her footsteps on the stairs before moving into the hallway. He stood at the railing overlooking the lobby as she paused at the reception desk to speak with Jackie Morris.
Then fetching her umbrella and raincoat, Catherine March went out into the rainy afternoon, leaving Nick feeling oddly troubled as he stared after her.
Nick turned away from the railing, anxious to have a look through the newspaper clippings, but the sight of his uncle Emmett lurking in the hallway stopped him cold. He hadn’t expected to see anyone on the second floor. Since his father and uncle retired, Nick mostly had that area of the building to himself, although Emmett still retained his office and he almost always attended the weekly briefings.
He’d made a point of telling Nick not to expect him until the end of the week, but there he stood looking pleased with himself that he’d caught his nephew off guard. Emmett LaSalle was nothing if not competitive. He took great pride in one-upping the younger detectives in the agency.
“You’re awfully jumpy,” he observed.
“I tend to get that way when someone sneaks up behind me,” Nick countered. “What are you doing here anyway? I didn’t expect to see you until Friday.”
“Change of plans.” Emmett nodded toward the long row of windows in the lobby where rain still pelted the glass. “Can’t take the boat down the coast in this weather.”
“Fish bite best in the rain,” Nick said. “Or so I hear.”
“Rain is one thing, but a monsoon is something else. I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.”
Like Nick’s dad, Emmett LaSalle was a handsome man, tall and lanky with an easy grin. They were fraternal twins with physical similarities, but their personalities were like night and day. Emmett had always been a little on the slippery side whereas Raymond LaSalle was about as straight an arrow as one could hope to find. To Nick, his uncle looked as if he’d stepped from the pages of a noir detective novel. No matter the season or trend, he favored pleated slacks and fitted knit shirts topped with a weathered fedora. He claimed he’d given up gambling years ago, but Nick had his doubts. The detective agency had been a lucrative investment for the LaSalle brothers, and both Emmett and Raymond enjoyed fully funded retirements. But Nick couldn’t help questioning some of his uncle’s recent purchases, like the forty-foot fishing boat he slyly called The Shamus.
Emmett leaned both forearms against the railing and called down a greeting to Jackie, who had glanced up when she heard their voices. As always, her gaze lingered on Emmett before she turned back to her work. She’d had a thing for him for as long as Nick could remember. Everyone at the agency knew it but pretended not to. Nick sometimes wondered if they’d had a romantic relationship in their younger days. Maybe that explained why she’d stubbornly carried a torch through both of Emmett’s marriages. Maybe she was waiting for him to wake up one day and realize the love of his life had been right in front of him all along.
Emmett gave him a sidelong glance. “The woman that just left. New client?”
“She could be. I’m looking into something for her. We’ll see how it goes.”
“Quite a looker, from what I could see. Way out of your league, though.”
Nick was used to his uncle’s ribbing. He gave a careless shrug. “Then I guess it’s a good thing she’s a client and not a date.”
Emmett grinned, displaying a slight overbite that gave him a boyish air despite the silver at his temples. “My first wife was a client.”
“And look how that turned out.”
“Everything was fine until she got nosy.”
“Yes, how dare she take offense to all those clandestine trips to Vegas,” Nick said dryly.
Emmett’s expression sobered. “What did you say her name was?” He stared down at Jackie until she glanced back up at him. Something flared between them. Not attraction or even affection, but the silent communication of an old and complicated liaison.
Nick paused at the abrupt change of subject. “You mean the client? Her name is Dr. Catherine March.”
“Doctor, huh?”
“She’s a forensic anthropologist.”
Emmett repeated her name with a frown. “Has she been in before? I swear I know her from someplace.”
“Maybe you recognize her from her work with the police department. An article ran in the paper yesterday about her efforts to help the county coroner’s office identify the victims in the Delmar Gainey case.”
Something flashed across his uncle’s face, an emotion gone so quickly Nick wondered if he’d seen it all.
When Emmett didn’t respond, Nick said, “Surely you’ve heard about the Gainey case. Human remains found in an abandoned house? You’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard all the breathless reporting.”
Emmett frowned down into the lobby where Jackie had returned to her work. “Has she been able to identify any of the victims?”
“She’s working up profiles for the coroner.” Nick thought about the enigmatic glint he’d caught in her eyes and the hesitant revelation about a puzzling discrepancy. He shrugged. “But to answer your question, I gather the work is ongoing. She didn’t talk much about it.”
Emmett glanced at him. “That’s not why she came here, then. Good. I’d hate to see you get dragged into that mess. I hear heads are still rolling at police headquarters.”
“I hear the same, but why would you even think that a possibility? Why would she come to me about a police investigation?”
“It was just a thought,” Emmett said. “Wouldn’t be the first time an overzealous consultant tried to go behind a detective’s back. The last thing we need is to step on any CPD toes, especially in a high-profile case like this. If they thought you were trying to undermine an investigation, they could get your license yanked.”
“You don’t need to remind me to proceed with caution when dealing with the Charleston Police Department.” Nick didn’t have to elaborate. His uncle would get his meaning.
Emmett gave a grim nod. “All the more reason to keep your