Page 60 of Deja New
TWENTY-NINE
Angela had missed the same spelling error three times in a row
(no more 4:30 a.m. hot chocolate for you, missy! at least not this week)
and when her phone rattled (Mitchell’s suggestion that she download a rattlesnake rattle*for her ringtone was genius), she was glad for an excuse to take a break. To her surprise, Jason Chambers was calling. The chat had been short
(“Of course you can come over.”)
and sweet
(“It’s nice to hear from you!”).
Also: ugh.Nice to hear from him?She sounded like someone’s aunt. And not a cool aunt, the way Dennis had been the fununcle. Somebody’s grumpy aunt, the kind who kept all the balls that dropped into her yard and wrote bitchy letters to the editor about how noisy the downtown area was.
When Detective Chambers turned up a half hour later, she was ready for him. She’d put on makeup, run mousse and a curling iron through her hair, picked out appropriately sober-yet-stylish clothing that flattered and covered at the same time.
And then she undid all of it because good God, who dresses for a date when a homicide detective was giving you an update about your murdered father?
So she brushed the curls out of her hair, blew her bangs out of her face (her hair was always in one of two stages: “I’m growing it out” or “I need a haircut”), and slipped into black leggings, a thigh-skimming cranberry-colored long-sleeved tunic, and plain navy flats. She looked in the mirror, pronounced herself as not trying too hard, and went to the kitchen to wait.
Minutes later, she opened the kitchen door before he had a chance to knock and saw at once that she wasn’t the only one low on sleep: His kind eyes had shadows beneath them. The navy blue suit was clean but rumpled, like he’d napped in it. And the dark stubble blooming along his jaw wasn’t sexyat alland, oh, God, why did she lie to herself? She wanted to give herself beard burn. He wouldn’t even have to do anything. Just stand still while she grabbed his head and rubbed his face all over her.
Archer had come in behind her and shook hands with Jason. “Hey, Detective, how’s it going?”
“Fine, Mr. Drake. Could you come with me now?” he asked Angela. “I’ve got something I think you need to see.”
“That sounds like everyStar Trek: TNG*ever,” Archer declared. He had a point. They were a Trekkie household, always had been (nothing against theStar Warsfranchise, they were fine if you liked glorified soap operas whose characters all had daddy issues*).
They’d all noticed that no one ever gave Captain Picard specifics. Ever. It could be a bomb, it could be a spy, it could be a bomb made of spies, and all Riker or Geordi would ever say was, “Captain, I think you should see this” or “Captain, you’d better get down here.” As Paul had pointed out when he was a wee lad (a wee-er lad), “They’re all terrible at debriefing their superior officer. Did they all flunk military protocol?”*
(This had the unfortunate side effect of sparking the “Resolved: That the United Federation of Planets is the galaxy’s military, not the galaxy’s Peace Corps” debate again. No one got to bed before 3:00 a.m.)
“Why? Do you have an update?” she asked. “A new witness?” A new witness would be wonderful. The old ones were dead or had disappeared or had refused to talk in the first place. A new witness would be Christmas.
He shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s related to the case or not.”
Okay. Is that disappointing? Am I disappointed?
“Will you come?”
Not disappointed.“Of course, I can go right now. I— Wait.” She turned to Archer. “What’s Mom up to?”
“Dunno. Jack said she’s in her room with the door closed.”
“Fine.”
“But she knows he’s here,” he added, jerking his head toward Jason. “She asked who was knocking.”
“Okay. So it’s unlikely she’ll come out anytime soon.”
“Based on my lifetime of observing her behavior... yeah. Pretty safe bet.”
Fine. Better than Widow Drake storming into the kitchen, insulting Jason for reasons only known to her, then vanishing for hours, maybe days. She remembered her uncle telling Jason to go direct traffic last week and wondered what caused the older generation of Drakes to have so little respect for law enforcement. She hoped, very sincerely, it skipped a generation. Preferably two or three generations.
Paul had once pointed out that living with Emma was like sharing a house with the Phantom of the Opera: You knew she was creeping around somewhere behind the scenes, wanting everyone to remain in the house, but she was hardly ever seen.
Jason was probably a bit weirded out by the exchange. Suddenly Angela was too tired to go into it one more time. “It’s complicated,” she said, and shrugged.
