Page 57 of Rest In Pink

“I sincerely hope he wasn’t close-mouthed last night,” Molly said, and I hung up on her laughter, smiling.

Because Molly was the best, and Vince had not been close-mouthed.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

When we finally broke away from the investigation, about eight, the sun was up. “Come with me,” I said, and Rain followed me in her car back to the Big Chef. She drove a black Mercedes convertible, which helped explain how she got to Burney so quickly after getting the call from George. As I turned into the drive, I realized that Liz might still be there. And possibly indecent. Which, normally, I’m all in favor of.

But Anemone’s little red sports car wasn’t parked in front, so I breathed a sigh of relief as I stopped and Rain pulled alongside. She’d spent the remainder of the night into this morning going through the rooms in the Shady Rest and the surrounding area. I’d followed her, filming, occasionally taking close-ups and collecting evidence in bags, while marking the spot. The small trunk of her car held a lot of stuff. She told me it was designed to hold two golf bags, which I didn’t understand. Who would design a trunk for that?

Arson wasn’t her expertise, but she was trained in it, since fires were often crime scenes. Captain Olson had been more than happy to walk both of us through it.

I realized Rain had never been to the Big Chef before as we got out. She looked around at the woods and then at the diner with much the same focus as she had at the crime scene. Then, being the detective I was, I had my second worrisome realization: what did the inside look like? Things had gotten a bit wild last night and I certainly hadn’t paused to clean up with George at the door. Nor did I expect Liz to do that. She wasn’t really the homemaker type, which was fine by me.

“Nice location,” Rain said, which I thought was carefully phrased.

I opened the front door, which Liz had left unlocked, and stepped in. Rain didn’t give me a chance to check things as she was right behind me.

“You told me about this.” She nodded. “Interesting. You like doing things differently, Vince. A bit small, but comfy for one.”

I was glad I’d told Patsy to go ahead with the order. “Want to crash for a few hours or talk it out?” I asked. “I can put coffee on.”

She walked along the counter and glanced past the glass bricks into my bedroom. “Vince. Vince. Vince. You naughty boy.”

I looked over her shoulder. The bed was a tumble of sheets and the stockings were still in the holes I’d drilled.

I defended myself. “You know that retired SEAL admiral who wrote the book about making your bed every morning? Well, you know how much I like SEALs. This is my protest.”

“Uh-huh. And the stockings?”

“I have no idea how those got there.”

“I bet I could find the culprit with about ten seconds of investigation.” She came back into the main area. She noted the framed poster of Rogers’ Rules of Rangering. “Really, Vince? Stockings and Major Rogers?”

“Keeps me focused.”

“Sure.”

She made a decision. “Let’s crash for two hours so we can think straight.”

“Roger that. You want—“

“Hell, no. I am not going into that den of depravity. Where do you put guests?”

“I have an air mattress,” I said and set it up for her in the hall beside the shower. Look, the place is three hundred square feet. For the first time, I thought about what it was going to look like expanded. A place two people could stay in without being on top of each other, which, with Liz, I’m all in favor of, but it appeared my circle was expanding.

While I was thinking that, I was setting up the air mattress with sheets and blankets and pillows until Rain said, “Enough, Cooper, I don’t need the Hilton.” She crawled under the blanket and was asleep within seconds, just like any good Ranger. I went in the bedroom, thought about untying the stockings, figured that ship had sailed, crawled into sheets that smelled of Liz and sex, and was quickly unconscious.

* * *

Exactly two hours later,plus or minus a minute or two, we were at the counter on adjoining stools, sipping coffee. She had her iPad in front of her and I had a blank legal pad. I think we looked like we knew what we were doing.

“Well, Detective Cooper?” Rain asked. “What happened at the Shady Rest?”

“Well, Inspector Still,” I said, because it was always good to start with formalities before descending into profanities and arguing, “a person who was not registered in a room fired up a grill and the CO2 from it killed Thomas Thacker in the next room.”

Rain held up a finger. “Not CO2, Ranger. Carbon monoxide, not dioxide. CO.”

“Right. Okay. Well. A lot of it doesn’t make sense. Initially.”

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