“Get back on Abercorn.”
“What’s on the menu tonight?”
“A shooting.”
“Convenience store?”
“Brace yourself.” She took a deep breath and expelled it. “The home of Judge Cato Laird.”
Duncan whipped his head toward her, and only then remembered to brake. The car came to an abrupt halt, pitching them both forward before their seat belts restrained them.
“That’s the sum total of what I know,” she said in response to his incredulity. “I swear. Somebody at the Laird house was shot and killed.”
“Did they say—”
“No. I don’t know who.”
Facing forward again, he dragged his hand down his face, then took his foot off the brake and applied it heavily to the accelerator. Tires screeched, rubber burned as he sped along the empty streets.
It had been two weeks since the awards dinner, but in quiet moments, and sometimes even during hectic ones, he would experience a flashback to his encounter with Elise Laird. Brief as it had been, tipsy as he’d been, he recalled it vividly: the features of her face, the scent of her perfume, the catch in her throat when he’d said what he had. What a jerk. She was a beautiful woman who had done nothing to deserve the insult. To think she might be dead . . .
He cleared his throat. “I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Ardsley Park. Washington Street.” DeeDee gave him the address. “Very ritzy.”
He nodded.
“You okay, Duncan?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I mean, do you feel funny about this?”
“Funny?”
“Come on,” she said with asperity. “The judge isn’t one of your favorite people.”
“Doesn’t mean I hope he’s dead.”
“I know that. I’m just saying.”
He shot her a hard look. “Saying what?”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. You overreact every time his name comes up. He’s a raw nerve with you.”
“He gave Savich a free pass and put me in jail.”
“And you made an ass of yourself with his wife,” she said, matching his tone. “You still haven’t told me what you said to her. Was it that bad?”
“What makes you think I said something bad?”
“Because otherwise you would have told me.”
He took a corner too fast, ran a stop sign.
“Look, Duncan, if you can’t treat this like any other investigation, I need to know.”
“It is any other investigation.”