In the video, a man of average height and weight came around the corner and settled on a bench.
“Margaret Fan confirmed that this was the man Cal Landry watched as he died,” Sofria said.
“He doesn’t look too broken up about it,” Ren added.
“No. He almost looks…”
They both watched as the man all but danced in his seat on the bench.
“... like he’s celebrating.” Ren finished her sentence. “I’m going to call down to Tampa, see if that detective,” Ren scanned the police report still open on his laptop, “Michaels has the receipts from the restaurant.”
“A killer would pay cash,” Sofria pointed out.
Ren cocked his head to the tablet. “Does he look like a guy who’s worried about getting caught?”
Sofria glanced at the man in the video, arms spread on the back of the bench, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. “No. He looks arrogant.”
After placing the call to the detective, Ren set his phone on the table. “He was in his car. Said he’d email us the information in ten minutes.”
Sofria stood and walked around the island to the kitchen. “I could use a beverage.”
“There’s juice and sodas in the fridge,” Ren replied.
“Is it too early for something a little stronger?” She joked as she pulled open the stainless steel door.
“If you’re even old enough to drink,” Ren muttered.
“Leo.” Sofria waited until he looked up. “How old do you think I am?”
Ren pocketed his embarrassment and cleared his throat. “Well, when I came to your apartment that day to get the files on Dario Sava, you said you were a junior at Columbia. Assuming you didn’t skip any grades, which with you is not a safe assumption, you were nineteen or twenty back then. So by my math, you’re hovering right around twenty-two.”
Sofria released a lilting laugh that hit Ren right in the chest. “Professor Jameson,” she corrected, “I said the CIA recruited me in my junior year. They then paid for me to finish my degree and get a double master’s in statistics and applied mathematics. I was twenty-four when you came to my apartment that day. I’ll be twenty-seven in May.”
Ren stammered, “You’re twenty-six?”
She smiled. “And eleven months.”
He stood and came to the island. Standing across a sea of marble, he said, “Have dinner with me tonight.”
She leaned on the countertop. “I’d love to, but Leo, I leave in three weeks for an embassy assignment.”
Ren frowned. “How long will you be gone?”
“A year.”
He removed his wire-framed glasses and cleaned them with the tail of his shirt. “Well, shit.”
“Yes. Shit,” she repeated. “But I’d still love to have dinner with you.”
“Me too.”
“You can finally tell me what Leo is short for; I think I’ve guessed every name under the sun. Leon, Leonardo, Leonard, Leopold.”
Ren winked. “Maybe.”
His email pinged. “That’ll be Michaels’s info.”
Sofria followed him back to the table, and Ren pulled up the document. Together they examined credit card receipts from the night Cal Landry died. Together their eyes stopped on a name: Milo Graves.