The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(39)

“I thought we’d have this case solved by midnight,” I said.

“We will.”

“This case. Not the one with your parents.”

“Obviously, they’re connected. Occam’s razor, Watson. How often are your family members kidnapped and poisoned inside the same week?” Her words were flip, but her voice wasn’t. “The simplest explanation is the truest. Always. So I’m boning up, as it were. While you’re using this girl as an in. Pump her for information. Turn on that skeezy laddish charm.”

“Any more gross puns?”

“I’m just not up for it—”

“Stop.” What did it say about us, that the best we’d gotten along in days was when we were planning my date with another girl? “Fine, I’ll get a look inside Marie-Helene’s studio, ask her friends some leading questions, try to get a read on Nathaniel before we stake out East Side Gallery tonight. But I’m getting a sandwich first.”

“Yes, good.” Like she was donning a cape, Holmes threw her ratty robe over her clothes and tucked her book under her arm. “And Watson,” she said, “wear your fedora,” and she snickered to herself all the way down the hall.

MARIE-HELENE LIKED MY HAT. SHE LIKED MY BOOTS, TOO, and the band shirt I wore with my ripped jeans, which wasn’t exactly a good thing, since I’d never listened to them.

“And anyway,” she was saying, holding her latte in her gloved hands, “Faulkner’s always been my favorite, but I like Murakami a lot, too. They’re so different, it’s hard to choose between them.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure.” We were standing outside the café where she’d wanted to meet, a half block from her studio. She’d pointed it out to me earlier—the steepled roof, the brick walls—and I was waiting for an excuse to ask to see it.

“And graphic novels. I think they’re what got me drawing in the first place.” She sipped at her drink. The fuzzy ball on the top of her hat bobbled back and forth. “Are you okay? You look distracted again.”

I forced a smile. “Just a bit lost in my thoughts, love,” I said, and I was. I wanted to move things along. I wanted to be back at Greystone with new evidence. I wanted to know when talking to a French girl about our favorite authors on a snowy street in Berlin stopped being my idea of a perfect Sunday. All I really wanted to do was get to her studio so I could rifle through her things while she was in the bathroom.

Sometimes I wondered if hanging out with Charlotte Holmes had made me into a monster. At times like this, I knew it for sure. “So how did you get into art?”

“Well, once I got lost in the Louvre—wait,” she said, frowning. “I thought I told you that already, at the Old Met.”

She had. I backtracked. “No, of course. Ha. But that was when you decided you liked art. I meant, like, when you wanted to, uh, make it.”

Marie-Helene raised an eyebrow, but she gamely launched into a story about seashells, and her grandmother’s spoon collection, and a pencil she stole from her postman. It was a well-told story, funny and smart. I stopped listening almost immediately. Instead, I took her hand in mine and set off toward her studio in a wandering sort of way.

“Do you have any of that old work up there?” I asked when we reached the door.

“I don’t,” she said. “Are you trying to get me alone, Simon Harrington?”

The last name Holmes had given me. “I might be.”

I watched her think about it. The tip of her nose was pink in the cold, and she was wearing some bright lipstick that made her look like she’d wandered in out of a fairy tale. And I didn’t want to kiss her. How did I not want to kiss her? I’d been completely ruined.

“Okay,” she said shyly. “I’ll show you my paintings.”

“Is anyone else around?” I asked as she fiddled with the keys.

“It’s only a few days till Christmas. I’m going home tomorrow, but I think that I might be the last one here.”

“Good,” I said, too eagerly. There’d be fewer witnesses, fewer occupied studios, and I wanted to dig around. If I could, I wanted to rule out Nathaniel’s students as suspects. I liked Marie-Helene. In another life, I could’ve liked her a lot, and I wanted to stop wondering how I could use her as a tool in our case.

The studios were dark, except for the pale winter afternoon streaming in through the windows, and Marie-Helene didn’t bother to flick on any lights as we went along. Not until we got to her space at the end of the row, and she hoisted herself up onto her worktable, kicking her legs.

“Hi,” she said, biting her lip.

Crap, I thought. Because of course. Of course I’d be expected to make a move here. Touch her neck. Kiss her; hell, maybe sing her an L.A.D song—do something to live up to the ridiculous texts Holmes had been sending.

They were ridiculous texts, and in more ways than one. There had to have been a way to arrange this meeting without all that over-the-top flirting. If they’d gotten friendly last night, why hadn’t Holmes gone and met Marie-Helene herself? She was the better detective. We both knew it.

Okay, I’d been kind of petty that night before, keeping my arm around Marie-Helene, bragging to Holmes that the French girl liked me, Ha-ha, I don’t care that August is hanging around, I have someone, too, and yeah, it was kind of a dick move, but I thought she’d brushed it off, and Oh my God, I thought, she’s totally setting me up. Either she knows I’m going to totally cock this up, or—