A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery #2)(62)

At the name, Kate stopped and looked at him. “Gil? What did he—?”

Their halting seemed to bother Jack as he abruptly stopped singing. One of the band members took the mic, and Jack jumped down. He pushed Garth aside and led Kate into the dance.

She had grown accustomed to his quick movements. “You interrupted at a very bad time.”

“Garth is married and has a kid and a half. He—”

She moved closer to him. “Shut up and listen. He said that Chris dated Bridget who—”

“Was crazy.”

Kate stepped away and glared at him.

Jack pulled her back into his arms and was silent, listening.

“Garth said Bridget wasn’t as bad as Gil has it, but...”

“But what?”

“That’s when you jumped off the stage and demanded my full attention.”

Jack ignored that remark. “Gil is my best friend. He’d tell me if...”

“Tell you what?”

“Nothing. He hasn’t told me anything. What does Garth know that I don’t?”

“Maybe I would have found out if you hadn’t done one of your jealous fits and—”

Jack stopped dancing, took her hand, and led her back to the table. Their sandwiches were there.

“I want you to stay here while I go talk to Garth.”

“How about if you stay here while I go talk to all of them?” She picked up her drink and when the napkin stuck to the bottom, she pulled it off and dropped it on the table.

“I know those guys so I—” He broke off as he looked at the napkin.

Kate saw what he was looking at and put her drink down.

The napkin had large, black letters on it.

STOP THE COP
A second later, Jack had slid out of the booth and was looking around the room. Other than a few tourists, he knew everyone in the bar. “Stay here,” he said, then hurried through the dancers to reach the back door.

Kate was a foot behind him.

“I told you—” He’d already seen the futility of trying to make Kate obey him. As they ran through the kitchen, he asked if any strangers had been there.

“Just an old guy,” a cook said.

“Skinny?”

“Yeah.”

Jack practically leaped to the door and flung it open. Kate caught it before it closed.

“Damned heels,” she muttered. “If you hadn’t made me wear them, I could —”

Outside, Jack stopped and looked around. “That’s why I told you to stay inside. For your safety.”

“No, you told me to stay behind because I’m a girl and therefore you think I am incapable of doing—”

He gave her a Give me a break look. “He’s gone.”

Kate pulled the napkin out of her pocket. “So now what? We go home, do show and tell, and go back to endlessly talking about murder? What happened to our vow to not get involved?”

The band started to play again. High up on the wall was a screened window and they could clearly hear the music.

Jack could see how upset she was. On impulse, he pulled her into his arms and began a slow dance with her. “You are a great dancer. Nobody can keep up with Garth, but you did.”

She knew he was changing the subject and she was glad of it. “I had classes in college. I like staying agile.”

“Yeah?” He pulled her closer.

“What do you think that note means? I’m guessing ‘the cop’ is Chet. Do you think he’s getting close to the real kidnapper? Or maybe he’s close to finding Janet’s murderer. Maybe we should—”

Jack dropped her into a dip so low that she quit talking. “I suggest we go back in, eat our sandwiches, have a few more beers, then go home. I’ll get one of the guys to drive us. Tomorrow we’ll turn this over to Chet and let him figure it out. Sound like a good idea?”

“An excellent plan. When do we order the chocolate?”

“As soon as you swear to never ever again dance with Garth. My heart can’t stand watching that again.”

“Oh, Jack, you do say the funniest things. I’m going to dance with Garth every chance I get. What’s his wife like?”

“Pregnant. Never could dance. He said it was his favorite thing about her as she would never complain that he didn’t take her dancing.”

She laughed. “Come on, let’s go.”

They went back into the bar together.

As Carl Olsen watched them from high above, he sighed in relief. His entire body hurt and it was hard for him to get down. If they’d stayed a few more minutes, he might have fallen at their feet. It had been hard to escape them. But earlier, it had been easy to disappear in the excited crowd in the bar. No one looked at a skinny old man who was hunched over and scuffling about. Those people were full of the energy of life, something that Carl no longer had.

As he got down, he thought how he wished with all his might that the cop would stop investigating. He wasn’t worried about that reporter. That guy was so desperate that he’d make up an ending for his story, anything that would get him on talk shows. The truth meant nothing to him.

But the cop... He cared about justice, about vindicating his stupidity from the first time around. All that cop cared about was being able to say, “See, I figured it out. I wasn’t a fool after all.” The consequences of revealing the truth meant nothing to him.