A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(61)

“I wasn’t hinting to make you treat me again. I was just curious,” she said. “After the meal we had tonight, I can’t even think about food again for a few days.”

“I liked the Escarpment too,” said Crane. “I’ve always liked it, but tonight it was at its best. It’s such a beautiful view anyway, but having you across the table made it even more beautiful.” He watched her for a reaction, but didn’t detect one, so he persisted. “I meant that, you know.”

Chelsea could feel herself getting panicky. He was trying to be nice, but being with him made the interior of the car seem suddenly smaller. She felt an impulse to open the car door and get out, but the car was moving. She held her discomfort in check. “You shouldn’t be such a kiss ass. People will think you’re trying to make fools of them.”

“Me?” said Crane. “I’d never do that to you. I do think you’re beautiful. I’m sure you can see that for yourself in the mirror every day, but it doesn’t hurt you to know that other people appreciate you.” He grinned. “You’re raising the property values around here, so it’s good for everybody.”

“Always glad to help the real estate people,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else. You’ve been careful all through dinner not to talk about work. So tell me about your day at work. How was it?”

“Good,” he said. “Business is always good. Whenever the economy starts looking up, people buy too much and don’t have anyplace to put the excess but storage. When the economy goes down again, they lose their big fancy homes and have to put all of it in storage.”

“So they have to come to you no matter what.”

“The smart ones don’t, but they don’t matter. There are so few of them that they’re not a big share of the market. How about your job? Are you back at work yet?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I was thinking of going back this week, but my mother asked me to go on a little trip with her, so I told the bank I wasn’t ready. She was going to fly to Denver to help my cousin Amelia with her new baby, and she wanted me to go with her. At the last minute I couldn’t face it. I realized it would have been the same thing that kept me from going back to work—lots of questions about Nick and the investigation and what I feel, and people saying it’s too bad we weren’t married, because then there would be insurance. It would be even worse in Denver. I’d edge out Amelia and her baby for attention and everybody would feel bad for me instead of good for her. I’d rather be around people who have gotten tired of talking about it.”

“It’s not that we’re tired of talking about it. We just—”

“I am,” she said. “I should probably be ashamed of that, but it’s how I feel. I don’t want to go through the whole story over and over again for a bunch of new people, and relive everything to catch them up.”

“I understand,” said Crane. “You can visit your Denver relatives another time after it’s all over.”

She glared at him, coiling herself for a fight. Nick’s murder wasn’t ever going to be over. Death wasn’t a temporary setback. Her life had been marked forever. Saying that sometime it was all going to fade away was stupid. As the seconds passed she watched his face. He was trying so hard, and he had just made a small mistake trying to comfort her. He didn’t deserve a hysterical tirade from the same woman he had just bought the most expensive dinner in Western New York and tried to flatter and distract for over three hours. “It’s true,” she said. “Denver will still be there when I’m ready.” She noticed that he didn’t make the turn at Telephone Road. “I think you just went past my turn.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get you there. Just a brief detour.” He kept driving, his eyes on the road. He seemed to be speeding up.

Chelsea didn’t like the way he avoided looking at her, and she didn’t like it that he had not asked if she minded taking a detour. She felt manipulated and trapped. But she was determined to remain silent, and give him enough time to realize she was irritated. Maybe then he would get around to discussing why she felt that way. The silence went on, and she began to suspect that she was more uncomfortable with silence than he was. “So what’s with the detour?”

“I just have to stop at my place for a minute before I swing back your way. I left some papers at home that have to be in the office in the morning, and that’s in the direction of your place, so I can drop them off on my way home from there. I’m sorry to do this, but it’s payroll stuff, and it’ll save me a long trip later.”

She ran his excuse through her mind and listened to the tone of his voice for evidence that he was lying to get her alone in a place where he could make an unwelcome move that would only cause them both embarrassment. She couldn’t detect anything. In penance for her suspicion she was inclined to be agreeable about this. He could just as easily have made whatever misguided advance he’d wanted at her house. She lived there alone now, and was always alone when he came to visit or pick her up.

Crane turned a corner onto a knot of smaller roads, and she knew that they were in the space somewhere between the Country Club of Buffalo and the Park Country Club because she’d once worked a night job for a caterer, but she had lost her sense of exact location from being turned around a couple of times. The houses were all big now, most of them long and low, with huge lawns and tall trees, all at the ends of long driveways marked by rural mailboxes on posts, but then curving up to modern houses.