Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(31)



“And you let him get away with that?” Lonergan asked.

Pike shrugged. “Flirting’s not a crime, and what he, or whoever, does once he clocks out is their business, not mine.”

Foster watched Valentine work his magic, first with Black Dress, but then he moved down the bar and chatted with Peggy Birch. He slid her the bottle of pop, then leaned on the bar, smiling, flirting, fiddling with his tie. “He said he was here until closing; is that right?”

“He was. We had to shoo a couple out the door at cutoff time. Then he cashed out. Why?”

“He take any long breaks?” Lonergan asked, following Foster’s lead.

Pike harrumphed. “And miss one single hottie? No way. Maybe to take a quick leak or something, but that bar is his seat of power. He leaves it for nothing. I hope you’re not thinking Giles had something to do with this.” She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes wide. “Because I’m telling you, he’s not your guy. He’s hot air. He’s cotton candy. I’m not saying he couldn’t kill anybody—anybody could—but I’m telling you he’s not the kind of guy who could pull it off. He’d melt like an ice cube in the sun. He sure as hell wouldn’t be out there now minding that bar cool as anything.”

The footage advanced to the moment Birch walked out of the door behind a handful of others. Through the windows, it was clear that the group went left while Birch went right toward the stairs leading up to Michigan Avenue. Not together. So where had Peggy gone after that?

“Is this the only angle your cameras capture?” Foster asked. “What about the back of the restaurant or the tables outside of this tight arc? The ones against the east wall.”

“We got that, too, but you asked for the bar.”

Foster turned to face her. “I’d like everything. Would you mind making a copy? We’ll take it all with us.”

Pike rolled her chair forward. “You got it. Give me a couple minutes.” Foster and Lonergan stepped back to let her work. After a time, the woman stood and handed Foster a copy of the footage on a thumb drive. “Here it is.”

Foster took the drive, slipped it into her bag. “Thanks.”

She and Lonergan wove back through the restaurant, past the bar, and out the front door. Foster stood there for a moment as Lonergan said something she didn’t tune in to, watching the city do what it did: breathe, move, live. People rushed by. Sirens blared. Cars honked, and the brakes squeaked and hissed on the buses. She glanced across the river at “the spot.” The skyscrapers didn’t care, and neither did the river, but she did. She needed to know why, who. Had Peggy Birch’s fate been sealed here at Teddy’s? Foster glanced back and spied through the window the wolfish Valentine standing at the bar watching them. He’d noticed Birch enough to say when she’d walked into the bar and when she’d left. What else did he know?





CHAPTER 16


It was nearly 7:00 p.m. when Foster walked into her house, put her bag down, unclipped her holster from her belt, and plunked it on a side table. She’d made it through her first day back, and she’d done okay, sort of. Muscle memory, wasn’t it? Like riding a bike or falling off a log. And after a long, frustrating day, it felt now like she’d never been away for even a second.

Back at the office, she and Lonergan had rerun the footage from Teddy’s frame by frame for two hours, watching again as Peggy came in and commanded attention at the bar, watching as Valentine served her a Coke and hovered more than he should have. She’d paid special attention also to Teddy’s front window to see if anyone stood outside looking in at Peggy, but there was no one. They hadn’t yet started on the alternate angles, but they were both beat—her eyes were gritty from the strain of squinting at tiny images on a tiny screen. There was nothing else they could do tonight. Tomorrow, after the autopsy, they’d try again.

Foster peeled off her blazer, unbuttoned her blouse at the neck, and padded over to the bowl of colorful marbles on her dining room table. She plucked out a blue-green one and dropped it into a tall ceramic vase about the height of an average four-year-old. It was halfway full. Only then did she exhale; only then did she allow herself to stand down. Padding into the kitchen, she grabbed a cold bottle of water from the fridge. The dog barking outside she knew would go on for at least a few more hours before her neighbor next door finally let him in for the night. No concern for the neighbors, of course, who had to endure the incessant yips and barks and growls until then. Add to that the banger cars that roared up and down the block at all hours, their noisy engines revving and rap music thumping out of huge speakers at earsplitting decibels. There was no such thing as a quiet night in this neighborhood, but this was where she had to be. Besides, what would she do with a quiet night except fight against it? Foster’s mind worked overtime when the world was too quiet and still. Ghosts visited in the night when time refused to budge, the hands on the clock unwilling to bring the relief of a welcome sunrise.

There wasn’t much to the place. It was a two-bedroom house purchased after the divorce, after there was nothing left but her. The place wasn’t anything, really, except for a roof and four walls and things she didn’t care about or even half notice. Shelter. Bare necessity. A house, not a home. But it was here, and from her living room window, it had a view of the maple tree out front.

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