Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(42)

“That’s all you know about her?” Foster asked.

Valentine’s brows lifted. “How much do I need to know?”

Lonergan grimaced. “She have a last name, Casanova?”

Valentine wouldn’t even look at him. He addressed Foster instead. “I got better than a name, but only for you, because a woman’s dead, and I want him out of here.”

The man pulled out his wallet and slid out a business card, handing it to her. Foster eyed the card. There was a name on it and a telephone number. She flipped it over, but there was nothing on the back. Foster read aloud. “Katherine Samuels-Key. She’s married?”

Valentine’s face lit up, his tongue wetting his lips proudly. “I didn’t ask. She didn’t tell.” He slid a contemptuous look at Lonergan, who was staring daggers back at him. “That’s how it’s done this century, Pops.”

Lonergan took a step forward to apparently show Valentine just how much of an old man he was, but Foster broke in with another question. “So she works the bar, goes with anyone here. You watch as she picks up whoever; still you keep her card in your wallet?”

He stared at her, confused, like he didn’t get why she found that strange. “We’re not dating or anything.”

Lonergan leaned forward, his jaw straining. “Dumbass, is she or is she not a pro?”

Valentine backed up to the shelves, the contact rattling the bottles on the ledge behind him. He couldn’t put any more distance between himself and Lonergan, but it sure looked like he wanted to. Valentine was all mouth. Lonergan knew it. Foster knew it too. She suspected that even Pike, his boss, knew it, but if Pike found out he’d been letting professionals work the bar on an odd night, Foster was sure his days were numbered here at Teddy’s. That might have accounted for the sweat on his forehead and the attention to his tie.

“I don’t know, okay? Her business is her business,” Valentine said.

Foster suspected that the name on the card was as bogus as a three-dollar bill, but the number was good, otherwise Valentine wouldn’t be carrying it around in his wallet. She waited to see if Lonergan had anything more to ask, but it looked like he was going to let the conversation die there, which, for him, was probably for the best. They had a number and an unreliable name. It was something.

“Anything else?” Foster asked Valentine.

He picked up his bar rag, wound it around his hands. “What more do you need?”

Outside the bar, Foster slid her notebook back into her bag and looked up at Lonergan next to her. “Why do you terrorize people like that?”

Lonergan sniggered. “I was right takin’ you for a bleedin’ heart. Look, you want to make an omelet, you got to break some eggs. A little in-their-face cuts the bullshit by half.”

She glanced out over the river at the pedestrians strolling along the path on the other side. The flags along the bridge waved in the breeze. The water was calm. And standing next to her was a lummox of a partner working her last nerve.

“The problem I have is that I don’t trust you.” Her eyes met his.

“Your problem, not mine,” he said.

She exhaled. “Like I said.”



They met Ashley Tighe outside her residence hall sitting cross-legged on a bench, a philosophy textbook in her lap. She seemed nervous and sneaked furtive glances at the doors when anyone went in or out. Tighe, petite and barely five feet tall, with blinky black eyes and a mess of brunette curls, didn’t look like she ate enough to keep a bird alive. Foster wondered if it was Stella she was worried about.

“I expected you to come in, like you agreed,” Foster said.

There was another glance toward the door, a shift of body weight. “I changed my mind. I really don’t want to get in the middle of anything. I don’t know anything about what happened to Peggy.”

“It’s Stella Dean I want to ask you about,” Foster said. “She says she was studying with you Sunday. Is that true?”

Lonergan stood by. He hadn’t said much since the bar. Foster was fine with that. Tighe checked the doors again. Students passed, paying them little attention, too focused on their own thing, lugging heavy backpacks or riding bikes or talking on their phones.

“Yeah, we studied Sunday.”

“Studied what?” Lonergan asked, his voice a little softer than Foster was used to hearing it.

“Econ. I get As. Stella’s lucky if she pulls a D.” She looked up at Foster. “Stella’s why I didn’t come. She’s been burning up my phone. She wants me to say she was with me all day, but she wasn’t. We met up at noon, and I was back in my room a little after two. It wasn’t my idea to study with her, but Stella . . . she insinuated herself. She makes it almost impossible to say no to her about anything.”

“Some friend,” Lonergan said.

“Stella doesn’t have friends,” Tighe said. “She has . . . hostages. I thought I’d left mean-girl cliques behind in high school, but they’re here, too, and Stella’s their supreme leader, at least here in Barnwell.”

“So you can only vouch for her between noon and two,” Foster said. “You have any idea what she was doing before or after that?”

Tighe shook her head. “I try not to think too much about Stella.” She clasped her hands in her lap, squeezing them tightly, then checked the door again. “She’s probably watching us right now.”