Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(46)

Foster stood at the table. “Mrs. Samuels-Key?”

The woman nodded, her eyes wide, her look wary. She’d overdressed for the occasion in a camel-colored turtleneck, black pants, and black suede mules with chunky three-inch heels. A Burberry trench was slung over the back of a chair. It wasn’t the kind of ensemble often worn in this room, Foster noted. Samuels-Key looked as though she were on her way to lunch at RL, the Gold Coast restaurant where celebrities went to be seen, and burgers were thirty dollars a pop.

Samuels-Key brushed a strand of blonde hair away from her angular face. Foster noticed the wedding ring—the diamonds, the white gold. What was a woman pulled together so tightly as she appeared to be doing fishing around a downtown bar for random hookups?

Foster pointed at the chair. “Sit. Please.” She watched as the nervous blonde took a seat and draped her coat over her shoulders, Foster suspected not for warmth but for protection, like armor. “Katherine or Kate?” The woman ignored the question.

Samuels-Key held her head high. “Your messages said this was to do with a Joe Rimmer? I don’t know who that is.”

“You must know somethin’,” Lonergan said. “You’re here.”

The withering look she gave him broadcast her scorn. “I’m here because I didn’t want police knocking on my door as though I’m some common criminal.” Her chin lifted. “I have neighbors. And whatever that person has done, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

Foster laid down the photo from Teddy’s with her and Rimmer in it. She pointed at him. “That’s Rimmer. You picked him up, or he picked you up, on Sunday night.”

“You left with him,” Lonergan said, seemingly unfazed by the woman’s derisive sneer. “He’s not draggin’ you out the door.”

“We’d like to ask you about that.” Foster glanced over at Lonergan, who seemed to be champing at the bit to break Samuels-Key down. “And only that.”

Foster could tell the woman was thinking through her options. It took almost a minute before she made her decision, punctuating it with a resigned, deep exhale. “Let’s get this over with,” she said.

“First, let’s start with your name. I found nothing under Kate or Katherine Samuels-Key. Who am I talking to?” She could tell she’d surprised Lonergan, but had he stuck around for the grunt work, he’d have been there when she’d discovered the inconsistency. Things moved fast. She didn’t have time to spoon-feed him.

The woman drew her coat tighter around her shoulders as though she were freezing, but Foster knew her discomfort had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “This could ruin me,” she said. “My husband is a hard man. Unforgiving.”

“Sorry, but I need your name,” Foster said gently.

“He won’t have to know I’ve been here?”

Foster watched her. “All I can promise is that we’ll be discreet.”

Samuels-Key lowered her head, clasped her hands in her lap. “Melissa Cooke. What has he done?” She looked to her, to Lonergan, but got only impassive looks back. “Right. You won’t say. I’m supposed to lay myself bare, but you get to keep all your little secrets.”

Foster scribbled down Cooke’s name, then consulted her earlier notes. “You met Rimmer at Teddy’s. He told us he was with you all of Sunday night.”

“He’s lying. I barely stayed two hours. My husband was due home from a business trip early Monday.”

“Where did you . . . hook up?” Foster asked.

“His place. North Side. We Ubered there. I Ubered back not long after. I have the receipt that proves I’m telling the truth.”

Foster held out a hand. “Please.”

Cooke shook her head, frowned, but opened her bag for her cell phone, then held it up for them to see the Uber confirmation. “Date and time of pickup and drop-off.”

“Doesn’t prove it was you in the car,” Lonergan said.

Cooke gripped the phone. “Don’t you have to prove I wasn’t? Look, the details of my failed marriage are none of your business. I go to Teddy’s for . . . a diversion, to forget for a while how miserable it all is. I met Rimmer. We left together, spent some time. That’s the extent of our connection. I haven’t seen him since and don’t intend to. I can’t help you beyond what I’ve already said. Now do the phone calls stop?”

“You also spent time with the bartender, Valentine,” Lonergan said. “Anybody else?”

Cooke glared up at him, getting, as well as Foster did, the accusation in the question. “Sex wasn’t a crime last time I checked, Detective.”

He harrumphed. “It is if you’re chargin’ and settin’ up shop at Teddy’s.”

Cooke turned red with fury. “I was not.”

Foster’s jaw clenched as she watched the unhappy woman fold in on herself, shame, anger, and guilt washing over her face. “I apologize for that,” she said. She heard Lonergan grumble and felt him shift uneasily beside her. “Let’s please continue. You left the bar around eight; the Uber receipt has you being picked up at his place at ten thirty. It took you maybe twenty minutes to get home, then?”

Cooke avoided looking at Lonergan. “I walked in my door a little before eleven. When I said my husband was due back from a business trip, I should have said his latest mistress. It’s a game we play. I pretend to believe him when he says he’s working, and he couldn’t care less whether I believe him or not. So I go to Teddy’s. I could have stayed with Rimmer. No one would have missed me. But I wasn’t having any fun, so I didn’t. He was . . . unspectacular. And I was bored. Plus, he was distant. It was clear it wasn’t me he wanted, but I knew that beforehand.”