I shook Cotter’s hand and smiled down at him, content to wait to let him begin the pissing contest, which he did, quickly. I managed to twist my hand slightly so that I had better leverage than him. I looked him straight in the eye and proceeded to crush his fingers. I let his hand go when I saw the strain around his mouth. I think Paul was the only one who noticed the locker-room behavior. As for Cotter, oddly enough, he looked both homicidally furious and curiously absorbed. He slowly rubbed his hand, staring at me. It was as if he was trying to get inside my head, trying to see how he could best go about smashing me. I knew I’d made an enemy, didn’t really care, but I did wonder what he was thinking now. I hadn’t met up with a verifiable sociopath in at least six months.
Cotter never looked away from me. I turned when I heard Alyssum Tarcher say, “Well, Paul, now that Jilly’s back with us, you can get to work again. I understand all this has been hard on you, but now, finally, everything will be all right.”
“Yes,” Paul said. “Jilly wanted to come tonight, but she couldn’t walk more than a few steps. Mac and I left her nearly asleep and disappointed. She wants me to assure everyone that she didn’t go over that cliff on purpose. She lost control of the Porsche. She also swears that she won’t go a hundred miles an hour around any more curves as long as she lives. She sends her love.”
“That’s a relief,” Alyssum Tarcher said. He picked up two flutes of champagne from a waiter’s tray and handed one to me and one to Paul. Then he picked up one for himself, raised it, and said, “To the future. May our project succeed beyond our wildest imaginings.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Paul said.
Neither Cotter nor I said anything, merely sipped the champagne, nasty stuff, I’d always thought, remembering fondly the Bud Light Midge had brought me in the middle of the night. Her husband, Doug, was a lucky man. I placed the flute back on the waiter’s tray. Alyssum had a dark brow raised, but I didn’t give a shit.
Paul said, “It’s a real tragedy about Charlie Duck getting killed. Not something you’d expect to have happen in a great town like Edgerton.”
“Bad, bad thing,” Alyssum Tarcher said, nodding that leonine head of his. “Everyone’s been talking about it, trying to figure out who could have done such a thing, and why.”
“He was a nosy old man,” Cotter said. “He was always pissing people off when he pried into their business.”
“A stranger went to his house and killed him, a random thing,” said Tarcher. “It must have been. No one in Edgerton would have hurt a hair on his head.”
“He didn’t have much hair left,” Paul said. He received a strained smile from Tarcher.
I turned to see Rob Morrison, looking like a hunk from Southern California in a black T-shirt, black slacks, and a black sports jacket, speaking to Maggie Sheffield. It was the first time I’d seen her out of uniform. She was a knockout. A red dress on a woman, especially one without much front or back, has an amazing effect. Her hair was piled up on top of her head and she was wearing three-inch heels. I had an urge to walk up to her, bite her earlobe, and go from there. Then I saw Rob Morrison’s hand on her back, very low on her bare back. Very proprietary.
“Hello, Mac. You look very nice in that dark suit.”
I turned to see Cal Tarcher, dressed like a frump in a long skirt with a black, high-neck, long-sleeved silk blouse and ballet flats. At least the skirt and blouse fit her, more or less. Her red hair was flat against her head, pulled back and tied with a black ribbon at the base of her neck. Her glasses had black frames. Well, at least she was color coordinated. “Hi, yourself,” I said. I wondered what had happened to that young woman I’d seen briefly outside Paul and Jilly’s house, the one who’d suddenly looked taller and arrogant and cold as ice. We were back to little miss prim and dowdy.