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His friend was acting out of character, but Lou let it drop. Something was up, but he wasn't about to push it.
    They parked in a no-parking tow zone a few steps away from the restaurant's entrance. Lou tossed his police vehicle card onto the dashboard.
    "You think this is going to be safe?" Jack questioned. "I don't want my bike getting towed along with your vehicle."
    "They're not going to tow my car!" Lou said with conviction.
    The two men walked into Elio's and entered the fray. The place was packed, particularly around the bar near the front door.
    "Everybody is back from the Hamptons," Lou explained, practically yelling to be heard over the general din of voices and laughter.
    Jack nodded, excused himself to those in front of him, and squeezed sideways deeper into the restaurant. People juggled their drinks as he brushed by. He was looking for the hostess, who he remembered as a soft-spoken, willowy woman with a kind smile. Before he could find her, someone tapped insistently on his shoulder. When he turned he found himself looking directly into Laurie's blue-green eyes. Jack could tell she had taken her "freshening up" quite seriously. Her luxurious auburn hair had been let out of her restrained, workaday French braid and cascaded to her shoulders. She was dressed in one of his favorite outfits: a white, high-collared, Victorian-style ruffled blouse with a honey-brown velvet jacket. In the half-light of the restaurant, her skin glowed as if illuminated from within.
    To Jack she looked terrific, but there was a problem. Instead of the warm, fuzzy, happy expression he was expecting, she appeared more like amber and ice. Laurie seldom bothered to conceal her emotions. Jack knew something was wrong.
    He apologized for being late, explaining how he'd been called out on a case, where he'd met Lou. Reaching behind him, Jack pulled Lou into their sphere of conversation. Lou and Laurie exchanged several cheek-to-cheek air kisses. Laurie responded by reaching behind her and drawing forward Warren Wilson and his longtime girlfriend, Natalie Adams. Warren was an intimidatingly well-muscled African American with whom Jack played basketball almost nightly. As a consequence, they had become close friends.
    After greetings were exchanged, Jack yelled that he would find the hostess to inquire about their table. As he began pushing his way toward the hostess stand again, he sensed that Laurie was right behind him.
    Jack stopped at the hostess's podium. Just beyond there was a clear buffer zone that separated the people dining from those standing around the bar. Jack caught sight of the hostess in the process of seating a dinner party. He turned back to Laurie to see if her expression had changed subsequent to his apology for being late.
    "You weren't late," Laurie said, as if reading his mind. Although the comment was exonerating, the tone wasn't. "We had just got here a few minutes before you and Lou. It actually was good timing."
    Jack studied Laurie's face. From the set of her jaw and the compression of her lips, it was clear she was still irritated, but he had no idea what was troubling her. "You look out of sorts. Is there something I should know?"
    "I expected a romantic dinner," Laurie said. Her tone was now more wistful than angry. "You never told me you were inviting a horde."
    "Warren, Natalie, and Lou are hardly a horde," Jack responded. "They are our best friends."
    "Well, you could have and should have told me," Laurie responded. It didn't take long for her irritation to resurface. "I was obviously reading more into the evening than you intended."
    Jack looked off for a moment to control his own emotions. After the anxiety and ambivalence he'd expended planning the evening, he was unprepared for negativism even if it was understandable. Obviously, he'd inadvertently hurt Laurie's feelings while being so absorbed in his own. The fact that she was counting on the two of them being alone hadn't even occurred to him.
    "Don't roll