Read Tough Customer for Free Online Page B

only wanted her shift to be over so she could get out of there. He was functioning in a vacuum.
    Caroline must have sensed his uneasiness. "I chose this place because I've never been here. I know a lot of people in town, and it's a friendly community. I thought our first meeting should be where it was unlikely we'd be interrupted."
    He wanted to ask what would have been wrong about meeting at her house, but he already knew the answer. She would want to meet in a public place, where a scene was less likely to occur.
    "This is fine. Just awfully..." He glanced around. "Frilly."
    She smiled, and that made him relax a little.
    "I don't know where to start," she said. "I don't know anything about your life in Atlanta."
    "What do you want to know?"
    "Why there?"
    "That's where I ran out of gas. Thought it was as good a place as any."
    "You joined the police force?"
    "Fulton County Sheriff's Office. They had an immediate opening. I started as an investigator. Good job. Good benefits. Stayed with it for twenty-five years. But the city grew, mostly in self-importance. The office got very button-down. I was getting sick of all the rules and regulations.
    "Then I solved a case and had to testify at trial. That's where I met Derek Mitchell, attorney at law. He cross-examined me. We were on opposing sides, but we impressed each other. He asked if I would be interested in working for him as his firm's investigator."
    "Less button-down?"
    He shrugged. "It's been all right so far."
    "It was very generous of Mr. Mitchell to let you leave to come here on such short notice."
    "As bosses go, he's okay."
    She rearranged her legs beneath the table and took great care with smoothing the napkin in her lap, keeping her eyes down. "Do you have a family?"
    "No."
    She raised her head and looked across at him. "You never married?"
    He replied with a guffaw. "Don't I wish."
    She appeared on the verge of giving way to natural curiosity and asking about his marital status but didn't. Wisely, he thought.
    Instead, she said, "You didn't know until last night that I was a widow."
    "Nope."
    "I'm still in real estate. Did you know that?"
    "Figured as much."
    "I thought you might have. ... I mean, your being an investigator by trade, I thought you would have--"
    "Kept track of you over the years?"
    "Frankly, yes."
    "Frankly, I did. For a while. Then I ... stopped."
    "Lost interest?"
    "Lost hope."
    He sounded pathetic even to his own ears. Practically growling, he said, "I don't suppose smoking is allowed in here."
    Her head went back several inches. "You
smoke
?"
    That caused him to laugh. "I don't actually smoke. I just inhale. Smoking takes too long to get the nicotine into my bloodstream."
    "When did you start smoking?"
    "Thirty years ago."
    The significance of the time frame didn't escape her. She held his gaze for several beats, then said, "You should quit."
    "What for?"
    Their stare held until the waitress returned with her tea and his Coke, which was served in one of the vintage bottles accompanied by a slender glass of ice sitting on a little china plate with a white paper doily underneath it. They didn't have Coke in ordinary cans in Merritt, Texas? He didn't touch anything, afraid he'd break something.
    Caroline thanked the waitress, spooned sugar into her cup, then poured steaming tea out of a little white pot with pink flowers painted on it. "It's still weak. I didn't let it steep long enough," she remarked.
    Okay, enough of this bullshit.
"You gonna talk to me, or what?"
    She set her spoon in the saucer. It clinked against the cup as though her hand might not have been quite steady. She looked across at him. "Last night, in my house, a man was shot and seriously wounded. Berry was there."
    Dodge placed his elbow on the edge of the table and cupped his mouth with his hand. For the next quarter hour, Caroline talked, pausing only occasionally to emphasize a point or to organize her thoughts. He listened without interrupting her. He would gladly have sat