Софи Райан - A Whisker Оf Trouble

“I’m serious,” I said. “They can’t be on a date, can they?”

He shook his head. “Who are you, Sarah? The person who writes the couple-matching algorithms for Match-dot-com? Leave it alone.”

“Fine,” I said. I bent my head over my menu and watched him under my lashes. As soon as he dropped his own head, I turned to look over at Jess and Liam again.

A crumpled paper napkin struck me on my right temple. I turned back to Nick. “Hey! What was that for?”

“Stop looking at them,” he said. “What the heck is wrong with you?”

I propped an elbow on the table and leaned my forehead against the palm of my hand. “I don’t know,” I mumbled. I turned my head and looked over at Nick. “What are you having?”

“Bear burger and fries,” he said.

“That’s sounds good,” I said, closing the menu and setting it on the table. I resisted the urge to glance over at Liam and Jess again.

The waiter came back for our order. After he’d taken it and headed for the kitchen, I looked at Nick. “What the heck is wrong with me?” I said. “Jess has known Liam since she and I were roommates in college. How many times have we all had dinner together?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “A lot.”

“So why does it feel all . . . weird seeing the two of them over there having dinner?”

He studied me for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he finally said, reaching out to set his knife spinning in a circle on the wooden tabletop. “You tell me.”

I pulled a hand back through my hair and sighed. “Liam was doing that thing he does.”

“That thing?” Nick asked, just a bit too casually, frowning across the table at me.

“That guy thing.” I made a circular motion with both hands. “You know, where he leans forward, smiles and tips his head to one side the way Elvis does when he’s trying to wrangle a bite of cookie from someone. That thing that you just said you taught him.”

“Oh, that thing,” he said, and his cheeks flushed with a bit of color.

“Jess is my best friend. I don’t want her to get hurt,” I said.

Nick actually laughed.

“Not funny,” I said, glaring at him.

He leaned against the back of his chair, still laughing. “Yes, it is, Sarah. Jess is probably the only person in the state, heck, maybe on the entire East Coast, who won’t fall for Liam’s charm.”

When I didn’t immediately say anything, he raised an eyebrow at me. “Because he is good. I did teach him well.” He leaned to one side and the balled-up napkin I pitched at him sailed over his shoulder.

Sam caught it before it hit the floor and lobbed it back into the middle of the table. “Play nice,” he said as he passed the table.

I looked at Nick. “Okay, new rule. No talking about the case, my cooking, you running or Jess and Liam doing anything.” I ticked each one off on my fingers.

He nodded. “Deal.”

We looked at each other in silence. “So, what do you think of the Sox’s chances this year?” he said finally.

This time I was the one who laughed. “We’re going to talk about the Red Sox?” I said. “What is there to say? You know they don’t have any depth in their pitching this year?”

Our waiter arrived then with our burgers. Nick waited until he’d refilled our coffee mugs before he spoke. “You’re right about the pitching roster,” he said. “I don’t like it, but you’re right. So how about we don’t talk about the Sox or cooking or running or Jess and Liam, but”—he held up one finger—“how about this one time, which won’t be construed as a precedent of any kind, we do talk about what Alfred and his merry band of angels have been up to? It’s pretty much the safest topic I can come up with.”

I looked at the plate in front of him. “Can I have some of your fries?” I asked. My burger had come with onion rings because Sam knew they were my favorite.

“As long as you don’t complain about me eating them with tartar sauce,” he said, grabbing two fries, dunking them in the little bowl of tartar sauce the waiter had brought to the table.

“Tartar sauce is for fish,” I said, picking up an onion ring with my fingers. Nick opened his mouth and I held up my hand and smiled sweetly at him. “Ketchup is for french fries. But if you want to eat them wrong, it’s okay with me.”

Wordlessly he pushed his plate toward me. I used my fork to take eight or nine fries and slid a couple of onion rings in their place on his plate.

“So, what’s happening with the Angels’ investigation?” Nick asked.

“Rose and Mr. P. are talking to most of the people the police have already questioned.” I took a bite of my burger. It was good, not that I’d expected anything else. Sam was particular about everything that came out of his kitchen.

“Did they find anything the police missed?” he asked. There wasn’t any condescension in the question as far as I could hear.

“Maybe,” I said.

He looked up at me. I filled him in on how Edison had cheated Teresa out of the metal moose sign and how she’d gone back to look for it and seen Ronan Quinn the morning of the day he was killed.

“You’re sure it was Quinn she saw?” he said, wiping a dab of mustard off the side of his mouth.

“Positive,” I said. “She’d talked to him once. She knew him on sight. I keep wondering what he was doing there so early. You think he was meeting Ethan?”

“I think Ethan would have mentioned that.”

I lifted the top of the bun and stuck two small onion rings on top of the burger patty. “Maybe Quinn was getting another opinion on the wine,” I said.

Nick shrugged, his mouth full.

“What was the old man like?” I asked, reaching for my coffee. “Based on what everybody’s said about him, I have to say he didn’t sound like a very nice person.”

Nick looked around for our waiter and, when he spotted the young man, held up his cup. He waited to answer my question until it had been topped up and then he leaned back in his chair with his hands wrapped around the mug. He’d demolished about three-quarters of his burger already.

“Edison Hall was a hard, rigid man,” he said. “Although he wasn’t quite so bad when his wife—Ethan’s mom—was alive. I think I said that already.”

I nodded.

“For all that, everything he did, everything was for Ethan and his grandchildren.”

“You mean the wine collection.”

“The old man worked hard all his life. The house had been paid for and he didn’t have any debt, but he didn’t have any savings, either. Stella said he got a little obsessed with leaving an inheritance after his wife was gone.”

I reached over and speared another two fries from his plate. “I understand that. Gram was the same way for a while. Finally Mom and I got together and told her if she kept going without things so she could leave money to us we’d take it all and donate it to the Future of Swift Hills Coalition.”

Nick laughed. “The group that wanted to build a condo development along the side ridge of the park? Didn’t Isabel and my mother work on some sort of campaign against them?”

I shifted sideways in my chair and reached for my own coffee. “They did. Once Gram realized we were serious, that pretty much put an end to all her talk of leaving an inheritance.”

“I told my mother that if she was foolish enough to leave anything to me I’d rent this place out and offer beer and chili to everyone as long as the money lasted.”

“What did Charlotte say to that?” I asked, swiping another fry while his attention was diverted.

Nick gave a snort of laughter. “You know my mother. She told me she wanted her urn set up on the bar and to make sure Sam and the guys played ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’”