Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

"I think he tests it, just like I'm going to do with it," Jake said.

The detective looked relieved.

Jake raised his hand in a mock toast. "Unless he drinks it."

Manny studied herself in the full-length mirror and heard her mother's voice echoing in her head. Philomena Manfreda, you are not leaving the house like that.

Sighing, she pulled off yet another outfit and tossed it onto the growing pile on her bed. As a solo practitioner with her own civil rights practice, Manny had a closet that was stuffed with suits for every lawyering occasion: suits to help convey her erudition to judges, suits to charm juries, suits to woo new clients. Plenty of cocktail dresses, too-opera, theater, five-hundred-dollar-a-plate charity bashes-all pressed and ready to go. But ask her to come up with the perfect outfit to wear to share a plate of antipasto with a man who dissected bodies all day, and she was utterly at a loss.

Manny reached for one more hanger in her overstuffed closet. Vogue had devoted three pages to gushing about this dress. If it didn't work, she was giving up. Slipping on the purported miracle garment, she turned to face the bed.

"Well, what do you think?"

The mound of clothing quivered slightly. A small spot of auburn emerged, followed by two big brown eyes: her toy red poodle, Mycroft. The dog surveyed her latest attempt, then laid his head between his paws and whined.

"You're absolutely right." She studied her reflection in the mirror. "Too… contrived."

She returned to the closet and yanked out her favorite black slacks. Why make such a big production about getting dressed to meet Jake anyway? The man was oblivious. She could appear in a muumuu from Wal-Mart or any couture outfit and he wouldn't notice because his eye would be plastered up against a microscope.

They had met in the line of duty, the last time working together to bring justice to the long-dead victims of a killer who had preyed on defenseless patients in an upstate psychiatric hospital. They'd flirted over dead bodies in the morgue and bonded by escaping attempts on their lives. The Lyons case was solved and now they were… what? Having a rendezvous? That implied romantic getaways to inns in the Berkshires or beach houses in the Hamptons. Dating? No, that would require regular phone calls and invitations to movies or concerts.

Instead, Manny spent hours in Jake's laboratory looking at gruesome crime-scene photos, peering at slides of poisoned-tissue samples, comparing exit-wound patterns. Then, for a nightcap, they would discuss the autopsies he had performed that day, before falling into bed under the watchful eye of a taxidermied raven-his honorarium for speaking about murder to the local Edgar Allan Poe club.

But whatever she had going with Jake Rosen, it sure beat the hell out of attending the annual Bar Association dinner dance with Evan Pennington III or going to Knicks games with that yahoo bond trader, Troy what's his name.

So why was she agonizing over what to wear? Maybe because, for once, Jake had actually called her up and invited her to have dinner in a charming little Italian trattoria. No sharing pepperoni pizza on a stainless steel morgue gurney tonight-this was a real dinner date. The place had great food, but it wasn't pretentious-fancy. She didn't want to arrive overdressed, showing how thrilled she was to be out with him.

Why is my confidence so undercut? This guy spends his days dissecting people's brains, and now he's messing with my head.

Manny zipped the pants, pulled on a pink silk knit sweater, slipped her feet into fuchsia snakeskin Manolo slingbacks, and checked her reflection. The look was chic, classy, but casual. Not bad. Not bad at all.

When she reached for Mycroft's Goyard carrier, monogrammed with the initials MM, the little dog shot off the bed and jumped in.

"That's right, Mikey, we're going on a date. And you're the chaperone."

Jake looked up from the case folder he'd brought with him to Il Postino in time to see Manny crossing the street toward his sidewalk table. Red hair flying, hips swaying, high heels tapping, Manny made quite a few heads turn as she strode through the early-evening crowd. It pleased him that she didn't seem to notice the effect she had.

Now she caught sight of him and waved. He rose to greet her and she kissed him lightly before settling Mycroft under the table.

"Where are your groupies?" Manny asked.

"Huh?"

"You're quite a celebrity-front page of the New York Post." Manny grinned as she took the newspaper from her bag and read the headline aloud, "'ME Enters Vampire Investigation.' That must've really pissed Pederson off."

Jake stared at her.

"Your jaw's dropping. You want to be careful of that, eating outside in New York. Flies, you know."

Jake started to laugh. Why did it surprise him that Manny had immediately grasped the trouble that trip to St. Vincent's had brought him? No sooner had he exited the hospital than he'd been besieged by a horde of TV and print reporters. His natural reaction was to answer their questions briefly but honestly. Stupid-when would he ever learn? Somehow, they had managed to spin his responses into lead stories, and their flashing cameras had splashed his startled face across all three New York dailies and the evening news.

"I wish you'd've been with me yesterday," Jake said. "You would've known to throw a jacket over my head and 'No comment' me out of there."

"How did Pederson react?"

"Let's just say I thought I was going to have an opportunity to brush up on my CPR."

The post-Fiore lecture had gone on and on: "violating jurisdictional boundaries;" "no regard for chain of command;" "no understanding of limited resources…" For Pederson, work was all about protecting his turf, hoarding his budget, and ramping up his media coverage. With one unauthorized trip, Jake had managed to score a trifecta of violations.

"You know he thinks you're angling for his job." Manny tapped the newspaper. "He sees this as grandstanding."

"I didn't know they'd be lying in wait for me," Jake protested. "And I don't want to be chief ME. Balancing budgets and sitting through endless meetings-no thanks."

"I know you like nothing better than being elbow-deep in an abdominal cavity, looking for signs of unnatural death." Manny reached for his hand resting on the table. "You have to remember that not everyone understands the appeal."

The soft touch of Manny's fingers took the sting out of her words. Her ability to go straight to the crux of a problem had caught his attention the moment he'd met her; her beauty had dawned on him a little later.

"Yeah, this little escapade of mine has had unintended consequences. Pederson has explicitly warned me off the Vampire case."

"So you're dropping it?" Manny's eyes opened wide, then, as she caught sight of the blue case folder beside his plate, crinkled into a smile. "You scared me there for a minute-thought you were going soft."

The waiter approached the table, introduced himself as Luigi, and rattled off the specials.

"I'll have the wild prawns," Manny said without hesitation.

Jake continued to scan the menu. "Do you know that shrimp are scavengers? I once autopsied a pilot whose plane crashed into the ocean. Had to take half a dozen off his body. Funny, too, because the poor guy had shrimp in his stomach-his last meal. Gave new meaning to the word payback."

The waiter looked pale. Manny's stomach grumbled loudly. "You know, I may just go vegan tonight. I'll start with a large salad…"

"Careful, E. coli gives leafy greens serial-killer potential," Jake whispered.

Manny shuddered. "If I had your job, I wouldn't be able to stomach anything more than applesauce and dry toast."

"I'll get you a position as a morgue assistant." He slipped his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. "The Diener Diet! The newest way to lose weight. I bet you could get on Oprah with that."