Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

“I thought this was reality TV.”

Greer laughed. Not in a that-was-funny way. More like in a you’re-incredibly-stupid way. She rolled her porpoise eyes. “Get real, Ms. Martin. The appeal of reality TV is that it’s real without being too real. You know what I mean?”

Before I could tell her I didn’t and I never wanted to, she dismissed whatever answer I might give.

“So let’s get you over here, Team One. Mae, you’ll be telling your team all about the cemetery. That way, we’ll be able to provide our viewers with some historical background without hitting them over the head with it. So you’ll want to mention that Monroe Street was officially founded in 1841, but that burials have taken place here since 1818. And remember to say something about how it was an ideal spot for courting. Couples walked the grounds arm in arm!” She sighed. “It was all very beautiful, and very romantic.”

“And yuck!” Really, I was supposed to keep quiet when this sort of nonsense was about to be filmed? “That’s sick and twisted.”

“It’s history.” If Greer’s eyes were lasers, they would have cut right through me. Not so the look she turned on Mae Tannager. “So you’ll be doing all that, and Team Two, you…” As if she hadn’t given any thought to what she was going to do with us, she glanced around. “Over there.” She waved toward the falling-down mausoleum. “Once Mae is done with her background information, that’s when you’ll walk over and we’ll do shots of each of you.” She glanced over my team, and when she got to Sammi, she leaned closer to her cameraman. “Careful with that one,” she said quietly, but not quietly enough. “Better just keep the camera on her face.”

Good thing that camera wasn’t on Sammi right then and there; she gave Greer the finger.

As ordered, we trudged over to the mausoleum to wait. Well, some of us trudged over to the mausoleum. I noticed that Absalom kept his distance, just like I saw that in spite of her one-finger salute, once she was away from the group, Sammi didn’t look as angry as she did upset.

Remember how I said that I knew better than to go chasing after ghosts? Well, I knew that having a heart-to-heart with Sammi was not in my best interests, either. Still, I couldn’t help myself. There was something about seeing tough Sammi with her eyes bright with unshed tears that made me feel like it was my duty, as team captain, to say something to cheer her up. I walked over to where she was leaning against the mausoleum, her leg (the one with the electronic monitoring device on it) bent and one foot against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest.

I smiled, but since she refused to look at me, it didn’t much matter. “Don’t pay any attention to Greer. She obviously wouldn’t know fashion if it came up and bit her in the butt.”

She snorted. “And you would?”

I tried not to take the comment personally. I mean, coming from a woman in red shorts and a purple shirt with a saint on it, how could I? “I know a thing or two about the way to dress.”

“For an old-folks’ country club, maybe.”

“How can you-” I bit off the rest of my comment. Sammi’s opinion was just that, an opinion, and dead wrong, besides. She only said what she did because she was itching for a fight. I refused to be the one to give it to her. I didn’t care enough, in the first place. Plus fighting teammates would make Greer salivate, and who knows what Bianca would think of me if she saw me duking it out with Sammi.

I held my arms at my sides, the better to control my temper. “Greer doesn’t shop where I shop, or where you shop.”

Sammi’s top lip curled. She plucked at her purple top. “You think this kind of quality comes off the rack? I make my own clothes. I design them, too.”

OK, so we didn’t share one iota of the same fashion sense, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t impressed. Suddenly, the whole saint-on-the-shirt thing made sense, too. “You’re name is Sammi Santiago. And Santiago, that means-”

“St. James. Yeah.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “That’s how you can tell it’s one of my own designs. I put St. James on all my stuff somewhere. You speak Spanish?”

“Nah. But I know that much. I know creativity when I see it, too. You making your own clothes, that’s really cool.”

She controlled a smile. “You think so?”

“I think that’s more than I could ever do. It’s way more creative than Greer in that gray suit of hers.”

“Yeah.” Sammi looked toward where we heard the sounds of genteel laughter coming from the section where Greer was filming. “She needs to get rid of those man shirts. If she wore that suit with a bustier-”

“That’s too scary to think about!”

We shared a laugh.

It wasn’t much, but it was a small inroad. Feeling more comfortable with Sammi than I had since she stepped out of that van and into my life, I did my best to make small talk. “You ever think of selling your clothes?” Believe me, I was in team-captain mode here, I wasn’t interested in buying. “There are some boutiques over in the Tremont neighborhood that-”

I guess that was the wrong thing to say. Sammi grumbled a curse and walked away.

As it turned out, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all. It meant I didn’t have to deal with Sammi or with introducing anybody to anybody else when Quinn showed up.

“I thought you’d be working.”

I gave him a look that told him I was. “Didn’t think I’d see you today.”

“Hey, I’m a man of my word.” He was carrying a slim file folder, and he held it up for me to see.

“Is that-”

“The file you wanted. The Lamar case, yeah.”

I should have been grateful. I was. Honest. But-

“It’s awfully skinny.” I scrunched up my nose and gave the folder another look. “How can all the information about an entire murder investigation be in such a skinny folder?”

Quinn’s expression reminded me a whole bunch of the one on Sammi’s face before she walked away. “ ‘Thank you’ might be a more appropriate response,” he said.

“Thank you. Why is the file so skinny?”

His lips puckered. Not in the good way they did when he kissed me. “This is what’s called the basic file,” he explained. “There’s one of these kept in the Homicide Unit for every case that’s ever been investigated. It’s not supposed to leave the Justice Center.”

“Thank you.” This time I meant it.

Quinn sloughed it off. “I figured no one else was going to be looking for the file. Not on a murder that old. Especially when someone was tried and convicted. You just going to stand there? Or are you going to take a look?”

I shook away my disappointment and went to stand in the shade of the mausoleum. Quinn came along. “Basic file,” he said, flipping it open. “It tells you-”

“The basics.”

“That’s right. Who was murdered, when the call first came in, who was interviewed, who was convicted.”

“I know who was convicted.” I leaned closer for a better look. Not such a bad thing, considering that Quinn was wearing Flavio aftershave, my favorite. When he left my apartment that morning, he was dressed in the navy suit he’d worn to dinner the night before. But he must have stopped home somewhere along the way. His suit was one I’d never seen before. Grey, with pinstripes that were far more subtle than the ones on the suit that Lamar wore. His French-cuffed shirt was a shade of blue that matched the sky overhead, his dusty blue tie was a box pattern of darker and lighter blues, tans, and gray.

I leaned a little nearer. “You got this file for me fast.”

One corner of his mouth pulled into a smile. “Told you I was a man of my word. You wanted what you wanted, I wanted what I wanted, and once I got it…”