HAZEL DIDN’T WANT to sit down with us. “I have tables to wait on.”
“You know what Kaitlin and I do for a living, Hazel?” Livingston asked.
“Yeah,” she said, and the one word was sullen, like a shadow of the rebellious teenager she might once have been.
“Do you know Marshal Newman?” Livingston nodded toward Newman, and since they were sitting next to each other, it was a small gesture.
“I know him.” Again her demeanor was sullen and instantly guarded. It didn’t mean that she knew a damn thing that we needed to know. A lot of people are just naturally suspicious of the police. Go figure.
“This is Marshal Anita Blake and Marshal Otto Jeffries,” Livingston said, motioning down the table toward us.
I said, “Hi, Hazel.” I was going to try to be the good cop, because Olaf sure as hell couldn’t do it.
She mumbled, “Hi,” before she could stop herself. A lot of people will do automatic social cues if you give them a chance. She frowned harder, showing where some of the harsh lines around her mouth had come from. To get such deep lines, she must have frowned a lot more than she smiled.
“We just want to ask you a few questions, Hazel,” Livingston said.
“I don’t know anything,” she said. She hadn’t asked us what it was about, just gone straight to not knowing anything about it. Either she did know something, or she’d had a run-in with the police before.
“I bet you know lots of things,” I said, smiling.
Hazel frowned harder, looking at me. “I don’t know anything.”
She put a lot of emphasis on don’t, and again there was that echo of sullenness that teenage girls seem to specialize in, as if a part of Hazel was stuck at about fifteen or sixteen. If you have something bad happen to you, sometimes you can get stuck at the age when it happened, and without therapy, you can stay stuck for the rest of your life. I was beginning to want to know more about Hazel’s childhood. If it wouldn’t help us figure out who done it, I’d leave it alone, but if we needed leverage to get her to talk to us, then I was pretty sure her past would give us a lever to move her or at least to try.
“I bet you can figure out the math on a good tip faster than I can.”
She frowned even harder so that the lines in her face looked almost painful, more like scars than lines, as if her unhappiness was a wound that showed on her face.
“And I bet you know this menu backward, forward, and sideways.”
She gave a half smile that softened the pain in her face. “I’ve worked here for over three years, so yeah.”
“Please have a seat, Hazel. We just want to talk to you,” Livingston said.
The smile vanished, and she was back to sullen and wary. “I have other tables, Dave. Sorry.” She actually started to walk away.
“Hazel, we can talk here, or we can talk at the station. It’s up to you,” he said.
She turned and looked at us all. The scorn on her face was epic. I wondered what she’d have been like if she was really mad at someone, and I realized we might find out. “Unless you’re arresting me, I don’t have to go with you or answer your questions.”
“Do you know Bobby Marchand?” Newman asked.
Hazel narrowed her scorn onto him. I would not want to date someone who had that look and attitude in them. “Of course I do.”
“We’re trying to save his life.”
“I thought you were one of the supernatural marshals.”
“I am.”
“Then isn’t it your job to kill him?”
“I have a warrant for his execution.”
“Then why do you want to talk to me about anything? It’s a done deal. Bobby killed his uncle, and now you have to kill him so he doesn’t attack anyone else.”
“What if Bobby is innocent?”
“The whole town knows he did it.” Hazel rolled her eyes at Newman, as if to ask how stupid he could get. Again, it was that echo of a teenage girl, because no one does scorn as well as they do.
“If I kill him and find out later that he didn’t do it, then whoever had knowledge of the real murderer and didn’t speak up to save Bobby’s life could be charged with manslaughter or even third-degree murder.”
I wasn’t sure that was strictly true, but watching Hazel with hesitation in her eyes, I just sat there and kept my doubts off my face. Newman might have found a way through all that scorn and bad attitude.
“That’s not true.” But her eyes said plainly that she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that.
“Sit down and talk to us, Hazel, and we won’t have to find out,” Livingston said.
She finally sat down on the edge of the seat near Kaitlin. She looked at all of us and then said, “You wanted to talk, so talk.” Most people chat and get themselves in trouble, but apparently, she was going to make us do the talking. I’d have bet money this wasn’t her first police rodeo.
“Carmichael said that he slept over at your place the night of the murder,” Newman said.
“Yeah, he did. Now, I have other customers waiting for their food.” She moved to the edge of the seat like she was going to stand up.
“Don’t he and the Chevets usually check with one another to make sure that someone is at the house just in case?”
“Yeah. The one time they don’t, and the shit hits the fan.” Hazel stood up.
“Why didn’t Carmichael coordinate with the Chevets?” Newman asked.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“I thought you and he were serious about each other,” he said.
“We were. We are.” She said the last part fast, as if hoping we’d miss the grammar change.
Livingston asked, “Did you break up?”
“No,” Hazel said. She glanced behind her, and there were people at another booth trying to flag her down.
“You said you were serious, past tense,” I said.
“I said we are serious. Now, I have people waiting for their food and their tickets. My tips are getting smaller every minute.”
“Okay, Hazel. Thanks for talking to us,” Newman said.
Hazel hurried away to wait on other tables. When she was out of earshot, Kaitlin said, “I thought Hazel lied better than that.”
“She usually does,” Livingston said.
“Does she lie a lot?” I asked.
They both nodded. “She can put on a great act as a waitress. She can pretend to be sweet as honey while she’s trying for a bigger tip,” Kaitlin said.
“She’s a good waitress,” Livingston said, “but she’s lied to Pamela about why she’s late to work. Lied so well that Pamela believed her more than once, only to find out weeks or in one case months later that it wasn’t true.”
“She was hiding something,” Newman said.
“And hiding it badly,” I said.
“You say she is normally a very accomplished liar?” Olaf said.
“She can smile to a customer’s face so that they request her to wait on them next time, but behind the scenes she’s bitching about them the whole time. I’ve seen it. She’s not just a good liar. She’s good at hiding how she feels.”
“So why was she nervous and making mistakes today?” I asked.
“She was pretending,” Olaf said.
“Why pretend to be nervous?” Kaitlin asked.
“Lying to your boss about why you’re late to work is one thing,” Newman said. “Lying about a murder investigation is different.”
“You think she’s in over her head?” I asked.
“When I questioned Carmichael, he seemed genuinely torn up about Ray’s death and Bobby being under a death sentence,” Newman said.
“So what does his girlfriend have to hide?” I asked.
“I’ve seen true remorse in murderers before,” Livingston said.
“I don’t think Carmichael killed Ray,” Newman said.
“Did you get the feeling he was hiding anything?” I asked.
Newman shook his head. “No.”
I looked across the table at Livingston. “Is Carmichael a good liar?”
“I don’t know him as well as I know Hazel, but he’s always seemed pretty straightforward.”
“Honest, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“What is he doing with that woman?” Olaf asked.
“She’s twenty years younger than him,” Livingston said.
“So, he’s sixty-something?” I asked.
“No, fifty-something.”
“Okay, I give—how old is she?”
“Just turned thirty.”
I blinked at him. “I’m older than she is. I wouldn’t have called that.”
“Me either,” Kaitlin said. “I thought you were my age.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
I smiled and shook my head. “I’ve got you by seven years.”
“Wow, you’ve got to tell me your secret sometime. Please tell me it’s not an all-natural diet and virtuous living.”
I laughed. “Hardly. It’s part good genetics, part not smoking or drinking or partying. I burn in the sun and don’t tan worth a damn, so no tanning. And all my friends that are my age or older that hit the gym seriously are aging better than my friends that don’t exercise. I try to eat semihealthy, but I love fast-food burgers and French fries. I’m not giving them up until I have to.”
Kaitlin laughed. “Yay! I love fast food. How about junk food like chips and desserts?”
“I’m not big on snacks and sweets. Sorry.”
“I’ve seen your intended on TV, so I won’t ask about the virtuous living. If you’re abstaining from that gorgeous vampire, I don’t want to know, and if you’re having the wild and crazy sex that the Internet claims you are, then I don’t want to know that either. It’ll just make me jealous.” Kaitlin smiled when she said the last part, because she didn’t really mean it.
“This area is too rural and you’re too cute to have any problem getting dates.”
She grinned at me, tried to look modest, and failed. “I do all right on dating but finding someone to settle down with, that’s a different story. Like you said, the county is pretty rural, so a small dating pool means I can have my pick within reason, but finding ‘the one,’”—she made little air quotes around the phrase—“in the same small pool is harder.”
“I didn’t know you were looking for Mr. Right. I know a few fellows that are ready to settle down,” Livingston said. He smiled when he said it, like he didn’t think she’d take him up on it.
She laughed. “I’m not ready.”
“You were joking about being jealous of Anita and Jean-Claude,” Olaf said, and I couldn’t decide if he was stating a fact or admitting that he’d just figured out that she’d been teasing me.
“Yes. I’m happy if she’s ready to settle down, but I want to be able to date whoever I want, to be with whoever I want, to have fun with whoever I want.” Kaitlin took a sip of her coffee and gave him the full weight of her big gray-blue eyes over the rim of the mug.
If I hadn’t been sitting right beside Olaf, I might have missed the extent of the look, but I saw it and I knew he had to have seen it. I was happy all over again that Kaitlin wasn’t his type. I liked her, and it would suck to have to protect her from the big guy. I had enough trouble protecting my own boundaries from him. As if the thought had caused it to happen, I felt a hand on my knee. I looked down, and there his hand was, having to maneuver around my holster and gun, but still that big hand cupped my knee like he had a right to touch me there.
I looked him in the eyes and didn’t even try to look friendly. My voice was low and careful as I said, “Move.”
He stared down at me with his cave-dark eyes, and for the first time, I wasn’t afraid. Part of it was being in public, but the other part was simply that I had to draw the line now, because he was one of those men who would keep pushing until I did. Whispers, threats, but he’d never just touched me like that before. It was a small thing. He hadn’t grabbed my breast or something. But to some men, if you don’t say no at a knee, they’ll take a breast or more the next time.
“Now,” I whispered because I didn’t want to humiliate him in front of our fellow officers. That would have been dangerous.
He moved his hand, and he wasn’t angry. He studied my face as if searching for a clue.
“Everything all right over there?” Livingston asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“We need to talk,” Olaf said.
“Yeah, we do.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Livingston asked.
“Otto and I just need a minute,” I said. I gave a pushing motion, and Olaf slid out of the booth while I scooted out after him.
“The porch out front is good for privacy,” Newman said.
The porch was where a lot of the customers waiting for tables were sitting. We could find a private corner to talk, but we’d be surrounded by people. The fact that Newman had suggested it meant he knew something was up between Olaf and me. He gave me a very serious look, and his head was turned so that Livingston and Kaitlin couldn’t see. I realized he’d seen Olaf put his hand on me. In that moment I wasn’t unhappy he’d seen it. Now I could tell him the same cover story that Edward had told a fellow cop at his wedding when I’d been best man/person: Olaf had a crush on me and was starting not to take no for an answer. So Edward had pretended to be my boyfriend even in front of other cops to back Olaf off. It had been half true; the only lie was that Edward and I had ever been more than just best friends. I didn’t want Newman playing white knight for me, but him helping me not be alone with Olaf would be helpful until Edward got here.
But right now I was going to lay down some ground rules for the big man. He wanted to try to date me. The fact that it would be a cold day in hell before I actually let him date me was beside the point. If he was serious, then he needed to understand basic consent. You didn’t get to touch me anywhere unless you asked first, and I had to agree to the touch. Then and only then could you do it. I was about to try to teach a sexual sadist and serial killer about asking before he touched a woman. Since his idea of a great date up to this point had been kidnap, torture, and rape, I wasn’t sure how he’d take the lesson, and worse, I was beginning not to care. He had done far scarier things before, but for some reason, his touching me under the table like he was my boyfriend with other cops sitting right there had just pissed me off.