The woman at the next table got up to leave, but dropped her purse. Milo picked it up, handed it back to her. She smiled and he winked and she giggled.

As she walked away, Amber stared at Milo. “You winked at her.”

Milo frowned. “What? No, I didn’t.”

“You so did! You actually winked at her!”

“Did I?”

“I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Milo said. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s your flirting technique like?”

“I don’t have one,” she said.

“Sure you do.”

Amber shook her head. “It is literally non-existent, and I use literally both in the literal and figurative senses.”

“You just need practice,” Milo said. “Find someone you’d like to flirt with and strike up a conversation.”

“Like who?” she said, laughing.

“I don’t know,” Milo answered, looking around. He nodded to a young guy across the cafe. “How about him?”

Amber smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“Coward.”

“He’s just not my type.”

“What is your type?”

She shrugged. “Not him.”

Brenda came over with Milo’s coffee.

“Thanks very much,” he said. Brenda smiled and blushed and hurried to another table before she melted.

Milo took a sip, and didn’t meet Amber’s gaze.

“Shut up,” he said.

Chapter 12

WHAT HE HAD, and let there be no mistaking this, was a bona-fide mystery on his hands.

A murder mystery, to be exact. How many of those fell into the lap of someone like him every day? A murder mystery with police collusion. He knew what they called that, of course. They called it conspiracy.

Were all the cops in on it? He had no way of knowing. Novak and Woodbury, certainly, and maybe that other one, Officer Duncan. The one that never smiled. He doubted Lucy Thornton was involved – she always struck him as an honest sort of cop. And if Thornton was honest maybe her pal Ortmann was, too. But again he couldn’t be sure. They could all be part of this.

His heart was beating faster all of a sudden. This probably wasn’t a good thing, but for once Virgil didn’t mind. He was taking his pills and that’s all anyone could be expected to do in his position. He had a mystery to solve, after all.

Sure, his paranoia had been getting to him. Every creak in his house was a footstep. Every passing car was a police cruiser, come to silence him. He wasn’t getting much sleep. He wasn’t eating much. But so what? He had important things to be doing, for God’s sake. For the seventh time that day, he checked the windows and doors, made sure they were locked.