Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

The night mist was going to turn into something—the sky’s rumbling stomach said so. Whether it would be rain or snow remained to be seen. Right now it just filled the air, giving soft halos to streetlights and a neon-reflecting slickness to the street, where headlights sent smudgy beams into a darkness that would only get darker.

That dust-up in the dark at Shannon’s pad may have almost killed me, but that had been a matter of avoiding a knee to the chest; otherwise I felt fine and didn’t figure I showed enough damage to attract Velda’s attention when I headed for our regular back booth at the Olde English Tavern on Third Avenue. We’d agreed to meet at ten and I was on time. She was already there.

I slid in opposite her and noticed she was frowning, just a little. She was still wearing the lime silk blouse and forest-green skirt she’d worn to work, and looked just as fresh as when she’d walked in the door this morning.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

Apparently I didn’t look so fresh.

I said, “I didn’t think it showed.”

Her eyes tightened. “You got a little limp going there.”

“Come on, baby. I’m never limp around you.”

All that got was a smirk.

She said, “Spill.”

I spilled. Midway through the story, a waitress who knew me well enough to deliver a Canadian Club and ginger without asking did so. Velda showed nothing in her expression, not even concern. Well, she did wince when I reported that thrusting knee that tried to be my valentine.

She had a Manhattan going, which she sipped as I reported, and when I’d wrapped up, she said, “You can’t be sure Casey’s file was on that disk.”

“Reasonable assumption,” I said with a shrug. “It was a backup, probably, squirreled away for Chris to find when that framed photo came his way. Casey went to some trouble, sealing it up. Looked like it came straight from the framer’s.”

“You didn’t see the guy who jumped you.”

I shook my head, sipped the CC & ginger. “No. Just enough light from the window to make out the shape. Good size guy. My size. He took Chris down with some martial arts moves, which is no surprise, since this is clearly our Knees Up Mother Brown murderer.”

The gag seemed appropriate in a pub.

Her eyes remained tight. “You didn’t get any sense of the attacker, beyond being a male, and your size?”

“I got a whiff of his aftershave, his cologne, whatever. ‘Obsession.’”

Her eyes opened a little. “Unless you were just smelling yourself.”