“You don’t have time for dinner,” she said. “You’ve got a ten-year-old triple murder to solve, and I really do have to get back.”

“Yeah, I know things are hoppin’ up there in Scranton,” Coletti said. “They desperately need a profile on the guy who keeps going out cow tippin’ on Tuesdays.”

“I’ll have you know I work out of the Dunmore state police barracks,” she said with a smile in her voice. “We don’t take kindly to being called Scranton. And besides, they already caught the cow tipper.”

“Okay, fine,” Coletti said. “Do you think the folks up in Dunmore can spare you for a few hours so we can grab a quick meal?”

“Are you asking me out, or do you just want to use me for my profiling skills?”

“Both.”

“I see,” she said in a cynical tone. “But when I offered to help you before, you told me you had a plan, and I don’t recall that plan including me.”

“That was before I realized you knew what you were talking about,” Coletti said. “I miscalculated, and I’m willing to make up for it by paying for dinner.”

She looked at him with mock suspicion. “Are you trying to buy me, Detective Coletti?”

“You make it sound so dirty.”

“Maybe it could be,” she said in a sultry voice.

“Depends on what you’re offering in exchange for my company.”

Coletti smiled. It’d been years since a woman had flirted with him. Yet there was Mary Smithson, teasing him with everything from her flashing blue eyes to her suggestive tone. He liked it.

“Not only am I offering you dinner,” he said. “I’m offering you the chance to fix someone who doesn’t want to be fixed. You’re into that, aren’t you?”

“I’m always up for a challenge,” she said.

“Good. You help a stubborn old cop solve a case, and as a bonus you get to track down a murderer and save an innocent priest. It’s a win-win.”

She teasingly pretended to ponder his offer as passersby looked at them curiously.

“Come on, Mary,” he said when he noticed other cops watching them. “Let’s go outside before the rumors start.”

She smiled as they walked out the front entrance. When they got to his car, he opened her door before walking around and opening his own.

“So what did you do with the note from the art gallery?” she asked when he got in.

“I dropped it at the lab right before I saw you. The paper’s kinda rough to lift prints from, but I wanted to see if we could get an in-house handwriting analysis before we sent it down to Quantico.”

“Smart move,” she said. “The FBI would take weeks.”