Thirty

THIRTY

LOOKS-WISE HE REMINDS ME a little of my ex-husband Martin. But once he opens his mouth his accent isn't French, it sounds more like 200 proof Queens, New York.

"Wow, I don't get to meet a lot of famous people," he says before he even introduces himself.

"You need to set the bar a lot higher than me when it comes to famous."

"Is that false modesty I hear?"

"Is there any other kind? And by the way, I don't believe I caught your name."

"I'm Danny Esposito. Homicide investigator, State Police. I work out of our office at the Republic Airport, over in East Farmingdale."

"I know where the airport is."

"'Course you do. You went to junior high school in Patchogue, right? Before you moved back to the city?"

"You've done your homework."

"Like I said, you're famous and I like to know as much as I can about famous people. I was the same way with my favorite ballplayers growing up."

"We seem to have locked that in at this point, your opinion about my celebrity status." My smile is so thin I barely feel my lips move. "I assume you want to talk about something other than that."

"Well, now that you mention it," he says, "it might have something to do with that scene you and the mother and the daughter had the other night, them now being deceased and all."

"You find that out in between getting the call on the murders and making it out here from East Farmingdale?"

He rubs his chin. His look must require some tending to get it just right, that sweet spot between a couple of days' growth and an actual beard.

"I've been following your exploits since the first Jacobson trial. I even sat in the gallery." He shrugs. "Anyway, now it turns out that as you were leaving the benefit, people heard you threaten Elise Parsons. The mom. Something about knocking the Botox out of her face. Did that happen?"

"You obviously know it did." I nod. "Are we skipping right past the part where she hit me?"

He grins and points a finger at me. "Right before you threatened to harm her if she ever came near you again." Still grinning, he asks, "So did she?"

"Did she what?"

"Come near you again?"

I look over at Jimmy. There have been enough times in his life when he was the one asking questions at crime scenes. His eyes tell me to answer Esposito without going out of my way to antagonize him. It will only keep us here longer and neither one of us wants that.

"I never saw Elise again after the benefit. It was part of a much broader plan to never see her ever again, period."

Esposito takes off the sunglasses and puts them on top of his head. Maybe thinking he's showing off his blue eyes. I don't have the heart to tell him he's wasting his time with me.

"Are we really doing this, investigator? Is that a real title, by the way?"

"Call me Danny."

"I'm not a suspect here, Danny . We both know that. So why are we still even having this conversation?"

"How about we go with you being a person of interest. You like that better?"

"We know I'm not one of those, either."

He smiles what I'm sure he thinks is a flirty smile. "You are to me."

"I've got a question for you, if you don't mind?"

"Go ahead."

"This whole vibe you've got going, the pose, the come-on—does it actually work with other women?"

"More than you'd think, actually."

"Good boy," I say.

I look at Jimmy again and jerk my head in the direction of the street.

"Maybe I need to call a good lawyer," I say to Danny Esposito, and head down the driveway without looking back, knowing the hotshot from the state cops is watching me all the way down the hill, maybe starting to understand how far out of his league he is.

Or not.