Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [145]
“Leave Nelli with Esther.” Lucky took her leash from Max and handed it to me. “Just in case.”
I frowned at Lucky. “Lopez is not a dopp—”
“We’ll be lightin’ a candle to St. Monica while you talk to the cop.”
Lopez’s gaze followed them briefly as they retreated, then moved back to me. My heart was thudding as he walked up to me. He looked so handsome, and Lucky was right, he was looking at me like he . . .
But if he really did feel that way, he sure didn’t look happy about it.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
Nelli sniffed his hand, then gave a little wag of her tail.
Lopez looked at my throat and frowned with concern. He reached out as if intending to touch me, but then stopped himself and lowered his hand. “How’d you get those bruises?”
I told a semi-truth. “Buonarotti.”
His expression darkened. “Does it hurt much?”
“Not so much now. I can’t sing, of course, but that’ll come back in a few more days.”
“So you’re okay?”
I nodded. He didn’t say anything else.
“So . . .” I shrugged. “You didn’t attend the service.”
“Well, I’ve suggested the deceased was an accessory to murder, and I’ve refused to swear that his death wasn’t suicide. So I thought he might climb out of his coffin if I showed up.” He added, “But it seemed like a good idea to keep an eye on who did come.”
“Oh.”
After an awkward silence, he said, “I see the Shy Don is quite taken with you.”
“He was just being polite.” I reached into my purse and pulled out Lopez’s cell phone. I had brought it along, thinking he might come today. “Here.”
“Hey!” He was obviously pleased to get it back. “Thanks! Where did you find it?”
“The priest stole it from you. At Vino Vincenzo.”
“Son of a bitch. So he was a pickpocket?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me. “How did you get ahold of it?”
“Dumb luck, you might say.”
He evidently decided not to ask any more about it. He put the phone in his pocket.
We gazed at each other.
I thought again about that moment in the church: I want LIGHTS! And then . . .
I said suddenly, “Have you ever . . .”
When I didn’t continue, he prodded, “What?”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to ask. “Have you ever felt strange?”
“All the time, since I met you.”
“Oh!” I blinked, and hoped that maybe . . . but then I saw how sad he looked, and I knew for sure where this was going.
“Esther . . .” He frowned and looked down.
I gathered from the subsequent silence that he had decided not to ask what I was doing at St. Monica’s the night the priest had killed himself and Buonarotti had lost his marbles. Or why I had given my phone number to a Corvino capo, who dropped that piece of evidence when he was brutally murdered at Vino Vincenzo. Or whether I still believed I had seen Max decapitate Lopez’s perfect double.
I could see him filtering through all the things he couldn’t not think about when he looked at me now, and my heart sank. He was standing within a foot of me, but he was way out of reach.
Finally, he said, “It’s not just your friendship with Max.”
“I know.”
“And it’s not just the crazy things you said the other night.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or even just the crazy things you keep doing.”
“Oh?”
His expression was so unhappy, it made me want to put my arms around him.
In a low voice, he said, “I concealed evidence. I withheld information. I lied to my sergeant and to my captain. I let you and your friends leave a crime scene, and half my report about that night is fiction.”
I nodded. I hadn’t asked him to do any of that. It didn’t matter. He’d done it to protect me. He was afraid he’d do it again.
“The priest is dead, Buonarotti’s going to prison, no innocent people got hurt . . .” He let out his breath and shook his head. “But we got lucky, that’s all. I can’t . . .” He tried again. “You and I . . .”
“This went badly for us, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And you like me and wish things were different.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But things being what they are, you’re not going to call me anymore or ask me out again.”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“And since you’re the one breaking up with me,” I said, “why do I have to write all your dialogue?”
That surprised