Cavanaugh Encounter. Marie Ferrarella
“Okay, since you’re the newbie,” he told her, “we’ll let you pick the place. Pizza it is.”
He turned left at the next corner, heading toward a restaurant that, in his opinion, served the best pizza in the area.
“What did you have to say to Mrs. O’Keefe?” he asked casually.
“Nothing, really.” She met his eyes in the rearview mirror and knew that the man wasn’t about to let the matter go at that. “I just gave her my card and told her to call me in case she thought of anything she might have forgotten.” She debated adding the next part, then decided to do it in case O’Bannon thought she was holding something back. “And then she asked me to promise that we would catch the bastard responsible for her daughter’s murder.”
“And did you?” Luke asked.
She paused, anticipating a lecture. But she wasn’t about to lie, either. “Yes, I did. But I said that I promised. I didn’t include either one of you in the promise.”
“Want to hog all the glory yourself, is that it?” Luke deadpanned.
“No,” she protested. “I just didn’t think that you’d appreciate my making any promises in your name,” she told him.
“He’s just yanking your chain, DeMarco,” White Hawk told her. “And as for making promises, I’ve heard him say the same thing to the grieving relatives of other victims. It’s hard to walk away, indifferent, in the face of that kind of gut-wrenching grief. You did what you had to, newbie. It’s not just protect and serve,” he told her. “Sometimes that includes comfort, too. Consider it all part of the job description.”
“Is that what he believes?” she asked White Hawk, nodding at O’Bannon.
“Yeah,” the detective assured her. “Even if he doesn’t say it. Trust me,” he added.
“And me without my violin,” Luke murmured sarcastically.
Frankie merely shook her head. The sooner they found the killer, the sooner she’d be able to get back to her own department.
“Hey,” Luke said suddenly, directing the question to the woman sitting directly behind him as a thought occurred to him. “You’re not one of those people who insist on having vegetables on their pizza instead of cheese, are you?”
The idea was abhorrent to her, but the tone of O’Bannon’s voice was challenging and she wasn’t one to just submissively allow a challenge to go unanswered. “And if I was?”
His answered surprised her. “Then we’d have to go someplace else, because the place I’m taking us to doesn’t serve that kind of pizza.”
Since he was being so nice about it, Frankie decided to let the matter drop rather than drag it out a little longer.
“Well, luckily for all of us,” she said, “I like my pizza the traditional way—lots of cheese, pepperoni and super-thin crust.”
“Wow,” Luke responded. “Finally something we can agree on.”
“Probably the only thing we can agree on,” she murmured under her breath. She didn’t think he heard her, but he did.
Luke stopped at the light and glanced over his shoulder at her for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find something else eventually.”
She had no idea why the way he looked at her—even though it was only for a split second—sent such a hot shiver zigzagging up her spin.
Almost in self defense, she told him, “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”
She expected a sarcastic retort from O’Bannon. Instead, he made no response whatsoever—which wound up unsettling her even more.
The pizzeria he was taking them to was just around the corner on the next block. It was in the middle of what had once been a thriving strip mall but the stores on either side of Gino’s had changed hands several times and the stores on either side of those stores stood empty, with For Lease signs prominently displayed in their windows.
Frankie noticed that the sign in the window that they passed by first appeared dusty, a testimony that the property had been vacant for a while now. She wondered if people in the area were just losing interest in supporting their neighborhood stores, or if this was now an ongoing trend because people preferred doing their shopping online instead of in actual buildings of brick and mortar. She’d read that somewhere, and the thought of that happening made her sad. She could remember hanging out at the mall all day with Kristin.
Everything was changing, and not always in a good way.
It felt about ten degrees warmer inside Gino’s when they walked in. It was also dimmer. The sun was bright outside, but it seemed as if someone had flipped a switch the moment they came in and the front door closed behind them.
In contrast, the person behind the counter seemed to light up when he saw them. He also appeared to be standing just a little taller by the time O’Bannon approached him.
“Why don’t you two find a table?” Luke suggested to her and his partner.
Frankie scanned the small restaurant. Finding a table wasn’t going to be a problem. Every other table in the place appeared to be empty. Was it always like this or had they come in at a bad time?
“After you,” White Hawk told her.
“Is this place always this empty?” she asked White Hawk as she sat down at the closest table.
“You’ve never been here before?” Luke asked, joining them and taking a seat. “This place makes the best pizza in town. I thought since you liked pizza so much, you would have found this place yourself.”
Frankie noticed that he hadn’t answered her question, just asked one of his own, possibly to throw her off. She shrugged. “I live in the other direction,” she said simply. “There’re a couple of decent pizza parlors between the station and my place.”
“Pizza parlors,” Luke repeated, the corners of his mouth curving.
She had no idea why that would amuse him but she braced herself for some kind of a cutting comment. “That’s what I said,” she replied crisply.
His smile only seemed to widen. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
She wasn’t, but she wasn’t ready to admit anything until she knew why he was asking and what he would do with the information once he got it.
“And just what makes you say that?” she asked.
“They’re not called pizza parlors out here,” he told her. “That’s something people say back East. Are you from back East, DeMarco?” he asked, looking at her. “You don’t sound like you are.”
Frankie didn’t really feel like sharing any personal information with O’Bannon, no matter how harmless it was, but she knew that he wasn’t going to back off until she satisfied his curiosity.
One glance at White Hawk told her that she was right on that score.
“I was four when my family moved out here. My mother loved pizza and she called them pizza parlors. I guess I picked that up from her.” She was not about to elaborate any further on either of her parents. And when she asked, “Any more questions?” it sounded almost defensively waspish to her own ear.
“I’ll let you know when I think of them,” Luke told her mildly.
Frankie had no doubts that he would do exactly that, no matter what those questions involved. And she was just as determined not to answer them. The next moment, she saw him standing up next to his chair.
“Here comes our pizza,”