“Yeah.”
“Have fun?” she managed the faintest hint of acid.
“A modest amount,” he said, matching her irony.
He was a big boy. He could do his own dirty work and bring the photos up.
He hesitated a beat, and then:
“So... what about you? You do anything... I dunno,fun...last night, Britt?”
Uh-oh.
She thought her answer through for what felt like quite some time. “Went out with a friend.”
Her voice sounded dreamy. She’d forgotten how thoroughly alcohol savaged every single one of your senses. She wanted to speak quietly so as not to jar her head.
“Mmm. Friend, huh?”
“Casey.”
“Ah, Casey. What did you ladies do?”
Another little delay while her brain searched out the word.
“Drank,” she whispered.
He stifled a laugh. “You don’t say.”
She had nothing to say to that, really.
“You know... as I was driving back into town from Napa this morning... I saw a lot of new artwork.”
Oh. Crap.
“And since I know how you like to transform things, I thought you might be interested to hear how some of the Hellcat Canyon’s public art has been, shall we say, transformed.”
She remembered he played a cop onBlood Brothers. He knew how to interrogate a suspect. He could just corner her into the truth with these innocent little comments.
She remained silent. You can’t incriminate yourself if you don’t talk. She’d learned that from cop shows, too.
The intent of this long, long silence was clearly to shred her nerves to pieces.
“I just have one very pressing question, Britt.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
He paused strategically.
“Why a clown?”
It took her a long while to answer.
Finally she decided she didn’t have it in her to attempt a defense.
“Fun.” Her voice was a shamed, resigned hush. It was almost peaceful to surrender to truth this way.
“Fun?” His voice was peculiarly taut.