Split Second

“Call me Jasmine, please, Agent Savich. Ah, the doctor tells me perhaps next Tuesday, if he continues to gain strength. But the thing is, I don’t want him here. Mr. Urbi and Mr. Shama have convinced me he might be in danger at home, because why would he be robbed twice? Whoever tried to kill him might try again. He is safer in the hospital with that lovely young man sitting right outside his door, protecting him. You must catch whoever is out to kill my husband, Agent Savich. May I call you Dillon?”

Savich smiled at her. “How did you know my first name, ma’am?”

He saw the ma’am rankled, but her smile didn’t slip.

“I asked Officer Horne—Dillon.”

He nodded, and with apologies, asked where each of them was the night Mr. Patil was shot in the back. Nowhere near the Shop ’n Go, they each said, and offered witnesses.

Savich asked them about the first robbery attempt. Nowhere near, each said, and produced more alibis.

Savich backed off. Mr. Shama was looking at Savich like he’d like to shoot him. As for Mr. Urbi, he was smiling toward Jasmine Patil.

Savich said, “Gentlemen, do you know of any reason why someone would want to murder Mr. Patil?”

None of them knew who could possibly wish to harm a single hair on Nandi Patil’s precious gray head, except, Mr. Urbi insisted, some madman who, for whatever reason, had a grudge against Nandi.

Savich needed to get them alone, but when? There was so much going on with Kirsten—he’d talk to Ben Raven about interviewing each of them. Savich rose, nodded to each of them. “Mr. Urbi, Mr. Shama, a pleasure to meet you gentlemen.”

“I will show you out, Dillon.”

She gave him that look again, a look that said she understood something very private about him, as a man. Yet she appeared to adore her old husband, and he was certainly besotted with her. Savich looked back at the two men, now speaking in low voices. Mr. Urbi looked up at that moment, met his eyes, and something moved in those dark eyes, something like understanding.

At the front door, Jasmine Patil rubbed her hand over his arm and moved closer. “It’s truly a pity for my granddaughter, Cynthia, that you are married, Dillon.”

He nodded. “Actually, ma’am, I don’t consider it a pity at all. My wife is very special. I will speak to you again, Mrs. Patil,” he said, and left her very nice house in Fairfax, not looking back, because he knew she was standing in the open doorway, staring after him. One of these three had better answers for him, he was sure of it.

He called Ben Raven, got his voice mail, and left him a message.

Right now he had to focus on getting Ms. Kelly Spicer, veteran waitress at the Texas Range Bar & Grill in Baltimore, down for a field trip to the Hoover Building for an interview.

CHAPTER 38

Hoover Building

Wednesday, lunch

Kelly Spicer, longtime waitress at the Texas Range Bar & Grill in Baltimore and wife of the owner, Jonah Spicer, wasn’t a perky twenty-two-year-old. She was flamboyant and fifty with a huge smile she liked to flash at her customers whenever she claimed she was “straight off the Texas range.” It was a little fib, she told them, but God wouldn’t care, now, would She? She laughed at her joke, shaking her big Texas hair, making the silver hoops dance in her ears, and drawing your eye to the awesome cleavage on display from three open buttons on her blouse.

Savich, Lucy, and Coop sat with her in the seventh-floor cafeteria of the Hoover Building.

Coop was very nearly vibrating, his eyes never leaving Kelly Spicer. He noticed her cleavage, sure—he was still breathing, after all—but he was so excited about her being here he wasn’t even thinking of eating his bowl of turkey chili. He was leaning toward her, wanting to pull the words out of her mouth.

Lucy was as excited as Coop, and barely kept from dropping the beef taco off her tray.

Savich slid the roasted vegetables off his shish kebab as he asked Kelly what she thought of her sushi.

Lucy couldn’t bear the idea of raw fish, and kept her head down and chowed on her taco. Coop was fiddling with a spoon, his bowl of chili still untouched as he waited for her to take two bites of her sushi. He took that as a signal to begin. “We know the Baltimore Police Department already showed you the pictures, Ms. Spicer. Are you absolutely sure the woman you saw last night is Kirsten Bolger?”

“Absolutely, Agent McKnight. By the way, I sure do like your name, like an Irish knight charging in on his horse. Odd duck, she was, that’s what I told Gator. He’s my husband; he went to Florida way back in the day. Football, football, that’s what his life’s about. Now that it’s football season, he switches on the huge TVs and we turn into a regular sports bar.”