Finding Claire Fletcher (2 page)

She smiled wryly. “Charming.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “Honest,” he replied.

She gazed at him thoughtfully. “Connor, what do you do?”

“I’m a detective,” he said.

“Are you any good?”

He laughed. “I was.”

“Was?”

He bit his lip and tightened his fingers around his glass.

“Oh,” she said. “The bad day.”

“Some of it.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “The rest?”

He took a moment to study her. She had her elbow propped on the bar, one hand playing absently at her curls. She was appraising him. He shuffled his bar stool closer to hers and leaned his face into hers so that their mouths were nearly touching. She remained still, relaxed.

“You
are
interesting,” he said.

“Are you picking
me
up?”

“I don’t know,” he said, backing away. “Would you like me to?”

She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “That depends.”

“On what?” he asked.

“On the rest of this conversation.”

“Formality,” he said, waving a dismissive hand.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” she countered. “Tell me the rest.”

“The rest of what?”

“Of what made today a bad day.”

Suddenly, Connor felt like hurling his glass against the wall. Instead he gritted his teeth and replied, “So what is this? What? I have to buy you a drink
and
pour my heart out to you just for some sex? Or I have to buy you seven drinks
while
I pour my heart out so you’ll be good and shitfaced when I take you home?”

Claire continued to eye him with a calculating look that slowly began to unnerve him. She stood and slid a twenty dollar bill across the bar. She put her lips to his ear. Her voice was calm, even. Her breath felt cool on the nape of his neck.

“I’m buying,” she said. “Three minutes ago, you thought I was a hooker. Then, for about ten seconds, you thought I was a bored housewife. After that, you wondered if I was a bar hag, hitting on the fresh meat. None of those things are the truth.”

With a single finger, she turned his chin so that he was looking directly at her. For a fleeting moment, staring into her bottomless eyes, Connor felt terrified. “Not a very good detective, are you?” she said.

She sauntered away from him and out of the bar, her supple behind swaying. She carried nothing. No purse, no jacket. Connor’s stupefied jaw hung where she’d left it.

Before he realized what he was doing, the bar door was flapping behind him and the cool night air rushed at his face like a hard slap. He caught up with her a block later, tugging on her arm from behind. She snatched it from his grip, a flicker of something in her eyes. “Are you crazy?” she said. It was the first sign of emotion he’d heard in her voice. Anger.

He huffed but stood in front of her, blocking her way. She tried to move around him, but he moved with her. She spun on her heel and began walking back toward the bar.

“Wait,” he called. He ran again and planted himself in front of her. “Divorce,” he said.

She folded her arms and glared at him, but she didn’t leave.

Connor threw his hands up in surrender. “My divorce went through today, okay? That’s the rest of it. I fucked up at work—botched an arrest—and then came home and there was this letter in the mail from my attorney saying my divorce was final. It’s been coming for a year, you know, but to get the news today of all days. I mean I fucked up my marriage, I fucked up my job. I just...I don’t...,” he floundered and fell silent.

A smile crept across her face. “So what you’re saying is you’re a fuck-up?”

He laughed. “Well, yeah, okay. I guess I am. I fucked up with you.”

Her eyebrows knitted together. “Well, you’re starting to repair some of the damage.”

“I guess that’s something,” he said.

“You’re much cuter when you’re honest and vulnerable.”

He shot her a quizzical look. “Yeah. I was honest in the bar and that didn’t go so well.”

“I said honest
and
vulnerable,” she clarified.

Connor looked at his feet, then back at Claire, feigning shyness. “So you think I’m cute, huh?”

This time she laughed. The sound surprised Connor, both because he liked it, but also because there was a harshness to it he hadn’t expected.

“Can I give you a lift?” he asked.

“No.”

“Okay. Can we get another drink? Something to eat?”

“No.”

“How about a walk?”

Claire considered that. “How far do you live from here?”

“Like ten blocks, but I have my car.”

“I’ll walk you home,” she said.

Connor studied her for a moment. “Well, all right,” he agreed. “It’s that way.”

He pointed over her shoulder and she turned. They walked the ten blocks in silence. Connor glanced at Claire repeatedly, but she did not look at him.

“This is it,” he said when they reached his house.

It was a simple, white one-story with black shutters and a small but neatly kept front lawn. There was a brick path leading from the sidewalk to the front door with large clusters of yellow flowers crowding the path on either side.

Connor watched her take it in. “Not very masculine, I know,” he said. “My wife’s touch. Ahh, my ex-wife. Sorry. First day.”

“You have a yard,” was all Claire said.

Connor took two steps onto the walkway and gestured toward the house. “Uh, yeah, there’s one in the back too.”

Claire was mesmerized by the flowers—their long muted stalks rising and leaning in unison toward the direction of the next morning’s sunrise.

Connor clapped his hands together awkwardly. “Look, Claire, if you don’t want to come in, that’s okay. I just wanted to meet you—properly that is. I don’t expect anything.”

The spell broken, she stepped onto the path with him and extended a hand for the second time that night. “Claire Fletcher,” she said.

Connor smiled and shook it, “Connor Parks.”

“Are you going to invite me in?” she asked. “I’m getting cold.”

He laughed. “Yeah, okay. Come on.”

They entered the house, which was just as silent as it had been for the last two years since Denise left him. Connor was automatically attuned to the small sounds that filled his ears like a cacophony. Sounds no one else noticed. The ticking wall clock in the living room, the steady hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. The
drip-drip-drip
of the leaky faucet and the nearly inaudible
whir-clink-clink-whir
of the fluorescent light above the kitchen sink that he always left on.

“It’s quiet,” Claire said as he closed the door behind them.

“Yeah.”

He went to turn on the lamp beside the couch, but she stopped him, her hand at his elbow. “No,” she said. “I like it this way.”

“Okay.”

Connor wondered if he should kiss her, if that was his cue. He pictured her full lips curving when she spoke. Claire slid her hand down over his and led him toward the dimly lit kitchen. She sat at the table and looked at him. Now it was she who looked vulnerable, and he really did want to kiss her.

“A drink,” she said.

“Scotch?”

“Of course.”

He got two glasses and an unopened bottle of Glenlivet from the cabinet above the sink. Claire watched him. “Take off your jacket,” she said.

Connor obeyed, and she pulled out the chair diagonal from hers. “Sit,” she commanded.

Again, he obeyed and let her pour the scotch. He picked up his glass and for the second time that night asked what they should toast to.

Claire’s grin was catlike. “Let’s toast to fuck-ups,” she said.

Connor laughed. “To fuck-ups,” he said and drank.

“Tell me about the arrest.”

Connor sighed. “You don’t want to hear this.”

“Don’t be shy, detective.”

He lifted his palms and let them fall back to the table. “This guy,” he began. “We were on him for rape, five counts, and armed robbery, two counts. We’d been on this case for two months. We thought we had him cold twice before, but when we went to arrest him, he wasn’t there. Either our information was bad or he was tipped off.

“Anyway, we had him today. We went to this house where we knew he was hiding out and we went in. We get up to one of the bedrooms, you know, and the whole house was clear so we start looking under beds and in closets and shit. So one of the other guys opens the closet door in this bedroom and there’s this fucking guy. He’s crouched there and he’s got something in his hand. I thought it was a gun.”

“So you shot him,” Claire said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah,” Connor replied, meeting her eyes.

“It wasn’t a gun.”

“Nope. It was a lead pipe.”

“You killed him.”

“Yeah.”

“Feel bad?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Were you glad?” she asked.

“Yeah, in a way,” Connor admitted far more easily than he would have liked.

“But now you’re in trouble.”

“Oh yeah.” Connor smiled at her and ran a hand through his hair. Fatigue and scotch were beginning to slow him down. “Are you from IA?” he asked.

She cocked her head slightly to the side. “IA?”

“Internal Affairs,” he said. “Are you from Internal Affairs?”

Claire smiled. “Hah. No, I’m not.”

She poured them more scotch. “Your turn to toast,” she said.

He picked up his glass. “Okay. To mysterious women. No, no. To beautiful, mysterious women.”

Claire smiled and touched her glass to his.

“Why’d you pick me?” Connor asked. “Tonight. In the bar.”

Claire looked into her glass and swished the amber liquid around thoughtfully. “Well, if I’m right about you, you’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Is this a trick?” he asked.

“No,” she said, looking suddenly tired. Her eyes moved from the glass to his face. “Connor, do you have a room in this house that was, you know, mostly your wife’s room? One you haven’t really gone into since she left?”

Connor blinked. His heart was a tiny pinging ball in his chest. “Yeah,” he croaked.

“May I see it?”

“Um, sure. Okay.”

He guided her into the formal dining room which was opposite the living room. Connor flicked the light on and they both squinted. He stood in the doorway, which was as far as he ever got, and watched Claire.

She moved slowly, as if moving through a museum. She studied the smooth flow of the mauve wallpaper, the still mauve drapes with mint-green sashes hanging above them. The small cherry writing desk with its two drawers and seven cubby holes. Impractical. Connor had always thought so.

Claire ran a hand over the hard-backed chair tucked under the desk before moving on to the large cherry china cabinet with glass doors. It stood empty like a faceless sentry looming over the room.

“She took the dishes,” he explained.

Claire nodded. She turned to the dining table which still held the tabletop calculator, their joint checkbook, a pen and a pile of two-year-old bills that Connor had paid when the late notices finally came in the month after Denise left. Denise had always paid their bills at that table. Connor had not touched it since she left.

Claire ran a finger over the table, making a shiny, thin streak through the accumulated dust. She turned to look at him, her gray-smudged index finger in the air as though she were checking the direction of the wind.

“She met someone else,” Claire said.

Connor smiled grimly. “Yeah.”

“Come here,” Claire said.

He locked eyes with her and let a moment pass before walking toward her. She stepped so close to him, her breasts brushed against him. He was almost a foot taller than her. He breathed on her forehead, trying not to tremble. He wanted her, but again felt that terrible second of panic she’d inspired in him at the bar. She tilted her head so he could look at her.

“Who are you?” Connor asked.

“I told you.”

“Claire Fletcher.” He shook his head. “That doesn’t—”

She didn’t let him finish. She stood on the balls of her feet and closed her mouth over his. Connor melted into her as his body sagged to wrap around hers. She put both hands in his hair, pulling him into her so furiously their teeth clanged together.

He pulled away. “I’m sorry,” he breathed.

“Don’t stop,” she said.

Their mouths met again. Connor squeezed her tightly around the waist and scooped her up, holding her against him. Her feet dangled above his. He felt like he was holding a live wire. Her whole body buzzed with electrical current.

Claire gripped a handful of his hair and yanked his mouth from hers. “The bedroom,” she said.