She accepted the handshake and added wearily, “It’s Leda. Just Leda.”
“Leda, then. I hope to see you soon.”
When the door had shut behind him, and the last echo of his footsteps had faded down the stairs, both women flailed their arms at each other.
Leda’s voice was high enough to summon dolphins when she squeaked excitedly, “What am I going to do? A cop wants to take me clue-hunting!”
“You’re a bloodhound. You’ll be awesome!” Niki replied in kind. Then she took it down an octave to add, “You should totally do it. He’s a paying customer, and this is a travel agency without a surplus of travelers to agent. He’s already promised not to be mad if you suck at this.”
“Oh, I am going to suck at this.”
Niki grinned. “Is that a psychic prediction?”
“That’s a non-psychic certainty.” She put her head back down on her desk and left it there, her forehead smearing the surface with makeup. Her voice was muffled when she concluded, “But I don’t actually have a bad feeling about it.”
“You don’t?”
She picked her head up and pondered what she’d just said. “I don’t. I don’t know how useful I’ll be, but I don’t feel any apocalyptic doom or anything. At worst, I’ll be useless. Right? Even though… I mean… you know.”
Neither one of them wanted to say it out loud. Niki tiptoed around it. “I know, but maybe this is a good opportunity. You’re making friends with a cop—a cop who isn’t weirded out by your psychic stuff. Even if you can’t help him with his case, maybe he can help you with yours.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Like what? Like you’re not still looking for answers?”
Leda shot her a warning look. “Tod is gone. It’s been three years, and the police haven’t been ultra helpful so far.”
“It’s not like they had a lot to go on. You weren’t a lot of help.”
The warning look went sharp.
Niki walked it back. “No one knew why Tod was in the back seat of his own car, or why he was all the way out past Renton, or why anybody would want to hurt him. Not even you.”
“Stop it. Just stop talking.”
“All I’m saying,” Niki persisted, “is that it can’t hurt to be friendly with a police detective. He could dig up the case, take another look at the evidence. He seems pretty sharp; he might see something the other guys missed.”
“Nicole.”
It was like she’d used a safe word. Niki closed her trap and waited to see if this was going to turn into a fight or just a round of sad bickering.
Leda sat back in her chair. She pressed her hands flat on her desk, then used her palm to rub away the sweat smudge she’d left with her forehead. “One psych-curious cop with a stale cold case isn’t going to change what happened to Tod. It might not even be Grady’s jurisdiction, or however that works.”
Carefully, Niki said, “That’s no reason not to help him, if you can.”
Leda thought about it for a minute, and then waved a white flag. “Okay, fine. You’re right. If I can help, awesome. If I refuse to try, then I’m a jerk. Screw it. I’m in. But I don’t want to go alone. Are you in?”
“Yes, but not if you want to do it Saturday. Me and Matt have plans. We’re going to Snoqualmie for a train thing. You know Matt and trains.”
“Dammit. Saturday is the only day that makes sense for me.”
“Go on without me; you’ll be fine. No really bad feelings, right? Meet him for coffee, or meet him here, or whatever feels good to you.” Niki picked herself up off the IKEA love seat, adjusted her stance with the plastic boot, and said, “Come on, it’s almost five o’clock. Clock out or sign off. Now that I’ve said it out loud, I’m feeling Castaways.”
“You just want to go see Matt.” Her boyfriend was the manager there.
“Come on. Let’s get some drinks, and if you feel like a little klairvoyant karaoke, nobody will stop you.”
“Now’s really not the time.”
“I’m sorry I brought up Tod, but you know I’m right about this.” Niki picked an oversize sweater off the rack by the door. “You always feel better after you sing. It’s like exercise, or eating your vegetables, or mediation. But with glitter and the occasional high note.”
“I’m not doing any klairvoyant karaoke.”
She flung the sweater over her shoulders. “Suit yourself. Get a nice grown-up slushie and watch me do some karaoke of the non-psychic kind.”
“You have a terrible voice.”
“It’s Thursday. Nobody will be there to hear it, and I am not ashamed.”
Leda got up, too. There was no escaping Niki’s gravitational field of forced fun times, even when the afternoon had gone a little dark. “You sound like a crow being strangled.”
“Only until I’ve had a couple of drinks.”
“Then you sound like two crows being strangled.”
“I love you, too.” Niki collected Leda’s jacket, balled it up, and tossed it to her. “Get a move on, girlie. Rush-hour traffic is upon us.”
“Let’s take the light rail.”
“The station is four blocks from Castaways, and I’m not exactly in hiking shape at the moment. If you’ll recall.” She held up her booted foot for emphasis.
“Fine,” Leda sulked, feeling like a jerk because she hadn’t thought of Niki’s bum foot. She picked up her purse and fished out her car keys. “I’ll go get Jason.”
“Jason” was a baby-blue Accord that Leda had bought on a Friday the thirteenth. Sometimes Leda wondered if she shouldn’t have named it “Jamie Lee” instead, but it was too late to turn the habit around now. Grumpily, she stomped past Niki and down the corridor, then out the side door that promised an alarm if opened. There was no such alarm.
“I’ll bring the car around front.”
Niki promised, “I’ll be there!” and locked the door behind herself.
Five minutes later, Leda pulled up, and Niki secured herself in the passenger seat. Castaways was only half an hour out if the traffic was good.
5.
Leda and Niki were going against the flow of rush-hour traffic, thank God. Even on a Thursday afternoon, the city core was a still life of cars—with a soundtrack of horns honking and people swearing in a dozen languages. They’d started out a little south of town, in a neighborhood called Columbia City; Capitol Hill was only a few miles north, but any road closures or wrecks could stretch the drive to an hour, if luck wasn’t with them.
Jason the Accord made it up the hill in thirty minutes, and he was successfully parked in another ten. The parking wasn’t metered after six. It was a quarter till then, but Leda and Niki decided to risk it rather than spring for the paid lot down the block.
The hill was crawling with cars, bicycles, jaywalking pedestrians, homeless people with signs, rats, hipsters with tiny dogs in neon harnesses, street musicians with open guitar cases, preachers wearing sandwich boards, skateboarders, and the occasional drag queen. Cap Hill had once been known as the city’s main “gayborhood,” and it still had a few clubs and bars that catered to the old clientele. These days, Niki called it the “stayawayborhood” because she’d been priced out of the apartment she’d shared there with Matt for a couple of years. She was still sore about it.