Dead Man Talking

She snorted. “And you would?”

I tried not to take the comment personally. I mean, coming from a woman in red shorts and a purple shirt with a saint on it, how could I? “I know a thing or two about the way to dress.”

“For an old-folks’ country club, maybe.”

“How can you-” I bit off the rest of my comment. Sammi’s opinion was just that, an opinion, and dead wrong, besides. She only said what she did because she was itching for a fight. I refused to be the one to give it to her. I didn’t care enough, in the first place. Plus fighting teammates would make Greer salivate, and who knows what Bianca would think of me if she saw me duking it out with Sammi.

I held my arms at my sides, the better to control my temper. “Greer doesn’t shop where I shop, or where you shop.”

Sammi’s top lip curled. She plucked at her purple top. “You think this kind of quality comes off the rack? I make my own clothes. I design them, too.”

OK, so we didn’t share one iota of the same fashion sense, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t impressed. Suddenly, the whole saint-on-the-shirt thing made sense, too. “You’re name is Sammi Santiago. And Santiago, that means-”

“St. James. Yeah.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “That’s how you can tell it’s one of my own designs. I put St. James on all my stuff somewhere. You speak Spanish?”

“Nah. But I know that much. I know creativity when I see it, too. You making your own clothes, that’s really cool.”

She controlled a smile. “You think so?”

“I think that’s more than I could ever do. It’s way more creative than Greer in that gray suit of hers.”

“Yeah.” Sammi looked toward where we heard the sounds of genteel laughter coming from the section where Greer was filming. “She needs to get rid of those man shirts. If she wore that suit with a bustier-”

“That’s too scary to think about!”

We shared a laugh.

It wasn’t much, but it was a small inroad. Feeling more comfortable with Sammi than I had since she stepped out of that van and into my life, I did my best to make small talk. “You ever think of selling your clothes?” Believe me, I was in team-captain mode here, I wasn’t interested in buying. “There are some boutiques over in the Tremont neighborhood that-”

I guess that was the wrong thing to say. Sammi grumbled a curse and walked away.

As it turned out, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all. It meant I didn’t have to deal with Sammi or with introducing anybody to anybody else when Qui

“I thought you’d be working.”

I gave him a look that told him I was. “Didn’t think I’d see you today.”

“Hey, I’m a man of my word.” He was carrying a slim file folder, and he held it up for me to see.

“Is that-”

“The file you wanted. The Lamar case, yeah.”

I should have been grateful. I was. Honest. But-

“It’s awfully ski

Qui

“Thank you. Why is the file so ski

His lips puckered. Not in the good way they did when he kissed me. “This is what’s called the basic file,” he explained. “There’s one of these kept in the Homicide Unit for every case that’s ever been investigated. It’s not supposed to leave the Justice Center.”

“Thank you.” This time I meant it.

Qui

I shook away my disappointment and went to stand in the shade of the mausoleum. Qui

“The basics.”

“That’s right. Who was murdered, when the call first came in, who was interviewed, who was convicted.”

“I know who was convicted.” I leaned closer for a better look. Not such a bad thing, considering that Qui

I leaned a little nearer. “You got this file for me fast.”

One corner of his mouth pulled into a smile. “Told you I was a man of my word. You wanted what you wanted, I wanted what I wanted, and once I got it…”

I knew better than to go down that road. The last thing I needed was for my teammates-or Greer-to find me looking starry-eyed with Qui

That was not the kind of publicity the restoration needed, and it would certainly make my favorite Homicide detective less than happy. With that in mind, I took the folder out of his hands and read it over.

“The victim was Vera Blaine. She was twenty-two.” Seeing the information laid out in black and white made me queasy. “He never told me who was killed, or mentioned that she was so young.”

“He?”

I shook myself out of my thoughts and found Qui

“He. The guy who filled out the papers in Lamar’s cemetery file. You know, the ones that mentioned that Lamar might have been wrongly accused. I just assumed it was a he. And look”-changing the subject was a much better tactic that getting fixated on the fact that my information was coming from the dead guy who’d been convicted of the murder-“it says she was killed at the Lake View Motel in Cleveland. Ever hear of the place?”

Qui

“Or maybe the place doesn’t exist anymore.” I read over the address. Even I knew it wasn’t the best part of town. “Twenty-five years is a long time. The motel is probably gone.”

I read the next section of the report. “It looks like the cops interviewed a whole lot of people. Some guy named Steve Ganley, for one. It says here he was Vera Blaine’s boyfriend.”

“And it also says that there’s not one shred of doubt that your guy, Jefferson Lamar, committed the murder. See?” Qui

“Which doesn’t mean he killed her.”

“Of course not.” He took the file out of my hand and flipped to the second page. “But all this does. Look: it’s a list of the evidence. They had him dead to right. Lamar’s personal weapon was used in the shooting. His fingerprints were on it. His blood was on her blouse.”

None of which Lamar had ever mentioned.

“Still, there was that note in the cemetery file. The one about Lamar being framed.” There were only those two pieces of paper in the file, but I turned them both over, just in case I’d missed something. “There must be more information somewhere. What about crime scene photos? And the gun itself? If Lamar says he was framed-” I offered an apologetic smile. “If that note in his file says he was framed, there must be a reason somebody thinks he was framed. How can I find out more?”

“This isn’t enough? If all you’re looking for is information about the crime so you can make your team look good-”