Jeff came back over and bent close to my ear. "I need to interview this one now that I have his complete attention."
I whispered, "Okay, I can wait."
"Please go home. I'll call you."
"But—"
"And do me a favor? Let me talk to Will Knight first."
He said this nice enough, but he wasn't asking for a favor: Jeff was warning me not to contact my client.
"If you say so," I answered.
Now, sometimes you gotta dance to the tune the band plays, especially when one of the fiddlers is your cop boyfriend. But as I drove home, I had to think long and hard whether this was one of those times.
2
I arrived home around ten, grabbed a Coke from the fridge and headed for the living room, unable to stop thinking about Verna Mae's call to me today and the horrible way she died. The sheer brutality had me as mad as a bull in red dye factory. I needed to find out what had happened. I mean, why beat a woman to death for jewelry and the contents of a handbag that could have been snatched without much effort? But maybe she had some fight in her and pissed off her assailant. If the bad guy was on drugs, it wouldn't take much to set him off.
Then there was Will. He would soon learn about this, and I sure wanted to be the one to tell him. I did have his number on speed-dial. One press of a button and I could see if he was home, walk that tightrope Jeff had placed between me and my client by asking Will if he'd had any surprises today—like a visit or call from Verna Mae.
Don't be an idiot, I told myself. I needed to respect Jeff's request, and I sure didn't want to get on the wrong side of HPD. I was still a new PI and under the supervision of Jeff's good friend Angel Molina of the Molina Detective Agency. Though I am a registered investigator, I only stay that way if I don't get into trouble.