Hal, who’s announced he’s staying the night—and possibly the next few nights—is sleeping in Cooper’s office downstairs. The contents of his duffel bag turned out to include several changes of clothes, a toothbrush, and the book he’s currently reading, as well as multiple firearms.
I offered him the guest room instead of the couch—which folds out but isn’t as comfortable as a bed—but he thanked me politely and said he preferred Cooper’s couch. Cooper later informed me this is because his office has the best view of the street, so Hal can see anyone who might come up the front steps.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for an intruder try to break in through the back?” I asked.
Cooper shook his head. “That’s what the alarm is for. Hal’s worried about someone disguised as a pizza deliveryman walking up to the front door and knocking. Only none of us ordered pizza, and pizza’s not what’s in the box.”
“Now you guys are being ridiculous,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Are we?” Cooper asked. “You said that blogger ate a lot of pizza, and look what happened to him. Maybe that’s how his attacker got in.”
There’s not going to be any convincing Cooper that anyone could easily have snuck up behind Cameron Ripley and strangled him—he sits with his back to the door of the Express’s office, typing with earbuds in his ears—so I let it drop. Let Hal stare at the front porch for mysterious assassins disguised as pizza deliverymen who are allegedly coming after me. I have bigger fish to fry.
“So is Hal here,” I finally ask Cooper, when his lids have become droopy from the painkiller and I know I’m likely to get the truth from him, “because you’re worried about what’s going at my place of work, or because you’re worried about what’s going on with my mom?”
Cooper shakes his head in bafflement. He wasn’t wrong about the pills making him fuzzy-headed. “What do you mean?”
“There’s no use pretending anymore,” I say, reaching out to lightly run a finger down his cheek. It’s already rough with razor stubble, and likely to get rougher as the days go by. With a broken ankle, cracked rib, and fat lip, he won’t be bothering to shave. “I know you weren’t in a car wreck. Sammy the Schnozz squealed.”
“See if I ever do him another favor,” Cooper says after a beat, with genuine bitterness. “You just can’t trust people anymore, Heather.”
“No, you can’t, can you? Cooper, I believe I asked you to leave the thing with my mother alone.”
“And I believe I told you that as a licensed private investigator, I couldn’t. Heather, don’t you get it? I couldn’t not follow her.”
“And look where it got you!” I’ve sat down on the bed beside him. Now I spread my hands to indicate his bandaged ankle and ribs. “This is what she does. She ruins everything she touches.”
He captures one of my outspread hands, then kisses the back of it very gently so as not to hurt his badly bruised lips.
“Not everything,” he says, with a lopsided smile. “Not you. Not this time. I didn’t let her.”
“Oh, right,” I say, sarcastically. “So this time instead of hurting me, she hurts you. That’s so much better, Coop.”
“Come on, Heather. You think this is bad? Believe me, I’ve had much worse. In a couple of weeks, there won’t be a scratch on me. And this had nothing to do with your mom—”
“Oh, right!” I cry again.
“Okay, well, maybe a little. She hangs out with some rough customers, your mother.”
I shudder, then lay my head on his shoulder—carefully, so as not to disturb his rib—wrapping one arm around him. “Why do you think I told you to leave it alone? My God, Cooper, you could have been killed.”
He grins crookedly, then winces. “Glad to hear you have so much faith in my abilities.”
“I’m serious. Ricardo was never the nicest guy.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Heather, but I don’t meet a lot of nice guys in my line of work. I’m not exactly a librarian.”
“Yeah, but do librarians hang out with mobsters? Because I’m pretty sure Ricardo owed money to the Mob.”
“Well, that could explain why he was so interested in your mom. She clearly has a lot of cash to spend. I started tailing her when she came out of your dad’s apartment building this afternoon. She headed straight to Fifth Avenue to hit all the usual suspects—Tiffany’s, Bergdorf’s, Van Cleef and Arpels. It wasn’t until we got to Prada that I realized I wasn’t the only one tailing her.”
I lifted my head from his shoulder. “You mean Ricardo—?”
“Caught him behind her just as she was exiting the store. I recognized him right away. He’s aged a bit, but not that much. Plus, he’s a pretty crummy tail. He had on a trench coat and fedora, pulled down low over his face, for Christ’s sakes. Who wears an outfit like that when it’s eighty degrees outside? The guy’s clearly an amateur.”
“So what did you do?” I ask.
“I said, ‘Hey, Ricardo, long time no see,’ and the guy’s so freaked out, he pulls a knife on me. I had no choice but to disarm him.”
I gasp and sit up. “Cooper! Are you crazy? You could have been stabbed.”
“There were ladies present, including your mother,” he says, indignantly. “What was I supposed to do? As soon as she recognized Ricardo, your mom started screaming like she’d seen the antichrist. And even then, it took store security forever to figure out what was going on and call the cops. By the time they arrived, old Ricardo and I were already out on the sidewalk. He tried to push me under a cab—”
“Where was my mom?” I interrupt.
“Disappeared,” Cooper says. “Didn’t see her again once the cops peeled Ricardo and me apart.”
I press my lips together, thinking dark thoughts about my mother, who hadn’t even had the decency to stick around to help my fiancé while he was being half beaten to death by her ex—even if Cooper had eventually turned things around, and ended up winning the fight.
“Anyway, it just goes to show,” Cooper says, playing with a long strand of my hair, “things aren’t always what they seem.”