There was a figure leaning against her car, waiting for her.
Beth stopped, her heart hammering in her chest. Some of the drunkenness drained away, absorbed by adrenaline. Then she recognized him.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said.
“You’re not driving home,” Detective Black said.
Beth closed her fingers around the keys in her hand. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m the police,” he said. “I’m not letting you get in an accident.”
Incredibly, he was wearing a suit, or parts of one. He had no jacket, and his tie was loosened past his clavicle, his shirt unbuttoned at the top. But his dress pants were barely wrinkled and his shoes were shiny. His face was tired and his hair was slightly mussed, but he watched her with cop’s eyes.
“Fuck off,” Beth said, because she was tired and drunk and couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Go away and leave me alone.”
“I’m not going to do that,” he said stoically. “My car is just over there. I’ll drive you home.”
“How did you know I was here?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew. With the suspicious instincts of the drunk, she knew.
“You were following me,” she said.
Black didn’t answer. He looked away, unable to meet her gaze. Even in a parking lot at one in the morning, he was handsome.
“Well, screw it,” Beth said. He was leaning against the driver’s door, blocking her way, so she walked around the car to the passenger side. She’d climb over the gearshift and drive off, leaving his nice-looking ass to fall to the concrete. But Black rounded the car the other way and blocked her again, putting his hand over hers as she reached out with her key.
“Nice Cadillac,” he said.
It was. It was big and black. It was a nice car if you were a man, a big stupid man who cared about idiotic cars. It had been her father’s—he had bought it because a man as rich as he was, as high up in the world as he was, should own a Cadillac. But he’d never loved this car, just like he never loved his expensive house or his expensive wife. His expensive daughter, even. This big, shiny car hadn’t prevented her father from ending up dead on the kitchen floor.
Beth pushed the words out at Detective Black like venom. “I have to drive it because I don’t have my other car. You do.”
Ransom had said that meant the cops were going to look for fingerprints, blood, hair. It was a waste of time. Beth wondered if they’d find her father’s fingerprints in that car, a shadow of him left over from when he was alive.
“You’ll get it back,” Detective Black said.
“Don’t bother.”
“Beth, get in my car. I’m not letting you drive.”
“Who shines your shoes?”
He looked surprised. “Pardon?”
“Your shoes are shiny,” Beth said. “Your clothes are pressed. You don’t wear a wedding ring. So who does it?”
The detective blinked. “I do it myself.”
“The shining and the pressing?”
“Yes.”
Beth had never known a man who did that. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
“Actually, yes, I do. I’m engaged.”
“Then why doesn’t she press your shirts?”
“If you were engaged, would you press your fiancé’s shirts?”