Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

familiar ring.
    Alton’s obvious delight with her was unsettling. Wetzon felt like some sort of trophy. What had been so flattering, and still was, seemed in a vague way threatening. Not seemed—was. Threatening to her way of life, her relationship with Silvestri. What relationship? she asked herself angrily, fighting what she didn’t understand.
    It was raining when they got to the street, and Alton, disdaining her offer to share her umbrella, bolted to a nearby parking garage, handed his ticket to the clerk, and waited for her to join him. He moved like a much younger man.
    Would he drive, she wondered, a Mercedes? A Jag? Something Japanese, like Silvestri’s Toyota? Wrong in all respects. He drove American. A Mercury Cougar, to be exact. And when she wondered aloud, he said, “I always buy union.”
    She adjusted herself under the seat belt and realized it was the same movement as adjusting oneself under crime-scene tape on a park bench. “How could I think otherwise?”
    Alton looked over at her and laughed.
    They drove down Fifth in sheets of rain so torrential that the windshield wipers were useless and the windows fogged up. At Eighty-fifth Street, they drove slowly through the transverse from the East Side to the West Side. Traffic crawled and great pools, mini-reservoirs, sprang up everywhere. They didn’t talk. The windshield wipers went chung-chung, chung-chung.
    “I thought I’d play chef tonight,” he said. “And besides, it’s such a lousy night to be out.” He glanced over at her. “What’s the matter?”
    What was the matter? Everything. She felt a flutter of panic in her chest. He wanted her to have dinner with him, but in his apartment. She remembered what had happened last year when Chris Gorham had asked her to wait in his apartment.... She was not handling this well.
    When they got through the Park, he pulled into a bus stop on Central Park West and stopped the car and looked at her.
    She said, “I’m sorry. I had an unpleasant experience last year, and when you said we’d be eating in your apartment, I panicked.”
    “Leslie,” Alton said, softly. He took her fisted hands and gently pried them open. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not saying I’m a saint. I’m a man, and I want to make love to you. But that’s something that has to be mutual. Let’s take it one step at a time, okay?”
    “Okay.” Grow up, Wetzon. It had happened once. It isn’t going to happen a second time. Still …
    “And I’ll get you home at a decent hour, for me as well as you. I’m sitting on an arbitration panel tomorrow morning.”

39.
    W ETZON WAS PERCHED on a high stool, her stockinged feet curled around the legs, watching Alton—sleeves rolled to his elbows and tieless—finish the salad dressing. He turned back to the stove, gave the risotto another spin with his fork, and took a sip of wine. Her shoes had gotten a soaking from the short distance between the car and the awning of Alton’s building, and she’d packed them with towel paper and set them down with her purse on the red vinyl tile floor at her feet.
    Alton was sure of himself in the kitchen, too. His collar was open and his face was flushed with the heat of the stove. Deft of hand, purposeful, his movements were calm and smooth, and she wondered if he made love like that.
    Wetzon played with the stem of her glass, disconcerted by her thoughts.
    “How are you at tossing?” he asked.
    “What?” What had he said? Tossing? She felt her face get hot.
    “The salad.”
    “Oh, sure.” Why are you behaving like such a dork? she asked herself. She stirred the dressing vigorously and poured it over the salad, a colorful mix of greens and purples, then tossed it between two giant plastic forks. She felt weary.
    Alton turned, skillet in hand, ready to serve the risotto, and caught her. “Tired?”
    “Yes. I’ve had only one decent night’s sleep since my apartment was flooded last Friday ... God, that was almost a week ago.” In six days her whole life had done a complete turnaround. It was amazing. She grinned at Alton. “But I’m famished, too, so don’t just stand there, feed me.”
    He divided the risotto with porcini mushrooms between each plate. “We can sit here or at the table.”
    “Let’s sit here. I like kitchens.”
    “So do I.” He got up on the stool next to her, and they rubbed elbows.
    The risotto was just the right half-custardy consistency. “This is wonderful,” she said, but she