Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

laughed. “I thought I spotted you as you came into the room.”
    She shook her head. “I’m sorry. This is really embarrassing, but I’m having trouble placing you.”
    “That’s because it was a long time ago. And I no longer have my ponytail. Doug Comley, Stanford pre-med. It’s been, what? Twenty years? I’m not surprised you’ve forgotten me. Hell,
I
would’ve forgotten me.”
    Suddenly a memory popped into her head, of a young man with long blond hair and protective goggles perched on his sunburned nose. He’d been far lankier then, a whippet in blue jeans. “Were we in a lab together?” she said.
    “Quantitative analysis. Junior year.”
    “You remember that, even after twenty years? I’m amazed.”
    “I don’t remember a damn thing about quant analysis. But I do remember
you
. You had the lab bench right across from me, and you got the highest score in class. Didn’t you end up at UC San Francisco med school?”
    “Yes, but I’m living in Boston now. What about you?”
    “UC San Diego. I just couldn’t bring myself to leave California. Addicted to sun and surf.”
    “Which sounds pretty good to me right now. Only November, and I’m already tired of the cold.”
    “I’m kind of digging this snow. It’s been a lot of fun.”
    “Only because you don’t have to live in it four months out of the year.”
    By now the conference room had emptied out, and hotel employees were packing up the chairs and wheeling out the sound equipment. Maura stuffed her notes into her tote bag and stood up. As she and Doug moved down parallel rows toward the exit, she asked him: “Will I see you at the cocktail party tonight?”
    “Yeah, I think I’ll be there. But dinner’s on our own, right?”
    “That’s what the schedule says.”
    They walked out of the room together, into a hotel lobby crowded with other doctors wearing the same white name tags, carrying the same conference tote bags. Together they waited at the elevators, both of them struggling to keep the conversation flowing.
    “So, are you here with your husband?” he asked.
    “I’m not married.”
    “Didn’t I see your wedding announcement in the alumni magazine?”
    She looked at him in surprise. “You actually keep track of things like that?”
    “I’m curious about where my classmates end up.”
    “In my case, divorced. Four years ago.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry.”
    She shrugged. “I’m not.”
    They rode the elevator to the third floor, where they both stepped off.
    “See you at the cocktail party,” she said with a goodbye wave, and pulled out her hotel keycard.
    “Are you meeting anyone for dinner? Because I just happen to be free. If you want to join me, I’ll hunt down a good restaurant. Just give me a call.”
    She turned to answer him, but he was already moving down the hallway, the tote bag slung over his shoulder. As she watched him walk away, another memory of Douglas Comley suddenly flashedinto her head. An image of him in blue jeans, hobbling on crutches across the campus quadrangle.
    “Didn’t you break your leg that year?” she called out. “I think it was right before finals.”
    Laughing, he turned to her. “
That’s
what you remember about me?”
    “It’s all starting to come back to me now. You had a skiing accident or something.”
    “Or something.”
    “It wasn’t a skiing accident?”
    “Oh man.” He shook his head. “This is way too embarrassing to talk about.”
    “That’s it. Now you have to tell me.”
    “If you’ll have dinner with me.”
    She paused as the elevator opened and a man and woman emerged. They walked up the hall, arms linked, clearly together and unafraid to show it. The way couples should act, she thought, as the pair stepped into a room and the door closed behind them.
    She looked at Douglas. “I’d like to hear that story.”

T HEY FLED THE PATHOLOGISTS’ COCKTAIL PARTY EARLY AND DINED at the Four Seasons Resort in Teton Village. Eight straight hours of lectures about stabbings and bombings, bullets and blowflies, had left Maura overwhelmed by talk of death, and she was relieved to escape back to the normal world, where casual conversation didn’t include talk of putrefaction, where the most serious issue of the evening was choosing between a red or a white wine.
    “So how
did
you break your leg at Stanford?” she asked as Doug swirled Pinot Noir in his glass.
    He winced. “I was hoping you’d forget about that subject.”
    “You promised to tell me.