Lupo POV

The whole thing with April had put me in a foul mood.

Because I'd thought our case was in trouble before.

Now it was crap.

We didn't know much more than we'd known two days ago.

In fact, it felt like we knew less.

But mostly, my mood had darkened because being at April's house had brought back memories.

That smell had made me sixteen again.

"Cyrus, I need you…can you help me? Please…"

"What now?" Bernard asked as we drove back into the city. I was grateful that his words had interrupted my thoughts.

"Well, we're still missing five grand."

"Can five grand buy a hit?"

"On a former cop? Five dollars could buy that hit. We've got to get Candi talking."

"And finish what you started with those phone records. You said that Logan and his wife are going to help?"

"Yeah. They'll be in later. I'm going to meet them at their house at one."

"You? Are we not partners anymore?"

"You have a fourth date to finish," I told him with a wry grin. "I can bring the Logans up to speed."

"My date can wait," he told me.

"It can," I agreed. "But there's no reason why it should. I'm going to have a stack of phone records and two fresh pair of eyes. Besides, I'm just planning on giving them the rundown. I'm sure we won't actually start working tonight."

"Well, if you're sure," he mumbled as he pulled out his cell phone.

"Hell yeah, I'm sure," I told him. "Besides, you need to get laid so you'll get out of your bad mood."

Bernard laughed out loud at that, which was what I'd been hoping he would do.

"Yeah, well I just hope my date agrees with you," he said with a grin.

I drove while he made his call, and then once we were in Manhattan, I dropped him off at his car.

"You call me if something happens," he told me before he shut the door.

"I will. Otherwise I'll see you in the morning."

I left Bernard and sent Connie a text.

Are you almost done?

She replied.

No. Hit a snag. I'll call you later.

I had four hours before I needed to be at the Logans.

Connie was busy.

Bernard had a date.

And for some reason, I did not want to be alone.

And yeah, okay, I knew the reason. I didn't want what happened earlier to send me back down memory lane.

Or I should say, any farther down memory lane.

Because images and voices from my past were fighting for dominance in my head, and I just wanted them all to get the hell out.

So I drove to McNally's and headed into the bar.

And if it's any indication of how desperate I was for company, I nearly wept at the sight of Ross and Rodgers sitting at a table.

My boss and the medical examiner.

And I was giddy.

I gave them a casual wave and headed for the bar. As I'd hoped, Ross called me over to the table.

"Pull up a chair, Detective," Rodgers said pleasantly.

"How'd it go with April?" Ross asked.

"Danny, let the man get a drink first."

"Oh, it's um…I don't want to interrupt."

"Sit, Detective," Ross ordered.

So I pulled up a chair and sat at the table. I waved over the waitress and ordered a beer, and then I filled Ross in on what had happened in Connecticut.

"So that's five grand accounted for," Ross remarked. "And you didn't arrest her for felony possession?"

"It was…medicinal," I mumbled lamely.

Medicinal or recreational, two pounds of mary jane was still illegal in New York and Connecticut.

"You know that? Or she told you that?"

"I'm sure of it," I said confidently.

"And she didn't know anything about the hit?"

"Cap, she's a girl who made a bad choice and now she's working her butt off to make up for it. She doesn't want her mom to be disappointed in her because she may never have the chance to make it up to her. She's not involved in the hit."

"Okay," he said, backing off and giving Rodgers a look.

It's possible I was a little too vehement about it.

"So where's your partner?" Ross asked me.

"I sent him back to his date. We're tapped for tonight. Tomorrow we'll try another round at Candi."

"Mike and Carolyn are coming back tonight?"

"I'm meeting them in a few hours. They're going to help me go over the phone records. If…I mean, if you say..."

"It's fine, Detective," Ross said.

"Have you heard from Bobby and Alex?" Rodgers asked me.

"We texted earlier. They'll probably be home this weekend."

I spent the next two hours having dinner and pleasant conversation with Ross and Rodgers.

Or rather, Liz as she insisted that I call her. I'd always known that she had a great sense of humor, but she really had me cracking up with some of her stories.

It was an amusing and welcome respite from the demons of my past.

As I walked back to my car after dinner, I got a text from Connie.

I'm still working. I'm going to have to skip the Logans. I'll try to be quiet when I get in.

I replied.

Don't be quiet. Wake me up.

I tucked my phone back into my pocket and drove slowly over into Brooklyn.

I was still early.

Really early.

But I was still feeling out of sorts and I didn't want to go home, and I wasn't sure what else to do, so I just pulled out the phone records and sat in my car looking them over.

But I couldn't stop thinking about that smell.

My junior year of high school.

My dad had left the year before, leaving my mom alone with four of us. I was the oldest, so I was instantly the man of the house.

Five months later, my mom was diagnosed with glioblastoma. Her prognosis was eighteen months.

She lived seven months.

And for the last three of those seven months, our home smelled of marijuana and antiseptic.

My aunt took care of my mom's medical needs, and I kept her supplied with primo weed.

I kept myself supplied with it, too, to block out the reality that my mom wasn't going to live to see me graduate high school.

I spent a large portion of those last three months stoned out of my mind.

My grades took a nose dive right along with my attitude.

And then I caught my little brother smoking it.

"You do it," he'd shouted at me belligerently.

"But you can't," I'd retorted obstinately.

And even as I'd said the words, I'd realized my hypocrisy.

And my similarity to my old man. He was the one who'd tried to teach us about commitment and follow-through, but then left his family high and dry.

So I'd quit smoking dope, and worked harder in school, and forced myself to be a positive role model for my brother and my two sisters.

Of course, now my brother was dead. And one of my sisters, too. The other sister lived in Montana and I hadn't seen her since my brother's funeral.

One big happy family.

"Hey, are you going to come in or should we climb in the car with you?"

It was Logan, and he was knocking on my window.

I looked at the dashboard clock and realized that I'd fallen asleep with the paperwork spread all over the front seat.

It was one-fifteen.

"You're late," I said as I got out of the car.

I saw the lights flicking on in the house, and I figured that Carolyn had gone on inside.

"Like you noticed," he replied good-naturedly.

"How was Rio?" I asked him as I gathered up my papers.

"Everything I thought it would be."

I followed him up the front walk, working hard to shake the cobwebs from my dream.

"Where's your partner?" Mike asked me as he opened the front door.

"He's on a date."

"I meant the blonde," he quipped.

"Ah. Sorry, I'm still a little fuzzy. She's working. I think," I added as I pulled out my phone.

I didn't have any new messages, so I had to assume that she was still at the office.

With Cutter.

It was a good thing that I wasn't jealous.

"How about some coffee?" Carolyn asked as we entered the kitchen.

"That would be great," I agreed.

"So where are we?" Mike asked, quickly getting down to business.

I told them what Bernard and I had discovered earlier while I laid out the phone records on the table.

"So it has to be in here somewhere," I concluded. "She called someone who called someone. Other than that, I've got the ten grand she had in her house, and another five that's missing."

"Let's get started then."

"I just wanted to bring you up to speed," I said. "We don't have to start on this tonight. You guys just spent sixteen hours on a plane."

"Don't remind me," Mike said. "I've got the scratch marks to prove it."

"Mike," Carolyn chastised.

"What, is that your kryptonite?" I asked with a grin. "You're afraid to fly?"

"I'm not afraid," she corrected as she sat down at the table with us. "I just don't care to."

She gave Mike a glare as she grabbed a stack of papers, but her wilting look quickly turned into a smile. They had some kind of something going back and forth between them, but whatever it was, I wasn't privy to it.

All I knew was that they were both tanned and happy, and they seemed as though quite a weight had been lifted since the last time I'd seen them.

And that was enough for me.

So we teased and joked and hurled harmless insults at each other as we scoured the logs, and the interaction with the two of them very nearly made me forget all about my earlier funk.

It was about the most fun I'd had while going through phone records.

But fun or not, we didn't come up with anything new.

Although we made good headway.

We now had quite the tree of phone calls. We were down several levels of branches, now mapping out people who had been called by people who had been called by Candi.

"The girl liked her phone," I mumbled as my own cell began to vibrate.

"Maybe she was into more business than just stripping," Carolyn suggested. I thought about that as I pulled my phone from my belt.

It was Connie.

I'm done. Your place or the Logans?

I checked my watch, and realized that it was almost three.

I had to be at 1PP in five hours. I was going to have to call it a night.

"You think that she was hooking?" I asked Carolyn while I typed in my reply to Connie.

Mine. I'll be there soon.

"She called a lot of men. A lot of men," Mike said. "April was just about the only woman she did call, and we know that was only because of the money."

"It's possible that she just has all male friends," Carolyn mused. "Or maybe she's into drugs."

"If she were hooking or dealing, shouldn't she have a lot more money?" I said.

"Maybe she's not very good at it," Mike joked.

"Or maybe she's got money somewhere that we haven't found," Carolyn said, picking up on my line of thought.

"And if she's got money somewhere else, then maybe the five grand is stashed there, too."

"But if she has money, then why steal from Testarossa to pay for the hit?"

"This girl is making my head hurt," Mike said as he rubbed his hand over his face. "She can't just do things that make sense, can she?"

"I want to talk to her," Carolyn said. "She's in custody, right?"

"She is," I agreed. "She was arrested, made bail, and then got arrested again so she's not going anywhere this time. But she does have a good lawyer."

"A good lawyer," Logan remarked. "Paid for by whom?"

I sat back in the chair and looked at the two of them.

"We confiscated the ten grand," I said with a shrug. "And the five grand was already missing when she was arrested. She couldn't have known that she would need it for legal counsel."

"Who's the lawyer? Is she pro bono?"

"Kris Filson."

"I know of her. She doesn't do freebies," Carolyn said.

"She did show up awfully quickly after the arrest," I agreed. "But I have no idea how that would fit in here. What are we saying? That her lawyer works for the hit man who Candi hired, and now he's helping her by paying her legal counsel so that he doesn't get busted, too?"

"You said yourself that she's being closed-lipped about the whole thing. You've offered her deals, right? Who is she protecting? Stoat is dead."

"Either that, or maybe she does have hidden money."

"This thing just keeps getting weirder," I said, shaking my head.

"Go home," Mike said. "That was Connie, right?"

"Yeah. She's done," I admitted. "Thanks for your help."

"You think you can get me into talk to Candi tomorrow?" Carolyn asked. "Maybe a woman to woman chat might clear things up."

"Hey, at this point I'd agree to a séance to speak with Stoat himself."

"Ross will be on board?"

"I've got it covered," I assured them.

We said our goodbyes, and I headed for home.

For now, my home was where we usually stayed even though we hadn't officially agreed to move in together.

But she hadn't called it home in the text. She'd called it my place.

Soon, I decided. Soon I'd get up the nerve to make things a little bit more official.

Because I needed to stop acting like I had all the time in the world.

Because really, who did? Who knew how much time anyone had?

Connie had beaten me home, and had already walked Otto. She was now sitting on the couch wearing one of my t-shirts and I'd bet nothing else.

I wanted to come home like this every night.

"Did you catch a break?" she asked me as she got up from the sofa.

I felt dead tired, and emotionally wrought. I shook my head and tossed my jacket on the chair.

"Are you okay?"

"It was a long day," I admitted as I pulled her into my arms.

"Did something happen?"

"I just…can we just…not talk?" I asked her.

Then I sat down on the couch and pulled her onto my lap. I buried my nose in her hair, inhaling deeply in a desperate attempt to erase the smell from before.

"Lupo?" she whispered, and the concern in her voice was almost too much.

I remembered why I'd avoided relationships. I remembered why I was more interested in having fun than allowing my emotions to develop.

Because it hurt too much when things fell through.

When people left. Or died.

But that didn't mean it was the right thing to do. And quite frankly, I'd come too far to run away now.

"Do you want to move in with me?" I asked her softly as I continued to breathe in the sweetness of her scent.

"I kind of already have, don't you think?" she replied, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

"I mean, all the time. Sell your place. Or we'll sell mine. I just want us to live together."

"Because you had a bad day?"

It was a fair question and I didn't blame her for asking it.

And I knew that she was giving me an out. If the question had been frivolous or impetuous, I could take it back, and we'd still be okay.

But I didn't want to take it back.

"No. Because I love you."

TBC...