“I take it you’re dating again.”

“Spinach is good for you, blondie. Put some on your plate,” Mike said. “I’m trying to get myself out there.”

“That’s great. I really think it is. It’s time, Mike.”

“You know me. Most of the broads I meet are too high maintenance.”

“Rumor has it you met a judge at Roger’s Christmas party.”

“I-I met a lot of people at the party. Saw a lot of old friends.”

“And left with a very attractive judge. Want to tell me about her?” I pushed my plate away, kicked off my shoes, and curled up on the sofa.

“You crack me up, Coop. You got me tailed? Which of your girls has the big mouth?” Mike said, reaching over and taking the steak from my plate.

“What’s to say the judge isn’t talking?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? Not with her.”

“Judge Levit,” I said. “Fanny Levit. Just appointed, Civil Supreme. Age?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Hmmmm. An older woman.” Mike had turned thirty-eight in the fall, six months ahead of me.

“By a year.”

“Lighten up, Detective,” I said, sticking my toe in his side. “How many times have you seen her?”

“I met her at Roger’s. Took her to dinner the other night,” he said, getting to his feet and carrying our dinner dishes into the kitchen.

“So why are you here?” I called after him. It wasn’t the few sips of wine I’d had that was making me feel frisky.

Maybe Mike was stuck with the same dilemma I was, wondering how our superb professional partnership would be affected by a change in personal direction. At the same time it both interested and frightened me. Once we crossed the line of intimacy, we’d never be able to work cases together again.

He returned from the kitchen carrying a bowl stacked high with profiteroles-Patroon’s best dessert and one of my sweet-tooth weaknesses-covered with chocolate sauce.

“I’m here ’cause of you,” he said, handing me a spoon and offering first dibs on dessert.

“Sometimes you come out of nowhere at me, Michael Patrick Chapman, and I am so pleasantly surprised,” I said, reaching over to brush the crumbs off his sweater.

“I’m here because you never even bothered to call me today about the autopsy on Salma, and you got to help me figure something out.”

We’d had mixed messages before, but this one caught me totally off guard.

“You drove out to talk to me about the case?” I asked. I sat up and folded my legs beneath me, feeling like a fool for having put any kind of personal spin on his Friday-night drop-in. “You could have just called, you know?”

“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have seen Logan, and I didn’t want to bother Mercer before the big family prom.”

I was embarrassed by my ridiculous assumption that Mike had driven out to see me for some reason other than the case. Of course this hadn’t been a social visit, or at least it was no more personal than two friends and colleagues catching up before inevitably turning the conversation back to our work.

“What’s the news on the autopsy?” I asked. I tried to focus again.

Mike stood up with his glass in one hand and leaned against the mantel. “Cause of death was obvious. The wine opener pierced Salma’s trachea. Asphyxia due to blood inhalation.”

I’d had cases like that before. Death was usually quite rapid, the victim often convulsing as blood obstructed the air passages. It was as ugly a picture as I had imagined.

“You expected that.”

“Yeah, well, what do you know about pregnancy?”

“Precious little.”

“Dr. Kirschner says he’s willing to bet that Salma never gave birth.”

I put my glass down to try to clear my head and rethink things. Claire Leighton had told Mercer that Ethan admitted fathering Salma’s little girl. The baby had been in the apartment shortly before Mercer’s visit. The doorman described the woman who had taken her.

“What do you mean, Mike?”

“You know MEs, Coop. They’ll never say never. But it’s something about the cervix that has Dr. Kirschner convinced.”

“Like my Riverside Park homicide victim two years ago. When a woman has given birth to a full-term baby,” I said, “there are changes in the cervix. The opening gapes a bit-the medical term is patulous.”

“That’s the word. He said she wasn’t patulous. There’s nothing in Salma’s body to reflect any signs she gave birth. No scars on the abdomen to suggest a C-section. He took one look at the uterus and said there was no way anything that small had ever held a baby.”

Now, there was an entirely new set of concerns to deal with. Whose baby was it and what had become of the child? Who was the man who had shown up on Wednesday night, claiming to be the baby’s actual father?

“So Ethan Leighton probably bit the bullet on a phony DNA test,” I said. It wouldn’t take much for a forger to fake a genetic test result to convince the congressman that he had indeed impregnated his lover.

“And you can add a touch of extortion to the list of motives that’s growing deadlier by the hour.”

TWENTY-SIX

I got up from the sofa a bit later to check on Logan, who had barely shifted positions since I tucked him in and turned out the light. When I returned to the den, I put another log on the fire and settled into a comfortable armchair.

Mike found a college football game on ESPN and stretched out on the sofa. I pretended to watch while I wondered whether he would always be as much of an enigma to me as he had proved to be tonight.

Vickee and Mercer got home shortly after one o’clock in the morning. They had seen Mike’s car down the street and figured we had planned to spend the evening together. They were as mistaken as I.

“How was the party?” I asked.

“We had a good time,” Vickee said. “The relatives behaved and the bride-to-be is happy as anything. All fine with Logan?”

“If he wakes up fighting with people-eating dinosaurs, I’m not the perp,” I said, pointing a finger at Mike. “He’s good as gold and I loved the chance to be with him for a few hours.”

Vickee stepped out of her shoes while Mercer took off his jacket and undid his tie.

When she went upstairs to look in on the baby, Mike told Mercer about Salma’s autopsy and I started to relate the details of my interview with Olena.

“What can I fix for you, Alex?”

“I’m good. I’m going to drive back into the city.”

“Why don’t you stay? Guest room’s all made up.”

“I need a decent night’s sleep, Mercer. It won’t even take half an hour for me to get home.”

Mercer poured himself a drink from the bar and Mike helped himself to another glass of wine. “This is taking the courthouse rent-a-baby scheme to a new low.”

It was commonplace for felons-especially those facing a sentence date-to show up with a woman who’d been nowhere in sight throughout the trial. The plea for sympathy worked best if she carried an infant in her arms, not likely to be any relation to the defendant, but something to tug at the heartstrings of judge or jury.

“It also explains how sterile it was in Salma’s apartment,” I said. “Sure, she had a crib and a high chair and enough toys in the bedroom when she needed to convince the congressman that she’d had his kid. But no photographs, none of the out-of-place disorder you’d expect with a nineteen-month-old-well, it was a setup, in all likelihood.”

“Probably worked for as little time as he had to spend with her,” Mike said, “between being in Washington and his own home here in the city.”

“I would so love to corner Ethan Leighton and just confront him with all this,” I said, picking up my jacket and tote. “Too bad Lem’s in the way of that.”

“You blew the chance.”

“I’ll walk you out to your car,” Mercer said.

“G’night, Mike. Thanks for bringing dinner.”

“I put it on your tab, Coop. The least I could do was make the delivery.”