Murder in the Tea Leaves

“Speaking of Morocco, I still owe you dinner.” Someone had come up behind her, slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. It was Logan. “When you left for Morocco last year, I promised you a raincheck for dinner, and you haven’t called it in yet.”

Mooney watched Finley’s face to see how she was going to get out of this one. Finley and Logan had been out several times before Finley and Max reconnected. And they had continued to hang out together over drinks, like tonight. But Finley had put off his recent attempts to get her alone, especially over an intimate dinner. As much as she liked him as a friend, even if there had been no Max, she probably wouldn’t have seriously dated him. But now, there was a Max.

“You do indeed,” Finley acknowledged. She was going to have to handle this carefully since he was one of Mooney’s clients.

Finley was saved from having to further commit by a former colleague who called her over to look at pictures of her baby. By the time she returned to her stool, everyone was deciding where to go for dinner. They settled on Rocco’s, a steakhouse in the Flatiron District, and the group began piling into cabs for the short trip downtown. As fate would have it, Logan put Finley into a cab and then hopped in beside her.

“So where do you want to use your raincheck? The world is your oyster,” Logan said as the cab entered the long line of traffic heading south on Fifth. “You name the place. Just the two of us. Anywhere in the world.”

Finley knew that he meant it. If she had said she wanted steak frites in a Paris bistro in Saint-Germain-des-Prés—or even sushi in Ginza, Tokyo—Logan would have scheduled his plane and whisked her off for dinner in France or Japan, even if it was one that she could easily have gotten in New York. She smiled at the privileges that wealth could bring.

“I’m going to have to think on that for a while,” Finley said. “I leave in a few days on another assignment, so I’ll have a couple of long plane rides to contemplate where I want to go.”

“You’re leaving me again? Where to now?”

“Colombo for a couple of weeks. And then further south with my sister.”

Logan turned to face her, smiling slightly. “Any other guy would think that you’re trying to avoid me.” He paused. “Are you?”

Finley returned his look and answered honestly. There was no point in not being direct and truthful. “No, I like your company. You’re an exceedingly interesting man, but I think we both know that I’m not interested in you.”

She straightened in her seat, turning her gaze forward and matching her smile to his. “And if you were truly honest, you would concede that it isn’t me that you want. It’s the chase you like, not the catch!”

Logan opened his mouth to speak, shut it, sighed, and then burst into laughter. “You got me! Until you said it, I don’t think I realized it myself. Touché!”

He lifted her gloved hand from her lap and held it in his. Theirs was going to be a long and complex friendship. The stuff of legends. They continued the rest of the trip in companionable silence. The cabbie glanced in his mirror a few times, shook his head, and turned up the radio.