A Dose of Murder by Lori Avocato

Air bombardment. Four hundred killed in an air-raid shelter in Baghdad. I took a desk job in Intelligence after that. Jagger separated soon after and became a PI. Seems investigative work fits ex-military pretty well. Never talked much after he left the service, and I don’t know if he still works for himself.”
    I could only stare. Wow. They’d both left what they must have loved because of the accidental loss of civilian lives. War casualties but no less hard to take. But why the rivalry?
    And what the heck was Jagger doing here?
    I finished my salad and sipped on my water to give Nick time to compose himself. Not that he looked all that flustered, but I hated dredging up a past that for him must not have been too pleasant. I envied that he’d done so much in his life while I’d lived in Hope Valley since birth, except when I’d attended college in Hartford.
    He finished his coffee and looked across the room. I turned to follow his gaze.
    Jagger was sitting with Eddy Roden.
    This was getting confusing. “What does this Jagger do?”
    Nick looked back to me. “You would have been better off to go with the ‘What’s a Jagger’ question,” he commented.
    â€œWhy would he be here to see Eddy? You don’t suppose they are friends?”
    â€œJagger only has enemies.”
    Yikes! “But they’re talking as if they didn’t just meet.” I could see Eddy grinning, leaning near as if telling Jagger some private joke. Eddy was sleazy. I remembered him as being nerdier in nursing school. He got up and walked toward the door.
    â€œGo tell your buddy goodbye.”
    â€œWhat?” At first I thought he was talking about Jagger. Then I realized he wanted me to talk to Eddy for the case. I took my empty tray in my hand and forced myself to stand after making sure Jagger was still in his seat.
    Our eyes met. Damn!
    Talk about looking through someone. No, talk about mentally stripping someone. Okay, that was me trying real hard to strip Jagger. His eyes were boring into me. I turned away and still looking at him, tripped on something—and smacked right into Vance.
    â€œPauline? What are
you
doing here?”

Seven
    â€œWhat am I doing here? What
am
I doing here?” Over Vance’s shoulder I could see Nick staring at me. When I turned away, I caught Jagger’s glare.
    â€œWhat am I doing here?”
    Vance looked annoyed. I’ve seen that look many times, so it didn’t take any special skills to read his body language. “Yes, Pauline. You’re acting weird. What are you doing here?”
    â€œI . . . came to see
you
, silly.” Good one!
    Vance looked suspicious. “You came to have lunch with me?”
    I looked down at my tray. There sat my empty salad dish and empty water cup. “I wanted to surprise you.” I’m a master of that emotion today. “Yeah. I . . . see ? I have a dish ready to get a salad and cup of water too. I could only guess at the time when you’d get to have lunch, so, here I am.” I swung around to see if Eddy had left.
    Whew. He had. All I needed was him coming over to ask why I was eating a second lunch. Despite Vance being the flustered one now, he followed me to the lunch line, where I got a second salad—low-cal dressing this time—and another cup of water. I looked back at the table to see Nick was gone.
    Well, he did say he had some business to attend to.
    So much for my surveillance lesson today.
    Across the room I saw Jagger get up and walk toward the tray return. Good. All I’d have to do was chitchat with the Doc, then get in my car and head over to Tina’s. Headstrong Polack that I am, I decided I could do a bit on my own again. I refused to think about what a bust my first trip to Tina’s had been.
    After my second glass of water met up with all the coffee, I did, in fact, have to excuse myself from the table. Vance was used to that, and