Hare Today, Dead Tomorrow by Cynthia Baxter Page A

irresistible as always.”
    I cast him the dirtiest look I could muster. “Hardly. I’m just trying to help Suzanne.”
    He laughed. “Seriously, Popper, it’s good to see you. Really good.”
    He just stood there for a few seconds, staring at me and grinning. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d gotten especially spiffed up for me. He smelled suspiciously like soap and men’s cologne, as if he’d somehow managed to sneak a shower into the middle of his busy day. The fact that his thick blond hair looked slightly damp, especially the mass of tiny curls at the back of his neck, added weight to my theory.
    Like me, Forrester was in his mid-thirties. He was tall with a sturdy build, his broad shoulders giving him the look of someone who’d played football in college. As usual, he was dressed as if he were posing for the cover of The Preppy Handbook. He wore a pink cotton button-down shirt, khaki pants with nary a wrinkle, tan loafers, and a sporty brown jacket made of a tweed fabric that probably had an English-sounding name like Harrington or Tatterbumper.
    But it was the look in his gray-blue eyes that really got me. I was pretty sure that what I saw in them was real concern, coupled with something that looked dangerously like fondness.
    I looked away.
    “You know I hate being called Popper,” I reminded him.
    “Precisely why I enjoy doing it so much,” he returned breezily. “There’s just something about you that makes me want to get under your skin.”
    Probably a few other places as well, I thought. I’d be lying if I said that Forrester Sloan didn’t have some appeal, at least on an intellectual level. He possessed something that wasn’t quite charm, but close enough that he deserved at least some credit for it. But given the situation, I had absolutely no patience for him—and no interest in fending off his flirtatiousness. The fact that we were both standing outside Cassandra Thorndike’s house was a harsh reminder of the reason I was here in the first place. A young woman had been murdered—and another young woman was being unjustly accused.
    “I talked to Falcone earlier today,” I said, anxious to bring the conversation back to the investigation. “He wasn’t exactly thrilled over my interest in this case.”
    “Even though you and Suzanne Fox are friends? I’d have thought that would make him more willing to indulge your interest in the investigation.”
    “Except that he’s trying to prove that she did it and I’m trying to prove that she didn’t. That kind of puts us at cross-purposes, don’t you think?”
    “I see your point.” Forrester only hesitated for a moment before saying, in that newspaper-reporterly way of his, “So tell me more about your relationship with Suzanne Fox.”
    “There’s not much to tell,” I replied with a shrug. “We’ve been good friends for over fifteen years. We met in college, at Bryn Mawr. We both wanted to be vets. She went to Purdue and I went to Cornell, and we lost touch for a few years. But this past June, I discovered that she’d moved out to West Brompton Beach. She has a practice in Poxabogue.” I shrugged again. “That’s it in a nut-shell.”
    “I see.” I braced myself for a smart-ass comment. Thankfully, it didn’t come. Instead, Forrester said, “So, Popper, what can I tell you about the case?”
    “I already know the basics,” I replied. “Cassandra was alone in her house on Tuesday when somebody came to visit. Somebody she knew. Or maybe that person sneaked inside without her realizing it. At some point things got ugly, and the visitor grabbed something sharp and stabbed her with it. Somewhere in there— probably after she’d been stabbed at least once—there was a struggle that left the entire room in disarray. Lots of blood everywhere, stuff knocked over... Cassandra tried to fight off her attacker but her attacker prevailed, and she fell to the floor, dead.” As I outlined the scene, it played through my head with