Page 144 of Fire and Bones

I raised questioning brows.

“Jimmy Cantler’s Riverside Inn?” He waited for recognition to leap across my face, but I wasn’t cooperating. The brows stayed up.

“You know not of these delicacies?” he asked, feigning shocked disbelief.

I wagged my head no.

“You are in for a treat. I did my usual and bought far too much for one person.”

“Sorry, but I just made myself—”

“One never refuses bounty from Cantler’s.”

“What if one is allergic to seafood?”

“Is one?”

“No.”

“Excellent.” Crow’s-feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Would you like a beer?”

“Water, please.”

“Evian?”

“Tap. I’m opposed to the concept of single-use plastic bottles.”

“I admire such conviction.”

Zanetti went to the fridge to get a Sam Adams for himself. To the sink to fill a tumbler for me.

The kitchen was slowly yielding to an irresistible aroma. The scent of seaweed and salt water and the things that live in it was sending an olfactory cue straight to the appetite center deep in my gray matter.

What the hell. The guy had blue crabs. I’d eat with him, figure out the Petco sighting later.

Returning to the island, Zanetti said, “I drove these bad boys all the way down from Annapolis. My Rover’s going to smell like a fish market for months. Do you know if Ivy has shell crackers and picks?”

As I searched drawers, Zanetti pulled items from the bag. Paper plates and napkins. Lidded pots containing butter and vinegar. A grease-stained brown paper bundle.

I lay tools beside each plate. Unwrapping the bundle, he centered a crustacean on mine.

For a moment we focused on cracking and digging.

Sweet Christ on a pickle. Cantler’s knew how to do crab.

Zanetti chatted as we ate, relaxed and self-assured. Not the demeanor of a man whose dinner partner had just caught him cheating on his fiancée.

Was I wrong? Did Zanetti have a doppelgänger who frequented strip malls with tattooed bimbos? Or had I been right, but escaped detection among the parked cars?

Zanetti wasn’t the brightest squirrel climbing the tree. I knew that. But would he go all alpha gorilla if I let on that I’d seen him? If he guessed that I was probing to confirm my suspicion?

What the flip. I owed it to Ivy.

“These came from Annapolis?” I asked, casual as hell.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ivy said you’d be out of town this week. You were in Maryland?”