Read Online Dead to the Last Drop by Cleo Coyle - Free Book Online Page B

twelve?” he quipped, looking down the long expanse of polished mahogany. “I think the Walton family is missing.”
    “Walton’s Mountain never saw a dining room with four sets of bone china, a wall of priceless paintings, and sideboard that once served Abraham Lincoln.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “You think my bottle of beer is outclassed?”
    “No. It’s got a coaster.”
    “But no opener.”
    “Oh, sorry. I’ll get it.”
    “Allow me,” he said, gently pushing me back in my chair.
    “Top drawer, next to the fridge!” I called.
    Some grumbling ensued about not being able to find it, but before I could get up again, he reappeared with something that was definitely not a bottle opener.
    “Mike, what in the heaven’s name are you doing with those?”
    “You’ll see . . .”
    In one swift move, he closed his handcuffs around the neck of my frosty bottle, angled the metal edge upward, flipped off the top, and handed it back to me.
    I blinked, staring at my open bottle.
    “It’s an old beat-cop trick,” he explained.
    “I hate to ask where you learned it.”
    “Stakeout, of course. Upper Manhattan.”
    “You were drinking beer on a stakeout?”
    “No, old-school Coca-Cola from a Mexican bodega. But after the job was over . . .” He smiled as he flipped open the cap on his own beer and took a long, happy swig. Then he dug into the food and went quiet until every bite was gone and his fingers were licked clean.
    That’s when Quinn’s laser gaze was back on me, and I uncomfortably turned my attention to Mrs. Bittmore-Black’s Smithsonian museum of a dining room.
    “If these walls could talk . . .” I mused.
    “You don’t know how many times I’ve thought that on homicide investigations.”
    “I can imagine.”
    Quinn looked over the antiques. “If you could choose one item in this room, just one, what would you like to hear talk? That cuckoo clock?”
    “A gift from a German chancellor,” I informed him. “And I’ve heard it talk already. Can you imagine that clock going off during the formal dinners here? Eccentric lady.”
    “Or a very wise one.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Consider the pontificating that must have gone on here among officials and bureaucrats. The sound of a cuckoo bird every hour would have been a brilliant reality check on pompous speeches.” He lifted his beerbottle. “So how about the Lincoln-era sideboard? You said this house was part of the Underground Railroad, didn’t you?”
    “It was, but that’s not what I would choose.”
    “What, then?”
    I gestured to the ornate tray on top of the sideboard.
    “The silver coffee service?”
    I nodded. “It was a gift to Mrs. Bittmore-Black from Jacqueline Kennedy.”
    “Really?”
    “I understand they were lifelong friends. Did you know Mrs. Kennedy lived at two addresses on this street? First in a town house with Jack, before they went to the White House, and then . . .”
    “And then?”
    “After the President was assassinated, Jackie moved back to Georgetown. This street served as a launching pad for her highest heights and in a stunningly short time—”
    “Her crash pad for god-awful depths.”
    I shook my head. “That poor woman. The whole thing must have felt surreal.”
    “The whole thing was a monumental crime, Clare, that’s what it was. A conspiracy to commit cold-blooded murder.”
    “Conspiracy? You don’t think Oswald acted alone?”
    “At this point, few detectives I know do. And if it wasn’t a conspiracy, then it was a conspiracy of dunces.”
    “You mean the Secret Service not properly protecting the President?”
    “Members were either in on it—or incompetent.”
    “Either one is hard to believe.”
    “Why? They’re not robots. They’re human. They make mistakes. And they can be corrupted like anybody else in government. Power corrupts, sweetheart.”
    “Even good people?”
    “Without checks and balances and transparency—what we in the crime-fighting trade