Page 128 of The Woman By the Lake

Nadia

By the time we hit a very crowded Double D, I could sense Riggs’s mood had taken a huge hit, mainly because he wasn’t hiding it.

This was because we had to park five blocks away, off the main drag, in the residential section of MP that fed back from it.

It was also because we had to wade through a plethora of Charles-Haden Savages, Olivers, Mabels, Cindas, Howards, Bunnys, Tim Konos and tie-dye hoodies to get to the Double D.

I’d never seen so much fake orange fur in my life, and the weather was back in the low seventies.

I felt bad Riggs was in a shitty mood, but I thought it was hysterical.

It didn’t get better when we had to fight our way through the residents of the Arconia even to get in the door of the Double D, and within seconds, a passing waitress shared, “Wait’s at least half an hour. Probably longer. We got a list going. Write your name on it, and we’ll shout it out when we got a table ready. You don’t come at first call, we give it to the next name.”

She then swung her fully loaded arms to a clipboard sitting on the counter at the curve of the horseshoe bar and scurried away.

“Whose idea was this?” Riggs grumbled.

I wasn’t about to remind him it was his.

“Yo, Doc!” we heard shouted.

I looked right just as Ledger yelled, “Jace! Jess!” and raced through the crowded space to the huge, circular corner booth that…oh my God…had Delphine Larue sitting in it.

I noted she had a very good-looking man of the Riggs variety at her side, except he was older, and had a more Outdoors Guy feel than a Good-Time Guy.

With them were two other men who were clearly of his loins.

And they were identical twins.

Riggs put his hand to the small of my back and began to lead us that way, as I said under my breath, “Is that Delphine Larue?”

“Yup.”

“Star of the seminal sitcom Those Years?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Author of one of the greatest books of our time, We Pluck the Cord?”

There was now humor in his, “Yeah.”

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

“Hey, Doc,” the man beside Delphine greeted when we got to their table. “Sit with us. We got room.”

And I’ll repeat.

Oh my God!

I was going to have breakfast with Delphine Larue!

One of the twins got out so Ledger could sit between them, and all the others scooched in so I was sitting next to Delphine Larue’s man, and Riggs slid in beside me.

It was a tight fit, but it worked, and it was a lot better than waiting more than thirty minutes to eat.

I was famished.

“Nadia, this is Cade Bohannan. You know of Delphine. And these are Cade’s sons, Jess and Jace,” Riggs introduced.

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