TITLE: E and P

AUTHOR: Julian Lee

EMAIL: thwarted1066@yahoo.com

URL: http://www.geocities.com/thwarted1066/index.html

FANDOM: Crossing Jordan

PAIRING: Nigel/Woody

RATING: PG

ARCHIVE: Yes to list archives & "Oh, Those Guys," if ya want it. Others please ask; I probably won't say no.

DISCLAIMER: "Crossing Jordan" & all the lovely, sexually ambiguous lads & lasses therein belong to NBC and Tailwind Productions. I make no profit off of this venture; no copyright infringement intended.

SUMMARY: "I'm entertaining a passing fancy, Bug," Nigel said airily, "nothing more." "Well, stop entertaining it!" Bug looked horrified. "He's a *cop*!"

NOTES: Dedicated to Perpetual Motion, Scribe, Miriam Heddy, and everyone else who wants Nigel to back them against a wall.



E and P
By Julian Lee

"Townsend! Heads up!"

Nigel looked up, one eyebrow arching to express some emotion between put-upon exasperation and grudging amusement. "Yes, Detective Hoyt?" The 't' at the end of 'Hoyt' escaped more explosively than he would have liked.

Woody didn't notice, anyway. Thrusting a large plastic bag into Nigel's hands, he demanded, "Get me something that ties Sandra Melgram to the Hawsworth Country Club. Today." He was already speeding backward out of the room. "Very important case. Very important people watching."

Stunned, Nigel waved a desperate hand around the crowded room. "I already have half a dozen--"

But Woody was raising a hand in farewell and bumping the door open with his hip. "I'll be back later today. Thanks!" And he was gone.

"--assignments pending, Woodrow." Nigel sighed and looked at the bag Woody had handed him. Sandra Melgram's effects. What the detective thought Nigel could do with them, he had no idea. "I'm a push-over," he muttered and put Woody's case at the top of his overflowing pile.

(~)

"Can I ask you something?" Nigel gave the bottle a hefty shake, sending a shower of vinegar over his chips. **Fries,** he corrected. No matter how many years he lived here, he sometimes had trouble thinking like an American when hanging out with other expats. Across the small table, Bug lowered his sandwich. A sliver of shredded lettuce hanging from his mouth was more endearing than disgusting, though it was fairly begging Nigel to reach over and pull it free. But he'd adopted a hands-off policy where Bug was concerned. It was better for their working relationship.

Bug was still staring. "What?" Nigel demanded.

"You're asking permission to start throwing absurd questions at me?"

Lowering the fry that had been on the fast track to his mouth, Nigel considered. Then he grinned and popped the fry into his mouth after all. "Now that you mention it," he said, "no. What do you think of Detective Hoyt?"

Bug smiled. "That's better. I was worried, for a bit. Detective Hoyt? He's all right." He said this with the unstudied air of a man who hadn't spent hours obsessively contemplating the detective. Not that Nigel had, either. "He can be sort of high strung. Fixated, I guess you could say. I wonder how he and Jordan survive working together."

"*Exactly,*" Nigel said, as though Bug had hit upon the inner workings of the universe. He leaned forward, his lunch forgotten between his elbows. "What *is* that story?"

"Jordan and Hoyt?" Bug shrugged with the uncaring air of a man whose future happiness in no way hinged on the status of the relationship between Jordan Cavanaugh and Woody Hoyt. Not that Nigel's did, either. "I thought there was something going on between them once. But whatever it was, it looks to have fizzled." Bug picked up his cup and sucked noisily at his straw. Nigel stifled a groan. Ah, the obtuseness of straight men. Then, as he watched, he saw the wicked thought form in Bug's head a split second before he grinned devilishly around his straw. "Why are you so interested in that? Not thinking of making a play for her?"

Nigel snorted. "For *her*?"

Bug smirked. "Didn't think so." The penny dropped, and Bug set his cup down slowly. "Nigel, you're not--"

"I'm entertaining a passing fancy, Bug," Nigel said airily, "nothing more."

"Well, stop entertaining it!" Bug looked horrified. "He's a *cop*!"

"What?" Nigel affected to look hurt. "You don't think there are gay cops? Or at least, bi cops? Or at least, cops who aren't opposed to broadening their horizons?"

"I'm sure that's not all you want to broaden," Bug muttered. "This is Boston, Nigel. As in, Boston Irish Catholics? Who are not renowned for their tolerance of homosexual behavior?"

Nigel grinned. "Then it's a good thing I'm not Irish or Catholic, isn't it?"

Bug wiped his fingers on his napkin and then threw the napkin on top of his abandoned sandwich in a gesture that looked remarkably like throwing in the towel. "Just watch yourself," he said, dark eyes somber. "I wouldn't want to see you get hurt."

"Why, Bug," Nigel drawled, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, "I didn't know you cared."

Rolling his eyes, Bug pushed his chair back and stood, washing his hands of the entire situation. "I don't know *why* I care," he grumbled, picking up his trash. "It's not as if you listen to a word I say."

"I listen," Nigel protested, rising. "Just because I choose to disregard some of your advice--"

"*All* of it."

"--doesn't mean I don't listen." Bug paused at the door, looking Nigel over. Nigel's fingers twitched on the door handle. "What?"

"Nothing." Bug shook his head. "I just realized that I don't like you very much."

Laughing, Nigel followed Bug out of the room. "Took you long enough."

(~)

"Townsend! Just the man I'm looking for."

Nigel drew himself up in parody of a soldier at attention, but he resisted the urge to salute. "Hoyt!"

As usual, Nigel's sarcasm was lost on Woody. He barreled up with his hand outstretched. "Sandra Melgram?"

Nigel handed over the printout with a proud flourish. "Stomach contents. I believe you will find all of those items on the menu at the Hawsworth Country Club." He crossed his arms and waited for Woody's effusive outpouring of gratitude.

What he got instead was a pair of eyes widening in horror. "And at every other restaurant in Boston that's three stars or better." Woody shoved the paper back at Nigel. "This isn't enough. You have to find me something more."

Nigel stared around the room. His backlog of unfinished projects continued to swell. By his estimation, he had at most a day and a half before Garret's considerable ire, currently no more than an ill wind from the west, gusted to tornado strength and blew him back to England. "Listen, Detective," he protested, "I don't have time to be your personal--"

"I'll be around first thing tomorrow. Have a good night!" Woody was out the door.

"--errand boy," Nigel finished, addressing the empty air. Sighing, he returned the report on Sandra Melgram's stomach contents to her case file. "I'll get to work looking for something more, shall I?"

(~)

As near as Nigel could tell, he and Jordan were the only live bodies left in the morgue. Even Dr. Macy, who normally made other workaholics crawl home in defeat, had escaped an hour and a half ago. Bloody typical, Nigel thought, shaking his head in disgust. The one night he could blow the boss away with his dedication was the one night the boss wasn't around to see it.

Not that he wanted Garret to see him *now* - he was, after all, showing his 'dedication' to a rather questionable master and a task that was, at this point, connected to the ME's office in only the most tangential way. Well, that was one way of looking at it - but it wasn't Nigel's way. He considered himself an ambassador of goodwill, fostering cooperation between the ME and the PD. Or, if he were lucky, between one particular E and one particular P.

The doors swung open, and Nigel grinned. "Well, speak of the devil," he said.

Jordan looked around the empty room. One eyebrow lifted to dangerous heights. "'Speak' of the devil, Nige? Who were you speaking to?"

Unruffled, he shrugged and turned back to the computer. "Myself, mostly."

At the 'mostly,' Jordan's other eyebrow went to join her sister, but Jordan herself seemed to have no opinion on the matter. Instead, she brought an empty chair right up to the side of Nigel's desk and turned it backwards, straddling
the frame. Nigel suppressed a sigh. If only he could convince himself to be the least bit interested in women, this would be a woman infinitely worth being interested in. Jordan crossed her arms on top of the back rest. "Burning the midnight oil?" she asked, lips quirked in that knowing half-smile of hers.

"No rest for the wicked," he returned, wondering how long they could conduct a conversation consisting of nothing but platitudes.

"This isn't one of my projects, is it?" A note of guilt crept into Jordan's voice; she was finally, after all these years, starting to feel bad about the extra work her pet projects always created for him.

To his chagrin, Nigel found that he was blushing. "Ah, no," he said, trying to turn the computer screen out of Jordan's line of sight.

She caught him out anyway. "Detective Hoyt?"

Nigel looked over sharply. Jordan's expression was benign, but he knew her better than that. "How did--" He foundered for a moment, and then gave in and asked the question. "How did you know?"

She shrugged. "He's been running around like a crazy man - ah, crazi*er* man - all week. I don't know what it is about the Melgram case, but it's gotten to him."

Nigel's nervous system breathed a sigh of relief. Jordan had been talking about the case. The work. He smiled out of sheer gratitude. "He has been something of a bear, hasn't he?"

Laughing, Jordan stood and replaced the chair. "Just a little." Nigel expected her to leave, to return either to her work or her bed, which, if she were as tired as he was, must've seemed *very* appealing. Instead, she hovered beside the table. "Woody's a funny guy. To get his attention, you have to *get* his attention, you know? Grab him by the shoulders. Shake him up." Nigel recognized the brief lift of the corners of her mouth as the Tired Worker's Smile. She shrugged and wandered toward the exit. "Night, Nigel."

"Good night, Jordan," he said, staring out the window at the darkened city. Had Jordan been making chit-chat, or was that valid advice on the wooing of Woodrow Hoyt? Who could tell, with her? Still, she'd handed Nigel the option of shaking someone up. And he was not a man to turn down an opportunity like that.

(~)

"Townsend!" Woody barreled through the ME's office with his usual forceful disregard, like a typhoon that can't be arsed to notice its path of destruction. But Nigel was ready. Woody skidded to a halt in front of Nigel's workstation, mouth opening to pour out his morning's orders.

Nigel was too fast. "*Detective* Hoyt, *if* you are going to insist on the empty formality of last names, you could at least call me *Dr.* Townsend, so I don't feel as though my four extra years of higher education were *completely* wasted. However, if given my druthers, I would prefer that you call me Nigel, and if I were given *all* my druthers, I would infinitely prefer that you take me out to dinner on Friday night. This would serve both as an apology for the truly *awful* and inconsiderate way you've treated me this week *and* because I find myself desperately attracted to you and suspect that you are neither insensible to nor repulsed by this fact."

There was meant to be more to that speech, but Nigel had run out of air. This morning in the shower, he'd practiced getting the whole thing out in one breath, but he'd misjudged the effects of adrenaline rushes and a racing heart on control of his oxygen flow. Still, he'd hit the essential points. He stood back, crossed his arms, and waited. If he'd read Woody wrong - if he'd misinterpreted Jordan's strange ramblings last night - this would be the part where the fist to the face happened.

"Fri - this Friday?" Woody stammered. Nigel's shoulders slumped; he recognized the stumbling backpedal of homosexual panic when he saw it. At least there didn't appear to be a fist en route. "I don't think--"

"All right." Nigel nodded curtly and waved the detective away. "I was joking, really."

Woody rolled his eyes. "If you'd let me finish," he said, voice testy and the tiniest bit hurt, "I was going to say that I don't think Friday will work for me this week. Could we do it Saturday instead?"

"Saturday?" Nigel's turn to stammer and stare had come. Could a gay man experience homosexual panic? Then something - probably his hormones - started functioning again, and he realized that, even if Woody wasn't thinking of it as a date, he *had* accepted Nigel's proposition. He shook himself awake and smiled. "Saturday would be perfect."

"Great." Woody smiled broadly. "I'll meet you at Donati's at seven. Don't make me stand around waiting, Nigel."

Woody was long out of the room before Nigel registered that the detective had called him by his given name.

(~)

Nigel hadn't been to Donati's in a year and a half, but he was willing to bet that it hadn't changed. His memories of the place were fond: oceans of stained glass in the windows and in the faux-Tiffany lamps suspended over every table; good, solid, uncomplicated food; a draught list that would make his college mates weep with envy; and an almost palpable disdain for the pretensions adopted by several restaurants in the neighborhood, which had been solidly working-class but was now shuddering through the birth pangs of incipient gentrification.

A gentle spattering of rain had dampened Nigel's dark hair by the time he shouldered his way through Donati's front doors, adjusting and readjusting his lapels. The cocky sense of triumph that had carried him through Wednesday night, Thursday, and most of Friday had evaporated like early dew the instant he'd smirked at himself in the mirror that morning and thought, **I have a date with Woody tonight.** And then it had hit him: **I have a date with Woody tonight.** The tumble from smug self-assurance to blind panic had been surprisingly quick and easy. He'd spent the entire afternoon choosing, rejecting, and changing his mind about a score of outfits. The drive from his apartment had been spent second (or, by now, third - or tenth) guessing himself on his ultimate sartorial decision.

There was nothing for it now. Nigel gave his collar one more sharp jerk, as if yanking his own leash, and walked up to the hostess stand. The hostess was a twenty-ish woman with brownish blond hair and a smile that made one think of tall glasses of lemonade and cute, fluffy bunnies. A tag informed him that her name was Amber. Nigel leaned on her stand and set about beginning her corruption. "Hello, Amber," he said, grinning disarmingly.

She blushed slightly. "Good evening, sir."

Nigel 'tsked'. "'Sir' was my father, love." He put his hand to his chest. "*I* am Nigel, and I am wondering if my party has arrived yet."

Biting her lower lip and lowering her eyes, seeming relieved to have something else to look at, Amber consulted her chart. "Which party is that, si - which party?"

Nigel's smile jackknifed. She was just a kid. He didn't know, sometimes, why he did these things. "Probably it's under Hoyt."

Amber scanned the chart for a minute, but her head was already shaking. "I don't see the name--"

Chuckling, Nigel said, "Try Townsend."

Recognition sparked in the cornflower blue eyes instantly. "Of course. Dr. Townsend."

Fighting a snicker, Nigel nodded. **Touché, Detective,** he thought, willing to admit that he was quite proud of Woody at the moment.

"Your friend has already been seated," Amber continued. "He said you'd be late."

Nigel's raised eyebrow promised that Woody would suffer for that. "Did he, now?"

Amber giggled and nodded. "Is he in trouble?"

"Well," Nigel mused, "that depends on how he plays his cards tonight."

The last piece of the puzzle slid into place for the young hostess, and her eyes widened. Nigel waited for it, but she just leaned forward and whispered, "He's acting awfully nervous."

Woody, nervous? About their date? Maybe he'd accepted Nigel's offer out of pity, or in a panicked moment when he didn't know how to decline politely, and now he was nervous about having to tell Nigel that their after-dinner plans did not mesh in any way. "Really?" he asked, hating his voice for quivering.

Nodding, Amber said, "He spilled a glass of iced tea on Stacy. And then spent a whole minute apologizing and trying to clean her apron."

Nigel laughed and shook his head. Despite the detective's usual bravado, that *did* sound like him. "I suppose you'd best take me to him, then," he said, "before he has time to wreck any more of your fine establishment." They were both laughing as Amber led Nigel out of the entryway and into the side room.

Nigel stopped laughing the instant the air left his lungs. The air left his lungs the instant he saw Woody.

Nigel's hand went to his lapel again. In the end, he'd decided against the ratty Dead Kennedys t-shirt, opting instead for a maroon silk button-down that glimmered in the right lighting. Donati's had the right lighting. Standing here now, he was infinitely glad that he'd chosen up, rather than down. Because Woody....Woody looked...oh, what was the word Nigel was after? Ah, yes, there it was. Ravishable. Sitting in a booth along the side of the wall in a navy blue turtle neck and black slacks, fiddling with the straw in his iced tea, Woody looked nothing short of ravishable. Nigel felt his heart rate kick up.

Looking at Nigel from the corner of her eye, Amber whispered, "He's cute."

Nigel nodded dumbly. "He is that, love. He is, indeed." Amber disappeared without a sound, leaving Nigel no options save either freaking out and running or walking up to the table. At the moment, they were about dead split in terms of attractiveness.

Woody looked up and spotted him. His face broke into its wholesome, dairy-fed smile as he waved Nigel over. Nigel directed stern words at his feet and forced them to move across Donati's thin green carpet toward the booth, taking three times longer than he should have hanging his jacket on the hook so he wouldn't have to make eye contact. When he ran out of ways to stall, he put on a shaky smile and turned. "Hello, Woodrow," he said as he slipped onto the bench.

"Hi." Across the table, Woody's grin was as wide as it was devastating. "I was starting to worry that you weren't going to show."

"You know me," Nigel said, aiming for blasé and falling embarrassingly short. "Looking this good takes time."

Woody snorted, but before Nigel had time to decide which part of the statement he was disagreeing with, he said, "I thought you might have been distracted by the meteor shower."

Nigel blinked. "Meteor shower?"

"Yeah." Woody took a long drink of tea. "There's a fairly big one tonight."

Nigel shifted on the booth and studied Woody more thoroughly. "Woodrow Hoyt, armchair astronomer? I would never have pegged you as the type."

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me, Nigel," Woody said. It rather sounded like a gauntlet being thrown down.

Nigel opened his mouth to pick it up, and a woman in a crisp white shirt arrived. "Hello," she said.

"Hallo. You must be Stacy," Nigel replied. When she and Woody looked astounded, he added, "I understand there was an incident with iced tea."

Stacy laughed; Woody groaned; all seemed right with the world. Stacy slid a menu in front of Nigel, took his drink order ("I want the vermouth to be as faint as the scent of a long-abandoned lover."), and left them again.

"First off," Woody said, "I need to apologize for the way I've been acting this week."

Nigel shrugged. "This was a hard case for you."

"I can't explain why. Sandra Melgram was nothing like me; nothing in the situation resonated on a personal level. And God knows I've seen more gruesome crime scenes. But something about her - anyway, I'm sorry. Also, thank you. Her stomach contents did turn out to be a good place to start tying her murder to the country club."

Nigel smiled and sipped at his water. "I was just doing my job."

"Yeah, but--" Woody smiled sheepishly. "I know how many projects you shoved aside to keep me placated."

"*How* do you know?"

Adding a sheepish laugh to his smile, Woody said, "Macy came and yelled at me."

Nigel grinned. "Then I would say you have done more than enough penance for any inconvenience you caused me. And so, apology and thanks accepted, and let me add that I hope you catch the sick bastard soon. Now I believe there should be no more talk of work. Is family a safe topic? Have you been back to Wisconsin lately?"

Woody had, indeed, been back the month before. And so there were stories - stories about beer and football fans and how alarmingly easy it was for a native son to slip back into old roles, old patterns of behavior, even after more than a decade of trying to escape them. Nigel hadn't been back to the U.K. in eons, but he had stories, too - stories about American tourists and an obsession with Prince Andrew and how he didn't even know anymore if he thought of England as home. By the time dessert had been contemplated, argued over, ordered, and devoured, Nigel had learned more about Woody than he'd ever imagined there was to know.

But he *still* didn't know whether Woody was thinking of this as a date.

They spent twenty seconds fighting over the last bite of strawberry cheesecake before Woody sighed in frustration and speared it. "You're impossible," he stated before he popped it into his mouth.

Folding his napkin and laying it on the table, Nigel said, "At least my foibles are on the surface where everyone can see them. You...you're harder to get a reading on. You're...slipperier." And, oh dear, Woody slippery was not an image Nigel needed in his head.

Woody spread his hands, palms up. "I'm not such a mystery, Nigel."

Cocking an eyebrow, Nigel countered, "An off-duty cop drinking iced tea instead of alcohol, talking about astronomy and--" One long finger pointed accusingly. "You were quoting Thomas bloody Wolfe somewhere back there. What happened to the over-devoted, under-humored detective who's been banging about the morgue all week?"

"That's not the real me. Those are masks." The casualness in Woody's pose was far too studied, as it was in his voice when he added, "I don't feel like I need them, when I'm with you."

The sound of something shattering inside Nigel had to be a good thing, didn't it? Because Woody had just confessed that he *was* looking at this as a date, hadn't he? Hadn't he? But Nigel had been cut too many times to take anything on faith. He set down his water glass and stared at Woody. "What exactly are you saying, Woodrow?"

Woody bent his straw, let it pop back up, bent it again. "I'm saying, exactly--" He let go of the straw and rubbed his forehead. "This is not easy for me, Nigel. The Boston PD makes assumptions about its detectives, and this isn't one of them. But whenever I'm around you, I want--" He shook his head. A frustrated huff escaped his lips; it sounded involuntary. "I want things I shouldn't be thinking about. Things I *haven't* thought about since before I was a cop."

Nigel leaned forward, his heart near stuttering from the constant effort he was exerting to keep it from jumping for joy. "Look, Woody," he said, holding the other man's eyes, "I know I come across as the most flaming thing outside of Athens, but I *am* capable of discretion. If you're interested in pursuing...something...I can keep your secret."

"Can you? If Jordan or Lily started pestering you about your love life--"

Smirking, Nigel said, "By this point, Jordan and Lily have decided they don't want to know *anything* about my love life." Woody's eyes widened, and Nigel rushed to add, "Purely self-protective bullshit, Woodrow. You'd have nothing to worry about."

Woody's hand hovered in the air, torn between going back to fiddling with the straw, rubbing his forehead again, or falling to cover Nigel's hands where they rested on the well-varnished tabletop. "Nigel, I think that--" He jumped, his hand abandoning its other options to dive to his belt. When it came back clasped around Woody's pager, it was shaking slightly. "Damn it," Woody muttered. "I have to go."

"Saved by the bell?" Nigel asked wryly.

"Cursed by it," Woody corrected.

"You're not on tonight."

Woody rifled through his wallet and yanked out a stack of bills that more than covered the entire tab plus a hefty tip for the most patient Stacy. "Apparently, the bodies of Sandra Melgram's sister and brother-in-law were just found less than a mile from Hawsworth. It's part of my case."

In his pocket, Nigel's own pager began to vibrate against his thigh. "Bollocks," he hissed, grabbing it. "I'm to go with you, I see." He slid out of the booth and looked helplessly at Woody. "The romance of the evening seems to have evaporated as the clouds."

Woody cocked his head and considered. "Maybe not," he said.

Eyes narrowed, Nigel warned, "Woodrow, if you even *think* of wooing me over a corpse at a crime scene, I will hurt you so badly that your grandchildren will ache."

"No." Woody laughed. "Follow me." Nigel didn't move. Rolling his eyes, Woody grabbed Nigel's wrist and tugged. Nigel barely had the presence of mind to grab their jackets off the hook before he was being dragged through the restaurant to the balcony.

"Have you forgotten dinner already? I know you're hopeful for spring, but it's a bit chilly for al fresco dining."

"Would you shut up for a minute and get out here?" Woody's brusque tone was undercut by the chivalrous sweep of his arm as he opened Donati's back door.

Chuckling under his breath, Nigel shoved Woody's jacket at him and slid into his own as he stepped onto the patio. He zipped it and pressed his arms against his chest; the rain had stopped, but late March in Boston was still winter, as far as he was concerned. "I'm here, Woodrow," he said as he heard the door click shut behind them and Woody's footsteps on the wood behind him. "Why?"

Woody took Nigel by the shoulders and spun him so he faced south. Then he pointed about halfway up the sky. "Because of that," he whispered into Nigel's ear.

"What? It's the sky. It's night in Boston."

"Just watch," Woody begged.

"I'm watching....I'm still not seeing anything....Woodrow, this has to be the most bizarre and futile - oh, my God."

A meteor streaked across the sky, followed immediately by another. The sky went dark again.

"See? I told you!" Woody was gleeful as a child, almost dancing behind Nigel. "That was rare - one right on top of the other like that. The shower won't peak until after midnight, but I wanted to show it to you. I was worried that nothing was going to show. Looks like we were lucky."

Though he knew, logically, that there would be no more meteors for quite some time, and that they ought to head to the crime scene, Nigel continued to watch the sky. "Yes," he said quietly, lowering his gaze to Woody's face, "lucky."

If there had been better light out here on the patio, Nigel suspected he would be seeing Woody blush. Smiling, he turned and headed back toward the door. Woody reached out and caught his hand. Then Woody leaned forward and kissed him. Gently, but insistently, and Nigel's head started buzzing. When they separated, Woody was smiling. "Come on," he said. "Let's find out what the sick bastard's been up to."

Woody let go of Nigel's hand as they came back into the restaurant, but Nigel felt the heat radiate off him as they walked through the room, past the hostess stand - Nigel sparing a wave and wink for Amber - and onto the street. Woody had secured a prime parking spot in front of the restaurant, and Nigel wondered if that had required some creative - and legally ambiguous - use of his police siren. Woody opened the door with a flourish. "Your chariot, Dr. Townsend."

Nigel's eyebrows went exploring in his hairline. "You won't mind, arriving at the scene together?"

"Of course not," he said. Nigel smiled. "Who's going to know we aren't coming from my office, or yours?"

Nigel's smile faltered. Pragmatism, not romanticism, dictated Woody's actions. He should've known. He should *always* know. Forgetting that, at least for the time being, 'absolute secrecy' was the watchword of his...whatever this was with Woody, would spell its instant end. But that realization wasn't anywhere near enough to sink Nigel's buoyant spirits.

There was *nothing* romantic about a double homicide. But he had Donati's, falling stars, and a ride in Woody's car. Settling contentedly into the seat, he murmured, "I think interdepartmental relations are doing quite nicely, don't you, Detective Hoyt?"

In the driver's seat, Nigel's passing fancy laughed, and another meteor streaked across the sky.



FIN

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