Page 46 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

Trusting him didn’t mean I had to like waiting for not yet to become now.

So, yes, I snagged Nola Choi and invited her to dinner for a distraction.

We ate at the bar in the Haber House Hotel dining room.

While her company kept my mind off trusting Tom and waiting, she tried to pump me for information.

Without success.

I countered with educational essays on life from the perspective of experience.

Without success.

Though, in fairness, mine was a mere introduction to an ongoing series.

I’d paid the check and we were sipping coffee.

She made another stab at pumping.

I sidestepped with “Remember me telling you a firefighter — Miles Stevens — seemed to be interested in you?”

“Yeah.” She dragged it out, letting impatience seep into the middle. “It wasn’t that long ago, you know.”

“All right, all right. Don’t act like I’m deep into short-term memory loss.”

She grinned. “Why’d you ask?”

“Because you made a sort of grimace when you expressed lack of interest.”

“Did I?” Before I could respond, she added, “Microexpression.”

“Uh-huh. Your microexpression indicated something stronger than lack of interest. Wondered what caused it.”

“Not my microexpression. His. At first, I thought it was a run-of-the-mill smirk. Didn’t endear him to me, but I passed it off.”

“But?” I prodded when she paused.

“When I looked through what I’d shot — after I put together the package—”

I approved of her priorities. Breaking news packages came first.

“—I went back over the footage—”

And double-checking in case she missed something.

“—and realized it wasn’t a smirk.”

I gave her what she wanted. “What was it?”

“Duper’s delight.”

I’d heard of it, but . . .

“I took courses with behavior and body language experts. The first one, I thought it was a lark, but she was good. Trained military, law enforcement, national security officers. I took more courses. Comes in handy interviewing. Only problem is it’s impossible to turn off once you start noticing things and a lot of people are lying, covering up, deceiving a lot. It’s—” She stopped.

“It’s what?”

She should have made me wait a beat longer, but I wasn’t sharing that now, because I wanted to hear the rest.

“It’s what struck me about Mike when he interviewed me. I’d had a bunch of other interviews and . . . Let’s say, they didn’t build a lot of trust.”

“You picked KWMT-TV over all the other options you had because of Michael Paycik’s honest face. Sorry — I’m not laughing at you, Nola. He does have an honest face. No, he is honest.”

He was so proud, believing his persuasiveness showed Nola the possibilities of his — our — vision for the station.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” She grinned. Definitely not with duper’s delight. “And stayed because of you and the rest.”

“Tell me about duper’s delight.” I hoped it sounded like a non-duplicitous invitation and not an order.

“It’s not necessarily consistent from person to person. It can come across as smugness, including if the duper tries to suppress, especially from long practice of lying. Still, it’s involuntary. A subtle smile. Often fleeting. Sometimes a twitch.”

I thought of the twitch at the corner of Tom’s mouth that told me he was suppressing amusement. Without a drop of duping.

But I could think of others I’d encountered who matched Nola’s description.

“When they believe the person or persons they’re trying to fool accepted their lie or lies, they’re gratified at getting away with it. Can be combined with eye-blocking. That can be literal — covering them with a hand or an object — or closing the eyes, so the eyelids are the block.”

“Is that the only reason you’re not interested in him? Not that it’s not a good one,” I added. A duper wouldn’t be high on my list, even if my list hadn’t whittled down to one.

She shrugged. “No chemistry?”

“I wondered if it had anything to do with Kam Droemi.”

“Who?”

“Works at the fire department. Runs the office.”

“Oh, right. Not real friendly.”

“I suspect that’s possessiveness over Miles.”

“One time I heard them snapping at each other — well, mostly her snapping at him. I suppose it could have been possessiveness. Why anyone thinks that will hold onto somebody . . .”

I remembered their overheard exchange before I could see them in the fire department. Kam’s aggrieved voice, fragments about names and something about too many.

Nola was right.

My phone rang.

I held up a finger to Nola.

She shook her head. “I gotta go anyway. Early assignment.”

I nodded my understanding as I answered the call from Kit.