Page 80 of You'll Be the Death of Me

She hit Dial on the new contact and held the phone to her ear, hoping he’d see the text and know to answer a call from the same number.

“Not answering?” Cole said after half a dozen rings.

“Nope.” She knocked on his door again. “Jason Ulysses Marshall, open your door!” she called.

“Ulysses?” Cole asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes. He hates it. It was one of the things we first bonded over—terrible names. At least his is a middle name and not a first name though.”

“I thinkuniqueis a better term thanterrible.”

She turned to him with a teasing frown. “Youwouldlike the name Ulysses, Dr. Lewis. I bet you named your stuffed animals Brontë and Dickens and Shelley as a kid.”

“If I knew those names as a kid, I will seriously question what my parents were letting me read back then.”

Dell shrugged Robbie’s shoulder and knocked on the door again. “Maybe they’re lit professors too, and you raided the Lewis family library.”

“Maybe,” he said right as the door wrenched open.

“For the love of Sunday,what?” a very angry Jason yelped at them. He wore a silk robe with a matching eye mask pushed up on his forehead. “Robbie?” he said with a frown.

“No, it’s me, Dell. Which you would know if you’d checked your phone.” She waved Robbie’s phone at him and smiled.

He scowled and folded his arms. “If you were really my best friend, you’d know not to come calling before tena.m. on a Sunday.”

“Iamyour best friend, and we’re here because we need your help.”

Jason took a second to gather himself, wrapping his robe tighter and redoing the sash. “We?”

“Yes. Cole is here with me. We need to ask you something very important. Can we please come in?”

He eyed her suspiciously, but Dell knew it was mostly out of grogginess. “Yes, but I literally just rolled out of bed, so no commentary on the mess, please.”

Dell scoffed, knowing Jason’s idea of amesswas a glass left on the counter, or a shoe kicked out of place from its orderly row, or a magazine askew on the coffee table. His apartment was spotless and resembled a cozy floor display at a Restoration Hardware more than anything.

“He considers this a mess?” Cole said from behind Dell once they filed inside. The narrow entryway led to a small living room appointed with leather furniture and an array of houseplants.

“He has very high standards,” Dell muttered.

“What was that?” Jason asked as he shuffled into the galley kitchen. It opened on either end, with the living room on one, and the short hallway to his bedroom and the bathroom on the other.

“Nothing,” Dell said, and sat on one of the barstools looking into the kitchen from a cutout wall. She wanted to get to the point, but she knew trying to talk to Jason before he’d had coffee on a Sunday was not wise.

She impatiently watched him flip on his machine and set a mug under it. “Want any?” he asked through a yawn.

“Actually, coffee sounds great,” Dell said, hoping Robbie wouldn’t mind if she infused his body with a dose of caffeine.

“Coming right up,” Jason said, and reached for a second mug. “Does your man want any? Or, well, I guess he can’t really drink it, can he?”

“Not unless you let him hop in and borrow your body.”

Jason tilted his head in curiosity and frowned at the same time. Mercifully, his coffee brewer got down to business and squirted out a mug in about a minute. Dell let him add his creamer and take a sip before she reached in Robbie’s pocket and shoved the printout in his face.

“Is this the guy who crashed into me on the slopes in Tahoe last year? The Italy-bruise guy?”

Jason flinched at her sudden movement, nearly spilling his coffee, and leaned back. “What?”

“The guy, remember? The one who plowed into me and left a bruise. You said just the other day you’d be able to pick him out of a lineup.”