SUSIE’S CAFÉ IS KIND OF a cross between Cheers and a tiki hut bar on a beach in St. Lucia. The food is spicy, the steel drums are live, the margaritas are world-class, and not only do the waitresses know our names, they know enough to leave us alone when we’re into something - as Cindy and I were now.

  We were in our booth in the back room, and I was glaring at Cindy over my beer.

  “You understand? Talking to you off the record is ‘leaking.’ Just saying to you that I was working a new lead on the Campion case could jam me up!”

  “I swear, Lindsay, I didn’t use what you said. I didn’t need a quote from you because I got the story from upstairs.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Management has a source and I did an interview and I am not telling you with whom,” she said, setting down her beer mug hard on the table. “But the point is, you can hold your head up, Linds, because you told me nothing. Okay? That’s the truth.”

  I’m several years older than Cindy, and we’ve had a big sister, little sister thing since she crashed my crime scene a few years back and then helped me close the case.

  It’s hard to be friends with reporters when you’re a cop. Their rationalized “public’s need to know” gives bad guys the heads-up and messes up jury pools.

  You can’t truly trust reporters.

  On the other hand, I love Cindy, and I trusted her 99 percent of the time. She sat across from me in her snow-white silk sweater, blond curls bouncing like mattress springs, her two overlapping front teeth making her pretty features look even prettier. She looked totally innocent of my accusation, and she was holding her ground.

  “Okay,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Okay a............