12th of Never (Womens Murder Club 12) (13 page)

“It’s me,” he said when she answered. “Where are you?”

He could hear background noise, dishes clattering, and the muffled roar of shouted conversation.

“Susie’s,” she said.

Susie’s. Where the “girls” meet to eat. Also blow off steam, commiserate, and do some problem solving, too. Maybe they could solve his problem.

He said to Cindy, “We’ve got a bad connection,” then clicked off.

He reversed his direction, headed east on Oak to Van Ness, and then turned onto Broadway. He was steaming the entire time. Cindy hadn’t told him she was going out. He’d had a day he would’ve liked to have told her about. He would have enjoyed seeing her face across the dinner table.

Ten minutes after he hung up with Cindy, Rich parked the car on Sansome and walked a couple of blocks to the corner of Jackson. The light coming through the windows of Susie’s brightened the sidewalk and made him think of food.

He pushed open the front door and walked into the Caribbean-style café and its welcoming ambience—steel drums, the pungent smell of spicy food, and the good feel of conversation bouncing off the walls.

The hostess had her back to him and he didn’t wait for her to turn around. He broke through the bar crowd in the front room, made his way along the narrow passageway, and walked past the pickup window, where he sidestepped a waitress with a loaded tray.

When he got to the back room, he saw Cindy, Claire, and Yuki at their favorite booth. Cindy’s blond hair was curled tight from the rain. It looked like a halo around her sweet face.

He said, “What’s today’s special?”

Cindy looked up and he kissed her.

She didn’t look happy to see him.

CINDY COULDN’T BELIEVE that Richie had appeared without warning and was looming over her. He leaned down and kissed her and Cindy accepted his kiss, but she was pissed, giving him the eye that clearly told him so.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Hey, Claire. Yuki. I haven’t eaten. Cindy, I’m starving. What’s good here?”

Rich swung into the banquette, squeezed in next to Cindy.

“The pulled pork is tasty,” Yuki said.

“This seat is taken,” Cindy said, pointing to the half-full beer mug at Rich’s right hand.

“Not a problem.”

Rich signaled to the waitress, asked her for a chair, then ordered an Anchor Steam and pulled pork with plantains.

Claire said, “Richie, you’re looking pale, buddy. You sure you’re okay?”

“No, I’m
not
okay,” he said. “Here’s the thing, Claire. And I really want you to be honest. Cindy and I are engaged. I proposed, she said yes, jumped into my arms. We moved in together and now, a year later, no wedding date. She says, ‘What’s the rush?’”

Cindy said, “Rich. Not here.”

“I’m taking this rare opportunity,” he said, “to get advice from our friends. They know us. Let me talk, Cindy.”

“You’re being ridiculous and you’re embarrassing me. But I guess you know that.”

“When I actually see her,” Rich said to Claire and Yuki, as if Cindy hadn’t spoken, “I want to cook dinner with her, watch a movie. But she says, ‘Not now, hon, I’m writing.’ She writes in her head, you understand,” Rich went on. “Then, when she starts typing, she might as well be in an under-ground bunker.”

The waitress put Richie’s beer down on the table, then dragged a chair to the head of the booth. She sat in it and said to Rich, “Hi—I’m Lorraine.”

“I’m Rich Conklin. Cindy’s fiancé. Nice to meet you.”

“We just ran out of the pork,” Lorraine said. “Want to try the pulled chicken?”

“Okay. Fine.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

Yuki said, “We’re all obsessed with our careers, Richie. Women have to work harder—”

“Do you talk to Brady?” Rich asked Yuki.

“Talk to him? Sure.”

“You go out to dinner with him?”

“Uh-huh. Couple times a week.”

Cindy looked up as Mackie Morales came back from the ladies’ room. She looked cute, seemed smart, had been working in the squad room for the last couple of months. Richie thought she was a good assistant. Very helpful.

Mackie tapped Rich on the shoulder, said, “I believe you’re in my seat, Inspector.”

Rich jumped up and said, “Morales. I didn’t know you were here.”

“Don’t let me interrupt.”

Morales took the chair at the head of the table and sipped from her mug. Cindy thought that Rich didn’t look so pale anymore. In fact, his ears were red.

“So I feel very bad,” Rich continued. “Cindy won’t talk about what’s bothering her. This is a bad situation for both of us. What do you think we should do?”

Cindy felt like something had exploded between her ears. She couldn’t take it for another second. It was outrageous.
He
was outrageous.

“Rich, are you
high?
” she shouted. “I make breakfast for you every morning. I do your laundry. I have to work all hours. You do, too. You do the same thing as I do.”

“I need more than breakfast,” he said. “I need devotion.”

“Oops,” said Morales. “Well, my babysitter likes to go home about now. Thanks, everyone,” she said, putting a twenty on the table and grabbing her purse from the floor. “This was fun.”

“Yeah, me, too,” said Yuki. “Well, I don’t have a babysitter, but I’ve got a conference call. Play nice, you two.”

She kissed Claire’s cheek, did the same but more awkwardly with Cindy, who had gone stiff and was staring at Richie as if her eyes were the business end of double-barreled shotgun.

“I’m staying right here,” said Claire. “Let’s talk it out with Mama.”

CINDY SAID, “NO offense, Claire, but I don’t want to talk this out with anyone. Not you, not Dr. Freud, not anyone. This is personal between Rich and me.”

Claire said, “Dr. Freud?”

“Rich wants us to go into therapy, and I’m not going. I refuse, and I’ve tried to explain it to you, Rich. I don’t have a mental disorder. Newspapers are folding worldwide. Writers are creating free content on blogs and are competing for the chance to work for no pay at all.

“I have to nail down my niche so that when the music stops, I have a chair.”

“I’m not getting enough out of this relationship,” Rich said. “You have to decide what’s more important to you—”

Cindy bolted from the booth, pushed past the tables in the center of the room, threaded her way through the passageway, and went out into the bar. There was a limbo competition in progress and a skinny woman in hot pink was shimmying under the bamboo pole.

Cindy bumped into the stick and it clattered to the ground, which was followed by loud and very vocal disapproval from the crowd.

Cindy said, “Sorry,” and kept going through the doorway, into the misty night. She began running up the street to where she had parked her car, on Jackson and Battery.

Rich was calling her name, but she didn’t stop. She had her key fob in hand, and when she was within range, she disarmed the car alarm.

Rich was saying, “Stop running, Cindy. Just stop.”

When she got to the car, it chirped as the alarm reset itself. What the hell? She pressed the button and the car chirped again, then again.

Rich had a duplicate of her fob. Every time she turned off the alarm, he turned it on again. This was insane.

She spun around to confront him.

“Leave me alone, Rich.”

“First we talk.”

“Do not go cop on me.”

He smiled.

She said, “And do not try to humor me, either.”

“Answer me this, Cindy. When was the last time you kissed me like you meant it?”

Everything seemed to stop but the rain.

CINDY STARED AT Rich as he rested his butt against the left front fender of her car, crossed his arms over his chest. He looked seriously angry. She was pretty mad herself. When
was
the last time she’d kissed him with feeling?

He said, “You’re ambitious to a fault.”

“Oh, really?”

“Other women would be planning a wedding. They’d be designing their wedding dress and so forth. Picking out a honeymoon spot. You don’t want to set a date. You make a little sound in your throat when you see a baby.”

“What sound, Rich? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s like you’re disgusted.”

Cindy felt the sting of truth. Tears welled up and spilled over. Rich came to her and tried to put his arms around her, but she shook him off, said, “Don’t touch me. Please don’t.”

“Let’s go home,” he said. “I’ll drive your car. I’ll get a ride in the morning.”

The truth was opening her up, but the price of the truth was the loss of Richie.

“Rich. I’m sorry that I can’t be … I’m sorry that I’m not like other women. But I’m not. I didn’t want to face it, but you’re completely right. I’ve been keeping walls up because I knew that if I admitted that we want different things, this would be over.”

She had been wearing Rich’s mother’s ring for almost a year. She pulled at it until it came off, and then she pushed it at Richie. He grunted as if he’d been punched in the belly. But he took the ring, closed his hand around it, then put it into his pocket.

Cindy felt light-headed. Had she meant to break up with him? Her face was wet from the rain. Oh, my God. Richie.

“It’s not that I don’t love you,” she said. “I do.”

“And now you’re going to say that love isn’t enough?” His voice was cracking. He was crying, too.

Cindy reached up, took Richie’s dear face in her hands, and kissed him. Then she released him and turned toward the car.

“I’ll pick up my clothes in the morning,” Rich said. “I’m going to make sure you get home okay.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

“Where will you go?”

“Don’t worry about it, Cindy. I can always find a place to sleep.”

This was happening too fast, but it felt inevitable. Cindy opened her car door, got inside, and waited for several minutes as Rich got to his car, then pulled up behind her. His headlight beams filled the interior of her car with a cold and lifeless illumination.

Cindy released the brakes and turned the wheel, astounded at what she had done and that Rich had let her do it.

As she drove along Jackson, she had a flash of understanding.

Rich had gotten
her
to break up with him. He’d been loaded with determination when he arrived at Susie’s. She should have known it from the look on his face.

Rich had already met someone else.

I SAT WITH Claire on the fire stairs between the third and fourth floors of the Hall. Claire looked hungover
and
depressed.

“So the mayor says to me, ‘Claire, I gotta cut your pay.’ ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Why?’ And he says, ‘We’re not budgeted for two medical examiners.’

“You getting this, Lindsay? He’s installing a hack in my office and he’s cutting me back to half pay. What a freaking insult. You know how many dead people came through my doors last year? I’ll tell you. Two thousand three hundred and nine. It only cost the city about a thousand bucks a person. I’m already doing the work of
two
medical examiners.”

It was true. Along with running her department, supervising her staff, and overseeing the processing of thousands of deceased human beings, Claire also managed Dr. Clapper and the entire forensic lab at Hunters Point.

“And by the way,” she said, “I didn’t actually
lose
Faye Farmer’s body. I was robbed.”

Claire lit another cigarette. She had stopped smoking about five years ago.

“How did you leave things with the mayor?”

“I said, ‘Yes, sir. I live to serve, sir.’ I’ve got a kid in college. I can’t afford to tell him to shove it.”

“It really sucks, Butterfly, but it’s not forever.”

“What did you get from Jeff Kennedy?”

I told her about the interview at his lawyers’ office, the party at his house, and that we had a list of names to check out.

“How many names?”

“Twelve. If your two investigators can check out the party guests, Conklin and I can stay on Kennedy.”

“Deal,” said Claire. “You can have Kain and Dedrick. If they’re still letting me assign anyone to anything.”

She was jiggling her knees as though she were still dancing Julie on her thighs. From my phone, I sent her the list of party guests, then asked, “Find anything in Faye Farmer’s car?”

“Gunpowder on the dash. Faye’s blood on the seat back. I know. Shocker.”

My best friend inhaled, let out a plume of smoke.

She went on to say, “Clapper thinks she was most likely shot from the passenger seat. We have fingerprints—hers and Kennedy’s and a lot of prints that aren’t in the database. Nothing useful on the door handles. You have anything on Tracey Pendleton?”

“She hasn’t used her credit card or her phone.”

Claire said, “So she bought a no-name phone for forty bucks. Or maybe pesos. She could be buying gas with cash. I can’t figure it out. What does she want with that body?”

I said, “Here’s a late-breaking thought. Maybe Tracey Pendleton doesn’t have the body. Maybe whoever stole the body took her, too. Tracey was a witness.”

My phone rang. Conklin. We exchanged a few words, then I closed the phone, told Claire that I had to go.

Claire ground her cigarette out on the cement step. Ground it to powder. We both stood up. The look in Claire’s eyes was unutterably sad.

I hugged her and said, “This case is only thirty-six hours old. We’ve just gotten started.”

“I know. Shit.”

As she went back to the morgue, I trotted a half flight down to the squad room. I was already thinking about what Conklin had said: “The nutty professor is back.”

PERRY JUDD LOOKED as elated as if he’d just won a million dollars and the title of Mr. America at the same time. He stood up from the chair in Interview 2 and grabbed my hand with both of his. His color was high. There was spittle in the corners of his mouth.