“What case?”
“The Woodfield case, the one we got called out on that day.”
“The old guy who killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself?”
“That’s the one. From that day on, I remember whenever we’d go somewhere for lunch or dinner, Pickles would spend most of the time sitting there doing arithmetic on paper napkins or in his notebook, trying to figure out if Anna would be better off if he died while he was still on the job so she’d get a lump sum payment or if she’d end up with more money if she was the joint survivor on his pension.”
“Which one would have been better?” Mel asked.
“Pickles opted to work,” I said with a shrug. “Anna probably got a little more money when he died, twenty or thirty thousand more is all. The problem is, she spent the rest of her life mad at him for choosing to work instead of choosing to stay home with her. To her dying day she was convinced that was all my fault.”
“Sounds like they both got the short end of the stick,” Mel observed.
I looked at her. Mel was beautiful. She loved me, and I loved her. Yes, Pickles Gurkey may have thought he owed me something for saving his bacon on that murder charge, but it turned out that, as of today, I owed him for something even more important.
“Let’s not make the same mistake Pickles did,” I said. “Whatever time we have,, let’s not miss it. Let’s spend it together.”
Mel smiled back at me and held out her hand. “Deal,” she said.
We shook on it.
“So what are we doing for New Year’s Eve?” she asked. “Are we going out or staying home?”
I glanced at my watch. The afternoon had disappeared on me. It was almost five o’clock.
“Going out,” I said. “Let’s go put on our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and see what El Gaucho is serving for their blue plate special.”
“They don’t have a blue plate special,” Mel pointed out. “They never have.”
“Right,” I said. “And it doesn’t matter if they do or don’t because if there’s one lesson Pickles Gurkey taught me today, it’s this: Don’t worry about the money. Spend the time.”
Hours later, when it came time for midnight, we were standing on the balcony of our penthouse when the first volley of fireworks went off from the top of the Space Needle. Mel was holding her flute of real champagne. I had my glass of faux.
On the balcony below ours, someone had turned up their sound system, and “Auld Lang Syne” was blasting out of their speakers at full volume, loud enough to cover the rock and roll coming at us from Seattle Center.
Mel reached over and clinked her glass gently into mine. “Happy New Year,” she said.
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “And to you, and to time spent together.”
The fireworks were still blasting skyward when the song from the unit below ended in the familiar refrain, “We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”
Maybe I’m just getting sentimental, but a lump caught in my throat. I wiped a stray tear from my eye.
Mel shot me a concerned look. “What?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Just remembering,” I said. Then I raised my glass again. “Here’s to Pickles Gurkey,” I said. “May he rest in peace.”
Next from J. A. Jance:
When memories of J. P. Beaumont’s past— from his early days on the force at Seattle PD
and then, even earlier, to his days in Vietnam— bombard him, he is reminded of people and events he hasn’t thought of in years. But tugging on those long-ago threads leads to present-day murders, and soon Beau must face the fact that some bodies from the Second Watch just won’t stay buried.
Here is a sneak preview of
SECOND WATCH
Coming soon in hardcover
from William Morrow
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
PROLOGUE
WE LEFT THE P-2 LEVEL of the parking lot at Belltown Terrace ten minutes later than we should have. With Mel Soames at the wheel of her Cayman and with me belted into the passenger seat, we roared out of the garage, down the alley between John and Cedar, and then up Cedar to Second Avenue.
Second is one of those rare Seattle thoroughfares where, if you drive just at or even slightly below the speed limit, you can sail through one green light after another, from the Denny Regrade all the way to the International District. I love Mel dearly, but the problem with her is that she doesn’t believe in driving “just under” any speed limit, ever. That’s not her style, and certainly not on this cool September morning as we headed for the Swedish Orthopedic Institute, one of the many medical facilities located in a neighborhood Seattle natives routinely call Pill Hill.