FOR LUNCH I met Claire at MacBain’s Beers o’ the World Saloon, where we had a small table between the front window and the peanut barrel, hemmed in by the lunchtime crowd. As usual at the crack of noon, our favorite watering hole near the Hall of Justice was packed with attorneys, cops, and courthouse staff. Owing to my long-standing status as a regular customer (and pretty good tipper), Sydney MacBain, our waitress, had given us the only empty table without making us wait for our entire party of four to arrive.
Claire Washburn is my closest friend, as well as San Francisco’s chief medical examiner. Claire is black and bosomy and calls herself a “big girl.” Despite all the death she sees every day and year, she’s a compassionate woman, a loving wife, and a mom to three.
Her office and morgue are a short walk out the back door of the Hall, so we had trotted over to MacBain’s together. We were saving two chairs at our table. One was for our tenacious, effervescent friend Cindy Thomas, top crime reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. She was in a cab from her office, which was ten minutes away, traffic permitting.
Our fourth was ADA Yuki Castellano, a rising-star prosecutor. Yuki had texted me to go ahead and order lunch, leaving me to assume that the grand jury hadn’t yet arrived at a verdict on her current case.
Meanwhile, I had Claire all to myself, and she was outraged about the death of a young man who had been delivered to the morgue overnight. It was the second time in a month that a customer had left a bar a short distance from where we were sitting now and had been shot dead on the street.
It wasn’t my case, but I knew the details and understood Claire’s frustration. A kid about the age of her own boys, in otherwise perfect health, was lying inside a drawer with bullet holes punched into his body. No one had claimed his body or called the police looking for him. And no witnesses to his killing had stepped forward.
“I like the Second Amendment as much as anyone,” Claire was saying, “but seriously. Kids shooting each other outside the saloon like in an old spaghetti western? What is the point of that?”
Syd came over with two mugs of draft, and at that moment Cindy blew in, cut through the crowd, and slid into a chair between Claire and me. She looked adorable with a sparkling headband holding back her irrepressible golden curls.
“Hi, guys,” she said, shucking her jacket. To Syd she said, “I want what they’re having.”
“Gotcha,” said Sydney. “If you order now, I can get you in before a party of six.”
“Another minute,” I said. “Yuki’s on the way.”
I looked at my phone to see if I’d missed a travel update, but no. I said to Claire and Cindy, “I hope when Yuki gets here, she’s got that true bill under her belt.”
“Who wants to guess?” said a voice behind us.
Claire jumped up and pulled out a chair for ADA Yuki Castellano, the woman of the hour.
Yuki looked great as always, the streak of blue in her glossy black shoulder-length hair matching her impeccable suit of the same color. She was also wearing her courtroom face, and I couldn’t read her mood.
We three spoke in nearly perfect unison. “Well?”
“Sorry you had to wait,” said Yuki. “As you know, the grand jury has been known to turn in the verdict the second you’re out the door. But I had to wait out in the hallway. Ten minutes went by. Twenty.”
“Yuki, tell us,” Cindy shouted over the barroom clamor and the sound of laughter at the next table.
Yuki grinned.
She said to the waitress, “Sydney, I need a drink with a little kick to it. Surprise me. And I think we can order now.”
“The usual dietary restrictions?” Syd asked. She looked at each of us and we all nodded, affirmative.
“Four burgers,” she said deadpan. “Medium, medium rare, medium well, well done. Extra fries for the table. Surprise drink for ADA Castellano. With a kick.”
We all laughed, including Yuki—the joke being that she can get drunk on iced tea. Cindy, known among us as Girl Reporter, grabbed Yuki’s shoulders with both hands and shook her.
“Talk,” she said. “And cut to the freakin’ chase.”
Yuki’s phone rang, and despite Cindy’s grip on her, and all of us yelling, “No phones!,” she went for her bag.
She took the call, listened, said, “Me, too, Marc. You’re very welcome.”
As Yuki clicked off the call, Sydney placed a fruity-looking drink in front of her. Yuki thanked her, then said to us, “As I was about to tell you—Briana Hill was indicted on the charge of rape. That was the victim calling to say he was overwhelmed and very grateful.”
She smiled broadly. Glasses clinked across the table. Yay for Yuki. And a freaking great moment for the Women’s Murder Club.
CHAPTER 18
JOE MOLINARI, MY huggable and exceedingly durable husband, cooked dinner for us that night. I love his cooking, but I had no appetite. I put down a little of the shrimp scampi and broccoli raab and half a glass of the Cabernet.
“What’s wrong, Linds?” he asked me.
“Nothing. Really. Dinner is delicious. I had a big lunch with the girls.”
“Mrs. Rose has the flu,” he said, speaking of our neighbor and occasional nanny. “Are you getting sick?”
“I don’t have a fever. I’m just a little tired,” I told him. While Joe read to Julie, our two-year-old, who was reveling in the replacement of her crib with a real bed without “fences,” I cleared the table and stacked the dishwasher.
I went into Julie’s room as the puppy dog in the story found his way home because the porch light was on. I kissed Julie good night, told her to have sweet dreams. She said, “More kisses, Mommy.”
Right after smacky-kisses and huggy-wuffles, we locked the front door, turned off the lights and the electronics. Then Joe and I went to our sky-blue corner bedroom for the rare early night to bed.
Minutes later Joe was lying facedown in the bedding and I was massaging his bum arm. This was only one of his healing injuries from that explosive blast four months ago that killed dozens of people.
I warmed the massage oil in my hands and worked his muscles, gratified by the happy groans coming from my big, handsome man. I worked on his back and then turned my attention to his leg, which had been broken in two places.
He was walking fine now but still had pain, so we were keeping up with the physical therapy techniques.
Joe sighed. “That’s all I can take, Lindsay. Thank you.”
He rolled over onto his back and reached for me, and I went into his arms. He kissed the top of my head, and I held on to his chest and listened to him breathe.
We’d come so close to losing it all.
First there was Joe’s marriage-splitting, government-sponsored escapade that involved a professional femme fatale. Whatever had happened between Joe and the mystery blonde, I would never know and now I didn’t want to.
She was out of our lives. And Joe had promised nothing would ever come between us again.
Then there was the explosion that broke his bones, cracked his head, and almost made me a widow and Julie a fatherless child. But Joe was back. In many ways he was better than ever, and I thought I was growing, too.
But.
Well, there’s always a but, right?
Having come so close to death, having reordered his priorities, Joe had told me that he wanted to have another child. We barely had enough time for the child we had. My job was dangerous and had never been nine-to-five. Joe wasn’t working full-time. He had been Mr. Mom when Julie was tiny, and he was there for her when I needed him during the eight months when we lived apart and our marriage was a very tenuous thing. So Joe got top marks for Great Dad.
But another child?
How would that work? Even now he was working as a freelance risk management consultant in a laptop-at-home capacity.
That could change.
He had once been deputy director of Homeland Security. He had worked for the FBI and the CIA. He was trustworthy, experienced, cleared for classified everything. And in the current climate of terrorist attacks breaking out at random, I could see him being ripped out of his home office and pressed into service. The very qualities that had sent him into a bomb-struck and unstable building looking for survivors could be activated again.
Joe said my name.
I said, “I’m here.”