“We played a little softball in the park,” Joe told me.
“Oh, right. Good idea.”
“She said she’s going to sleep through the night.”
“Ha-ha. I want that in writing.”
“Why don’t you take off your piece and your shoes and stay awhile,” said my husband, clicking on the evening news. “Soup’s on in ten minutes.”
Love, love, love coming home. Just love it.
Chapter 2
I spent half the night talking to Joe about the belly bombs. And it wasn’t just pillow talk. Joe Molinari was former FBI, also former deputy director of Homeland Security, and now a highly regarded consultant who was content to be Mr. Mom while I fulfilled my calling in Homicide.
Joe had been over the case with me a few dozen times already, and he said, when we were under the covers in the dark, “Sooner or later, the bomber is going to take credit for this.”
I said, “Huh,” and rooted around in the creases of my mind, thinking that for certain bombers, that was true. But not all of them.
I remember that Joe got up for the baby twice. I did it three times, and suddenly it was eight and I was late.
At nine-ish, I parked my car in my favorite spot in the shade of the overpass and went directly to the ME’s Office. The reception area was full of cops and plainclothes guys standing around, wishing for cigarettes and hoping for autopsy reports.
There was a new girl at the front desk—very cute, wearing her blond hair in a low ponytail. She introduced herself: “I’m Debbie Day. The new intern.”
I congratulated the young woman and told her that Claire was expecting me, which was a lie that Claire always backed up.
I found Claire in the autopsy suite, stripping off her gloves as her assistant rolled a corpse out of the room toward the cooler.
She said, “I love how I think about you and you just materialize.”
“You got something?” I asked.
“Yeah. If I hadn’t had my hands full of internal organs, I would’ve texted you.”
Claire unsnapped her gown and hung it on a hook and peeled off her cap. I followed her through to her office, dying every second to know what kind of news she had.
She settled in behind her desk, rolled her chair until she was in just the right place, and said, “I got something from Clapper that he got from the Feds. What the belly bombs consist of.”
“Holy crap. Tell me.”
“Here’s the nutshell version. Trace of some kind of magnesium compound was found in stomach contents that were sprayed around the Jeep. The compound was ingested—you with me so far?”
“If I was any more with you, I’d be sitting in your lap.”
“Stay where you are. I’ve got no room on my lap.”
“Fine.”
“Okay, so, this compound interacts with stomach acid.”
I blinked a few times, then said, “You’re saying that those kids ate something and when it got to their stomachs—ka-boom.”
“Exactly,” said Claire.
Until new or contrary evidence challenged our theory, I was calling the belly bomb case a double homicide.
Chapter 3
I was still wrapping my mind around bombs you can eat when Claire picked up her ringing phone and got into something long and windy with a lawyer who wanted her as an expert witness.
While I waited for Claire’s attention, I stared at the picture on her desk of the four of us in what we cheerfully call the Women’s Murder Club. The four members are Claire, Cindy, Yuki, and me.
Claire was the bosomy African-American stalwart in the middle of our group, a mom three times over, my best buddy for the past dozen years, a woman with a heart big enough to move into and set up housekeeping.
To her right was Cindy, a sweet-looking bulldog of a reporter, working the crime desk at the Chronicle, who’d helped me bust a few criminals in her search for an exclusive story. Cindy and I have fought at times. Lots of times. She doesn’t back down until she’s tried every possible way around me and a few impossible ones. But I know her well and love her fiercely.
To Claire’s left was Yuki Castellano, who had given up private law to prosecute bad guys for the DA’s Office. She’s a bird-size beauty, a high-speed talker, a brilliant woman who has caught some bad breaks and still never says die.
I was the tall blonde on the end of the line, wearing my working-cop clothes and a sour expression. Bah. I don’t know what was bothering me the day that picture was taken. Well, taking a guess, maybe our new lieutenant, Jackson Brady, had stepped on my toes.
In front of me in real life, Claire picked up her intercom line and yelled into her phone, “Debbie, tell Inspector Orson to cool his giant heels and I’ll be with him in ten minutes. Hey, tell him to get coffee. I like mine with a lot of sugar.”
Claire slammed the phone down and said, “No peace for the weary.”
“I think you mean ‘No rest for the wicked.’”
“That, too.”
The phone on her desk rang.
“Don’t take that, okay?” I said. “What do you make of this ingestible bomb?”
“Well,” said Claire. She uncapped a bottle of water and took a really long pull. Then she said, “Since you ask, I believe this belly bomb was as personal as a knife.”
“Meaning?”
“It was a micro-bomb so it was easy to disguise. Limited impact because it was only meant to kill one person at a time.”
“So these kids were targeted?”
“Not necessarily. Could have been random. Remember the psycho who put cyanide inside Tylenol capsules.”
“So those one-person bombs were a kind of message?”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Claire. “Both of us go to the head of the class.”
Chapter 4
Debbie cast a slim shadow through the doorway to Claire’s office and changed the subject big-time.
She said, “Yuki Castellano is on line five. Wants to speak to both of you. She said, and I quote: ‘If you don’t put them on the phone, you’ll be sorry you came to work today.’ Unquote. She was kidding, right, Dr. Washburn?”
“Was she laughing?” Claire asked.
“Well, yeah. The cutest laugh I ever heard.”
Although Yuki was our resident bad news bear, she’d been quite merry lately. She’d won a couple of cases and was getting along well with her big hunk of burning love boyfriend.
Debbie gave me a knowing look. “Doctor, all of your friends try to walk right over me.”
Claire said, “That’s them teaching you to push back. Thank you, Debbie.” Then she stabbed a button, putting Yuki on speaker.
Yuki chirped, “I knew you two were together, goofing off, eating doughnuts, drinking coffee, livin’ la vida loca.”
“Are you high, sweetie?” Claire asked.
“You bet I am. Love makes me a little goofy.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” I said.
“Okay, how’s this? Brady and I are getting married.”
Yuki let loose one of her trademark delightful merry-bells chortles. There was a long pause as Claire and I stared at each other across Claire’s desk, just trying to comprehend what Yuki had said.
Claire recovered first.
“Did I hear you right, Yuki?” she said. “You’re not fooling with us, are you?”
“I’m at the bridal shop. Right this minute.”
I had just gotten used to Yuki dating my boss—now she was marrying him? Well, never mind the kink their relationship had put in the chain of command. Yuki was getting married.
“Oh. My. God,” I said, “Did you expect this? Or were you surprised by what could be the best news of the year?”
“Sur-prised!” she shrieked. “Brady’s divorce came through. So he just hangs up with his lawyer, rolls over in bed, and he says to me, ‘Nothing to stop us now.’”
Yuki treated us to another round of happy-over-the-moon laughter, then took a breath and chirped, “We’re saying the I do’s on Saturday.”