12th of Never Read online

  “So,” said Dr. Sebetic, looking at the space between me and Joe. “I have news.”

  He removed his glasses, polished them with a tissue, then squared them on the bridge of his nose.

  “The test results are back and the blood cell appearance is returning to normal. It’s what’s called a polyclonal lymphocytosis, which is a benign, temporary, self-limiting disorder—”

  “For God’s sake, Doctor,” Joe said. “In English, please.”

  “I’m sorry. Let me say it another way. Julie had abnormal lymphocytes, and that diagnosis is a banana peel that many an experienced specialist has slipped on.

  “You see, the blood cells in mononucleosis look just like the ones that you find in lymphoma.”

  I didn’t see.

  I said, “Mononucleosis? The kissing disease?”

  “Exactly. You didn’t have a sterile delivery room, correct? As I was saying, you can look at two slides and one is malignant lymphoma, the other is mononucleosis, and you can’t tell the two apart. Many a pathologist has made the wrong call.”

  I thought I was tracking him, but I was afraid to hope. I held on to my child and my wits, pictured the two slides, imagined doctors slipping on banana peels.

  Dr. Sebetic said, “The bottom line is that Julie is getting better all by herself.”

  “She’s out of danger?” I asked. “She’s going to live?”

  “She’s perfectly healthy and as cute as ten buttons. I’m sorry, but I have to be in a teleconference with Shanghai, uh, five minutes ago. Nurse Kathy will be happy to help you check Julie out of Saint Francis.”

  Chapter 108

  OH, MAN, TALK about home sweet home.

  A half hour after leaving the hospital, Joe, Julie, and I were safely and joyously back in our nest on Lake Street.

  Joe put the camera on a five-second delay, set it on the TV console, and ran across the room to the big leather sofa, where he flung himself down and swept me and Julie into his arms.

  We grinned, the two of us—nothing contrived about it. This was over-the-moon time. This was what extreme happiness felt like.

  After the shutter clicked, Joe dashed back to the camera and set it again, returned to his girls, and this time, when Julie looked at the lens, she laughed.

  “Did you see that?” I yelled at Joe, way too loudly. “Did you see her smile for the birdie?”

  “What is this?” Joe said, pointing at her left cheek. “Is this a dimple? Who’s your daddy?” he said, showing dimples of his own.

  We took more pictures, laughed like crazy people, and then put the baby to bed and hit the phones.

  I called my sister and the other three members of the Women’s Murder Club. I called Conklin and then Brady and Jacobi, the two guys I called Boss. Last but not least, I called our dogsitter, Karen, and asked her to bring Julie’s big furry sister home in time for dinner.

  Joe made serial calls to people from coast to coast, all of them named Molinari. And when we were ready to stop shouting and dancing, we went to bed.

  We made tender love, quietly, so we didn’t wake the baby in the next room, and it was so sweet that if I had any tears left, I might have cried.

  I slept hard and woke up laughing.

  Joe mumbled, “Tell me the joke.”

  “A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Why the long face?’”

  Joe laughed. “You’re giddy,” he said.

  “Yeah? A hamburger and a french fry walk into a bar. The bartender says—”

  “We don’t serve food here.”

  “Nuts.”

  “You know I love you, Blondie.”

  He went across the hall and returned with the baby. She didn’t cry, which was the most amazing thing, something I was going to love getting used to. She put her cheek on her father’s shoulder and he rubbed her back.

  “I know you love me, Joe,” I said. “But do I hear a ‘but’?”

  “No flies on you, honey. I got a job offer. The job is in DC.”

  I wanted to explode. I shouted in a whisper, “No, you don’t. No, Joe, just flat-out no effin’ way.”

  “For a lot of money. Enough to buy a pretty good house.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “But.”

  “But what?” I asked him.

  “I turned it down.”

  “Really?”

  “I didn’t even have to think about it. I couldn’t leave my sweeties, my party girls.”

  Chapter 109

  CINDY THOMAS HAD been obsessed by the Faye Farmer mystery since Farmer’s body disappeared from the morgue and she’d been assigned one of the best stories of her career.

  Fact: Faye Farmer had been murdered.

  Fact: Farmer’s fiancé, 49ers star Jeff Kennedy, was the only suspect and at the same time a dead end. There was no evidence against him.

  Fact: Forensic evidence that might have nailed Farmer’s killer had disappeared with her body, probably forever.

  Other facts: The police were nowhere on the case, but the public and the press still wanted to know the identity of the killer.

  Cindy had used every waking moment to chase rumors, interview Faye Farmer’s friends and enemies, and in so doing had become the Chronicle’s featured headliner in print and on the Web.

  This opportunity was priceless, but in the dark and lonely night, Cindy was not at peace. She replayed her conversations with Richie over and over again, and when she stopped rationalizing, she knew that Richie was right and that she had blown it.

  She had neglected him, had put her work first, and even now was using work to cover up the pain of losing the very excellent man she loved.

  Cindy had expected him to call her, and when it was clear that he wasn’t going to do it, she’d called him.

  And now here she was.

  Richie was staying at the Marina Motel, a cluster of old, two-story, Mediterranean-style structures with red tile roofs and iron railings around the balconies. At 8:15 p.m., Cindy pulled into the motel’s parking lot, nosed her car into a spot between a pickup truck and a station wagon, and turned off the ignition.

  She looked up at the second floor, picked out the room, saw Richie’s silhouette against the curtains. She got out of her car and walked up the outdoor steps, her heart hammering as she walked along the pathway to room 208 and knocked on the door.

  Richie called out, “Hey,” came to the door, and opened it. He had a towel around his waist and his hair was wet. He was backlit by the yellow light coming from the bathroom.

  He looked good.

  He said, “Come in, come in.”

  He pointed the remote control at the TV, switched off the sound.

  “Hi, Rich,” she said.

  She thought he might kiss her hello, but he said, “Have a seat. Give me a second, okay?”

  Cindy looked around at the plain, clean furnishings and at Richie’s familiar clothes draped over the desk chair. He pulled his clothes off the chair, disappeared into the bathroom, and closed the door. That reminded Cindy of the many days, weeks, and months they’d lived together, dressed and undressed in front of each other, feeling neither modest nor inhibited.

  Now all that had changed.

  Cindy swept the remote off the table and boosted the volume, watched the rehash of the crash outside the ballpark, then muted the volume again when Richie came back into the room. He was dressed, barefoot.

  He sat down on the end of the bed. She thought she saw tenderness in his face. She knew that he must miss her as much as she missed him. They’d had the real thing. And she knew that it wasn’t over.

  He said, “You saw reports on this crash, huh? It was brutal.”

  “I miss you, Richie.”

  He looked at her, his eyes soft, and she thought he was going to say, “I miss you, too.”

  But he got up, took some socks out of the dresser, brought them back to the bed, and sat down. He was still mad at her. That’s what it was.

  “I started therapy, Richie. I th
ought I should get some help, you know? My therapist’s name is Mary. She’s very good. And I was wondering if you’d come and see her, too. With me.”

  There was a pause; maybe it lasted only a couple of seconds, but it felt eternal.

  Rich said, “Ah. I don’t think so, Cindy.”

  Cindy felt sick. Cold and sick. “You don’t want to see if we could work this out?”

  Richie stood up, reached out his hand and pulled her to her feet, took her into his arms and held her.

  He said, “Cindy, it’s not that I didn’t love you.”

  “Don’t say ‘didn’t.’ Don’t say that.”

  “Cin, what’s wrong with us can’t be fixed in therapy. I don’t want to force you to sacrifice what you want. And I don’t want to give up my dreams for a family.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as she shoved him away, turned from him, and started to cry. “I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

  Chapter 110

  WE WERE AT Susie’s Café in the back room, the booth by the window. It was happy hour on a Friday night and “our place” was packed tight to the walls. Conversation was almost impossible, but Cindy, Claire, Yuki, and I really needed to connect with one another, and so we shouted over the noise and gestured wildly with our hands.

  An old dude at the bar had sent over a pitcher of tap, so I guess we looked good enough to go out in public, but Cindy was devastated, Claire was depressed, I still smelled like a fire pit, and I hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours.

  Yuki, however, looked as though she’d been granted three wishes: world peace, eternal youth, and everlasting love. The girl was happy. And she does love her fruity margaritas.

  At the moment, Cindy had the talking stick.

  “Just tell me that Richie isn’t showing up here, okay? Promise me that,” she said.

  Last time the girls had been to Susie’s, Rich had crashed the party, after which he and Cindy had broken up. Since then, Cindy had been nursing regret and hope. Now she took us through her horrible encounter with Richie at the Marina Motel, reporting the dialogue between them verbatim.

  I felt like I was in the room with her, watching Richie pull on his socks, then hug her and tell her it was over. The entire time she’d been wishing that he was in their bed, telling her that he was sorry, too, and not to worry anymore.

  Claire put her arm around Cindy and Cindy wept against her bosom. I’d never seen Cindy cry in public before and it just killed me to see her in such pain.

  Lorraine appeared at our table with a giant platter of Buffalo wings, placed them in front of us, and put a hand on Cindy’s shoulder.

  She said, “I don’t think wings will take your mind off a man who probably wasn’t worth your time, Cindy, but the fact is they’re delicious. And they’re on the house.”

  Cindy smiled through her tears, and after Lorraine had gone, Cindy said, “Will someone else talk? Please?”

  Claire kept her arm around Cindy and told us about the latest affront she’d suffered at the incompetent hands of Dr. Morse. She said emphatically that she would give up chocolate for a year if she could just get a decent lead into the recovery of Faye Farmer’s body.

  We batted the missing-body case around for a while, then Yuki took the floor to gloat—graciously—about the road trip to Bolinas, telling us how Brady reeled in Keith Herman and how insanely awesome it felt to have gotten that stupendous crud off the street.

  Claire said, “I don’t think I get Lynnette Lagrande. Did she want Jennifer Herman out of the way or not?”

  Yuki shrugged and said, “How can you comprehend crazy? I spent a lot of time with that woman, so trust me when I say she’s completely nuts. But her story is that she had nothing against Jennifer. She loved Keith, and after being strung along for a couple of years, she was over it—but at the same time still pissed off. And she wanted Keith to pay.”

  I said, “Over it, but she still wanted payback?”

  “Yeah,” said Yuki. “That’s what she says. So she set up the meeting for Keith with her new cop boyfriend, hoping Keith would be arrested for hiring a hit man. But Keith made the cop as a cop.”

  “So he decided to take out Jennifer himself?” Claire said.

  “Right. Divorce by homicide. According to Keith, he didn’t want his wife to end up with Lily. He’s a psycho, but he loves his little girl.”

  I thought about Julie and looked at Claire. She had to be thinking about her little girl, Ruby Rose, too.

  I sang a line from an old song: “Thank heaven for little girrrls.”

  I raised my mug and clinked it against Claire’s.

  Claire said solemnly, “And big girls, too. Getting bigger every day.”

  Cindy cracked up and hoisted her beer. Yuki raised what remained of her second watermelon margarita and we touched glasses across the table.

  Yuki said, “To us.”

  We said it in unison and with feeling.

  “To us.”

  EPILOGUE

  A BAD DAY FOR PRO FOOTBALL

  Chapter 111

  AT EIGHT THAT morning, I was working at my desk across from Conklin when Brenda called to me from the far side of the bull pen.

  “Sarge, I’ve got incoming from a sheriff in Nevada. You want the call?”

  Brady was out of the building, so I was in charge.

  “Transfer it over,” I said.

  The light on my phone console blinked. I picked up the receiver, tapped the button, and said my name and rank into the mouthpiece.

  The man on the other end of the line said he was Sergeant Cosmo Rinker of the White Pine County, Nevada, sheriff ‘s department.

  He said, “Sergeant, we’ve got two DBs out here, and you might be looking for them.”

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “Well,” Rinker said, “what happened was, this UFO group saw a bright light on the horizon a couple of weeks ago, thought it was a close encounter of the little green kind. But when they got to it, turns out to be a vehicle completely consumed by fire.”

  I wondered what an incinerated vehicle had to do with us. But the sergeant had hooked me, and the man liked to tell the story his way.

  “After the highway patrol called us, we got to see what was inside this burned-up Escalade. It was the cremains of two bodies in the rear cargo area, both of them female.”

  We were missing two female bodies, which was an inexcusable tragedy, an embarrassment to San Francisco law enforcement, and a very bad blow to a very good friend of mine.

  “I’m listening, Sergeant. Please go on.”

  “Sure, sure; I’m getting there. One of the females had a bullet that went into her head and out the other side. The other female also had a gunshot to the head, but the bullet was fragmented and forensically worthless. But our lab did get a hit on the dental work of that first female and that’s why I called you.”

  “What’s the victim’s name?”

  “She’s this Faye Farmer you’re looking for, got stolen from your ME’s office. We can’t ID the other victim.”

  Rinker was still talking as I typed an instant message to Richie. FAYE FARMER FOUND. I sent it to his computer. He typed back !!!!!?????

  I said, “Sergeant Rinker, where are the two bodies now?”

  “They’re at the ME’s office in Las Vegas. But I think you should come see us here in Ely pretty soon. I think maybe we’ve got a lead on the doer.”

  “Put the coffee on, Sergeant. We’ll be right there,” I said.

  Chapter 112

  IT TOOK FOUR hours for Conklin, Claire, and me to get to McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. Then it was a four-hour drive in a rental car to a speck of a place fifty miles north of nowhere on a small track of road leading out into the desert.

  The White Pine County sheriff ‘s barracks were sided in white aluminum, with a line of small windows facing the road and a sign on the front reading PUBLIC SAFETY BUILDING.

  We parked, stepped out into the blazing sun, and shielded our eyes with our hands so tha
t we could view the distant blue hills at the farthest edge of the scrub and the endless open sky above us.

  Moments later we went through the glass doors, identified ourselves to the desk officer, then waited in the dark reception room until a lanky man in a tan uniform opened an interior door.

  “Good to see you all,” he said. “Come on back.”

  Rinker’s office was lit with an overhead fluorescent fixture. File cabinets flanked his door, and his hat hung from a rack of antlers directly behind his chair. There was a framed picture of the Three Stooges in police uniforms and a dozen plaques on the walls.

  We took seats around Rinker’s desk, and after introductions were made, the sergeant opened a file on his computer and turned the monitor around.

  “Can everyone see?”

  We looked at photos of the torched Escalade from all sides, including a close-up of what looked like a red Frisbee in the backseat. That red disk had once been a plastic five-gallon gas container, and was likely the fire’s point of origin.

  Next Rinker showed us images of the interior of the cargo section at the back of the burned car. Along with the jack and the remains of the spare tire were two corpses, charred to the point of being what firefighters call crispy critters.

  Rinker said, “Our ME removed the bodies. Usually, when you take the bodies out, there will be carpet or something under them—clothes, maybe—that didn’t burn. But this fire burned long and hot. All we got was ash and a few pieces of metal you can see in this picture here.

  “Now, these are the reports from the ME.”

  He handed the records to Claire, who skimmed the forms, knowing just what she was looking for.

  “‘Jane Doe 91, cause of death, bullet to the head,’” she said. “‘Manner of death, homicide.’ May I see that photo of the artifacts again?”

  Rinker pulled it up and Claire scrutinized the scorched litter until she saw what she was looking for.

  “That buckle looks like it came from a gun belt. I’m just speculating, but until proven otherwise, I’m thinking this Jane Doe is Tracey Pendleton, still missing, still unaccounted for.”