Born To Die

“Including the sheriff?”

“Absolutely.”

“What about Rule?” Pescoli asked, mentioning Kayan Rule, a strapping African American man who had no use for any kind of silliness. One of the more independent of the road deputies, Rule was as unlikely as anyone to be involved in Joelle’s stupid games.

“Already drew his name this morning, as did Selena.”

Great, Pescoli thought but, deciding she had been accused too many times of not being a team player, lifted her arm and reached into the basket, where she plucked one of the few remaining scraps of paper with her fingertips.

“Wonderful!” Joelle was pleased with herself. “Now, don’t forget to leave him or her little gifts at least one a week, until Christmas!”

Pescoli unfolded the piece of paper, and her stomach dropped as she read the name scrawled across the small scrap:

Cort Brewster.

“I have to draw again!” she blurted.

Joelle snatched back the basket and raised a condescending, if perfectly tweezed eyebrow. “There are no doovers, Detective. That’s what happens when you come late to the party.”

Pescoli wanted to argue the point but decided she couldn’t stoop to groveling over something so trivial. She nearly forgot her cup of coffee as she left the lunchroom, with its festive snowmen and sparkling lights, and made her way to Alvarez’s cubicle.

Her partner, as usual, was bent over paperwork. “Trade with me,” Pescoli said.

“What?” Alvarez glanced up.

“For the Secret Santa thing. Trade with me.”

For once, Alvarez actually laughed. “No way.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Pescoli grumbled.

“So don’t worry about it. Just buy some candy or a DVD or something, leave it on Brewster’s desk, and call it good.”

“You know?”

“I am a detective. No one else’s name would get you so agitated.” Her smile was knowing. “You could have some fun with this, you know.”

“It’s not that easy,” Pescoli said, thinking of how the undersheriff and she hadn’t gotten along since the debacle last year, when Jeremy had been arrested. At the time he’d been with Heidi Brewster, and her father had intervened. Pescoli hadn’t, and her son hadn’t really ever forgiven her. Nor had Cort. He seemed to blame Pescoli for her son’s and his daughter’s bad behavior.

“Sure it is. Or opt out.”

“Joelle said—”

“That it was mandatory? Seriously? The Secret Santa thing? I don’t think so, but I’ll double-check the personnel policy manual.”

“Do that,” Pescoli said, annoyed.

Alvarez’s grin widened, and she slowly shook her head. “Since when do you listen to Joelle?”

“Since I don’t want to appear to always be bucking the system.”

“Then quit bitching, okay?” Alvarez turned her attention back to the stack of papers in front of her. “I hate it when you start whining like a baby.”

“I can’t believe you bought into it,” Pescoli declared, then noticed her partner’s expression turn more serious, her eyes darken a bit. “Is this a sheriff’s department or a damned bridge club?”

“Maybe we could all use a little Christmas spirit,” Alvarez said, adding, “Don’t you have something more important to worry about?”

“Only about a million things.” Not only her work, but there was that meeting at the school later today to discuss Bianca’s waning interest in anything to do with Grizzly Falls High School. Then there was Jeremy. . always Jeremy.

“So forget Secret Santa. Who cares?”

She was right, Pescoli supposed, sipping her cooling coffee on her way to her office. It was nothing and yet she was bothered. Working with Cort Brewster and having him as her boss were bad enough; sucking up to him by buying inane little Christmas gifts turned her stomach.

“It could get worse,” Alvarez said.

“I don’t see how.”

“Joelle could have your name.”

Pescoli closed her eyes and shuddered, envisioning myriads of plastic elves, cards that sang Christmas carols, windup nutcrackers with their grouchy faces, and chocolate reindeer, which Joelle, no doubt, had already squirreled away. Soon some of those items could litter her desk, every day a new and even more ridiculous cutesy Christmas gift hidden between the gory images in her homicide files.

“Pray that isn’t so,” she muttered under her breath and found her way to her desk, where so far, thankfully, no tiny surprises from her Secret Santa lay in wait.

“You gotta let it go.” Gail Harding had sneaked up on Hayes, approaching his desk without him knowing. The department was buzzing, voices filtering over the half walls, telephones jangling. Jonas Hayes had barely noticed. He’d been lost in thought.

Shelly Bonaventure’s file lay open on his desk, her death certificate on the top of the stack of papers, her picture, a head shot taken just last year, staring up at him.

“I’m not letting anything go. Not yet.”

“Her death was ruled a suicide.” Harding pointed to the appropriate line on the certificate. “See here? Cause of death. Probable suicide.”

“Probable being the operative word.”

“Case closed. It’s over.”

Hayes shook his head and shoved back his chair. “It doesn’t hurt for me to work on this, on my own time.” He stood and, in so doing, towered over her by nearly a foot. They were an odd pair, he knew. He was an ex-jock, a black man who still kept his body honed with ratball and weights, and she was a petite white girl with spiky red hair and huge eyes.

“I’m on my way over to an ‘accident’ on Sepulveda, a few blocks from the airport. A motorcycle pulled into oncoming traffic. First reports are that there was no reason for it. It looked intentional. The Honda, with a rider on the back, got hit by an SUV going the other way. You coming?”

He grimaced. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Glancing at the file one more time, he gave it a cursory scan before shutting it and following Harding to the elevators. She was probably right. It was time to let the Shelly Bonaventure suicide go, but he just couldn’t.

They’d interviewed most of her friends and family, none of whom had seen the suicide coming. Yes, there had been a little talk of depression, and yes, her career wasn’t on the upswing, and her love life had been nonexistent for the past year, but suicide still seemed unlikely.

The bartender at Lizards had mentioned that she’d been flirting with a man who hadn’t paid with a credit card and whose image hadn’t been clear on any of the security tapes of the building. But he had left after Shelly and, according to the one camera near the front door, had headed in the opposite direction that Shelly had taken twenty minutes earlier.

Just a chance meeting at the bar?

Or something more?

“Hey!” Harding said as they pushed open the doors and stepped into the warm winter sunshine. Seventy-five degrees, and already the local stores were decorated to the max with wintry Christmas images, festooned with fake fir trees and even faker snow. Santas, reindeer, elves, and gingerbread houses were on display, and it wasn’t quite