in one with my lieutenant.
Brady saw her watching him, tossed the football aside, and ran toward us. He grabbed Yuki out of the chair, hoisted her over his shoulder, and made a run for the space between the two saplings that marked the goal line.
Yuki shrieked and kicked melodramatically as Brady did the happy dance around the trees, then put Yuki on her feet and kissed her. With their arms around each other, they came back to the patio, laughing.
Man. They were disgustingly happy.
But I didn’t begrudge Yuki a bit of it. Between Yuki and Jacobi, Brady had let my end run fade without so much as a wrist slap.
Damn. It was good to have friends.
Joe called my name. He had the ball, so I stood, ran out, and waved my hands in the air until he tossed it to me. Cindy threw off her blanket and went for a pass, doing some little moves with her hips that had never before been seen in football.
I threw the ball to her, a surprisingly tight spiral, if I do say so, and she whooped and yelled as she caught it. Conklin came off the sidelines and chased and tackled her, and then, even though I didn’t have the ball, Joe tackled me. He tucked me under his body and rolled with me so that I landed on top of him, never even touching the ground.
We were all acting like a bunch of kids. And you know what? We needed to be kids. It was wonderful to just laugh our heads off. That’s what I was thinking when a minute later Brady came over to me at the barbecue and pulled me aside. He leaned toward me, close enough to whisper in my ear.
He said, “For insubordination, Boxer, you’re on night shift for the next six weeks.”
It sucked, but I knew he was right. I had broken the rules.
What could I say? “Okay, Lieutenant, I understand.”
Chapter 121
WE ATE like we never expected to eat again.
When Joe’s secret-sauced ribs had been picked clean, the salad had been reduced to a film of olive oil in the bowl, and all that remained of the baked potatoes was a pile of foil in the recycle bin, we went inside the house.
Claire busted out the cake while Edmund popped the top on the Krug. It was one of the best champagnes, at least a hundred bucks a bottle.
“Introducing my original white-chocolate cheesecake with cream cheese and orange slices between the layers,” Claire said, putting it down on the dining room table. “Baked sour cream frosting, and Grand Marnier in a graham cracker crust. Voila! I hope you like it.”
The applause was spontaneous and rousing, and I was pushed forward so that I could be next to my best friend. There were ten candles on the cake, standing for the tenth anniversary of the first time Claire and I met.
It had been a memorable occasion: It was my first week in Homicide, and Claire was the low woman on the totem pole in the ME’s Office. We’d been called to the men’s jail. A skinhead was down, three hundred pounds of swastika tattoos and muscle, wedged under his bunk and handcuffed. Not breathing.
The guard outside was in a high panic. He had cuffed the inmate and put him in his cell because the inmate was out of control, and now he was dead.
“He couldn’t find the keys to the cuffs,” Claire said. “And we couldn’t turn the body over.”
Claire was laughing as I told about her locking her kit outside the cell, then dropping her camera so hard she cracked the lens.
“And so Claire bends down for her camera, and I back into the guy’s toilet, which sends me down,” I said. “I reach out to grab on to something — anything — and end up grabbing his still under the sink. And the hooch sloshes all over me. I mean
Edmund has this big laugh: “Hah-hah-hah.”
He was pouring champagne into the good crystal glasses. I started to lift my flute of bubbly, but put the glass down.
Claire was snickering now, and Yuki’s trilling laugh was sounding the high notes.
“We get back to the morgue,” Claire continued, “stinking of hooch.”
“Disgusting,” I said. “But it was a no-brainer what killed him.”
“No-brainer?” said Claire. “No-brainer for
“He OD’d?” Brady asked.
“Didn’t take much,” Claire said. “If you’re distilling hooch in tin cans — and he was — it turns to methanol. Three ounces’ll kill you dead.”
“I can’t hear that story too many times,” Cindy said, laughing.
She plucked the candles out of the cake one at a time and licked the bottoms clean, making Conklin shake his head and laugh.
Yuki brought out the plates and forks, and Edmund handed me my sleeping goddaughter, Ruby Rose Washburn, a child as cute as ten buttons.
Claire hugged me tight, the baby between us.
“Happy anniversary, Linds,” said my best friend.
I had a lot of thoughts, and images came to me of a lot of murders and late nights working with Claire to solve them. It had been trial by fire every single time.
“And many more years together, girlfriend,” I said.
We were still laughing an hour later, and then it was time to go. After I’d hugged and kissed all my buds good night — and yes, even my fine lieutenant — Joe and I headed back to town.
It was wonderfully peaceful inside that car.
I said to Joe, “It was hard not to tell anyone.”
“I know. But let’s keep it to ourselves for now, Blondie.”
My handsome husband shot me a smile. Patted my thigh.
“Six weeks on night duty, huh?” he said.
“I dissed the lieutenant. I deserve it. Still, I did the right thing.”
“I’m going to have the whole bed to myself for forty-two nights. And here I am, married at last.”
“We can fool around when I get in at eight-thirty a.m.,” I said.
I leaned over and kissed Joe’s cheek as we took a turn onto Lake Street. Centrifugal force and a whole lot of love glued us together.
“Whoaaaaaa!” I squealed.
Damn, I was happy.
Epilogue. WIN/WIN
Chapter 122
YUKI AND RED DOG Parisi walked down the green terrazzo hallway toward Judge LaVan’s chambers. Yuki
