“She called you?” Yuki pulled back, her face flattened in surprise.
“She called Joe. I picked up his phone.”
Claire got up from her chair, wrapped her arms around me, squeezed the tears right out of my eyes.
Yuki went on as if I weren’t crying, as if Claire weren’t beaming stop signs at her with her eyes.
“Did you ask Joe about this?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He admitted it?”
I shook my head no.
Cindy reached across the table and clutched my hands.
Yuki said, “So, just to make sure I’ve got this right, Joe denies the affair.”
“He’s lying about it, yes. So I kicked him out of the house.”
Claire said, “Honey, what did this woman say?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t talk anymore.
Cindy let go of my hands and gave me a wad of paper napkins stamped with MacBain’s logo: the planet Earth whirling through a sudsy amber sky.
I sobbed into the napkins. It was disgraceful. It was pathetic. I couldn’t stop crying. Yuki shook my arm like she was a terrier and my arm was a sock doll.
“Lindsay, do you think it’s serious? Maybe it just happened and he can get you to forgive him.”
By then Cindy had typed Freundorfer into her iPad and pulled up the benefit story. She held up the candid photo of Joe with his mistress looking adoringly into his face.
“Oh my God,” Yuki said. “Oh, Lindsay. I’m going to be sick.”
I loosed some fresh tears and then all of us were crying. It seemed a little less pathetic when we were all wet together, but still: Joe was having an affair, my baby and I were alone, and I wanted to die. Before I could drown myself in root beer, my blinking phone rang.
Was it Joe?
No. It was Brady. He was with Conklin.
I hugged and kissed my friends, then fled down the stairs.
Chapter 72
I parked the Explorer behind Brady’s unmarked sedan on the north side of Ivy, a one-way residential street in Hayes Valley dotted with trees and lined with ordinary single and multifamily houses built so close together there was no space between them.
Jacobi’s brown, shingled house was at the far end of the block, and although he had a garage that took up the ground floor, his black Hyundai SUV was parked on the street.
Jacobi had a black SUV — like half the law enforcement officers in California.
Brady and Conklin got out of the unmarked and Conklin got into the Explorer beside me.
Brady stooped down by the window, said, “We’ve had a team on him all day. He came in about an hour ago. Lights went on. He’s probably in for the night.”
“I take it you didn’t catch him killing anyone?”
Brady ignored my tone. “You and Conklin do four hours. Narcotics will spell you at eleven. If he leaves the house, call me.”
“Yes, sir.”
I watched Brady get into his car, then I pulled out my phone, saw three messages from Joe, and ignored them. I arranged dog-sitting for Martha, then leaned back.
I must have sighed. “So you ready to tell me what’s going on, Linds? I’m not going to leave you alone until you spill.”
My mind was still in high gear, boosted by my surging hormones and the whole crappy day.
“Have you cheated on Cindy?” I asked him.
His mouth fell open and he stared at me, a look of shock and disappointment on his face I hadn’t seen in all the years I’d known him.
“Why would you ask me that? Is that what she thinks? Did Cindy say that to you?”
“No. So, have you, Rich?”
“No. Hell no. Seriously, is this what you’ve been thinking? Is this what’s got you all jammed up?”
Conklin’s gaze left me, went past me and through my window, but his shocked expression didn’t change. I heard a hard rapping on the glass.
I swung my head, saw Jacobi’s face right there. He was scowling. He knew that we weren’t parked on his street by accident.
He signaled to me to roll down my window, and I did it.
All I could get out of my mouth was “Jacobi” before he lit into me, lit into us both.
“How nice of you to visit. You are visiting, right, Boxer? You too, Conklin. My old friends, stopping by to see how I’m getting along?”
“It’s a stakeout,” I said miserably.
“You’re tailing me.”
I dropped my head. I was ashamed and mortified. Jacobi gripped the window frame and shook it as if he were rattling bars on a cage.
“You think I’m that Revenge shooter? Is that it, Boxer? I don’t hear from you for weeks, months, then, suddenly, ‘Can you help me with my cases, Warren?’
“I don’t know how many thousands of hours I worked with both of you,” he spat. “Put my life in your hands and vice versa.” He looked at me, then at Conklin, then turned his hooded eyes back to me.
“You turn my stomach, both of you.”
“Jacobi, I’m sorry. Wait!”
“That’s Chief. Chief Jacobi.” He turned away, stalked off with his wooden gait. The silence in the car rang like a bell.
Conklin said, “I’m going after him.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I called Brady.
“Is Jacobi leaving the house?” he asked me.
“Brady, he made us. He made us and he called us out.”
Chapter 73
Conklin came home to the apartment he shared with Cindy. It was completely dark except for the light in the kitchen. That meant that Cindy had been working for hours and hadn’t gotten up to turn on the rest of the lights.
He put his keys in the dish on the hall table, called out, “Honey, I’m home.” Heard a faint “Hey” in response.
He hung up his coat and gun, went into the kitchen, saw Cindy at the table exactly as he’d pictured her.
Her head was bent over her laptop, eyes obscured by the blond curls falling across her face, fingers dancing over the keys. She paused, turned, lifted her face for a kiss, and, after getting a peck, said, “Everything okay?”
“Had a completely terrible day is all.” Cindy said, “Did anyone die?”
“No.”
“Shots fired?”
He laughed. “Has to be a shooting for it to be a bad day?”
“Then — can you tell me about it later, Richie, because I’ve got to get this done.”
