Good Morning, Killer

“The Fresno Police Department. I saw a request for a recommendation he passed on to the chief. He wants to get a job up there and — just — never come back.”

She covered her mouth with her fingertips and stared at me with a look of alarm.

What sense did this make? My first thought was, no, he would never leave his father’s house. Not quit the department this close to retirement.

“You seem awfully upset about Andrew leaving. If he’s leaving.”

And what about us moving in together?

“You don’t know,” she breathed.

Margaret’s eyes were small and wounded with an aggressive kind of deprivation. Her arms were folded and her shoulders pinched as she peered out from a nest of resentment. She was hurting and would find somebody to blame — me, the dry cleaner, Andrew. She would gather her powers and punish us all.

“There’s no way you could know,” Margaret said. “You’re not inside the department. Andrew is the greatest guy on earth, but he’s fickle, very fickle, so be forewarned. He was the exact same way with me, after my husband died. I needed the comfort, understand what I’m saying?” I did, all right.

“Andrew was the only one who really, really knew me.”

Watching her. His best buddy’s sexy and ambitious wife. Margaret had retrieved a water bottle from somewhere and was taking a drink, keeping watch on me over the glinting plastic.

“I’m not going to apologize for it. You’ll be happy to know, he dumped me, too.” She kicked at the dry cleaning. “He thinks he’s angry, but my anger is bigger than his. Ha! I am the Thunder Goddess!”

“Is this a joke?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you a joke, Margaret, or just unbelievably cruel?”

The thing I resented most was how Andrew got us to fight over him in a parking lot.

“No, it’s terribly, terribly sad. I’m sad for you because you’re going to get hurt.”

“Enough.” I gripped the briefcase. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Woman to woman? You’re not the only one on his plate. It’s that Oberbeck bitch-and-a-half, too, but that’s the way they are. Senior detectives, I love them to death, but they think they’re God’s gift.”

This was something else. Not just lunacy, but lunacy with a barbed point.

“Time-out. Are we talking about Andrew Berringer and Sylvia Oberbeck?”

“Why?” she asked, terrifyingly coy. “Who wants to know?”

I turned around and walked back to my car, making sure to grind my heels as deeply and destructively into as many of Margaret Forrester’s slithery garments as possible.

Which way — the freeway, or the streets? Where was I going? To the office. Why? To talk to Rick. Rick had called me, right? He had seen the posting on Richard Brennan and wanted to pursue the lead. It was hard work thinking these thoughts, like lifting fifty-pound boxes, stacking one on top of the other. I was in some kind of a wind tunnel. A hallway. I was doing this work of thinking, stacking up the awkward facts (Margaret was jealous, crazy, unreliable), and at the end of the hallway there was Andrew.

There was Andrew and Officer Sylvia Oberbeck, whose character became instantly revised, from sensitive first responder at the M&Ms’ to dumb jock blonde with the fake fingernails and neat French braid that I could never manage, voluptuous underneath the uniform, and canny, too; she never gave it away (neither of them did), but you knew how it worked, she was there every day in the trenches, liked drinking beer and playing pool, a working-class girl with a couple of exes, as lonely and miserable and reckless as the rest of the squad, which she was probably screwing on a regular basis.

He slept with Margaret, too? After her husband died?

Was that possible? Was I nuts?

I called him.

“What’s the matter? You sound upset. Is it about the case?”

“Are you seeing someone else?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I heard you’re going out with Sylvia Oberbeck.”

“No.”

“Tell me the truth and we can move on.”

“I’m not seeing Sylvia Oberbeck. Where did you get this information?”

“Margaret Forrester.”

“Margaret is pathological.”

“I know, but she says you’re screwing Oberbeck, and also, get this, that you slept with her when the Hat died.”

“Listen to me. Ana? Are you listening?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You’re not crying, baby.”

“Just tell me the truth.”

“Do you know what we call Margaret? The Black Widow. Do you know why? Because she killed the Hat. Might as well have. Might as well have pulled the trigger on the gun.”

“I thought it was a baseball bat.”

“Whatever! She pushed that sorry bastard into an untenable situation. And he was a really good man. Work late. Move up. Volunteer for dangerous assignments. Make money. Money, money, money. She’s a greedy lying bitch, and she doesn’t like you.” “That’s clear.”

“She’s jealous as hell because you’re the boss—”

“And sleeping with you.”

“I’m sorry it came down this way. What can I tell you? This is how she operates.”

“I don’t care how she operates, all I care about is you and me. Is that pathetic?”

“Ana—”

“I can’t talk now, I have to get back. My supervisor’s calling. We have a suspect — a guy from Arizona, five arrests for rape, no convictions, name is Ray Brennan. Former marine.”

“Bingo.”

“Your idea. Good work.”

“Feeling better?”

“No.”

“What can I do for you, baby?”

“Tell me where you were last night.”

“Chasing a Spanish guy down an alley.”

“What went down?”

“Pickpocket.”

“Where? The Promenade.”

“Yep.”

“Catch him?”

“What do you think?” Andrew said. “Sixteen years old, runs like a rabbit.”

Rick said, “It’s about your ninety-day file review.”

“I turned in my files.”

“And every one of your cases says, ‘Unaddressed work due to the Santa Monica kidnapping.’”

“Be fair, Rick, not every one.”

I had not gone into the office. After speaking with Andrew, I had been able to drive no more than a mile