Want To Play (Monkeewrench)

Grace nodded and put a finger to her lips, then cringed as Annie smiled mischievously and sang out, ‘Rise and shine you slobs!’

There was a brief pause, then Harley shouted back. ‘Annie, you are a dead woman!’

Instead of running for cover and cowering in a corner at the sound of Harley’s shout, Charlie lifted his head, barking playfully. It never ceased to amaze Grace that a dog with a pathological fear of almost everything was so perfectly comfortable with these people that even their shouts didn’t scare him.

Roadrunner popped up, startled and looking a little shell-shocked. ‘What? What?!’

‘Nightmare, Roadrunner,’ Harley rasped. ‘Go back to sleep.’

Annie bustled around Grace and flipped the kitchen wall switch on high, blasting the adjacent living room with several hundred watts of light.

Harley lurched up to sitting position, emerging from under the blanket like a whale surfacing for air. ‘You are a loathsome creature,’ he mumbled, scrubbing at his wildly tangled ponytail. His mood lifted when he noticed her outfit and he gave her a very intentional once-over. ‘What are you supposed to be? The Great Big Pumpkin?’

Annie scrunched herself up in Quasimodo style and clawed the air with her nails. ‘Ha-ha. I’m the ghost of your worst Halloween nightmare past.’

‘No, you’re much sexier than she was.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Get up, it’s already six A.M. Breakfast time. That mean anything to you, smart-ass?’

Harley cocked his head and gave Annie an adoring smile. ‘It means I take back anything bad I’ve ever said about you.’

Charlie was now bounding into the living room like an overgrown puppy to start a gleeful campaign of face- licking. Harley fell on his back and submitted to the dog’s ministrations. ‘Help! Help! I’m being attacked by a mop!’

‘You’ll hurt his feelings,’ Grace said, watching with a smile as the elated dog moved on to his next victim.

Roadrunner hugged Charlie and gave his back a vigorous scratching. ‘You want to go for a jog, buddy?’

Charlie dropped to his haunches, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

‘Huh? What do you say?’

He barked his answer and loped toward the door.

Roadrunner yawned and stood up, looking almost fresh except for the large cowlick that stuck up from the back of his head. ‘Is it okay if I take him out for a run?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

Harley looked around at them with a sour expression. ‘What’s the matter with you people? Why is everyone so goddamned perky?’

‘Maybe because we didn’t drink two bottles of wine apiece last night,’ Annie said snidely.

‘For your information, Miss Holier-Than-Thou, that is not wine, it’s Bordeaux. And at two hundred bucks a bottle, I had to finish what your uncivilized palate could not. You don’t open a bottle of ’89 Lynch-Bages, have a glass, then chuck it.’ He fumbled in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet on a chain. ‘Roadrunner, stop at Mell-O Glaze on your way back and get me a box of those apple beignets.’

Roadrunner held up his hand. ‘My treat.’

Harley’s brows shot up. ‘You’re buying? What is this, the end of the world?’

‘The end of the world comes when you stop being an asshole. See you guys in half an hour.’

Grace was unloading food from the refrigerator. ‘Harley, go upstairs and lie down in the guest room. We’ll call you for breakfast.’

Harley stood up and stretched. ‘Nah, that’s okay. Just give me a carton of orange juice and ten aspirin and I’ll be fine.’

Grace held up a pitcher of orange juice. ‘Come and get it.’

Harley strode into the kitchen, took the pitcher from her, and set it down on the counter. Then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. ‘I want you to know that I’m not afraid of cholesterol.’

Grace chuckled. ‘Good thing, because I just went grocery shopping. Ham, bacon, eggs, sausage, potatoes, cheese . . .’

‘I died and woke up in heaven.’ He swooned, making a beeline for the coffeemaker.

Annie was now at the cutting board with sleeves rolled up and knife in hand, poised over an enormous ham. ‘This reminds me of college,’ she said happily, sawing off the first slab. ‘Remember when we used to have crash- overs, then pull out whatever was left over in the fridge and cook it up in the morning?’

Grace went to work cracking eggs into a ceramic bowl. ‘God, we made some disgusting stuff, didn’t we?’

Harley grabbed three mugs from the cupboard and hovered by the coffeemaker, waiting impatiently for it to finish its cycle. ‘What deranged individual made that lo mein omelet with goat cheese? Remember that? Jesus, that was disgusting.’

‘It was Mitch,’ Grace said. ‘He was the only aspiring epicure in the bunch.’

‘Misguided epicure,’ Harley corrected her. ‘Although I’ve got to admit, he’s come a long way. Frankly, I think his skills are wasted on Diane. She’s always eating unshelled birdseed and macrobiotic tree trimmings and crap like that.’ Harley poured coffee and added a hefty dose of cream and sugar to his. ‘Speaking of the ol’ boy, he’s probably already at the office having a nervous breakdown alone. I’d better give him a call and fill him in.’

‘Invite him over for lo mein omelets,’ Grace said.

Harley went into the office to call Mitch while Annie started her baking powder biscuits and Grace set the table. When Harley emerged five minutes later, he was shaking his head.

‘What?’ Annie and Grace asked simultaneously.

‘Bad news, kids. The Monkeewrench connection to the murders blew wide open, along with all of Mitch’s gaskets. We’re all over the news.’

Grace sighed. ‘It was bound to happen.’

‘Just a matter of time,’ Annie said, slapping dough back and forth between her hands. ‘Anybody who played the game and saw the newspaper yesterday would have put two and two together, just like we did.’

Harley poured himself more coffee. ‘Yeah, I know, but Mitch isn’t taking it so well. Five clients already called him this morning to pull their accounts. Right now he’s crunching numbers and he says it’s not looking too good.’

‘Did you tell him about the e-mail?’ Annie asked.

‘Well, I was going to, I meant to, but the poor guy was already totally undone, and if I told him about it I’d have to explain we’ve been here all night, that we didn’t just pop over for an impromptu breakfast, and then he’d feel left out because nobody called him . . . you know. Figured it’d be better if we told him about it in person. Anyhow, he won’t be joining us for breakfast.’ Harley peered over Annie’s shoulder and watched as she cut out little circles of dough. ‘But on the plus side, that means more biscuits for me.’

Annie swatted him with a flour-covered hand.

A half hour later, they were all squeezed around the tiny kitchen table, finishing off an enormous spread of ham, bacon, potatoes, vegetable omelets, and Annie’s legendary baking powder biscuits.

Roadrunner groaned and pushed his clean plate away. ‘This beats trail mix any day, I can tell you that.’

Harley was aghast. ‘That’s all you can say? Better than trail mix? Jesus, Roadrunner, this is paradise.’ He gave Annie and Grace an apologetic shrug on Roadrunner’s behalf. ‘Pearls before swine, you know.’

Roadrunner looked at his watch. ‘I hate to be the party crasher, but we’re supposed to be at the cop shop giving interviews in a few hours. We should talk about the e-mail. Does anyone think it’s the real thing or do we brush it off as a prank?’

‘You tell us,’ Grace said. ‘You were up all night tracing it.’

Roadrunner shrugged. ‘I never did get past that first firewall. Whoever did it is pretty good. I’ll keep working on it.’

Harley reached for the coffee carafe and started refilling mugs. ‘Probably some twisted little cyberfreak getting his anonymous fifteen minutes. According to Mitch, the press has this thing covered from hell to breakfast,