hated to stop talking with my old buddy. I asked him over for dinner, said I’d take him back to his hotel after.
Even as I said it I thought about how with Sigmund, Carlo, and me, it could only be half a conversation, nobody saying what was really on their mind. At the time I thought I had divided my lives that successfully. I hoped he would say no. Sigmund knew that, too, and like a typical man didn’t try to make excuses for it.
“No,” he said.
“Are you coming to the ME’s tomorrow?”
“No again. I’ll visit Morrison because I haven’t spoken with him yet and I should have followed protocol, but Agent Coleman wanted me to be here this morning.”
“Was she worried I’d go all ten-eight on Lynch?”
“Of course not. We all knew you would maintain admirable restraint.” He lowered his voice as we got closer to the others. “Agent Coleman, on the other hand, could use a trifle more restraint. They might have ended it, but at some point I feel confident she and Hughes have had sexual relations. They’re trying so hard to not show it their body language makes them look like same-pole magnets.”
“Good old Sig, I can always count on you for some profiling parlor tricks.”
He disengaged my hand from the crook of his elbow and patted it in brotherly fashion before opening the door on my side of the car. “So tomorrow I’ll talk to Mr. Lynch. And this evening you, Stinger, have a phone call to make.”
Six
Max turned off on Golder Ranch Road to drop me off while the other two cars continued south on Oracle back into the city. As we pulled up to the house I thought of the man and two dogs who awaited me inside. While it had been great to see Sigmund again, and despite the pain of seeing Jessica’s body, maybe even because of the stress of coming face-to-face with that part of the past, as I walked back up the driveway I imagined myself pounding on the door and yelling, “Sanctuary!” That’s how good it felt when Carlo opened the front door and gave me his grin.
For a second his look faded into what I imagined was my own before he said, “Couch time,” and we all moved to the living room where the Pugs could more easily get at my face. I was doubly glad then that Sigmund was not here to see the reunion of the pack.
After an early dinner (pasta with pesto, spinach salad) and before it was time for the Pugs’ evening walk, I took the rest of my wine into the extra bedroom that had been Jane’s quilting and scrapbooking room and that Carlo had agreed could be my office when I told him I needed a space of my own the way men have their garage. I didn’t tell him it was because I couldn’t quite let go of that particular woman, Special Agent Brigid Quinn. Plus, one of these days after I learned how to be a better wife than Jane ever was, I planned to set up a little private-investigating business.
I had my desk that I brought from my old apartment, cluttered with mostly magazines I meant to read and housewares catalogs with cooking utensils that mystified me, and my laptop. A swivel desk chair. Some banker’s boxes with old tax returns and other nonoffensive files. A metal cabinet with a lock, purchased after Paul left me, for the rest.
There were a few pictures on the walls to remind me of my successes in foiling evildoers, like the one of President Reagan congratulating me for preventing a terrorist attack that no one will ever know about. Another frame held the award I got for bringing down the Thai slavery ring. Another for infiltrating the Palo Mayombe cult and in the nick of time saving a boy from being boiled alive in a cauldron. I had mixed emotions about that award because there was already another kid dead in the cauldron when we showed up; it was also the time I shot the unarmed perp.
Jane’s quilting materials were in a box in the closet along with her sewing machine.
I sat down in the desk chair, put my feet up on a nearby banker’s box, and stared at the cell phone I’d left on the desk. I thought about my outburst on the road to Mount Lemmon. If it was just a matter of dealing with Jessica, I probably would have