Back in Black (McGinnis Investigations #1) - Rhys Ford Page 0,11
and with a personality big enough to rest the world’s weight on. I briefly thought about telling her it was nothing, but one did not lie to Claudia Dubois. So I gave her the whole story, not leaving out one thing, including the flappy man bits poking out of the sheep costume.
“Huh,” she finally said when my story ran down. “I’m not saying people don’t have the God-given right to do anything they want in their bedroom or with who they want, so long as no animal or child is hurt, but you’d think they’d have the common sense to not get caught flying their perversions out in the open.”
“That’s funny,” Bobby said as he came through the office’s wooden screen door. “People still say that about guys like me and Cole.”
“Tell Bobby about the sheep thing and see what he says then.” Claudia sniffed, patting a stray curl down. “I’ve got some billing to do. You figure out if you’re going to go meet that man about his dead wife, but mark my words, Cole, you take that case and this nice quiet life that you’ve had over the past couple of years is going to blow up into a mess of trouble like you haven’t seen in a long time.”
“SO YOU haven’t heard a damned whisper from this guy since… he and his wife came tucked tail into your office after she tried to blow your head off?” Bobby whistled a low, keening note. Then he chuckled when a woman being dragged by a trio of yappy long-haired Dachshunds walked past and gave him a filthy look. “Trust me, lady, as cute as your dogs are, I’m whistling at my friend here.”
The woman hurried past, ignoring my apologies for Bobby’s brashness.
“Swear to God, one day someone’s going to punch you in the nose for being an asshole,” I muttered, closing the Rover’s driver-side door. “Or maybe just punch you in general. Quit being a dick.”
“It’s kind of what I’m known for, Princess,” he jabbed back, giving me a wicked, disarming smile.
I didn’t know what my half brother, Ichi, saw in him. Despite being older than me by almost twenty years, Bobby was a fit, silvering, handsome rogue who’d treated monogamy like a disease before Ichi rolled into town. Then he fell hard, swore off all other men, and became a fiercely loyal husband. He was still a dick, though, and he often dragged me on long runs or hounded me into the gym and boxing ring so he could pound bruises into my delicate flesh, all in the name of keeping me healthy and fit.
Bobby could wipe the floor with me and often did. Still, he was a good guy to watch my back when I went out on my more dangerous jobs. And as a former LAPD detective who’d spent his years wearing a badge safely in the closet, he had a hell of a lot more connections with the boys in blue than I did. I’d spent my time on the force out and probably dealt out more than my share of attitude when clashing with the more old-school cops. Things were different now. I was different now. I’d come out of the other side of the shooting a different man, and Bobby had been sitting next to my hospital bed when I pulled out of my coma, sitting beside me because I was a brother in blue and ashamed he’d hidden in that closet instead of helping me batter down LAPD’s homophobic walls.
I loved him like a brother. It just took me a bit to accept he loved my brother like… well… I didn’t even want to think about what he and my baby brother got up to.
“Just try not to be a dick to Mister Brinkerhoff. He’s an old man, and he just lost his wife,” I reminded Bobby. “I don’t even know why he called me. This should be something he leaves up to the cops.”
“A lot of people don’t like to involve the cops, because it means opening up their lives to some intense scrutiny,” he shot back. “And if O’Byrne is doing her job right, she’s got to take a hard look at him, because the spouse is always the first person you suspect.”
“From what I remember of the old guy, he just didn’t strike me as a murderer.” I stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the two-story 1940s home set back from the street and shrouded by mature trees.