I called Duke again. Twice. No answer. No answering machine either. Duke really needed to get into the twenty-first century and I mentally added items onto my Christmas-present-buying list.
Then the door opened to the Marianne Meyer walked in.
Marianne Meyer lived next door to the Nightingale’s in Washington Park all the while we were growing up. She was between Lee and Ally and me in age and she was a good friend. She had been fettered by a scoliosis brace in junior high and orthodontics in high school. She married a jerk, got a divorce and moved back in with her parents a year ago. Marianne was taking her divorce hard and living with her parents at age thirty-one harder. She was five foot five and used to be cute as a button, but the divorce was taking its toll and she was drowning her sorrows in Oreos. She was a nurse at Pres-St. Luke’s, took the evening shifts so she’d have her days free and had made house-hunting a full-time hobby.
She rushed up to me at the espresso counter, her cheeks flushed.
“I heard you finally hooked up with Lee Nightingale,” she said.
Shit, shit, shit.
Marianne was intimately acquainted with my lifelong crush and had been recruited for some of my Lee Maneuvers in the past. She probably thought I was in seventh heaven and needed a friend to take me wedding-dress-shopping.
“We’re taking it slow,” I said.
“Have you… you know… done it yet?” Her eyes were beginning to glaze over at the very thought of doing it with the legendary Liam Nightingale.
“Nope.”
“What are you waiting for?” she nearly shouted and if she’d reached across the counter and grabbed me by my shirt and shook me, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I took Marianne’s mind off Lee with a mocha, heavy on the chocolate syrup and whipped cream.
After Marianne left, making me promise to phone her the minute I did it with Lee and give her all the details (not gonna happen), I called Hank.
I did this because I thought maybe Rosie might do something stupid, like hock the diamonds and go to San Salvador. According to him, he was owed fifty dollars for some of the “primo” grass I never knew that he grew in his basement and the guy gave him a gazillion dollars worth of diamonds.
That was seriously fishy and Rosie was seriously stupid for taking the damn things.
Though, what did one do when presented with a fortune of diamonds? Say no?
I didn’t actually blame Rosie for wanting to cash in his windfall and skip town.
Personally, I wouldn’t have picked San Salvador though.
If Rosie successfully skipped, and Lee was right in what he said last night, this meant that Rosie would be in San Salvador and there was a good possibility that either Lee or I or both of us would be target practice (I really shouldn’t have mouthed off to those guys and I was in whole-hearted agreement with Lee, I’m sure he’d been shot at tons of times and if he didn’t like it, I’d never like it).
This would also mean I owed Lee big time for putting his life in danger. Not to mention my life would be in danger and I’d have a hard time talking myself out of ha**ng s*x with Lee (at least once) before I died.
Further, I’d never replace Rosie at the espresso machine. He had a God-given talent, no joke. He was the Picasso of Coffee.
The first thing Hank said, “I hear you’ve finally hooked up with Lee.”
Shit.
Kitty Sue, the fastest dialing fingers in the West.
Something had to be done.
“Not exactly,” I responded.
“Yeah, takin’ it slow.”
“Something like that.” Really slow. Snail-with-a-hernia slow. “Listen, can I talk to you about something?”
“Anything.”
“Can you step out of your cop shoes for five minutes?”