Night work (5 page)

The lab work--blood, organs, fibers, and fingernail
scrapings-- would take days; there was no need for him to tell her
that.

"Speaking of the wife," Kate told him, "I think there's something hinky about her."

"Hinky?" Hawkin had gone to the coffeepot and paused in
the act of holding the carafe up to the light to judge its
drinkability. "What's 'hinky' mean,
anyway?"

"Odd. Strange. Out of whack. You know."

"I don't know. You've been watching that TV cop
show again, haven't you? You're worse than Jules."

"What's wrong with the way Jules talks?"
Hawkin's brilliant teenaged stepdaughter was undeniably a
handful, but Kate was very fond of her.

"Nothing, unless you want English. So, Ms. Larsen's hinky. Would you care to elaborate?"

"I was about to, until you started going hinky on me. She
looks like a typical Betsy Homemaker whose husband liked to slap her
around on Friday nights, but she's hiding something about the
murder itself. I mean, I'd say she's honestly sorry about
his death, God knows why, but she's more annoyed by the actual
murder than horrified or in denial or any of the usual reactions. Plus
that, when I asked if she knew who did it, she suddenly went all
big-eyed and innocent. Even her lawyer thought it was weird."

"Big-eyed and innocent like she did it, or like she knows who did?"

"I think she knows, or suspects anyway. She herself has an
alibi-- there was a meeting Monday night at the shelter, and after
it broke up she sat around until nearly midnight talking. I've
been trying to find out about her, but there's not much there.
She's never been arrested, never even had a traffic
violation."

"People close to her?"

"I was just getting started on tracking down her family, but
she doesn't seem to have had any real friends. Not among the
neighbors we talked to, anyway."

"Doesn't sound like the kind to know a couple of guys
who'd be willing to bash the hubby for three hundred bucks.
Still, you never know. See what you can find, and then tomorrow we can
go back down and talk to the neighbors again. Those people across the
street should be back by then."

"So should Emily Larsen."

"We can talk to her, too."

They settled in for a session of keyboards and telephones. Hawkin
was on the phone to James Larsen's supervisor at the airport when
he heard a sharp exclamation from Kate's desk, and looked up to
see a triumphant expression on her face. He finished the call and hung
up.

"Was that a 'bingo' I heard?" he asked, scribbling a note to himself.

"My Catholic upbringing showing. Emily Larsen's brother
is one of your basic bad boys. Name's Cash Strickland. In and out
of trouble since juvy, just got out of prison in January for aggravated
assault. The original charge was murder one, but he got off with a hung
jury, and the DA took a plea instead of working through a retrial on
the murder rap. Strickland's on parole in San Jose."

"Nice and close. Want to go talk with him tonight?"

Kate glanced at her watch. "The traffic will be hell, and I
wanted to be home for an early dinner. Roz Hall and her partner, Maj,
are coming over."

"The minister and the monkey's mother."

"Right. In fact, I'd bet Roz knows about women's
shelters. Maybe I'll pick her brains over dinner, see what she
knows about one Carla Lomax, attorney-at-law."

"Now, that ought to make Lee happy," Al said dryly.

"Some casual, general conversation, that's all."

"Sure. Tomorrow, then. We can do Larsen's neighbors on
the way back. Want me to call Strickland's parole officer?"

"I'll do it--he's a guy I knew when I worked
down there. What do you think--make an appointment with
Strickland, or sneak up on him?"

"I'd say talk to the PO, find out what he thinks. Of
course, if you make a date with Strickland and he bolts, that tells us
something, too."

"True. What did the airport supervisor say?"

"He gave Larsen back his job when he got out, and Larsen
lasted exactly one week before showing up drunk. The supervisor fired
him."

"All in all, not a great month for Jimmy Larsen," Kate
commented, and picked up the phone to call the parole officer assigned
to Emily Larsen's brother with the violent past, the brother
whose life went far to explain his sister's easy familiarity with
arrest proceedings and the terminology of alibi and search.

Chapter 3

THE REAPPEARANCE OF A witness to one of Kate's other cases
delayed her, and in the end she was late anyway to Lee's dinner
party. Only a little, though, and by cutting the interview short and
dodging through traffic in a manner that would have had Lee pale, she
pulled up in her driveway only half an hour after she had said she
would be home. Roz's car was parked down the block, a bashed-up
red Jeep Cherokee that still showed the signs of the rock face that her
assistant pastor had misjudged the previous summer, driving through
Yosemite with the youth group on a camping trip. Roz had no doubt found
better use for the insurance check than paint repair.

Kate let herself in, settled for a quick scrub of the hands in lieu
of a shower and a change of clothes, and slipped into the empty chair
while the entree was still on the table. She glanced uneasily at Lee,
and decided to opt for humor: she seized her spoon and twisted her face
into a parody of winsomeness.

"Please, Mum, may I have some, too?"

Lee was not amused, but she relented enough to take Kate's
plate and fill it. Kate said hello to Roz and Maj, asked after
Mina-the-monkey (who was two doors down the street at the moment,
dining with a friend from school on the forbidden fare of fish sticks
and chocolate cupcakes) and the baby (a seven-month lump under
Maj's dress, which a recent sonogram had revealed was to be
another female addition to the all-woman household). She then dutifully
turned to the other two places to greet Jon and his companion, a
long-ago lover turned friend named Geoff DeRosa.

Kate had lived under the same roof as Jon for almost two years, and
was occasionally struck dumb with wonder that in all that time she
hadn't murdered him. Yet. Jon had been a client of Lee's in
her previous life, before they had all become tied together by the
bullet that nicked Lee's spine, and he had expiated his guilt
feelings over the minor role he played in leading a killer to her door
by turning the tables and becoming, over Kate's profound
misgivings, his therapist's caregiver. He was strong for his
size, a necessary consideration in the early days of Lee's care,
and he worked cheap, an even more necessary factor. And if he drove
Kate crazy with his continual presence, his endlessly mercurial
relationships, and his deep devotion to bad music, he amused Lee, and
in the end that was the most important consideration of all. Kate had
grown to tolerate him, as she would have an irritating lapdog snuffling
around the rugs; they occasionally even had moments of honest
connection. Brief moments.

"I thought you were going to be out tonight," she said
to him, and then hoped she hadn't sounded too disappointed. Jon
took the question at face value.

"Later. Geoff has tickets for the opening of
Song."

"A new play?" she asked around a mouthful of still-warm scalloped potatoes.

"You haven't heard of it?" Jon sat back in
amazement, an emotion every bit as real as the one manufactured by
Emily Larsen. Kate chewed politely and waited for the rest. "You
will hear about it soon--the Bible bashers are up in arms.
It's bound to be in the paper in the morning. Probably even the
TV news."

"And why is that?" she prompted obligingly.

"Because it's from the Good Book itself. They've taken the Song of Songs and set it to music and dance."

Light began to dawn. "I suppose it's X-rated?"

"What else would be the purpose?" Jon answered,
fluttering his eyelashes and murmuring in a dramatically throaty voice,
" 'Oh, comfort me with apples." " Geoff giggled
in appreciation.

"You know," Roz broke in, "there's actually
a long tradition of using the Song of Songs for what you might call
bawdy purposes. The early rabbis had to pass an injunction against
singing it in alehouses. It
is
pretty dirty."

"I don't remember it as being dirty," Kate
objected. Her own childhood Catholicism was long lapsed, but the idea
of using the Bible to make a smutty play tweaked some vestigial nerve,
leaving her mildly affronted. Roz took her objection as a request for
further enlightenment, and went on with her lesson in Bible studies.

"The Song is generally regarded as symbolic of God's
love for His people, but in fact it's probably an adaptation from
a royal marriage-slash-battle ritual. Capture your bride and then screw
her."

"Ooh," Jon trilled. "Kinky."

Lee ignored him, and asked Roz, "Are you serious?" It was not always easy to tell with Roz, but the woman shrugged.

"It's part of what I'm working on in my
thesis," she said, a trifle defensive--as Lee had once
commented, Roz tended to hide her academic side like a dirty secret.
She had been working on a Ph.D. for the last few years, in addition to
being a full-time ordained minister in an alternative church composed
mostly of gay and lesbian parishioners and spending long hours as
unpaid advocate for a long list of causes. Maj referred to these, half
despairingly, as her partner's Campaigns.

"I have heard that the production is gorgeous," Maj
commented, since the academic discussion seemed to have reached a dead
end. Geoff, it seemed, knew one of the costume designers, which was how
he got opening-night tickets and an invitation to the party afterward.
Roz, hearing this, declared that she had been looking for someone to
help out with a church play, and before anyone quite knew how, she had
bullied Geoff into bringing his designer friend by the church the next
day to talk about some volunteer work, and then Maj stepped in even
more firmly and diverted the conversation into a discussion of the
various ethnic dance techniques and costumes used in
Song,
while Kate dedicated herself to her plate; both enterprises ran empty more or less simultaneously.

Kate cleared the plates, set some coffee to brew, brought in the
glistening fruit tarts Lee had made for dessert, laughed at jokes and
told one of her own, and began to feel a part of her relax a fraction
under the sheer normality of an evening spent among friends. Maybe she
wouldn't ask Roz about Carla Lomax after all.

When the tarts had been reduced to a few crumbs and Jon and Geoff had left for
Song,
Kate laid a fire in the fireplace. The four women took their cups
(herbal tea for Maj) and moved to the sofas. Kate carried Lee's
cup, waited until her lover had settled herself and tucked the cuffed
arm crutches out of the way, and then handed Lee the coffee and sat
down beside her. Maj eased herself into the overstuffed cushions across
from them, and sat back into Roz's encircling arm, just as Lee
was settling back against Kate, giving a little sigh of satisfaction
that sent a brief electrical shiver up Kate's spine that was as
powerful as lust, but more cerebral: hope, perhaps.

"Do you mind if I put my feet up on the table?" Maj
asked. "I know it's rude, but my midwife tells me it helps
my circulation."

"Of course not," Lee said. "Can we get you a pillow or something?"

"No, this is fine." Maj reached out and turned a
magazine facedown before she threaded her bare feet, covered in thick
black stockings that reminded Kate of rest homes, out over the low
table and onto the magazine. She balanced her cup and saucer on her
protruding belly, and grimaced self-consciously. "It's not
all fun," she commented. Indeed, once Kate focused on her, Maj
did not appear her normal collected self. She looked pale, even wan,
and had not had her usual appetite at dinner.

"Seven more weeks," Roz said, rubbing her
partner's arm by way of encouragement; Maj appeared more
depressed by the remaining time than encouraged.

"I was very impressed to see the mayor the other night,"
Kate told Roz. "Don't tell me you have him making
points?"

"God, no. It's part of his PR, going to school things.
Keeping in touch with the community and all that. Someone suggested
this because of the school's high test scores and great ethnic
balance, that's all."

Kate could well guess who that someone had been, and she
wouldn't have been surprised if points had indeed entered the
mind of that savvy politician. Of both savvy politicians--Roz was
well on her way to becoming a force to be reckoned with, and beyond the
borders of the city, or even the state. She looked to be the gay
equivalent of what Cecil Williams had become for the African-American
community, a charismatic voice, reasonable yet devoutly committed, San
Francisco's representative lesbian.

Roz simply had everything going for her. She was articulate, deeply
committed, passionate in her causes but capable of choosing reason over
rhetoric, communication over in-your-face confrontation. Despite her
relatively moderate public stance and her willingness to compromise,
there was no doubt whatsoever where she stood. Even the most radical of
gay rights advocates admitted her to their fold, and she had been
instrumental over the last few years in engineering seemingly
impossible agreements between opposing sides. Enormous of heart,
possessed of a cutting intelligence, charismatic, articulate, and
tireless, Roz was, in a word, compelling, and Kate was no more immune
to her charm than anyone else. Including the mayor, who had once called
Roz the nicest woman he'd ever been stabbed by.

Kate had only met Roz a year before, in the course of an
investigation that took her to Berkeley's so-called "holy
hill," the site of a number of theological seminaries. Roz had
been wearing her clerical collar and her guise as a late-blooming grad
student, and only some months later did Kate discover that Roz and Lee
had, as they say, history.