Before I could say, “I’m just going to watch,” Lorraine vanished and returned with a foamy pitcher of brew. She said, “I’ll be right back with glasses and to take your order. The fish and rice is nice.”
Claire said, “Have you all seen Yuki’s Facebook page? Pictures of that aurora borealis? It’s like something you’d see on the Discovery Channel.”
“I haven’t checked her page,” I said, “due to a belly bomb mission of the epic fail kind. What a day this has been.”
The beer glasses arrived. We all ordered the Friday-night fish-and-rice special with ripe plantains and extra-hot sauce. Cindy booted up her tablet and we perused Yuki’s honeymoon pictures—and yeah, without my knowing it was happening, my mood lifted.
We cracked some off-color jokes about just-married sex rocking the boat and we toasted my boss and Yuki, our good friends who’d fallen in love. After we ordered a second pitcher of beer to cool down the hot sauce, I talked about the belly bomber and wondered out loud what the creepy killer extortionist was really after.
I said, “The ransom is so puny relative to Chuck’s Prime’s bottom line. And the logic is weird. ‘Please stop me before I bomb again.’ Well, he got the ransom.”
Claire aimed a forefinger at her temple and rotated it in the universal hand signal for cuckoo.
She said, “This bomber. He doesn’t want to be stopped. He keeps telling you. He likes to blow people up.”
Claire signs in a couple thousand dead bodies a year to her fine establishment, and after we’d exhausted my story of a stakeout that got us exactly nowhere, the good Dr. Washburn told us a few gruesome tales from the crypt.
She laughed as I covered my ears and said, “La-la-la.”
“Here’s to dying peacefully in our sleep,” Claire said, hoisting her glass. “After putting down a big bowl of ice cream.”
“Cheers to a nice cerebral hemorrhage—in our nineties,” I concurred.
Cindy clinked her glass against ours, “And here’s to finding Mackie Morales and piling stones on her chest until she stops breathing.”
“What?” said Claire. “Mackie Morales? What did you say?”
“Lindsay didn’t tell you?” Cindy said, looking genuinely surprised.
“Both of you better start talking. I want to know what’s going on behind my back,” said Claire.
“That would be your cue,” I said to Cindy.
CHAPTER 46
CINDY SAID, “AW, Lindsay, you don’t mean that you want me to talk about this.”
“Absolutely,” I said and then sat back and watched her try to figure out what to say to Claire that didn’t make her sound like a lunatic.
“What is this about Mackie Morales?” Claire asked. “No, really, what is this? How come you’re not talking, Cindy?”
“Because Lindsay is having fun with me.”
Claire laughed. “Seriously? Well, I like to have fun, too.”
She said, “Fine, Claire. This is the whole truth. Lindsay told me that Morales had been seen coming out of a post office in this small town called Two Rivers, Wisconsin.”
“What? Mackie resurfaced, Lindsay?” Claire asked.
“That’s what I was told.”
“Lindsay didn’t tell me why or how,” said Cindy, mounting her defense. “But she told me where. That was all. And I took it from there.”
“And you did what?” Claire asked.
“I went to Wisconsin to find her.”
“No way.”
Cindy looked down at the table and drummed her fingers.
Claire laughed at Cindy’s expression, then started to pour herself more beer.
I put my hand on the top of her glass and said, “Who’s driving you home?”
Claire twisted her head around and shouted, “Lorraine? Coffee, please. All around.”
Lorraine came over with three mugs of coffee on a tray and said, “There’s been a complaint, Dr. Washburn. Laughing too loud at this table. But keep it up. I like it.”
We all laughed at this one, and I found that I was getting over myself. Cindy, too, was passionate about her work, and she was winning at it.
“I want pie,” Cindy called out before Lorraine had gone too far. “Anyone else?”
Lorraine returned to the table. “I’ve got coconut cream and key lime.”
“One of each,” Cindy said.
Claire stirred her coffee and said, “Okay. So did you find Morales?”
Cindy said, “Not me. Not the SFPD. And not the FBI either, but I’m still working on it.”
Cindy went on to tell Claire what she told me, that she had found out that Randy Fish’s father had lived in Wisconsin, that she had located the house and made friends with the local gendarme, and that they had found out the house was wired to explode three ways, and that Mackie had, in fact, been inside the house not long before.