Joe called out to me.
“Julie is with Mrs. Rose,” he said of our neighbor across the hall.
I said, “Great. Joe. I’m going to the hospital with Cindy.”
He said, “Take this.”
He handed me my phone, then put his arms around me. I think I was shaking as I held him tight.
The EMTs were closing the doors to the bus, so I broke away from my husband and told him, “I’ll call you.”
I never made it into the ambulance because Jacobi was standing between me and the doors.
“Jacobi. You see what happened here? It’s Morales. She’s the one who shot Cindy. I have to go with her,” I said.
“You can’t leave, Boxer. We’ve got a fatality here. You know that.”
I had no fight left and it wouldn’t have helped if I had. I said, “I need a minute.”
I climbed up into the back of the bus and said to Cindy, “I’ll see you later. You’re my hero. And I love you. And Cindy? You’re going to be fine.”
I stepped back down to the street. I gave my gun to Jacobi and walked with him to his car.
CHAPTER 109
MY ARMS WERE full of flowers when I burst into Cindy’s room at UCSF Medical Center.
Cindy shouted out, “Thank God the flowers have arrived.”
I looked around. There were flowers everywhere, lining the window sill and on the various dinky tables, with some potted things on the floor.
“Who died?” I asked.
Cindy laughed. “Not me.”
She was in the bed that was cranked up to sitting position, wearing a little pink robe. Right beside her in the bed, wearing oversize denims and a navy-blue SFDA sweatshirt, was Yuki Castellano Brady.
“Hey—hey,” I said.
And, yep, Claire Washburn, MD, was hovering over the two of my girls with a plastic cup of neon-green Jell-O and a spoon.
They all looked very merry.
“You think this is lime Jell-O, don’t you?” said Claire. “Well, you’d be wrong. This is my own brew. Made with Margarita mix.”
I laughed. “That explains everything.”
Since all the vases and vaselike objects were in use, I went to the bathroom, took the lid off the toilet tank and dropped the flowers in, stems down.
When I returned, Yuki said, “There’s a no-crying rule. Okay, Linds?”
I nodded. I was too choked up to speak, really.
Cindy was fine. Yuki was fine.
I went around the room and kissed each of my friends and they kissed me. There were hugs, too, long ones, no one wanting to let go. Speaking for myself, I was thinking how life could end without warning and how freakin’ wonderful it was to have moments like this.
When we were exhausted from the hugging, I pulled over a chair for myself and sat down hard, next to the bed.
I said, “I want what you’re having.”
There were peals of laughter, one distinctive peal coming from Yuki.
She said, “Was that me laughing? I haven’t done that in a while.”
She was a little drunk, but that was appropriate. She had told me and Joe most of the horrific story, including that she’d shivved the bad guy.
“You told everyone?” I asked her.
“Yep. The Women’s Murder Club kicked ass this week.”
“I’ve got Ms. Mackie’s three-eyed corpse in my cooler,” said Claire. “So I’ll drink to that.”
Claire raised her cup of Jell-O, and just then there was a knock on the doorjamb.
The unsung hero of the hour, the man who’d taught Cindy to shoot, was standing there. I said, “Well, I’ve gotta go now, Cindy. I hear my baby calling me.”
Claire added, “I’ve got a baby, too, and I’m driving Yuki home. I need to get a look at Brady.”
There was a little rustle as we gathered our things. More kisses for Cindy and then we each said hi, as we edged past my good-looking, good-doing partner, who was standing in the doorway.
I hoped to God Cindy was well enough to handle this.
CHAPTER 110
CINDY SAID, “HEY, where’s everyone going?”
The girls waved good-bye, blew kisses, and let themselves out the door, letting Richie in. Her pulse shot up. She touched her throat as he came into the room, looking great, wearing a jacket, his tie loose at the collar, fresh blue shirt, and khakis. His hair was falling over one eye.
“Richie. Hi.”
He looked around the room at the garden on the window sill and said, “Cindy, I would have brought flowers but a birdie told me that you have plenty.”
He turned his eyes on her, smiled, and shook a white paper bag with a gold-foil seal holding down the flap.
“I brought this instead.”
“Come onnn. Chocolate orange peel? Let me see.”
“Some grapefruit peel, too. Thought I’d mix it up a little for you.”