15th Affair (Women's Murder Club 15)

“Right,” said Claire, calling me on my bullshit with just her inflection.

I swung myself down to the seat across from my friends and ordered a beer, and that was when Cindy entered the back room with Richie in her wake.

True, Richie is not in the club, but we all love him dearly, and sometimes testosterone can move our thinking in a different direction.

Cindy sat next to me, and Richie pulled up a chair at the end of the table. Lorraine took our orders for the specials du jour and more beer. Then everyone turned to look at me.

The volume in this place was so high that unless there was a microphone buried in the jerked pork, this was as discreet a venue as possible for a conversation about Joe Molinari, Chinese spies, and a blond government operative who set honey traps.

I spilled the beans to a rapt audience.

“I have it on good authority that Alison Muller—that’s one of her names—is a CIA spy.”

I waited out the “What?” and “Who said so?” from Cindy and Claire, who were both familiar with the names of the victims. And then I said, “The same good authority told me that Shirley Chan was also a spy—for China.”

There were more gasps and OMGs and Richie said, “So what about Michael Chan? Was he a spy, too?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe he got caught in the crossfire. But the same source, and this has been independently validated, dropped a bomb. Joe was in the CIA long before I met him. That makes me think maybe he’s working for the CIA now.”

“That would explain why he hasn’t been in touch,” said Rich. Discussion of Joe as a CIA operative rounded the table a few times; then the conversation turned back to Ali Muller.

Cindy was curious about what kind of woman slept with men in order to betray them. Claire added, “Sex for secrets. And she kills people, right?”

“Psychopath,’” said Yuki. “Or patriot. Maybe she’s both.”

I tried to keep my head in the conversation, to feel the love and the safety in this coziest of places.

But my mind kept veering toward what I hadn’t said. That Ali Muller had worked for Joe. That they had been close. I hadn’t told my best friends in the world the fear that I was harboring, that Ali and Joe were back together again.

Music came from the front room. People were clapping and shouting “Lim-bo. Lim-bo.” I drank my beer. I didn’t even have to form questions in my mind anymore. I ached for my missing husband. I ached for him all over.

CHAPTER 57

CAT AND I had a good long talk that night, and we fell asleep in the big bed. Early the next morning, with promises both ways to stay closer in touch, I kissed my sister and nieces good-bye at the curb.

I took Martha for a good long run to the park and back. Panting and blowing, we returned to the apartment, where I showered, while Mrs. Rose made oatmeal and coffee. Breakfast time for Julie, Martha, Gloria Rose, and me was becoming almost normal, except for the empty sunlit chair where Joe had been sitting with his pancakes more than a week ago.

I drove my car through morning rush out to the airport, this time to meet Conklin for an update on the worst tragedy visited on the city of San Francisco since the great earthquake of 1906. We boarded a little red bus full of cops and journalists, and after zipping across the tarmac, we were deposited at the yawning mouth of the SuperBay at the northeastern turn end of the airport.

The SuperBay was huge, large enough to hold four jumbo jets. But under the lights, laid out on the football-field-sized concrete floor, was a giant, unsolved jigsaw puzzle made up of the blasted wreckage of the Boeing 777.

Vanderleest gave nothing away with his expression, but he was thorough. He walked the large group around the perimeter of the loosely assembled airplane carcass, showing where the tail section had broken from the fuselage; pointing out the fuselage itself, with its many rows of seating; indicating the ignition site, including the fragments of the wing; and showing us the nose of the plane with the intact cockpit, one of the few parts that bore any resemblance to its original form.

Vanderleest capped off his lecture by saying, “Anything that needed analysis was sent to our lab in DC. Investigations like this one typically take a year, sometimes a year and a half, to close. I’m always available to give updates, as needed.”

I asked Vanderleest if there was any news of parties who had fired the missile and he told me, “There are still no credible claims to this—this horror.”

It was a wrenching experience, seeing that total destruction, imagining the people who’d been only moments from a safe landing and reunions with friends and family. The explosion had killed hundreds for no reason anyone could explain, and to date, no one had been charged with any of it.

When we’d seen and heard it all, Conklin and I took the bus back to the domestic parking garage, where we’d left our cars. While in transit, my partner said to me, “Brady and I went to the Chan funerals while you were out.”

“In Palo Alto?”

“Yeah. Small church, but it was packed,

” he said. “Lotta crying. I saw some of the people we met out at Stanford. That runner friend of Chan’s. And the department head, Levy, gave one of the eulogies. A lot of people only spoke in Chinese.”

“You didn’t see Alison Muller, by chance?”