Claire was laughing as I told about her locking her kit outside the cell, then dropping her camera so hard she cracked the lens.
“And so Claire bends down for her camera, and I back into the guy’s toilet, which sends me down,” I said. “I reach out to grab on to something — anything — and end up grabbing his still under the sink. And the hooch sloshes all over me. I mean all over.”
Edmund has this big laugh: “Hah-hah-hah.”
He was pouring champagne into the good crystal glasses. I started to lift my flute of bubbly, but put the glass down.
Claire was snickering now, and Yuki’s trilling laugh was sounding the high notes.
“We get back to the morgue,” Claire continued, “stinking of hooch.”
“Disgusting,” I said. “But it was a no-brainer what killed him.”
“No-brainer?” said Claire. “No-brainer for you. I’m the one stuck with doing the post while you go home and change your clothes.”
“He OD’d?” Brady asked.
“Didn’t take much,” Claire said. “If you’re distilling hooch in tin cans — and he was — it turns to methanol. Three ounces’ll kill you
dead.”
“I can’t hear that story too many times,” Cindy said, laughing.
She plucked the candles out of the cake one at a time and licked the bottoms clean, making Conklin shake his head and laugh.
Yuki brought out the plates and forks, and Edmund handed me my sleeping goddaughter, Ruby Rose Washburn, a child as cute as ten buttons.
Claire hugged me tight, the baby between us.
“Happy anniversary, Linds,” said my best friend.
I had a lot of thoughts, and images came to me of a lot of murders and late nights working with Claire to solve them. It had been trial by fire every single time.
“And many more years together, girlfriend,” I said.
We were still laughing an hour later, and then it was time to go. After I’d hugged and kissed all my buds good night — and yes, even my fine lieutenant — Joe and I headed back to town.
It was wonderfully peaceful inside that car.
I said to Joe, “It was hard not to tell anyone.”
“I know. But let’s keep it to ourselves for now, Blondie.”
My handsome husband shot me a smile. Patted my thigh.
“Six weeks on night duty, huh?” he said.
“I dissed the lieutenant. I deserve it. Still, I did the right thing.”
“I’m going to have the whole bed to myself for forty-two nights. And here I am, married at last.”
“We can fool around when I get in at eight-thirty a.m.,” I said.
I leaned over and kissed Joe’s cheek as we took a turn onto Lake Street. Centrifugal force and a whole lot of love glued us together.
“Whoaaaaaa!” I squealed.
Damn, I was happy.