1st to Die (Women's Murder Club 1)

“Oh, I thought you were talking about my city editor.” Cindy snickered. “The guy’s only truly happy when he can threaten someone with their benefits. He has no clue how demeaning and condescending he is.”

“Cindy’s with the Chronicle,” I said to Claire, seeing her react with surprise. There was an undeclared no-fly zone between the force and the press. To cross it, as a reporter, you had to earn your place.

“Writing your memoirs, child?” Claire asked me with a guarded smile.

“Maybe.” The short version. But with lots to tell.

Claire’s margarita arrived, and we raised our glasses.

“To the powers that be,” I toasted.

Cindy laughed. “Powers that be full of shit, powers that be pompous jerks, powers that be trying to keep you down.”

Claire yelped in approval, and we all clinked glasses as if we were old friends.

“Y’know, when I first came to the paper,” Cindy said, nibbling a wing, “one of the senior guys told me it was this particular editor’s birthday. So I e-mail him this happy birthday message. I figure, him being my boss and all, it’s a way to break the ice, maybe get a smile out of him. Later that day, the jerk calls me in. He’s all polite and smiley. He’s got bushy eyebrows as big as squirrels’ tails. He nods me into the seat across from him. I’m thinking, Hey… the guy’s human like everybody else.”

Claire smiled. Enthusiastically, I drained the last of my second drink.

“So then the bastard narrows his eyes and says, ‘Thomas, in the next hour and a half, I have sixty reporters trying to take everything that doesn’t make sense in this fucking world and somehow cram it into forty pages. But it’s reassuring to know that while everyone else is madly rushing against the clock, you’ve got the time to paste a happy little smiley face on my day.’ He ended up assigning me a week of picking a winner from a fifth-grade ‘Why I Want to Be an Editor for a Day’ contest.”

I laughed and coughed up a little of my drink. “Goes under the heading of ‘No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.’ What did you do?”

Cindy had a great smile. “E-mail it was the boss’s birthday to every guy in the department. Jerks were slumping out of his office with their faces white all day.”

Loretta came around again, and we ordered meals: chicken in a hot sauce, fajitas, and a large salad to share. Three Dos Equis to go with them. We poured this lethal Jamaican hot sauce, Toasty Lady, on our wings and watc

hed Cindy’s eyes glaze over from the first fiery blast.

“Rite of initiation.” I grinned. “Now you’re one of the girls.”

“It’s either the hot sauce or a tattoo,” Claire announced, straight-faced.

Cindy scrunched up her eyes in an evaluating sort of way, then turned around and rolled up a sleeve of her T-shirt. She exposed two small G clefs etched on the back of her shoulder. “The downside of a classical education,” she said with a crooked smile.

My eyes met Claire’s — and both of us hooted with approval.

Then Claire yanked up her own shirt with a blush. Just below her ample brown waist, she revealed the outline of a tiny butterfly.

“Lindsay dared me one day,” she admitted. “After you broke up with that prosecutor from San Jose. We went down to Big Sur overnight. Just the girls. To let off some steam. Ended up coming back with these.”

“So where’s yours?” Cindy turned to me and asked.

“Can’t show you.” I shook my head.

“C’mon,” she pressed. “Let’s see it.”

With a sigh, I rolled onto my left buttock and patted my right. “It’s a one-inch gecko. With this really cute little tail. When some suspect’s giving me a hard time, I push him up against a wall and I tell him I’ll stick it in his face so tight it’s gonna look as large as Godzilla.”

A warm silence fell over us. For a moment, the faces of David and Melanie Brandt, even Negli’s, seemed a million miles away. We were just having fun.

I felt something happening, something that hadn’t happened in a long time, that I desperately needed.

I felt connected.

Chapter 34

“SO NOW THAT WE’RE ALL FRIENDS …,” said Claire, after we had eaten, “how’d the two of you meet up, anyway? Last I heard, you were going out to Napa to check on some missing newlyweds.”