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

Every face had the same red beard.

I had been dreaming. I found myself at my kitchen counter, blinking into swirling circles in my glass of chardonnay. There was a familiar calm in my apartment. No rushing crowds, no fleeing faces. Only Sweet Martha, lounging on her futon.

A pot of boiling water was steaming on the stove. I had my favorite sauce ready to go — ricotta, zucchini, basil. A CD was on, Tori Amos.

Only an hour ago, I had had tubes and IV lines sticking out of me. My heart had kept pace to the metro-nomelike rhythm of a monitor’s steady beep.

Damn it, I wanted my old life back. My old, favorite dreams. I wanted Jacobi’s sarcasm, Sam Roth’s scorn, jogging on the Marina Green. I wanted kids — even if it meant I had to get married again.

Suddenly, the downstairs buzzer rang. Who would be here now? I shuffled over and said, “Who is it?”

“I thought you had somewhere to go,” a static voice replied.

It was Raleigh.

Chapter 50

“WHAT’RE YOU DOING HERE?” I called back in surprise.

I was pleased but suddenly tingling with nerves. My hair was pulled up, I was in an old Berkeley T-shirt that I sometimes slept in, and I felt drained and anxious from my transfusion. My little place was a mess.

“Can I come up?” Raleigh said.

“This business or personal?” I asked. “We don’t have to go back to Napa, do we?”

“Not tonight.” I heard him laugh. “This time I brought my own.”

I didn’t quite understand that, but I buzzed him up. I ran back to the kitchen, turned the heat down on the pasta, and in the same breath threw a couple of pillows from the floor onto the couch and transferred a pile of magazines to a chair in the kitchen.

I put some lip gloss on and shook out my hair as the doorbell rang.

Raleigh was in an open shirt and baggy khakis. He was carrying a bottle of wine. Kunde. Very nice. He tossed me an apologetic smile. “I hope you don’t mind me barging in.”

“Nobody barges in here. I let you in,” I said. “What’re you doing here?”

He laughed. “I was in the neighborhood.”

“The neighborhood, huh? You live across the bay.”

He nodded, abandoning his alibi without much resistance. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You didn’t seem yourself back at the station.”

“That’s nice, Raleigh,” I said, looking into his eyes.

“So? Are you?”

“So. I was just feeling a little overwhelmed. Roth. This FBI thing. I’m fine now. Really.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “Something smells good.”

“I was just throwing something together.” I paused, thinking about what I wanted to say next. “You had dinner?”

He shook his head. “No, no. I don’t want to intrude.”

“That why you came with the wine?”

He flashed one of those irresistible smiles. “If you weren’t home, I have a corner on Second and Brannan I always head to.”

I smiled back and finally held open the door.