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

She coyly shook her head. “I just don’t want you thinking that ’cause a man keeps himself with a certain dignity there’s any dignity when it comes to that.”

“C’mon,” I exhorted, “you put it in play. Let’s hear.”

“Let’s just say that a few John Does aren’t the only thing that have been stiff on our examining tables.”

I almost fumbled my gelato onto the ground. “You’ve got to be kidding. You? And Edmund?”

Claire’s shoulders jiggled in delight. “As long as I’ve gone this far… Once we did it in a parterre box at the symphony. After a rehearsal, of course.”

“Whatta you guys do? Just go around leaving your mark like poodles?” I exclaimed.

Claire’s round face broadened with delight. “You know, it was a long time ago. But as I think of it, that time in my office at the coroner’s Christmas party — that wasn’t so long ago.”

“As long as we’re baring our souls,” injected Cindy, “when I first got to the Chronicle I had this fling with one of the senior guys from Datebook. We used to meet down in the library. In the far reaches of the Real Estate section. Nobody ever went there.”

Cindy scrunched her face, abashed, but Claire cackled with approval.

I was amazed. I was learning the hidden, suppressed side of a person I had known for ten years. But there was a little shame building in me as well. I didn’t have a story.

“So,” Claire said, looking at me. “What’s Inspector Boxer got to share from her closet?”

I tried to recall a single moment when I’d done something totally crazy. I mean, when it came to sex I didn’t think of myself as someone who held back. But somehow, no matter how hard I searched my memory, my passion always ended up between the sheets.

I shrugged, empty-handed.

“Well, you better get started,” Claire said with a wag of her finger. “When I’m drawing my last breath, I won’t be thinking about all those fancy degrees or conferences I spoke at. You only have a few times in your life to really cut loose, so you might as well take them when they come.”

A little tremor of remorse knifed through me. At that moment, I didn’t know what I wanted more

: my place on the list — or a goddamn name for Red Beard. I suppose I wanted both.

Chapter 65

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, I sat in my hospital smock in the hematology clinic at Moffett.

“Dr. Medved would like a word with you before we start,” said Sara, my transfusion nurse.

I felt nervous as she unpacked an IV setup for my treatment. Truth was, I had been feeling okay. Not much pain or nausea other than the incident in the ladies’ room last week.

Dr. Medved walked in with a manila folder under his arm. His face was friendly but unconfiding.

I smiled weakly. “Only good news?”

He sat across from me on the ledge of a counter. “How are you feeling, Lindsay?”

“I wasn’t feeling so bad when I saw you before.”

“Fatigued?”

“Only a little. End-of-day kind of thing.”

“Sudden nausea? Queasiness?”

I admitted I had vomited suddenly once or twice.

He made a quick notation on a chart.

He paged through some medical charts in the folder. “I see we’ve undergone four packed–red cell transfusions so far….”