4th of July (Women's Murder Club 4)

Chapter 12

IT WAS A DAY that had been ripped from the pages of a child’s coloring book. Bright yellow sun. Birds tweeting and the flowery smell of summer everywhere. Even the pollarded trees on the hospital green had sprouted flamboyant hands of leaves since I’d last been outside, three weeks before.

A lovely day, for sure, but somehow I couldn’t reconcile life as usual with my creeping feeling that all was not well. Was it paranoia—or was another shoe about to drop?

Cat’s green Subaru Forester cruised around the elliptical driveway at the hospital entrance, and I could see my nieces waving their hands and bouncing up and down in the backseat. Once I strapped into the passenger seat, my mood lifted. I even started singing, “What a day for a daydream —”

“Aunt Lindsay, I didn’t know you could sing,” six-year-old Brigid piped up from the backseat.

“Sure I can. I played my guitar and sang my way through college, didn’t I, Cat?”

“We used to call her Top Forty,” said my sister. “She was like a human jukebox.”

“What’s a joooot box?” asked Meredith, age two and a half.

We laughed and I explained, “It’s like a giant CD player that plays records,” and then I explained what records were, too.

I rolled down the window and let the breeze blow back my long yellow hair as we drove east on Twenty-second Street toward the rows of pretty pastel two- and three-story Victorian houses that stair-stepped up and across the ridgeline of Potrero Hill.

Cat asked me about my plans, and I gave her a big wide-open shrug. I told her I was benched pending the IAB investigation of the shooting and that I had a whole pile of “injured on duty” time I might put to good use. Clean out my closets. Sort out those shoe boxes full of old photos.

“Here’s a better idea. Stay at our house and recuperate,” Cat said. “We’re off to Aspen in another week. Use the house, please! Penelope would love your company.”

“Who’s Penelope?”

The little girls giggled behind me.

“Whooooooo’s Penelope?”

“She’s our friend,” they chorused.

“Let me think about it,” I said to my sister as we turned left onto Mississippi and pulled up to the blue Victorian apartment house I called home.

Cat was helping me out of the car when Cindy loped down the front steps with Sweet Martha running in front of her.

My euphoric doggy almost knocked me over, licking me and woofing so loudly I only hoped Cindy heard me thank her for taking care of my girl.

I waved good-bye to everyone and was bumping up the stairs fantasizing about a hot soak in my shower and a long sleep in my own bed, when the doorbell rang.

“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. My guess? I was getting flowers.

I clumped down the stairs again and flung open the door. A young stranger wearing khakis and a Santa Clara sweatshirt stood at the threshold with an envelope in hand. I didn’t believe his cheese-eating smile for a second.

“Lindsay Boxer?”

“Nope. Wrong address,” I said perkily. “I think she lives over on Kansas.”

The young man grinned steadily—and I heard the clatter of that other shoe dropping.

Chapter 13

“KILL,” I SAID TO Martha. She looked up at me and wagged her tail. Trained border collies respond to many commands, but “Kill” isn’t one of them. I took the envelope from the kid, who backed away with his hands in the air. I slammed the door shut with my cane.

Upstairs in my apartment, I took what was clearly a legal notice out to the glass-and-tubular-steel table on my terrace, which had a staggering view of San Francisco Bay. I carefully eased my sorry butt into a chair.

Martha settled her head onto my good thigh, and I stroked her as I stared out across the hypnotic swells of glinting water.

The minutes ticked by, and when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I opened the envelope and unfolded the document.