Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

“I can’t help it,” I said hugging her back.

“I’ll be fine, okay?”

“Okay.”

Of course I worried about her. Cindy was tough but not invincible. I watched her until she disappeared behind her front door. Then I pulled my car out onto Lake Street. I thought of the four of us Cindy had jokingly dubbed the Women’s Murder Club.

Claire and I were in good, happy marriages, and Yuki was about to tie the knot with a demonstrably good man. As I drove home to my dear husband waiting up for me and my little girl asleep in her crib, I felt grateful and very lucky.

I fiercely wanted good luck for Cindy, too.

CHAPTER 8

CINDY WENT THROUGH her ground-floor apartment, switching on lights, thinking about how just about every time she was with the girls and something interesting came up in conversation, one or all three of them would turn to her and shout, “That’s off the record, Cindy.”

It was a recurring joke, and actually not all that funny. So here was the thing. If she was going to be preemptively accused of running off with private tidbits for public consumption, she might as well do it.

Tonight, when Lindsay told her about the Mackie Morales sighting in Wisconsin, she had neglected to post the usual warning. So if Morales wasn’t off the record, she was on. And Morales was huge.

Morales had killed three people. She was a fugitive. And she’d never been interviewed. An in-depth Mackie Morales story was a crime reporter’s dream.

Cindy had worked the crime desk at the San Francisco Chronicle for five years and according to the publisher, she was a rising star. She’d gotten regular pay bumps and a coveted office with a door, and her byline had been on the front page regularly, top of the fold, on the home page of the website.

But by Cindy’s own admittedly high standards, she hadn’t blown the lid off the cooker.

Cindy went directly to the bay window niche in the front room, which she used as an office. She booted up her laptop, and while it loaded, she went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. After that, she washed her face and changed into plaid pajama bottoms and one of Richie’s SFPD T-shirts with the slogan, Oro en Paz, Fierro en Guerra. ENGLISH TRANSLATION: “GOLD IN PEACE, IRON IN War.”

Cindy was well aware that wearing Richie’s shirts, living in these rooms, sleeping in the bed they’d shared together, made it harder to get over him. But she wasn’t ready to get over him.

She loved him. He loved her. He’d proposed and she’d said yes. Then she’d blown it.

She vividly remembered the night they’d broken their engagement, on Jackson Street in the rain, after a fight about having kids, a fight they’d had many times before.

Here was the headline:

He wants kids. She wants a career. First.

They both insisted that it had always been so.

But the imminent lifetime commitment had caused them to polarize their individual needs. At least that’s how she saw it. She hadn’t said that she’d never be ready to have children, but that’s how he’d taken it.

By then, Mackie Morales had faked her way into the SFPD and manipulated Richie perfectly, even using her adorable fatherless little boy in a scheme to use Richie for her own purposes.

Richie was far from stupid, but he’d gone for it. That’s how good Morales was. And when she was exposed as a stone-cold killer, Richie’s heart and faith were shattered again.

File the whole mess under Humpty Dumpty.

Tonight, when Lindsay mentioned that Mackie Morales had been sighted, an idea with the size and brilliance of a four-carat white-diamond solitaire had burst into her mind.

She was an excellent investigative reporter.

She could track Morales down, trade information for exclusive access. A first-person interview with Mackenzie Morales would be a stunning career move.

By the way, Rich Conklin would know what she’d done, and he’d be moved.

Actually, she was pretty sure that he’d welcome an opportunity to see her again.

CHAPTER 9