The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(63)

Part Six




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DECEMBER 31





CHAPTER 92





THE HORNS, KAZOOS, and steel drums playing a jazzy version of “Yellow Bird” could be heard halfway down the street from Susie’s Café.

It was New Year’s Eve.

Cindy, Yuki, and I, along with our spouses and significant others, had commandeered the Women’s Murder Club’s favorite booth in the back room. Another table had been pushed up for Claire and Edmund Washburn, who were on their way.

Cindy leaned across the table and asked me to pass the bread, her new emerald pendant sparkling.

I asked, “What bread?”

Cindy cracked up. “I said, ‘You look good in red.’”

I fell apart laughing and Joe joined in, saying, “I keep telling her that a blonde in red is what used to be called a hot tomato.”

Now we were all laughing, Yuki spitting tequila, and I didn’t think it was because of my sweater or because I looked like a vegetable or because the joke was so funny.

It was just fantastic relief. Tonight the beer pitcher was bottomless, the spicy food had never been better, and everyone at the table had much to celebrate.

We were all finally off duty. Mayor Caputo had commended Conklin, Brady, and me for going above and beyond the call with Lomachenko and for locating Bavar, whom Lomachenko had bound with duct tape and then stashed in an air-conditioning closet on the main floor.

Bavar had been unharmed and had since made a sizable gift to the San Francisco Police Officers Association, turning a horrible week into Yahoos going into the next year.

Only one thing nagged at me on this happiest of evenings.

I hadn’t spoken to Jacobi since he was shot in the thigh almost a week ago. We’d exchanged texts, and he’d sent me a cheery message saying, Boxer, I’m fine. I’m comfortable in my own bed. Have a drink for me, but I still hadn’t heard his voice.

Joe squeezed my shoulder and said, “Check it out.”

I looked up and saw Claire and Edmund cha-cha-ing down the narrow hallway from the bar to the back room. She was wearing a sparkly, low-cut black dress, and they were both glowing from their week in San Diego.

Once they were seated, my closest friend and I got caught up. I told her what she had missed—the hairy, scary tightrope-walking Lomachenko interviews and his complete and somewhat unexpected capitulation.

“We have him on suicide watch,” I told her.

“That depressed, huh?”

“Yes. And in Miller’s play Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman kills himself.”

“But the one in the play does it by crashing his car, right?”

I laughed. “Loman is pretty creative. He might go tried-and-true with strips of bedsheet. We don’t want that.”

I poured a beer for Claire, and she told me about the go-get-’em students in her extra-credit Christmasbreak class.

“Some of those kids moved me to tears,” she said. “I know at least three of them are going to make stellar pathologists. Two of them are going to be better than me, if you can believe it.”

I looked up from her grin to see another friend headed our way—the lovely Miranda Spencer, a daytime-TV-show actor who was both glamorous and down-to-earth. She was also Jacobi’s girlfriend.

I was out of my chair, already beginning to shout greetings and a lot of questions, when she smiled broadly and said, “Lindsay. He’s right outside. And he’s got a surprise.”





CHAPTER 93





IT WAS AFTER eleven. I had fully expected to kiss my husband at midnight right here at Susie’s.

But Miranda was getting us up and hustling us out, saying, “Hurry, hurry.”

We paid up and pushed our way through the raucous bar crowd and out to Jackson Street, where a limo was parked at the curb.

Brady opened the rear door—and there was my dear friend in the back seat, holding a crutch and wearing a huge smile.

“The mayor has had some seats cordoned off for us,” he said. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

We all piled in and took off on a fifteen-minute drive through our city, still lit up for the holidays. When we disembarked at Rincon Park, Brady and Conklin helped Jacobi out of the car and blocked for him. Joe put his arm around Jacobi’s back and said, “Lean on me, Chief. Put all your weight on me.”

We found our reserved-for-SFPD block on the seating walls. We had a primo view of the bay, the ferry terminal, and the bridge decked out in swags of lights.

This was San Francisco in her party dress.

Thousands of people had collected on the Embarcadero to watch flowers blooming in the sky. We had just gotten settled into our seats when the first fireworks were launched from barges off Pier 14. Music was synced to the display, and the crowd cheered with each new explosion.

When the ten-second countdown to midnight came over the sound system, my husband grabbed me. Nearly squeezing the breath out of me, he showed me without words how afraid he’d been for me and how he couldn’t bear to lose me.

For the next twenty minutes the sky crackled with rockets and pyrotechnics, all reflected in the water below and capped off with a brilliant grand finale.

My husband and I kissed in the New Year.