The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)(14)

“Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind giving it a try. Cops do okay, though, huh?”

“The union takes care of us.”

“That must be nice. Nobody’s signing up to take care of me. Not that you guys don’t earn it. You do.” Lucy shook her head. “Sorry, I’m babbling like an idiot. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Don’t worry about it. How long have you lived here?”

“Two years. I need a new roommate now, or I’ll have to move. I called my parents to tell them what happened, and they think I should get out of the city. They don’t think it’s safe here. I don’t know, maybe they’re right, but I’d miss the funk if I left San Fran. Know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“How about you? Have you been here long?”

“All my life.”

“Where do you live?”

Frost hesitated. Normally, he didn’t talk about personal things. He didn’t share secrets easily. Even so, Lucy was easy to talk to, in her sweet, awkward way. She was an ordinary girl with an ordinary life, which was something that Frost liked. The city’s beating heart was all the people who got up and went to work and ate lunch and grabbed takeout for dinner and watched the Giants on TV and went to bed. People like Lucy.

People like Katie.

He also knew that she’d made an effort for him. She was made-up, her hair neat, her lipstick bright. She wore going-out clothes, not stay-at-home clothes. That was no accident. She wanted to make an impression.

“My situation is a little odd,” he told her. “I live in a house on Russian Hill.”

“Wow,” Lucy remarked. “Nice.”

“It’s not mine. The house belongs to Shack.”

Her head cocked. “Wait, isn’t Shack—?”

“My cat.”

“You rent from your cat?” she asked.

“Yeah. He’s a pretty good landlord.”

Lucy folded her arms across her chest. She wore a white sweater. Her brown curls brushed the collar. Her capris showed off the thin taper of her legs. “You’re teasing me.”

“Nope.”

“Are you going to tell me the story? Because now I’m intrigued.”

Frost grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, okay. About a year ago, I was called in on a home invasion case. Rich old widow, beautiful house on Russian Hill. She’d been shot dead in her bedroom. The uniforms who responded had a problem because the woman’s cat was sitting on her chest, and he wouldn’t let anyone near the body. Hissed and batted at them with his claws if they came close. He was protecting her. I grew up with cats, so I figured I’d give it a try. So I just talked to him.”

“You talked to the cat?”

“Yeah. I told him I was sorry that the woman was gone, that it was brave of him to want to protect her, but there was nothing he could do anymore. Eventually, he got off her body and walked over to me. He climbed up my leg, curled up on my shoulder, and wouldn’t leave. Right then and there, he adopted me.”

Lucy blinked back tears. Cat stories did that to women.

“The other cops wanted to take him to animal control, but I said I’d look after him while we did the investigation. Eventually, I talked to the trustee of the woman’s estate and asked if there was some family member who wanted to take Shack. He said there was no family. I said, well, would it be okay if I kept the cat? The trustee got very suspicious and asked if I knew anything about the woman’s estate, which was weird. I said no, all I wanted was to adopt the cat. After an hour in which I felt like he was the cop doing an interrogation, I found out that the estate instructions left the house in a bank trust as long as Shack was alive, and whoever took care of him could live there for a dollar a month. The old woman wanted to make sure that somebody had a hell of an incentive to look after her cat. The funny thing is, I was willing to take him for free.”

“That’s quite the story.”

“Yeah. So here I am, the cop who rents a house from his cat.”

“Is all of that true? Or have you figured out that a man with a cat is sort of a chick magnet for girls?”

“Honestly, I have found that out, but the story’s true. I did have to change his name, though.”

“Why?”

“Well, the old woman called him Se?or Bubbles. That didn’t seem manly enough for either one of us.”

Lucy smothered a laugh. “No.”

She bit her lip and played with her hair in a flirty way, but she wasn’t really good at flirting. He knew she was attracted to him. He liked her, too, but for different reasons. There was something real about her, and he met a lot of people in San Francisco who weren’t real at all. It didn’t matter what she said; he just liked listening to her talk.

“What about you?” he asked. “What’s the Lucy Hagen story?”

She blushed and looked away. “Oh, that’s a boring story.”

“I doubt it. Everybody’s got a story. Did you grow up in the city?”

“No. Out in Modesto. I went to SF State and wanted to stick around after college. Nobody was hiring business majors, so I applied at Macy’s. I had dreams of being Jennifer Aniston on Friends, you know? Work my way up into the fashion business? But that’s not going to happen. So I don’t know. I’ve thought about going back to get a nursing degree, but I’m already hip-deep in debt. This economy sucks if you don’t have a cat who comes with a nice house.”