Jump the Gun

by Zoe Burke

  I took a quick breath and was about to call out to Mickey, but instead I stuck the notepad in my back pocket without a word. I figured Cassie had written the message on the pad—she had been staying in my apartment for several days, after all—and maybe Georgia was her friend. I’d find out who Georgia was before saying anything to the police, and especially to Brad. I didn’t like the way he stared at me when he talked, like he thought I was either guilty or stupid.

  I joined the guys waiting at my front door. “Bonkers still seems really afraid. It makes me wonder how much he saw, or understood, or, well, experienced, however cats experience things.”

  Franklin let out a sharp guffaw at that, and it wasn’t empathetic in the least. It bordered on nasty. “That cat of yours is one mean feline—took a swipe at me and tried to bite me when I reached for it, the little pisser.” In that moment, I hated him.

  Mickey took my hand and squeezed it. “The good news is he’s safe.”

  I pulled my long black sweater off the hook in the hallway, put it on, and half-smiled at the two men. Officer Wilson stayed behind as the three of us walked down the stairs to dinner.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mickey and I stayed at the Sheraton Palace that night, downtown. It’s my favorite San Francisco hotel. The rooms are spacious and furnished with warm, cozy furniture and beds so comfortable you wish you could contract some prolonged, painless, nonfatal, contagious disease which would give you no choice but to stay bedridden for at least thirty days. With, of course, the man you were falling in love with, who had also contracted the same benign but debilitating ailment. And, with an unlimited room service budget. Oh—and sexy pajamas. For yourself and him.

  Sergeant Franklin had spent a couple of hours with us at dinner, asking me about the history of my relationship with Cassie for the first hour, and then jogging down memory lane with Mickey about college and sports and women and family. It wasn’t clear to me why they had been out of touch for so long, but these things happen. Time gets away from people, and before you know it, a couple of weeks have turned into a couple of years.

  I found out that Laurie was Mickey’s girlfriend in college and, I surmised, for a few years following. She was a highly motivated law student who currently was working for a high-profile firm specializing in corporate law, which I took to mean mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and big, big bucks. Mickey’s explanation for their break-up was brief: “Politics. Hers offended mine; mine offended hers. It turned out that we didn’t love each other enough to put up with all that. She probably voted for Dubya.”

  Brad’s questions to me were all about how well I knew Cassie. I explained that I knew her pretty well, but our friendship was defined by and limited to our sporadic weekend jaunts. We had been spending Saturday mornings together—whenever other plans didn’t get in the way—at a ninety-minute yoga class, followed by a brief breakfast at the café next to the yoga studio, and then an hour-long hike wherever we decided to go.

  He interrupted at one point. “Lovers? Did she have a lot of them, or was she a one-man kind of girl?”

  His not-so-subtle sneer made me want to spit at him. I hated him all over again. But I gulped Chianti instead.

  “She’s been seeing someone recently, a lawyer, but I don’t know who it was.”

  Recently, my hikes with Cassie had become easy walks through Golden Gate Park or had been abandoned altogether, since Cassie was hot to spend as much time as she could with her new squeeze on the weekends.

  Brad tore off a piece of garlic bread. “Tell me more.”

  I reached for my Chianti again, but the glass was empty. Mickey poured me another.

  Cassie worked for Whole Foods, managing their produce department. She was a healthy-food-and-exercise proponent, but she believed in enjoying life in the here and now. She was the only yogini I knew who smoked Camels. I also knew she was an only child and her father had died a couple of years ago. She had grown up in a suburb of Philadelphia, where her mother still lived. They were close. I asked Brad where Cassie’s mother was—had she arrived in San Francisco?

  “Yes, she has been to the station to identify the body, and she’s staying with friends in Pacific Heights. Do you know Mrs. Hobbs?”

  “No, I’ve never met her.”

  “Well, she told me that she is planning on having a service out here for Cassie’s friends, and then another one back east. She also mentioned that she would like to see you.”

  I brought my hand to my forehead. “Oh, god. Really? I wouldn’t want to see me. Her only daughter was murdered in my apartment…” I took another swallow of wine.

  Mickey patted my knee. “You were Cassie’s friend. Mrs. Hobbs knows that.” I grabbed his hand. We worked it out that Brad would give Cassie’s mother the number at the hotel, so that she could call when she was ready. Brad said the SFPD would have a patrol unit at my apartment for at least another day, in case whoever killed Cassie came back for me. I guess that had occurred to me already, but hearing him say it so matter-of-factly made me feel like my chair had been jerked out from under me.

  Mickey squeezed my hand, then suggested that we buy new cell phones first thing in the morning and repair the lock on my apartment, seeing as how my landlord was in Costa Rica on vacation.

  “Sounds like a plan.” I took a last swig of Chianti.

  When we left the restaurant and walked back to our respective vehicles, Mickey and Brad gave each other a quick high-five, and Brad shook my hand. “I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow. Get some sleep. And let me know tomorrow if you discover anything of value missing from your apartment.”

  “Okay, but I don’t have valuable stuff.” We started walking away from each other, and then I channeled Peter Falk as Columbo, because I turned around and called after Brad. “Were there any other messages on my answering machine, besides the one I left for Cassie on Sunday night?”

  He stopped and turned to me, looked off down the street, and then back at me. “No. Just that one.” He gave us a little wave, then continued on his way.

  I turned and took Mickey’s arm. Georgia Browning. Did Cassie write her name down because Georgia had called me?

  We got in the Mustang and drove downtown to the hotel. After we got to our room, I closed and locked the door, fell onto the bed, and studied the ceiling. Mickey went into the bathroom, and soon I was sound asleep.

  ***

  When I woke up the next morning, I was naked and under the covers. Mickey was already up, wearing a white hotel bathrobe, sitting at the small desk. He had his laptop plugged in and was typing away on it, now and then sipping from a cup of coffee. I noticed a tray with a silver pot and two cups on it, cream and sugar.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” He swiveled in his chair and winked at me. He looked tired.

  “Room service brought that and I didn’t even hear them?”

  “You’ve been out cold.” He poured coffee in the second cup and brought it over to me, while I scooted myself into a sitting position. He sat down on the edge of the bed and gave me a kiss. “Morning.”

  I smiled and took a swallow of coffee. “Mmmm.” Then I put the cup and saucer down on the bedside table. “What time is it?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “What? I slept for twelve hours?”

  “Yes, indeed, you did. You needed to.”

  I scanned the room again and saw my clothes neatly stacked on the easy chair, by the window. “Looks like you took good care of me, once again.”

  “My pleasure.” Mickey smiled and then stood up. “We have a busy day.”

  “Yup, I should get up and take a shower. We’ve got to get the lock, and the cell phones. We should drive up to Santa Rosa. We should call Luis, and…”

  “Who’s Georgia Browning?”

  I froze. Mickey just stood there. “Any time, Annabelle.”

 
“I’m sorry. I was going to tell you about her last night, but I passed out.” I think this was true.

  He tilted his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. “Well, you can tell me about her now. I found the notepad in your pocket when I undressed you last night. And, before you assume that I was rifling through your pockets”—he was right, I was about to accuse him of this—“let me say in my defense that as I was folding your pants I felt something in the pocket and simply pulled it out so that it wouldn’t get lost, or bent, or whatever.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, who is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He picked up the notepad from the desk. “So why was this in your pocket?”

  “I found it under my bed. Bonkers had been sitting on it.”

  “Your cat sits on notepads?”

  “Clearly you’re not a cat person. He likes paper. He curls up with it. Sometime try reading a newspaper with him around. Or a book. He likes to play with postcards.”

  “And you said nothing to Brad because…?”

  I pulled the covers up closer to my neck. “Because I hate him and I don’t trust him.”

  Mickey was skeptical. “Really? Wow. Kind of a snap judgment, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve been making a lot of those lately. I mean, here I am with you, and I just met you three days ago. Are you going to tell me that was a mistake?”

  “Touché.” He came back over to the bed and sat on the edge again. “So, what do you think this lawyer Georgia Browning has to do with anything?

  I sat straight up with a start. “LAWYER? How do you know she’s a lawyer?”

  “I Googled her. She has an office on Chestnut Street.”

  “Maybe she’s Cassie’s lover!”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t want Brad to come to any weirdo-psycho-lesbian conclusions about Cassie, so that’s why I told him only that she was in love with a lawyer, not that the lawyer was a woman.”

  Mickey sighed. “Annabelle, you should tell Brad what you know and not leave out important details, like sexual orientation and notepads under cats!”

  I closed my eyes. “Maybe.”

  “You think?” He paused. “Why would Cassie write her lover’s name and phone number on a piece of paper that ended up under Bonkers?”

  I looked at him. “I don’t know. Maybe she was doodling one day…”

  “Or maybe Georgia called you and doesn’t even know Cassie.”

  “I thought of that, too. That’s why I asked Brad if there were any other messages on my machine. Maybe Cassie wrote this as a phone message.”

  He waved the pad in the air. “But how did this end up on the floor?”

  “I keep it on the table by the bed. She could have written the message and torn it off, and then knocked it on the floor.”

  “And done what with the message?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Mickey stood up. He walked over to the windows and opened the heavy drapes. Sunlight streamed in, making stripes on the navy blue carpet and illuminating his worried face. “I don’t like this, Annabelle. I don’t like to keep secrets from Brad, from the police.”

  I got up and retrieved the other terry bathrobe from the closet, put it on, and went to put my arm around Mickey’s waist. “I don’t trust anyone in all this mess, except you.” As soon as I said that, my throat tightened and I had to swallow. After the weird way he was acting around Brad the night before, I reminded myself that I really didn’t know Mickey very well. “But I especially don’t trust Brad Franklin. He’s got a nasty edge to him. Why should I trust a man anymore just because he’s carrying a badge? I don’t know who the bad guys are or the good guys. I don’t like the coincidence of your old friend showing up on this scene. It’s too weird. I know he’s your friend, but that’s how I feel.”

  Mickey put his arm around my shoulders. We both kept looking out the windows onto bustling Market Street, thronged with business people, panhandlers, and shoppers. A self-proclaimed soapbox preacher used a megaphone to warn of imminent doom. Mickey sighed. “It is weird. It’s so weird that this morning I’ve been checking out Brad on the Internet.” He drew me closer to him. “I wasn’t sure I could trust him either. He’s a creep.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you were long lost friends.”

  “Not really. Friends, sort of, for a while. He was a mean drunk.”

  “What did you find out online?”

  “Everything he told us last night is true. He has been with the SFPD for about ten years, he got a divorce five years ago. He’s definitely a sergeant.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. But…”

  “But so is Chuck Lowery a policeman, right?”

  “Right.” I turned toward Mickey. “Look, I have to go see Georgia. I owe it to Cassie, I owe it to you, to get some answers. We can fill Brad in later. If you don’t want to come, I understand, but I’m going to see her, and, well, that’s that, Paxton.” I stood arms akimbo and felt like John Wayne. Only smaller.

  Mickey took my hands. “Okay, Starkey. You take a shower, and I’ll call the locksmith. We’ll get that door taken care of first, then we’ll go see Georgia Browning. But after we talk to her, we tell Brad about her.”

  “Unless we agree that there is a compelling reason not to.”

  It took Mickey a moment before he agreed. “Okay.”

  I put my arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. My bathrobe fell open, and his hands came to my waist and he pulled me to him. We hugged each other while he stroked my back. I undid the tie around his bathrobe, pulled it off of his shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. I wriggled out of mine, which landed in a lump at my feet. I led Mickey to the bed by the hand, and we both climbed in under the pillowy comforter and smooth sheet. When we got up next, it was almost noon.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mickey told me over breakfast, at a we-serve-eggs-all-day retro diner a few blocks from the hotel, that he had been taking care of office emails that morning, too, besides investigating his old friend. He wrote to his boss that some “personal difficulties” had come up, that he wasn’t sure when he’d be back in the office, but that he would stay in touch by email and phone, and would make sure that all of the follow-ups necessary for meetings at the book convention were taken care of. Mickey had a full-time assistant at the office, and, as he put it, “He’s Mr. Reliable, and after all of this is sorted out, he’ll be Mr. Reliable with a Big Raise.”

  That struck me as odd. At my company, “Big Raise” was a phrase I’d never heard, especially for a publicity manager like me, let alone a sales assistant. But Mickey had mentioned something about them releasing a new blockbuster akin to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, so I guessed his company could be doing a lot better than mine.

  I wasn’t expected back until the next week. I was on vacation, to relax for a few days following the book convention. Hah.

  We both had Sprint cell phone service, and there was a Sprint store on the way to my apartment, so we stopped to buy phones. We met the locksmith at three. He was already there when we arrived, and a uniformed policeman was with him. It took the locksmith only about thirty minutes to install a new deadbolt and a new handle with a lock, and new keys for both. The door was still a bit bashed in on its edge, but that would have to be dealt with later. We thanked the officer for his help, and I gave the locksmith a check.

  After searching through my belongings, I didn’t determine that anything was missing.

  Bonkers was still under the bed. I changed his litter box and refilled his food and water dish, happy to see them both depleted.

  We drove the Mustang, top down, to Georgia Browning’s offices in the Marina district on Chestnut Street. After parking in a public garage, we walked a couple of blocks to an old, restored Victorian.

  The recep
tionist greeted us. “Hello, can I help you?”

  Mickey answered. “We’re here to see Georgia Browning.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, actually…”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but she doesn’t see drop-ins. Would you like to schedule…”

  “Look,” I jumped in. “We’re here on an urgent personal matter. It’s very urgent, in fact. Could be a matter of life and death.” I folded my arms.

  Mickey cleared his throat. “It is important, if you’d be so kind as to let her know we’re here.”

  She frowned, but I didn’t flinch. She picked up the phone and punched in three numbers, explained that we were there and added, “It might be important.” She hung up. “Georgia will see you. Please go upstairs and turn left at the top. Her office is right there.”

  Mickey thanked her, and we took the stairs.

  When we walked in, Georgia Browning stood up, walked out from behind her desk, held out her hand, and said, “Ms. Starkey, Mr. Paxton, how can I help you?”

  She was slight in build and about my height, around five foot seven. Her blond hair was in an updo, and it looked like she had a lot of it. She was dressed in a chic dark green wool suit, jacket and pants, and wore fashionable black spike high heels. Her small diamond earrings and long, gold necklace were perfect accessories to the suit. She was very professional, but she seemed nervous. After she shook our hands, she fidgeted with her necklace. We all sat down. I noticed a framed photograph on her desk of a man and two children. If Georgia was Cassie’s lover, I guessed she was in the closet.

  I smiled at her. “I found your name on a notepad in my apartment. Did you call me?”

  Her face twitched the slightest bit, and her complexion paled. I had never seen that happen to anyone before, such a sudden loss of color.

  She glanced from me to Mickey then back to me again. “Why, no, I didn’t call you. I don’t know you, do I?”

  I shook my head. “No. Do you know Cassie Hobbs?”