by Diana Orgain
Mom ignored my sarcasm. “Look, look, she’ll do it again. It’s a game we’ve been playing all afternoon!”
Mom flipped Laurie onto her tummy and placed a little stuffed whale I’d never seen before in front of her. Mom indicated the whale. “An early stocking stuffer.”
She winked at me and pressed the center of the whale. It vibrated and played a tune. Laurie screamed in delight. Mom picked it up; Laurie pushed up on her arms and craned to see the whale. Mom brought the whale all the way up on Laurie’s right side. Laurie flipped onto her back. She had a shocked expression on her face like she couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten onto her back.
When she saw the whale again she screeched. Mom tickled Laurie’s face with the whale and Laurie clutched at it. Mom smiled proudly at me.
I collapsed onto the couch unable to feel like anything but a failure. The first time Laurie had flipped over had been a fluke. It happened last month when I had been out of the room and she hadn’t done it since. Now, Mom was able to get her to do it on demand.
Mom frowned at me. “Want some tea?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding your calls.”
Mom squinted.
“I just . . . sometimes, when you beat me to the punch at things with Laurie, like the Christmas photos . . . I feel like a failure.”
Mom came to sit next to me. She rubbed my back. “Darling! No. I’m only trying to help you. I know you’re busy. I was busy when you were small, too. Helping you with Laurie is my way of making it up to you.”
I hugged her. “You don’t have anything to make up to me. You’re an awesome mom.”
“So are you,” she said.
“Well, I don’t know about that, but thank you for saying it. I need to feed Laurie,” I said.
“Oh.” A guilty look crossed Mom’s face. “I just gave her a bottle.”
I covered my face. I knew, of course, that I’d texted Jim and told him to feed her, but when I saw Mom here I somehow held out the hope that maybe Laurie hadn’t been fed yet.
“I didn’t know when you were coming home,” Mom said.
This meant I’d have to bond with the dreaded breast pump and not my darling.
I got up and picked Laurie up off the floor. I inhaled but instead of Laurie’s sweet, pink freshness I smelled Mom’s moisturizer. I laughed despite myself.
“Okay, peanuckle. I’ll see you in a few minutes. Please try not to be walking by then.”
Mom smiled as I handed Laurie off to her.
“Have you talked to Galigani?” I asked.
Mom looked surprised. “Yes, this morning. Why?”
“He’s been avoiding my calls. I thought he was mad at me.”
“About what?” Mom asked innocently.
Oh brother, if I had to explain it to her . . .
“About you dating Hank. About me knowing it and not saying anything to him.”
Mom waved me off. “He doesn’t care about that.”
“Why do you say that? Of course he does.”
“No. Don’t be ridiculous. At our age, we’re not that possessive. He’s probably happy that he doesn’t have to entertain me full-time.”
“Have you talked to him about it?”
“As if I need his permission for something? We’re not married!”
Okay, if she didn’t care and he didn’t care, why should I care?
After I pumped, Mom went home, promising to drop my stack of Christmas cards at the post office.
All of Laurie’s turning over had exhausted her and she only seemed to want to snooze. I found this a good enough excuse to crawl into bed with her and nap myself.
I finally got out of bed around 4 P.M. to make dinner.
Just as I was taking inventory of the fridge, I heard Jim slip his key into the lock.
“Hello?” he called out.
“In the kitchen,” I replied.
There was some rustling in the living room and then his footsteps down the hall. He came into the kitchen and gave me a big kiss. “What’s for dinner?”
“Eggs? Cereal?” I asked.
He laughed. “I guess I should have gone grocery shopping. Who’s eating all our food?”
“You,” I said.
Jim pulled a beer out of the refrigerator and offered it to me. I declined. He opened it and took a swig.
“What was all that rustling around in the living room and where have you been?” I asked suspiciously.
Jim smiled but didn’t say anything.
I went into the living room and spotted two small boxes underneath the Christmas tree. They were wrapped in bright red Christmas wrap and had gold bows. I picked up one of the small boxes. It was for me from Jim. The other box was for Laurie.
He appeared in the living room. “Don’t shake it,” he said.
My shoulders slumped. “I don’t have anything for you yet! And I don’t have anything for Laurie either.”
“You don’t have to get me anything,” he said, picking up the box for Laurie. He pulled a pen out of his breast pocket and wrote something on the box. “There. Now you don’t have to get anything for her either.”
He showed me the label where he’d added And Mommy.
“It’s not the same! I want to . . . do the shopping . . . to do the . . .”
He wrapped his arms around me. “Don’t cry, honey.”
“I’m not crying,” I said, swallowing back the lump in my throat.
He pressed his lips against mine. “Good. I don’t buy crybabies dinner.”
Laurie let out a wail from the other room.
I smiled. “I guess she’s not invited.”
I called Kenny and convinced him to baby-sit while Jim and I popped down the street to the Irish pub near our house. When Kenny came over, I showed him how to do a proper diaper change, and promised that I would actually pay him for baby-sitting.
At the pub Jim ordered shepherd’s pie and drank Guinness while I brought him up to date on the investigation. I ordered fish and chips and sipped on my favorite chardonnay.
“Nancy’s hard drive was mailed to our house?” Jim asked. “Who has our address?”
I flipped through the case file I’d brought with me. I’d given business cards to practically everyone I’d met and I’d made the mistake of putting my home address on the cards.
Jim looked at my cards. “Yeah. Let’s take that off. We’re lucky someone sent you a hard drive and not a bomb or anthrax or something.” He rolled his eyes at me. “I can’t believe I didn’t catch that the first time you printed the cards.”
I grimaced. “I didn’t have it on the first batch I made. But then I was carrying around two sets of cards, one that I was giving out to Mommy-type people, like the lady who gives the infant art class, and the other one that—”
Jim nearly spit out his beer. “What? What did you say? Infant art classes?”
Under the table, I rubbed his leg with my foot. “How’s your shepherd’s pie?”
“What the hell kind of kook gives infant art classes? And then what kind of crazy person is actually interested in those?”
“Well, it’s not art like that. It’s art like an introduction . . .”
“She can’t even sit up yet,” Jim said.
“She rolled over today,” I said brightly.
“She can’t hold a paintbrush. She’s not ready for art classes.”
I sipped my chardonnay. “Okay, okay, my point was—”
“Right. You’re going to take our address off these cards.”
I flipped through the case file and found the envelope the hard drive had come in. “Yes. I will. First thing tomorrow. I promise. I’ll put it on my to-do list.”
Jim’s eyes went wide. “No. Not on the list! I want you to actually do this.”
“What do you mean, not on the list?”
“That list is just an excuse to pretend you’re going to do something.”
“What!”
Jim frowned more to himself t
han me. He picked up his pint glass and guzzled some Guinness. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“I do everything on my list.”
Jim nodded. “Of course you do, honey.”
“Except, you know, the stuff I cross off.”
Jim seemed suddenly interested in his dinner. He began to shovel food into his mouth. “Mmm hmm.”
“But I only cross stuff off that I’m not going to do,” I said defensively. “You know, stuff that I’ve changed my mind about.”
Jim smiled. “Like the art classes.”
“I haven’t changed my mind about the art classes.”
He ignored me and looked over his plate at the envelope in my hand. “Do you think a woman wrote our address or a man?”
I examined the writing. “There’s a little flourish on the S in street.”
Jim nodded. “Feminine, right?”
I shrugged. “Not necessarily. Some men might write like that.”
I looked at some of the men at the bar. Most were dressed in jeans or Ben Davis work pants and had boots on. Christophe’s sandals flashed across my mind. Jim wouldn’t be caught dead in those shoes.
“What about a European man? Someone who wears sandals. He might write with a little flourish, right?”
Jim polished off his Guinness and nodded. “Yeah. Euro guy. Okay, French guy, right?”
I nodded, flipping through the rest of the file. I had paperwork from Chuck Vann. His notes were in block lettering. Very engineerlike, precise, anal.
“What does Kenny write like?” Jim asked.
I stared at him. “Don’t be stupid. Kenny didn’t send me the hard drive.”
Jim laughed. “Not him, exactly. I mean, someone like him. An artistic young guy. Or a young French guy, like Armand.”
I shook my head. “Armand couldn’t have sent it to me. He never had my address and he was dead when this was mailed.” I continued to flip through my file and then I saw it.
My breath caught as I tried to wrap my brain around what I was seeing. “Foreign guy. Not French, but not American either.”
Jim looked at me. “Who?”
“Cooking’s an art, right?”
Jim squinted at me. “A Mexican chef.” I held out the cell phone bill that Ramon had jotted names on for me.
“Bingo. Want to take a drive across the park with me?”
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE •
Jim and I checked in with Kenny. He’d played the trombone for Laurie and had lulled her into a deep sleep. He said her favorite song had been “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
How appropriate. She was a little star! My little star.
Jim and I drove across Golden Gate Park and to Ramon’s house. We parked across the street from it and studied his place for a minute. The lights were on, but there didn’t appear to be any movement. We climbed up the stairs together and rang the bell.
After a few minutes, when we hadn’t gotten an answer, Jim pounded on the door and I rang the bell again, holding my finger on it so it gave a continuous ring. Suddenly the door flew open and a naked Ramon stood before us.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “Oh! Kate.” He looked from me to Jim, confused but seemingly not embarrassed. He pulled the door open farther. “Come in out of the cold,” he said, retreating down the hallway. “I’ll get some pants; have a seat.”
Jim held my elbow and ushered me to the living room. I tried to suppress my laughter. Jim scolded me. “It’s not funny!”
I shrugged. “I can’t help it. I think it is.” The harder I tried to suppress my giggles the more furious they became until I was only shaking with no sound coming out.
“You’re supposed to be a professional,” Jim said.
I probably wouldn’t have been laughing if I’d been alone. I’d probably have been horrified, but something about seeing the man naked while I was standing on his doorstep with Jim brought on the fit of giggles.
The way we had pounded on the door and rang the bell, he must have thought the house was on fire.
There was a rustling sound down the hall, then the sound of voices. He was with a woman. Jim and I exchanged glances.
Nancy had only been dead for two weeks and already he had a new squeeze. After a moment, he appeared, still bare-chested, but with a pair of loose-fitting jeans on.
“This is my husband, Jim,” I said to Ramon.
Jim gave Ramon a cool nod. Ramon nodded back.
“I know you sent me Nancy’s hard drive,” I said.
Ramon shook his head as though to deny it and for some reason glanced at Jim. Jim gave him a stoic look, which seemed to prompt honesty because Ramon said, “How did you know I sent it?”
I shrugged. “How did you get ahold of it? Did you steal it from her apartment?”
Ramon looked aghast. “No! Of course not. Steal it?”
“Her apartment was broken into and her computer was stolen,” I explained.
A perplexed look came over him. “No . . .”
Jim and I glanced at each other.
“When? I didn’t know . . . she didn’t say . . . I don’t know anything about a break-in . . . She never told me that,” Ramon said.
“You had the new key to her apartment,” I said.
Ramon shook his head. “She didn’t tell me it was a new key. She left it here . . . She said I should have it just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked.
Ramon looked saddened. “She didn’t say.”
Jim and I exchanged looks.
“Where’d you get the hard drive from?” Jim asked.
“I took it from her computer!”
Jim grit his teeth. “We know you took it from her computer, but where was her computer when you took it?”
Ramon’s jaw clenched. “It was at that apartment on Bush Street—the one I gave you the address to,” Ramon said to me.
Armand’s apartment?
“Is that why you gave me the address? Because her computer was there?” I asked.
Ramon looked down the hall as if afraid his new honey would overhear us.
Jim stepped toward him. “You’re wasting our time here. And clearly you have other things you’d rather be doing. Spit it out.”
“I found that address in Nancy’s jeans. When she didn’t come over that night and she didn’t call either. . . it wasn’t like her. I thought she’d hooked up with someone else.” He shrugged. “I got jealous. It’s my Latin blood. I went there and no one answered the door, even when I carried on like you two tonight, banging and ringing and banging. So, I forced my way in. No one was there, but her computer was there. I knew she was cheating on me. Figured I’d screw her the way she was screwing me and I took out her hard drive.” He squeezed at the bridge of his nose.
Jim flashed me a look.
“I didn’t know she was dead. So help me, I didn’t know that. Whose apartment was it? Do you know?” Ramon asked.
How had Armand ended up with Nancy’s computer?
I squinted at Ramon. “Yes. I do know.”
Ramon waited for me to speak, watching me with his dark eyes. I looked at Jim: He shrugged and nodded ever so slightly, giving me a nonverbal queue to go ahead and tell Ramon.
“I found the inhabitant dead. His name was Armand Remy. He was an intern at the French consulate. The police think he killed himself.”
Ramon, clearly shocked by what I’d just said, staggered back.
A woman appeared in the doorway. We all turned to look at her. It was Karen Nolan, the station manager at KNCR.
Karen Nolan was Ramon’s new squeeze?
“Kate? Do you have an update about who killed Nancy?” she asked.
Ramon quickly went to Karen’s side and grabbed her elbow. It seemed an almost protective response. Was he protecting her or himself?
I looked directly into Karen’s eyes. “I have some updates,” I said.
Jim moved closer to me. Definitely demonstrating it was two against two.
Ka
ren looked at us, confused by the semi-standoff. “Who is it? What’s going on?”
I explained about finding Armand dead and also Chuck’s house being broken into today. “Someone is still trying to get information. I need to know what it is.”
Karen frowned and looked at Ramon. “Do you know?” she asked him.
He shrugged, almost too readily.
“Ramon, when you were at Armand’s place, did you take anything else?” I asked.
Karen looked at me sharply. “What do you mean when he was at Armand’s place?” Her head jerked in Ramon’s direction but his eyes were on me.
“No! Of course not! I didn’t taken anything, besides, you know, Nancy’s hard drive. I’m not a thief . . . I was just—”
Karen grabbed at Ramon’s arm, but before she could ask anything he said, “I’ll explain later.”
I wonder how he was going to explain to his current lover that he’d tried to sabotage his past lover. But I guess, given the circumstances, if all he did was hack into her computer, it was better than the alternative.
“Karen, I’ll need to reach Kimberly tomorrow, can you tell me what time she gets to the station?”
Karen shook her head. “She doesn’t come in on Fridays. I can give you her cell number.”
Jim and I headed to the door. “Thanks. I have it.”
Jim and I walked in silence to his car. Karen had been distressed when we left, but Ramon was happy to get rid of us.
Jim opened the passenger-side door for me.
“I know why he didn’t stop.”
Jim looked puzzled. “Who?”
“Armand. He didn’t stop when he hit Laurie and me because he was on his way back from stealing Nancy’s computer. He must have had it in the SUV when he hit us.”
“Wait. I thought Ramon just admitted that he took Nancy’s hard drive.”
“He did. But he took it from Armand’s house. I know from Nancy’s apartment super, who has no reason to lie, that Nancy’s computer was stolen from her place. How did it get to Armand’s?”