Love Notes

by Penny Mickelbury

  “I’ll bet you did attract attention, Honey Chile,” Tim drawled from his queenly pose, imitating Alice’s South Carolina Gulla accent. “You’d attract attention at a drag show, Miss Long, Girl, with your fine self.”

  Gianna had to rap on the table to restore order, and it took several minutes more to learn from Alice that the Eight Rivers, named for the city of Ocho Rios in Jamaica, was the field office of the head of the Northwest Ganja Crew. She frowned, questioning Alice’s terminology, though not the veracity of her information.

  “The Ganjas split a couple of months ago. You remember a shoot-out in a church parking lot on Rhode Island Avenue in the middle of a Monday afternoon?” Everyone did, and Alice continued. “That marked the split. The southeast Ganjas just want to sell their weed, which is some of the most expensive—and highest quality—on the East Coast, and keep a low profile. Their attitude is the cops don’t mess with weed dealers if there’s no violence. The northwest Ganjas want to control the drug trade in D.C., period, and they don’t mind using violence. In fact, they like it, which is why the southeast crew doesn’t want any part of them. The northwest crew has battled the Russians, the Colombians—anybody white, who’s dealing in D.C.”

  “Hold it!” Kenny Chang stood up. “You’re saying that there’s a gang that deals drugs based on racial pride?”

  Alice shook her head and made a thumbs down gesture with her right hand. “There ain’t no pride involved, Kenny, just your average, run-of-the-mill, mean, greedy, drug-dealin’ scumbags.”

  “Is there an Irish drug cartel?” Cassie asked. “Is that why the Ganjas are so focused on stealing their guns?”

  “Nope,” Alice said, shaking her head, “not that I’ve ever heard. They want the guns from the Irish ‘cause the Irish are the ones who’ll have the guns. No politics or pride involved.”

  “I need to know how you know all this, Alice, and you can tell me privately if necessary,” Gianna said.

  “Just so it doesn’t leave this room, I’ll tell you,” Alice said.

  “It won’t leave this room,” Gianna responded, not needing to check for a consensus, though there was one as heads nodded around the table.

  “I just completed a two-month undercover assignment on the drug task force. Intelligence gathering. Longest two months of my life, and that’s the truth.”

  Gianna could believe it, given the sense of dread she heard in Alice’s voice; but what she was feeling was renewed anger at the chief. No wonder he had so readily agreed to Alice Long’s assignment; he’d probably have assigned her himself if Gianna hadn’t asked for her. Crafty bastard! She said, “So you agree that we’d better find the guns before the Ganjas find them.”

  “Oh hell yes!” Alice said with feeling. “What Tim and Detective Ashby saw at the Shamrock today might have been just some harmless old drunks, but those Irish guys with the guns are anything but. I heard the Ganjas talking about ‘em and the last thing you want is a gunfight between those two groups.”

  Gianna locked eyes with Eric, remembering the Chief’s analogy of the two elephants doing battle, and he nodded his understanding of her message: Find the damn guns before the Ganjas find them. Then she turned her attention to Cassie, Linda and Kenny. She wasn’t surprised that Cassie already had started work on the case; Marianne had called earlier to thank her for taking seriously the matter of the missing women. But she was surprised at how Linda and Kenny reacted to Cassie’s actions. Even though they’d had all day to smooth their ruffled feathers, they still were annoyed at Cassie’s trip to The Bayou the previous night. And, Gianna could see, Cassie regretted having done anything to irritate her colleagues. “I’m sorry, guys, I really am. I was just so glad to be back on the job and to have something to do.”

  “But suppose something had happened!” Kenny finally exploded, releasing not anger but fearful concern, totally confusing Cassie.

  “Something like what?”

  “Like...like...anything! I don’t know like what, Cassie! Like you needed back-up and you were in there by yourself and nobody knew you were there.”

  Cassie finally got it. “Oh, Geez, Kenny, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t run off by yourself,” Linda added in as snappish a tone as she’d ever used with any of them. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

  “All right, you guys, I think she’s got the message. Let’s move on. You want to tell what you learned last night, Cassie?” Gianna thought she’d better get her talking before she burst into tears.

  “I think what Kenny and Linda got from the ME is more important than what I got from the bar,” Cassie offered, catching everybody by surprise.

  “You’ve got something from the ME already?” Gianna hadn’t expected anything useful from the medical examiner’s officer for at least a week. Not only was the staff there overworked, it was overburdened by an archaic filing system and by notoriously sloppy record-keeping by the police department, which in turn often rendered their own records suspect.

  Their pique with Cassie finally put aside, Kenny and Linda looked more excited than any Hate Crimes cop had looked in months. “You know what a bas—”

  “Grouch,” Linda inserted.

  “Grouch Dr. Landing can be,” Kenny said, referring to the legendarily grouchy bastard, Asa Sheehee, the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia. “Well, we were expecting him to tear into us when we told him what we were after.”

  “But he smiled at us!” Linda chirped. “He actually smiled, and grabbed us by the arms and pulled us into his office. He grabbed this folder that was on top of this huge pile of sh—”

  “Crap,” Kenny said with a gotcha grin at Linda.

  “Crap. Then he says we’ll have to wait for anything going back as far as eighteen months or two years, but that we should take a look at the file on the Jane Doe from the other night.”

  “The other night!” Gianna and Eric spoke in unison, and listened with growing dismay as Kenny and Linda spilled out the details. The victim was an unidentified white female between forty and fifty years of age, discovered on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial, her esophagus severed by a length of piano wire still embedded in her throat. She was expensively though conservatively dressed and Dr. Landing speculated that her entire wardrobe, down to and including underwear, was brand new. No identification was found with or near the body, and the body bore no identifying marks. Except—”

  “Except what?” Gianna demanded.

  Kenny and Linda shared a look. “An intact hymen,” Linda said quietly.

  “A what?” Eric asked.

  “A hymen,” Kenny said. “That’s the membrane—”

  “I know what it is,” Eric snapped. “I’m asking why Asa Landing is making such a big deal out of a biological given. Every woman has one.”

  “But you won’t find many heterosexual fifty-something year old women with one intact ,” Gianna said quietly. “We need a photo of this woman.”

  “It’ll be ready tomorrow by noon,” Linda said.

  “Do you want us to show it to the owner at The Bayou to see if she recognizes her, or do you want to do that, Boss?” Kenny asked, knowing as they all did how deeply she involved herself in their cases. But the chief’s dictum rang in her ears and she shook her head. She was to stick close to the office and behave like a lieutenant.

  “If Marianne recognizes her, call me immediately. Then show that photo in every woman’s bar between Richmond and Baltimore. The three of you decide how to divvy up the turf. I’m going to pay Dr. Landing a visit, see if I can’t help him make some sense out of his case files.” The chief wouldn’t object to her paying a visit to the ME. “Or I’ll threaten to send Tim to do it.”

  Tim McCreedy had displayed a talent for making sense out of the unholy mess that were departmental case files. And though an enormous effort had been made to improve both the system and the cops who functioned within it, sloppy files more often than not were the order of t
he day. And Tim McCreedy, despite all the odds against him, somehow managed to create order out of mayhem, earning him the enmity of those cops whose files needed fixing; and not because they begrudged him his successes, but because he always was at his queenly best whenever on such assignments. And it always happened that some macho cop took offense at Tim’s behavior. The last one who called McCreedy a faggot took his meals through a straw for two months, and ate soft foods for another two. He bowed toward her. “Your wish is my command, your lieutenantness.”

  “Find those guns,” she commanded. But her mind wasn’t on guns. She was thinking about a Jane Doe with an intact hymen. Not proof, certainly, that the woman was a lesbian—penetration was an integral part of pleasurable sexual activity for many lesbians—but she had a feeling that Marianne would recognize the woman. She had a feeling that this Jane Doe and her intact hymen presented just the tip of something very deep and very ugly.

  *****

  Mimi leaned back in her chair, propped her feet on the corner of the desk, and stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen. She had been hung up on three times in the past seven minutes. Good thing she wasn’t thin-skinned, she thought as she picked up the phone to call the next number on her list. Given the amount of rejection she received during the course of a normal work day, she’d make a good actor. She’d always heard that actors learned early to handle rejection. She punched in the numbers and counted the rings. More than four without an answer and she expected an answering machine, unless it was the home of somebody over the age of seventy—sometimes they needed five or six rings to decide whether to answer. She hung up after the eighth ring and circled Cartcher, WD, and made a note to call the number again later. She dropped her feet back on the floor, scooted the chair closer to the desk, and re-read the stories on the discovery of the body of the Jane Doe, later identified as Millicent Cartcher of Clarion, Georgia, though it was stretching a point to call them “stories.” They were brief paragraphs of several sentences each that had been buried deep within the metro section of the paper, the first one running on a Sunday. She looked again at the date. Almost a year ago:

  The body of an unidentified

  female was discovered behind

  the Southwest Waterfront Marina

  early yesterday morning. The

  white female, approximately

  fifty years old, was fully clothed

  and appeared to have been

  strangled. Police say there

  were no signs of a struggle or

  of sexual abuse. There was

  no identification with the body

  or identifying marks on the

  body.

  And a month later, this:

  Police still have not identified

  the body of a female found

  behind the Southwest Water-

  front Marina last month. A

  forensic examination places

  the woman’s age between 45

  and 55 years old. She had

  been dead less than 24 hours

  when she was discovered.

  Police have released an artist’s

  rendering of the victim and ask

  that anyone with knowledge

  of the woman’s identity call...

  And almost seven months later:

  Police have identified the

  body of a woman found five

  months ago at the Southwest

  Waterfront as 54-year old

  Millicent Cartcher of Reston,

  VA, who had recently moved to

  the area from Georgia. She was

  strangled to death. Police have

  no motive for the slaying, and

  no suspects.

  “And what else is new,” Mimi muttered, not at all embarrassed that she’d been overheard by at least four other reporters. If talking to oneself was the strangest thing a reporter ever did, they’d have to be considered almost normal. She’d called all the Cartchers listed in four different Georgia area codes, assuming that such an unusual surname wouldn’t be common and, therefore, that bearers of the same name would be related to the late Millicent. None of the dead woman’s relatives was pleased to hear from a Washington reporter asking questions more than a year after the fact. Not even non-relatives, including the editor of the weekly newspaper in Clarion, were willing to spend longer on the telephone than the several seconds it took for Mimi to identify herself and the reason for her call. She needed an atlas; she needed to find out exactly where Clarion was. She had relatives in Atlanta and she didn’t think it was near there. And she needed to pay a visit to Reston. Perhaps a neighbor would remember—.

  “Patterson.” She snatched up her phone in the middle of the first ring and instantly regretted it. Gianna was on the other end, tearing into her about interfering and meddling and being a general nuisance. Not that she considered posing a few questions “meddling,” though she’d like to have known how Gianna found out so quickly. Then she remembered her conversation with Renee. She’d have told Marianne and Marianne would have told Gianna. Before Mimi could think of something to say to smooth her ruffled feathers, Gianna cancelled their dinner plans for the evening, said she didn’t know when she’d be home and hung up, leaving Mimi listening to a dial tone.

  “Story of my life,” Mimi muttered, dropping the phone into its cradle.

  “What are you grousing about now, Patterson?”

  “Leave me alone, Tyler.”

  He stood in front of her desk looking down at her and there was something in his gaze that erased the unease and irritation that she felt. She looked at Tyler and found comfort in who and what he was, in the steady green eyes behind the tortoise shell glasses, the khaki slacks and white shirt and brown tie that he wore every day. He was predictable, yes: Predictably honest and fair and above reproach. “So, tell me, Tyler, when did I lose my humanity? Or at least the ability to write from a human perspective?”

  He raised his eyebrows at her. “Who’s been talking to you?”

  “Nobody talks to me any more, Tyler, you should know that. And the only expectation anybody has of me is that I’ll keep sending corrupt government officials to jail, but nobody really cares about that any more. Which is sending me messages I’d really rather not hear.”

  “Jesus, Patterson,” he said sadly. “You really do need to get away.”

  “Yeah, I know, but Gianna can’t go and I can’t think of anyplace I’d want to go alone. And anyway, the Weasel hasn’t signed off on my vacation request.”

  “Follow me,” he ordered, and scurried off between the desks and toward the hallway leading to the cafeteria. She sat for a moment, then stood and followed. He was waiting for her by the water cooler, their chosen spot for clandestine conversations, literally tapping his foot at her languid approach.

  “If you’re going to try to make me feel better, Tyler, thanks but no thanks.”

  “Don’t talk, Patterson, just listen. First, the Weasel okayed your VR this morning, effective Friday.” And then Tyler suggested that she hang out with friends of his who’d just bought a villa—that’s what he called it—on Florida’s Gulf coast. She remembered his friends, Sue and Kate. She’d met them once at a party at Tyler’s. At the time, they lived in Baltimore and worked in D.C. Tyler said they made a killing in the tech market, saw the crash coming and got out ahead of the disaster with real money, and lots of it. Quit their government jobs and retired a full ten years ahead of their contemporaries.

  “You think they’d have me? I mean, I really don’t know them. I only met them that one time.”

  “You complicate everything unnecessarily, Mimi. Why is that?”

  She pondered the question and a possible answer and came up blank. “I don’t know. Habit, I guess. So, OK, Sue and Kate.”

  “I’ll call them tonight and set it up.”

  “Thanks, Tyler,”

  He touched her arm and walked away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mimi and G
ianna both were uncomfortable with the way things were left between them but there wasn’t time to work through their difficulties in the days prior to Mimi’s departure for Florida. Though they both claimed that the week’s separation would do them good, neither of them believed it. How could it? If they couldn’t find the time to talk while in the same city, often under the same roof, how would being separated by hundreds of miles help? It was an asinine situation, and thinking about it on the flight down to Florida didn’t do Mimi much good. But talking about it did, she was surprised to discover. Almost as surprised as when she found herself talking freely and openly to Sue and Kate about the complex nature of her relationship with Gianna.

  They’d met Gianna the same time they met Mimi and remembered her, in Sue’s words, as “pretty, polite, intense, and distant. I didn’t know she was a cop until later, but when I found out, it fit. She was very...um... watchful.”

  Mimi was comfortable with Sue and Kate and relaxed and comfortable in their home. And why not? Tyler’s description of the place as a villa wasn’t far off the mark. They lived in Dunedin, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico, in a house that was as much external as internal in that it was constructed around a pool and courtyard, with palm trees as sentries and bougainvillea and birds of paradise as attendants. Mimi had her own room and bath and private patio with pool access so she could be alone as much as she liked, but she found that she enjoyed spending time with her hostesses.

  Sue, a tall, gangly woman with frizzy salt-and-cayenne pepper-colored hair, was an accountant with an office at home. She played golf every morning at first light and drank coffee and read three newspapers on the terrace overlooking the Gulf afterwards. Kate, shorter and rounder and possessed of the kind of pretty that prompted double-takes, worked three days a week in an antique store and volunteered two days a week in an AIDS hospice in Tampa, and was home only in the evenings. So, by default, Mimi spent most mornings with Sue and most evenings with Kate.

  Mimi usually bristled when confronted with other people’s comments and views about Gianna, usually because they rarely were complimentary, but she hadn’t minded Sue’s observation. It was, after all, accurate. And she hadn’t objected at dinner her second evening with them when Kate had probed her about the workings of their relationship. That’s when she had spilled all—the beans and her guts. Sue and Kate received her outpouring with warmth and without judgment and offered her a bit of advice: Relationships are what you make them.