Me, Myself and Why?

by MaryJanice Davidson

  I pulled up to her carefully tidy brick house and stepped around the hedges to go to the front door. I liked the woodwork; Cathie liked the hedges. She loved the fact that people couldn’t see her even from the front sidewalk. She babied those hedges and practically buried them in Quick Grow. Soon they would reach the second story.

  I let myself in—no need to use my key today; she was shockingly casual about home security—and hollered, “Cath? Where are you?”

  Frantic scrubbing was my only answer—ah! The kitchen.

  I walked through the living room into her kitchen, where the noise of scrubbing increased. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see her, only hear her, which meant—“Cathie, you stop that right now!”

  “Stop what?” her voice filtered back, as innocent as a newborn. “Catch any bad guys today?”

  “Stop scrubbing that tile with a toothbrush.” Have I mentioned that in addition to being a bit bipolar, she also had obsessive-compulsive disorder? “He’s your brother, not the pope.”

  “I wouldn’t clean for the pope,” she replied—Cathie was that most common of creatures, a lapsed Catholic. “That balding misogynist.”

  “Nah, I think the new one has plenty of—jeepers, stop scrubbing!”

  Cathie slashed at the tile a few more times, but her heart wasn’t in it now that I was confronting her, so she stood and dropped the toothbrush in the sparkling clean sink. Her knuckles were pink from pressure, and so were her knees.

  It was September, of course, and Cathie would wear shorts or skirts until December 15. Kind of a thing with her. She said winter came only because people believed it would. She was always trying to get other people to dress like it was the Fourth of July during Christmas season. So far, it hadn’t worked. The only thing that happened to me was a mild case of frostbite. (Cathie said it was because I wasn’t a believer, which is when Shiro told her it was because we were in the Northern Hemisphere during one of the coldest months of the year. And nearly slapped her.)

  Cathie Flannery was a coppery redhead, as the name might have suggested, with fair freckled skin and brown eyes. She was slender and short—she barely came up to my chin. What she lacked in body mass, though, she made up in vitality. Her hugs alone could knock anyone off their feet.

  “The house is perfect,” I assured her, hoping she wouldn’t decide to clean all the bricks with a toothpick dipped in grout. “He’ll love it.”

  “I don’t care if he does,” Cathie replied, tossing her head so that her hair flew out of her eyes. “I’m cleaning for me, not him.”

  Sure you are. But I knew better than to say so out loud.

  “So!” She perched on the counter and waved her small feet—recently pedicured with orange nail polish, ugh—back and forth. “Anything weird at work? Weirder than usual, I mean. Did your boss julienne potatoes during the morning meeting?”

  I giggled. “No, she put it off until the afternoon. I had to help with prisoner transport, and then I caught a crime scene this afternoon, and then I had a session with Dr. Nessman. Shiro did, I mean.”

  Cathie’s eyes went big. “Shiro showed up at work?”

  “Adrienne, too,” I admitted, glum. No use trying to keep it from Cathie; she always got everything out of me at the end.

  “My God! Both in one day! That must have—” We could hear the doorbell echo through the house and she hopped down. “That must have sucked,” she said over her shoulder as she rushed to the door. “I want all the gory details later.”

  I stayed in the kitchen, guessing she’d want privacy to greet the brother she so rarely saw. He was quite a bit older, knew how to bake, and ran his own business—that was all I knew about him.

  “Cade, I want you to meet my big brother, Patrick. Patrick, this is my friend, Cadence.”

  Oh, my. I now knew something else about him, too. He was gorgeous.

  His hair was such a dark red that it was almost black—you could see the reddish glints if he was standing beside a light source. His eyes, like Cathie’s, were a rich chocolaty brown, and he towered over her; I put him at about six foot three. He was dressed in khaki knee-length shorts and a button-down white oxford shirt; his big hairy feet were jammed into a pair of leather sandals.

  “Hi,” he said, holding out a hand. I was so overcome by his good looks, it took me a couple of seconds to realize I was supposed to shake with him. And when I finally did, I was morbidly aware of my sweaty palms. Why didn’t Shiro ever rescue me from humiliation? She only showed when I needed to fight.

  “Hi.”

  “It’s nice to finally meet you. My sis talks about you all the time.”

  I could feel the color rush to my cheeks and looked at my feet. “Oh, well, you know,” I said, both self-deprecatingly and idiotically.

  “I enjoyed our puzzling yet intriguing phone conversation.”

  “Uh—oh.” This guy? This gorgeous auburn-haired besandaled god had been on the phone with me? And Shiro? This guy? “Huh. That’s, um, that’s nice. And all. Yep.”

  He grinned, showing the dentition of a soap opera star. “Yep, that’s pretty much what our phone conversation was like: puzzling yet weird.” He glanced around the kitchen and then turned to his sister. “Cathie, for God’s sake. The toothbrush again?”

  This forced a giggle out of me, which earned me his bright smile and her glance of dislike.

  “So! Who do I have to smack to get some food around here?”

  “You’re the cook,” Cathie snapped. “Why don’t you feed us?”

  “Ah. The soul of courtesy, no matter what the circumstances. And what kind of a business trip is it if I have to cook?”

  Apparently Patrick made a ton of money by baking delicious cakes, pies, and pastries. He certainly didn’t look like what I’d imagined a baker to be. He looked like a firefighter who went windsurfing on his off days.

  To my amazement, the two siblings were quickly in the middle of a real spat, inching toward each other, gesturing, shouting—soon they would be nose to nose! My God, did she hate him? Did he hate her? Why were they being so mean? Was deep-seated rage the reason they almost never saw each other?

  I could do nothing but watch helplessly as the argument escalated.

  “—can’t just barge—”

  “—know who you’re—”

  “—like to see you—”

  Granted, I had no true idea of what constituted “normal family dynamics,” but this seemed a little extreme. Soon they would come to blows! I could never let that—

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Quit that. Right now.”

  They ignored me and kept shouting at each other. The fools. I eyed the bickering siblings and willed my upper lip not to curl.

  It occurred to me that it was getting easier and easier for me to “come forward” and drive Cadence’s body. Perhaps that quack, Nessman, was onto something.

  But that was not my problem; this was. I seized the siblings by the backs of their necks and briskly banged their heads together. They howled in unison, a grating harmony—his baritone yell, her alto yelp.

  “Behave,” I said sternly.

  Cathie rubbed her forehead, and her eyes widened as she recognized me. “Shiro Jones, you go straight to hell!” she shrilled. “Get out of here! I wanted Cadence to meet my brother. You weren’t invited.”

  “Wait,” Patrick said, rubbing an identical red spot on his forehead. “What? I thought you said her name was Cadence.”

  “It is. Most of the time, anyway. This is one of her other personalities—Shiro, the one who likes to fight.”

  “I do not like to fight,” I corrected her. “But Cadence will not.”

  “Sure you don’t,” Cathie replied with uncalled-for rudeness.

  While I appreciated Cathie’s loyalty to the three of us, I could not help the fact that I did not think much of her. She cut herself. As if the world were not already full of people who would gladly hurt her for free.

  Artists. ’Nough said.

  And she d
id it so she could “feel something.” It was puzzling and odd and contemptible. Cadence-the-eternal-ninny was warm and sympathetic. But that was Cadence—always drawn to weakness.

  And her older brother, Patrick—I could not deny he was a handsome man. Well built and in decent shape—those weren’t health club muscles he was sporting. His skin was a dark tan and his hands were rough—this was a man who spent a lot of time in the open air, who worked with his hands. Not what I would have expected from . . . what was he? . . . right, a baker.

  “Jeez,” Patrick was saying. “You told me your friend had MPD, but seeing it like this—how about the other one, will she come out, too?”

  Cathie and I shuddered in unison. “I hope not,” she said, echoing my exact sentiment.

  “So the other one—Cadence left because she thought we were going to hurt each other?”

  “Yes.”

  Brother and sister exchanged a look, then burst into laughter. When they did that, I could see their strong familial resemblance and was annoyed to find I was a bit jealous. My family relations were chaotic and weird; all three of us were continually out for ourselves.

  “Well, Shiro, we’ll be seeing a lot of you,” Patrick said. “We’ve been fighting like this since she started to walk.”

  “Why?”

  “Um, we’re Irish?” Cathie volunteered, earning another snort of laughter from her brother.

  “So when you were twelve and she was two, you would . . . fight each other?” The wretch.

  “Hey, she was the instigator!” the baker yelped. He pulled up a sleeve and showed me a pink scar on the underside of his wrist.

  “That looks like—”

  “It is! She freakin’ bit me! Not out of diapers for a year and she chomped me like a T-bone.”

  “Suck it up, crybaby,” Cathie said, admirably unashamed.

  “You should see all the other scars I’ve got.”

  “Perhaps another time.” Or perhaps never. “Behave yourselves. In case it has escaped your notice, I am trying to catch a serial killer.”

  “Of course it escaped my notice,” Patrick replied. “How the hell would I know that?”

  A rather good point. Why had I said such a thing in the first place? I—I was not trying to impress this handsome, handsome man. Was I?

  Was I?

  Cathie smacked him on the meaty part of his upper arm. “I told you. She works for the FBI.”

  “Is nothing sacred?” I cried. And I might have asked Cadence-the-blabbermouth the same thing. She knew our work was confidential.

  Which did not excuse my own babbling.

  So I fled.

  Chapter Twenty

  I blinked, almost feeling the silence. “What?”

  Cathie and Patrick were staring at me, though I hadn’t said anything. I knew that look, though, and peeked at my watch. About two minutes, gone.

  “Oh nuts.” I groaned. It’d be nice if once, just once, Shiro or Adrienne would warn me before she took over the driver’s seat. “Are you all right? I’m sorry. But jeepers, I was kind of worried you’d really hurt each other.”

  “Jeepers?”

  “Cadence doesn’t ever swear.”

  “No shit?”

  “She leaves that to Adrienne,” Cathie added.

  “You’re just full of helpful tidbits today,” I snapped.

  “Oh, the other one,” Patrick said, and to his credit, he looked interested, not horrified. Still, I wanted to hide in a cupboard.

  “I can’t believe you—you told him about us?”

  “Well, sure.” Cathie was sounding perfectly reasonable, like she’d given him a recipe for stock. “He’s my brother. We talk.”

  “Can’t you just complain about your parents or local sports teams?” I whirled on Patrick. “Don’t judge me!”

  His hands shot into the air as if he were being held up. “Never! I stick with judging my nutjob little sister.”

  I laughed—I couldn’t help it—and Patrick continued. “I’d hate to meet any of you in a dark alley, frankly.”

  “It probably won’t be a problem. Ugh, okay. I’ve been here long enough. I’m going home,” I muttered, looking around for my bag. “It’s been a very long, very weird day.”

  “Yes, I can see how all this would be stressful. For you,” Patrick added, but his dark eyes were—was that a twinkle? It was! I didn’t think there was such a thing outside of books.

  “You just—never mind.”

  “Don’t you have a hot date with that Detective Clapp?”

  “I do indeed. So farewell, arrivederci, buh-bye, whatever.”

  “Give him a kiss for me,” Cathie called after me as I slung my schlep bag over one shoulder. “With lots of tongue.”

  “And me,” Patrick added, which made me grin in spite of myself.

  So, yeah. It was safe to say that I liked him from the start.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “You look terrible.”

  “I feel terrible,” I admitted.

  George and I were heading out for some routine interviews to follow up on the latest ThreeFer killing. He had been out most of the morning—“sick” he said, but I suspected just staring at himself in a mirror, trying to figure out the most perfectly awful tie. He was driving; I just wasn’t up to the argument it would take to get him out from behind the wheel.

  “You want to get something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  George said nothing for another mile or so. Then, as we sat at a red light and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, he asked, “You should probably eat. I didn’t see you eat anything yesterday.”

  “Just because you didn’t see me eat doesn’t mean I didn’t. I have a life beyond the office, George.”

  “No. You don’t.” Not saying it in a mean way.

  Huh. Usually when I was upset about something George encouraged Shiro or Adrienne to come out and keep him company while I, to use his compassionate phrase, “quit having a friggin’ poopie.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is, actually.”

  “Is not!” I straightened so quickly I nearly strangled myself on the shoulder belt. “I’m—I’ve met someone.” Uh. I was pretty sure.

  “That’s better,” George said, yawning so widely I could see his fillings. “Conversation is good, even if it’s about a guy you’re not even dating yet. You’ve met him? That’s it? He could be a door-to-door salesman, I guess. Fuck, you’re killing me. Though I suppose this is an improvement over sitting in that passenger seat like a wordless blob. That whole pissing and moping about your condition gets really boring.”

  “Sorry, George. I should have realized how difficult this was. For you.”

  “Well, Cadence, I didn’t want to have to say so, but yeah, that’s exactly right.”

  “I really, really hate you.”

  My partner laughed. “Sorry, Pollyanna. You absolutely don’t. You don’t hate anyone—which is part of your problem.”

  “Thanks for the analysis, Freud.” And what had gotten into the poster pinup for amorality? He sounded almost—what was the word . . . uh . . . interested? No. Concerned! George sounded concerned. About me. Good gosh. The entire planet was imploding around me. “Now, if you don’t mind, why don’t we—gaaah!”

  I’d “gaaahed” because George had slammed on the brakes and, for the second time in twenty seconds, I’d nearly been strangled. There was a thud as we went up on the curb, a click as he disengaged his seat belt, and then the door was open and he was running away.

  I struggled free of my own seat belt, grabbed his keys, and climbed out. At least he hadn’t run anyone over this time, thank goodness, but that trash can was never going to be the same again. It was wedged under the left front wheel.

  “George! What the heck?” I glanced around at the witnesses on the street. “Uh. Official business, everyone. Nothing to see here.” Nope. Nothing—not a government-issue vehicle on the sidewalk outside Murray’s steak ho
use, the pulverized trash can, my partner sprinting off into the distance like the hounds of heck were on his butt, and me yelling after him, minutes or perhaps seconds before switching personalities. Happens all the time. “Well, okay. There’s plenty to see here, but it’s rude to stare.”

  “D’you need an ambulance?”

  No, just a shrink. And maybe a tow truck.

  “Wow!” A boy in a Timberwolves jersey which fell to his blue-jeaned knees was pointing at me. No. Past me. “Look at that guy!”

  I looked. Then I scrambled across the hood of our steaming, hissing government-issue vehicle and ran after George as fast as I could.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Don’t touch them, George!” I shrieked, knowing I was going to be too late, knowing I wouldn’t be able to stop my partner, and also that I was going to have a terrible sore throat in the morning. “The restraining order is still in effect! You are well within fifty yards! And we’re illegally parked!”

  I nearly tripped and went somersaulting over a newspaper machine and thought, This is a huge waste of time. I’d sure like to have the last thirty seconds of my life back. Also, it’d be swell if I could go one day this month without falling, choking, crying, seeing a shrink, seeing another ThreeFer crime scene, and—oh yes! Without having to chase someone and bring him down like a dang gazelle!

  Thank goodness street traffic—both auto and pedestrian—was low today. Smashed-up innocent bystanders I didn’t need.

  One had gotten past George, and as he streaked by on my left, I shouted, “FBI! Haaaaaaands!” again, for all the good it did. I couldn’t catch this one and help George with the others, so my order was mostly bluff.

  “Hey, that guy—”

  “—the car just flew up on the—”

  “—garbage can!”

  Darn it! Dang it! Dump it! Yes, I know I’m close to swearing, and guess what? I think I’m entitled to toss around a few vulgarities. The raggety-blamed stress was darn near killing me.