Death's Echoes
Page 26
“Only if you’ll marry me,” she said, recovering.
“I can do that,” Mimi said, bending low to kiss her.
“No wonder she’s making such a speedy recovery,” they heard from the doorway, and a smiling nurse entered carrying a small tray.
“What’s that?” Gianna asked, with a suspicious look at the tray and the syringe it held.
“Antibiotic,” the nurse answered. Then, “I understand you’re hungry? What do you want to eat? Your diet is not restricted. You may have whatever you like.”
“Chinese food!” Gianna exclaimed. “Whole crispy fish, sesame noodles, sautéed string beans with bamboo shoots—”
The nurse cut her off with a laugh and a look at Mimi. “You’re making a Chinatown run, I take it? Sweet and sour soup for me. I’m easy.” Then she lifted the sheet and looked at Gianna’s leg. “I need to change that dressing, clean the wound, make sure nothing is amiss.”
“What would be amiss?” Mimi asked.
“Nothing should be,” the nurse responded, “which is why I need to check.” Mimi knew when she was being dismissed so she grabbed her purse and headed out. She’d call the Chief and Eric and the Yangtze River, their favorite Chinatown restaurant.
When she returned with the food, including the nurse’s sweet and sour soup, the Chief was there and Gianna was looking like she wished he wasn’t. “I’ll be really upset with you if you’re upsetting her,” Mimi said, entering the room.
He gave her a look. “Unlike you, Maglione hasn’t quit her job.”
“Give her time,” Mimi shot back, and took pleasure at the look of astonishment on his face.
“Enough, both of you,” Gianna said, trying out a captain’s voice. Her Chief saluted her and left. Mimi rolled the tray to the bed, fixed her food, and went to take the nurse her soup. When she returned Gianna was eating as if she’d been deprived of food for a month. “This is so good!” she said, her mouth full. “Thank you, darling.”
“You’re welcome,” Mimi said, preparing to make a similar attack on her mushu vegetables and sautéed broccoli and snow peas, when Gianna’s sergeants arrived.
“Boss!” Eric Ashby enthused as he hurried over to her bed and grabbed her hand. “A crispy fish doesn’t stand a chance in your presence!”
Sgt. Thomasina Bell held back but grinned widely. “Hey, Boss. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you puttin’ a hurtin’ on that poor fish!”
Gianna laughed and extended a hand to Tommi who eagerly came forward and took it. Then she watched happily as Mimi hugged both sergeants. “Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Mimi,” Eric said. “We’d have gone crazy without your updates.”
“I could use an update if you don’t mind,” Gianna said, and she listened without speaking while Eric and Tommi filled her in, sparing no detail. Four of the men who ran the sex-trafficking ring in the warehouse were in custody, the fifth was still being sought, three of the girls had died from a combination of malnutrition and drug overdoses, two others still were hospitalized, and interpreters were still working to identify the girls and get them home—if they had homes to go back to.
The Metro GALCO bombers belonged to an Idaho-based religious group violently opposed to same-sex anything. They considered themselves soldiers in an army charged with wiping transgender and same-sex people off the earth. In addition to the five who had been arrested the night of the bombing, three more were apprehended in the rented suburban Virginia townhouse where police recovered enough bomb-making material to level several entire blocks which, according to materials found inside the house, was the plan. Neighborhoods where gay bars existed were their targets, as were the homes of nationally known gay, lesbian, and transgender figures prominent in the D.C. area.
Sunset View residents struggled to regain the place once considered normal but they were finding it difficult, especially their relationship with the police. Despite the best efforts of Gianna, Alice, Linda, and Bobby, the memories of Dexter Davis, Phil Diaz, and Mike Berry remained potent and ugly. Add the fact that it was a drunk Pittsburgh city cop who had caused the turnpike crash that killed the Sunset View men, and that some of the state guys were covering for him . . . add the fact that Gianna had shot and killed Alfreda Tompkins’s son . . . Sunset View residents did not have the warm fuzzies for cops.
“What about the fact that Alfreda Tompkins’s son was on my property trying to kill me?” Mimi asked. “They choose to dump their anger on Gianna rather than on Dexter Davis? What about the fact that Alfreda Tompkins let Dexter Davis take her children? And she’s mad at Gianna? She’s lucky she hasn’t been charged with reckless endangerment.” The rage that had been building inside Mimi toward Alfreda Tompkins finally erupted and she had to leave the room.
“Can’t say I blame her,” Eric said, watching Gianna closely.
“No,” his Boss replied, watching the empty space where Mimi had been.
“Will she be all right?” Tommi asked.
“I don’t know,” Gianna said, “but I need to go find out,” and she started to get up, to get out of the bed. The pain made her cry out, which made Eric run for the nurse, which made Mimi run back to Gianna’s room. She’d heard her cry out and saw Eric and the nurse, running.
“What happened?” She ran into the room, to Gianna. “Are you all right?”
“I would be if I could get out of this damn bed!” Gianna snapped. “How long is this going to last?” she demanded of the nurse. “Where’s the doctor? Get her in here!”
“It’s not a her; it’s a him.” The nurse hastened to explain that the ER trauma surgeon’s job was done when Gianna safely transferred out of ICU, and that she was now under the care of a vascular surgeon who specialized in the repair and treatment of the artery that had been damaged in her leg.
“Will he let me get out of this bed and out of this hospital?”
“Maybe,” said a voice from the doorway, who introduced himself, asked everyone but the nurse to leave the room, bristled when Mimi said she had no intention of leaving, and then ignored her as he examined Gianna’s leg and explained in great detail all the options available to her.
“I’ll take the walking cast, the session with the physical therapist, the pain management drugs, and immediate discharge,” Gianna told him, and they all laughed—Mimi, Gianna, and the nurse—when he wrote the orders on the chart and hurried out of the room as if he feared they might harm him in some way. But he was as good as his word, and Mimi had Gianna home and comfortably settled on the sofa within twenty-four hours.
She had expected to need a period of adjustment to calling Gianna’s condo home, but it was as easy and natural as planning the three-couple wedding, for Beverly and Sylvia and Freddie and Cedric all agreed that it was time they, too, took the next step. The adjustment Mimi needed to make was to the change in Gianna’s rank: She was now a captain. The Chief had insisted that she take all the necessary tests and she had, naturally, passed them all. But neither of them wanted to talk much about their work. Or in Mimi’s case, the lack thereof. They still had very raw places left by the events of the past three months, beginning with Cassie Ali’s murder and culminated with the shooting of Will Tompkins in Mimi’s front yard. Gianna had agreed to see the department shrink when she returned to work, and Mimi had agreed to see Beverly. She had not, so far, agreed to return to work, though she was seriously considering it since she no longer had to apologize to a Weasel.
The six of them were spending July Fourth with Freddie and Cedric, the highlight of the day being the fireworks display they’d watch from the patio of Freddie’s penthouse apartment along the Potomac River. But first Gianna had a surprise for Mimi, someplace they had to visit before they got to Freddie’s. Gianna had insisted on driving (it was her left leg that was injured, not her right one), and Mimi didn’t argue. She didn’t even wonder why Gianna had the garage door opener to the underground parking of a beautiful old building on St. George Drive. They had the opener to Freddie’s building; people wh
o lived in secure buildings in densely populated areas often saved guests the hassle of having to look for a parking space. However, when she saw Gianna had the key to Apartment 607, Mimi’s curiosity was piqued.
“Whose place is this?” she asked when they entered the spacious, beautiful—and empty—living room. The high ceilings and arched windows spoke to the elegance of another time.
“Ours,” Gianna said, smiling. “If you like it, that is.”
Mimi was open-mouthed and wide-eyed. “If I like it! It’s gorgeous!” and she ran through the apartment with the excitement of a little kid on Christmas morning. Three bedrooms—a working fireplace in the master bedroom! Three bathrooms—a Jacuzzi in the master bath! A gourmet kitchen! A library! A balcony! “We can’t afford this, Gianna!”
Gianna gave her a sheaf of papers which she read through with increasing amazement: the sale price of her house, the sale price of Gianna’s condo, the sale price of the place they were standing in. “As you can see, we can easily afford it.”
“But I don’t have a job!”
“You don’t need one. I’m a captain, remember? They make more than lieutenants. Besides, you’ll have a job eventually. When you decide you want one.”
Mimi turned around in circles. “How did you manage this?”
“Freddie’s real estate guy did all the work. We just have to sign the papers that sell the places we own and that make this ours.”
Mimi kept walking around in circles while rereading the contracts. “I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven,” she said.
“Nobody gets out alive,” Gianna said.
Ain’t that the truth, Cassie said.
About the Author
Penny Mickelbury has always been a writer and storyteller, but it became her profession when she began working as a newspaper, radio and television reporter in Washington, DC. After 20 years as a journalist, though, she took the leap—or the plunge—and moved to New York to launch her novel and playwriting career—and she’s still at it. Penny is the author of 11 published novels—10 of them mysteries spread across three different series. The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione novels were Penny’s first mystery series, and Death’s Echoes is it’s fifth title. Black Lesbian Feminist Press will publish Penny’s short story collection in Fall 2018, and she’s already at work on the sixth Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione mystery, and an historical fiction novel, both for Bywater Books. A native of Atlanta, Penny lives in Los Angeles with her partner of 18 years.
Acknowledgments
Writing a novel is a solitary pursuit, one that is made so much more comfortable, however, when the writer can feel the support at her back. I write knowing that the women of Bywater Books have my back. Thank you Salem West, Marianne K. Martin, Ann McMan, Kelly Smith, Nancy Squires, and Elizabeth Andersen for your constant presence.
Bywater Books
Copyright © 2018 Penny Mickelbury
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-61294-122-6
Bywater Books First Edition: February 2018
Cover designer: Ann McMan, TreeHouse Studio
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters and events described by the author are fictitious. No resemblance to real persons, dead or alive, is intended.
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