Claire busted out the cake while Edmund popped the top on the Krug. It was one of the best champagnes, at least a hundred bucks a bottle.
“Introducing my original white-chocolate cheesecake with cream cheese and orange slices between the layers,” Claire said, putting it down on the dining room table. “Baked sour cream frosting, and Grand Marnier in a graham cracker crust. Voilà! I hope you like it.”
The applause was spontaneous and rousing, and I was pushed forward so that I could be next to my best friend. There were ten candles on the cake, standing for the tenth anniversary of the first time Claire and I met.
It had been a memorable occasion: It was my first week in Homicide, and Claire was the low woman on the totem pole in the ME’s Office. We’d been called to the men’s jail. A skinhead was down, three hundred pounds of swastika tattoos and muscle, wedged under his bunk and handcuffed. Not breathing.
The guard outside was in a high panic. He had cuffed the inmate and put him in his cell because the inmate was out of control, and now he was dead.
“He couldn’t find the keys to the cuffs,” Claire said. “And we couldn’t turn the body over.”
Claire was laughing as I told about her locking her kit outside the cell, then dropping her camera so hard she cracked the lens.
“And so Claire bends down for her camera, and I back into the guy’s toilet, which sends me down,” I said. “I reach out to grab on to something — anything — and end up grabbing his still under the sink. And the hooch sloshes all over me. I mean all over.”
Edmund has this big laugh: “Hah-hah-hah.”
He was pouring champagne into the good crystal glasses. I started to lift my flute of bubbly, but put the glass down.
Claire was snickering now, and Yuki’s trilling laugh was sounding the high notes.
“We get back to the morgue,” Claire continued, “stinking of hooch.”
“Disgusting,” I said. “But it was a no-brainer what killed him.”
“No-brainer?” said Claire. “No-brainer for you. I’m the one stuck with doing the post while you go home and change your clothes.”
“He OD’d?” Brady asked.
“Didn’t take much,” Claire said. “If you’re distilling hooch in tin cans — and he was — it turns to methanol. Three ounces’ll kill you dead.”
“I can’t hear that story too many times,” Cindy said, laughing.
She plucked the candles out of the cake one at a time and licked the bottoms clean, making Conklin shake his head and laugh.
Yuki brought out the plates and forks, and Edmund handed me my sleeping goddaughter, Ruby Rose Washburn, a child as cute as ten buttons.
Claire hugged me tight, the baby between us.
“Happy anniversary, Linds,” said my best friend.
I had a lot of thoughts, and images came to me of a lot of murders and late nights working with Claire to solve them. It had been trial by fire every single time.
“And many more years together, girlfriend,” I said.
We were still laughing an hour later, and then it was time to go. After I’d hugged and kissed all my buds good night — and yes, even my fine lieutenant — Joe and I headed back to town.
It was wonderfully peaceful inside that car.
I said to Joe, “It was hard not to tell anyone.”
“I know. But let’s keep it to ourselves for now, Blondie.”
My handsome husband shot me a smile. Patted my thigh.
“Six weeks on night duty, huh?” he said.
“I dissed the lieutenant. I deserve it. Still, I did the right thing.”
“I’m going to have the whole bed to myself for forty-two nights. And here I am, married at last.”
“We can fool around when I get in at eight-thirty a.m.,” I said.
I leaned over and kissed Joe’s cheek as we took a turn onto Lake Street. Centrifugal force and a whole lot of love glued us together.
“Whoaaaaaa!” I squealed.
Damn, I was happy.
Epilogue. WIN/WIN
Chapter 122
YUKI AND RED DOG Parisi walked down the green terrazzo hallway toward Judge LaVan’s chambers. Yuki was thinking, Anything could go wrong and as history had shown, it probably would. Red Dog said to her, “I’ve changed my mind.”
“What did you say?”
“You don’t need me. Just do what you do, Yuki. It’s your party. Call me when you’re done.”
“I can’t believe you’re wimping out on me.”
Parisi laughed. “Yeah, that’s me. A big ol’ wimp. Now, you go get ’em. I’ll be in my office after lunch.”
“Wus,” she called after him.
Parisi laughed.
Yuki knocked on the judge’s door and heard him shout, “Come in.” She opened the door and entered Judge Byron LaVan’s chambers. Phil Hoffman and Candace Martin were in place and the judge was behind his desk, wearing his robes to maintain formality.
The court reporter, Sharon Shine, was sitting at her own small table. She put down the phone, said hello to Yuki, and asked after the deputy DA.
“Len had an emergency meeting out of the building. I’ll brief him later,” Yuki said, attempting to convey with her body language that Parisi’s absence was no big deal.
“Your Honor, everyone’s present,” said the court reporter.
“Fire up your transcription machine, Sharon. Everyone, this proceeding is now in session. Dr. Martin, do you know why you’re here?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“You’ve told the clerk that you’ve changed your plea to guilty. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Hoffman, any objections you wish to put on the record at this time?”
“No, Judge.”
“Ms. Castellano?”
“Your Honor, we’re prepared to recommend sentencing based on the defendant’s complete allocution.”
“Okay, Dr. Martin. You’re up. You’re saying that you’re guilty as charged, second-degree murder of your husband. Is that right?”
Candace Martin said, “Yes, Your Honor. I killed him without premeditation.”
“Tell me about that,” said LaVan. “Don’t leave out a word.”
Yuki thought Candace looked like she was sedated. When she spoke, her voice was soft but steady, even when she recreated the terrible scene that preceded the shooting. When she’d finished, she sat back in her chair and sighed deeply.
“Mr. Hoffman, have you spoken with the District Attorney’s Office? You’ve worked something out?”
“Yes, sir, we have.”
“Ms. Castellano?”
Yuki was unprepared for the rush of emotions she felt. Candace Martin had been part of her life for almost a year and a half. Even as she tried other cases, the Martin case had been on her mind, and new information had been added continually to a folder on her computer.
She’d rehearsed, lived, breathed, and dreamed this case, and when it blew up in court, when others would have given up, she’d stuck with it. And now it was almost over.
Yuki said to the judge, “Your Honor, due to the circumstances, namely that Dr. Martin’s daughter had been violently abused and that the defendant acted to protect her daughter from further harm, we recommend a sentence of ten years.
“Because we believe that it is necessary for the good of the children to be able to see their mother, we are recommending that the first five years of that sentence be spent at San Mateo Women’s Correctional. It’s minimum-security and only eighteen miles from the children’s home, and Dr. Martin will work in the infirmary.
“If Dr. Martin’s behavior is good during that time, we agree that she be released from prison after five years and serve the rest of her sentence on probation.”
LaVan swiveled his chair a couple of times before saying to Yuki, “Sounds good to me. So ordered.”
Phil leaned toward Yuki and put out his hand.
She clasped his firm handshake and felt his respect and
his sincerity when he said, “Thanks, Yuki. Congratulations.”
That’s when it really hit her.
She’d won.
Chapter 123
THE NOON RUSH was, frankly, horrible. Claire was driving because we were late and she was adamant that she didn’t want to be a passenger with a “cowgirl” at the wheel. That cowgirl she was referring to was me.
I was fine with Claire dodging traffic for a change, so I just dialed around the radio as we headed toward Sansome Street.
“If you had answered my text,” Claire groused, “we could have left ten minutes earlier. I hate to be late.”
“We’re only going to be a couple of minutes late.”
A cab swerved in front of us, then jacked around to pick up a passenger at the curb. Claire leaned on the horn. Others joined in — and then we were driving cowboy-style. I laughed at Claire.
“Giddyup,” I said.
“Am I okay on the right?”
“Go for it.”
We cleared the worst of the jam at Folsom Street and found an open lane that took us from 3rd to Kearny, a straightaway to an office building in the heart of the financial district.
“Not bad,” I said, looking at my watch. “I’d say we’re actually on time. And you didn’t even need a siren.”
The wind blew through the canyon of office buildings, practically sweeping us past the entrance to the sixteen-story granite structure casting a long shadow over the corner of Sansome and Halleck.
The lawyer’s office was on the eleventh floor, and while the elevator was swift, it took us time to find the right door and to clear reception. An attractive legal secretary in a pencil skirt and a ruffled mauve blouse walked us to a conference room and opened the door to let us in.
Avis Richardson was sitting in the seat closest to the door. She was scrubbed and dressed up, and although she looked grave, she resembled a fifteen-year-old girl more than she had at any other time since I’d met her.
I said hello to her and the Richardsons and introduced Claire, who was moving around the table to hug Toni Burgess and Sandy Wilson, the Devil Girlz we’d met in Taylor Creek, Oregon.
Correction: former Devil Girlz.
There was no sign of leather. Instead Toni was in a dress and had soccer-mom hair, and she said she was going back to teaching school. Sandy just looked sweet.
More people were introduced: lawyers for both sides, and His Honor Marlon Sykes, a judge from Portland who was in town for the ABA convention.
Baby Tyler Richardson’s travel seat was in a chair pulled up to the blond-wood conference table. He was wearing a blue onesie with a duck appliqué on the front. His eyes were open. He was very little, but he was taking everything in.
I smiled at Tyler, thinking about what a very important day this was for this little boy.
Chapter 124
CLAIRE AND I sat down at the conference table and the process began.
Lawyers passed papers to Judge Sykes: the report from Child Protective Services giving a green light to the women from Taylor Creek; an annulment of Avis Richardson’s marriage to Jordan Ritter; and the revocation of Ritter’s parental rights in exchange for a couple of years off the twenty-year stretch he was facing for statutory rape and kidnapping.
There was also a revocation of Avis’s parental rights, and adoption papers naming Toni and Sandy, who were beaming from across the table, Tyler’s parents.
Avis signed the adoption papers without hesitation. Toni and Sandy signed the same papers with barely contained glee, and together they got up and hugged Avis. She was stiff at first, but her nose pinked up and she started to cry.
Photos were taken and Claire and I were asked to be in the group shot. People came up to us and thanked us for our part in this wonderful outcome.
Avis was one of them.
She said to me, “I’m sorry for lying to you, Sergeant Boxer. I know you’ve done a good thing for Tyler. It’s legal now.”
The baby was in Sandy Wilson’s arms and he laughed in the excitement. I reached out to him. He wrapped my finger in his little fist and gave me a good solid connection with his big brown eyes.
My heart swelled.
I was eager for this little boy to start his new life.
Back in the car, Claire texted Cindy and Yuki, saying the Women’s Murder Club was on for dinner tonight at Susie’s. She added, “Don’t be late!”
I said, “By the way, I won’t be drinking.”
Claire put the phone in her lap and turned her eyes on me, pursed her lips, and said, “It’s about time you told me, girlfriend.” She reached over and gave my arm a shake. “I can read it all over your face.”
We both cracked up.
Claire knew me that well. I didn’t even have to tell her the news that had irrevocably and fantastically changed my world.
Joe and I were having a baby.
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