Unlucky 13

Chapter 46

Cindy said, “Aw, Lindsay, you don’t mean that you want me to talk about this.”

“Absolutely,” I said and then sat back and watched her try to figure out what to say to Claire that didn’t make her sound like a lunatic.

“What is this about Mackie Morales?” Claire asked. “No, really, what is this? How come you’re not talking, Cindy?”

“Because Lindsay is having fun with me.”

Claire laughed. “Seriously? Well, I like to have fun, too.”

She said, “Fine, Claire. This is the whole truth. Lindsay told me that Morales had been seen coming out of a post office in this small town called Two Rivers, Wisconsin.”

“What? Mackie resurfaced, Lindsay?” Claire asked.

“That’s what I was told.”

“Lindsay didn’t tell me why or how,” said Cindy, mounting her defense. “But she told me where. That was all. And I took it from there.”

“And you did what?” Claire asked.

“I went to Wisconsin to find her.”

“No way.”

Cindy looked down at the table and drummed her fingers.

Claire laughed at Cindy’s expression, then started to pour herself more beer.

I put my hand on the top of her glass and said, “Who’s driving you home?”

Claire twisted her head around and shouted, “Lorraine? Coffee, please. All around.”

Lorraine came over with three mugs of coffee on a tray and said, “There’s been a complaint, Dr. Washburn. Laughing too loud at this table. But keep it up. I like it.”

We all laughed at this one, and I found that I was getting over myself. Cindy, too, was passionate about her work, and she was winning at it.

“I want pie,” Cindy called out before Lorraine had gone too far. “Anyone else?”

Lorraine returned to the table. “I’ve got coconut cream and key lime.”

“One of each,” Cindy said.

Claire stirred her coffee and said, “Okay. So did you find Morales?”

Cindy said, “Not me. Not the SFPD. And not the FBI either, but I’m still working on it.”

Cindy went on to tell Claire what she told me, that she had found out that Randy Fish’s father had lived in Wisconsin, that she had located the house and made friends with the local gendarme, and that they had found out the house was wired to explode three ways, and that Mackie had, in fact, been inside the house not long before.

“Are you shitting me?” said Claire. “Whoa, Cindy. That’s hard-core.”

Cindy was totally warmed up. She talked about the two DBs at a Citibank in Chicago, victims of a thin, dark-haired female shooter who might be Morales. And then there was the fresh corpse found in a drainage ditch off Route 80 outside Laramie, Wyoming.

“The victim was a dark-haired college girl,” Cindy said with meaning.

“Randy liked dark-haired college girls,” I said.

“I remember,” Claire said thoughtfully. “What was the cause of death?”

Cindy said, “Gunshot to the temple. And her fingers were amputated postmortem.”

“I get you. You think that was some kind of Mackie tribute to the Fish Man.”

Cindy said, “Yeah, I do. But I’ve got no proof.”

She delicately folded a forkful of pie into her mouth and managed to keep talking without looking gross doing it.

“The college girl was Randy’s type. Hell, Mackie is Randy’s type. There were no prints or shells or witnesses, but I’m getting a sense she’s on a spree and she’s heading this way.”

“And so what are you going to do about that?” Claire asked. Now, like me, Claire was alarmed.

“I just want to write a great, great story,” Cindy said. “There’s nobody better to do it than me. You guys should stop thinking of me as a kid. Really.”

“No one thinks of you that way,” Claire said.

“No one,” I said.

“Right,” said Cindy. “Look.”

She put her pearly-pink quilted handbag on the table and opened it so we could see inside.

I saw a snub-nosed .38 between her makeup kit and a packet of gum.

“Shut up,” said Claire.

“Are you kidding me?” I said.

“No joke, girls. I can ride ’em, I can rope ’em, and I can shoot, too. Richie taught me. And I have a carry license to prove it.”

Claire and I blinked at Cindy as she finished the last of her pie and scraped the plate with her fork.

I knew I was supposed to stay home tonight. My girlish merry mood was gone. And guess what?

I was scared to death for Cindy.