Page 63

CHAPTER 61

WHEN I PULLED open Susie’s front door, I saw that the café was packed to the walls with a riotous evening crowd. Rikki’s steel-drum band had been moved from the front of the main room to its center, leaving more space at the bar for the after-work regulars and the sleek women from the Financial District who’d come for ladies’ night: half price drinks and dancing to the irresistible heat of the Caribbean beat.

Claire, Yuki, and I picked our way through the tipsy dancers, along the kitchen corridor to our usual spot in the room in the back. It’s half the size of the front and tonight was jammed with twice the normal number of weekday diners. Cindy was already waiting at “our” booth in the back corner. I read her expression as What took you so long?

We hadn’t even settled into the banquettes yet when Cindy began talking. “I just learned—”

Claire asked, “Before we start, Cin, okay to order? I skipped lunch today.”

She signaled to Lorraine, who held up the flat of her palm. Meaning, I’ll get to you when I can.

“I can’t stay long,” I told the others. “Joe’s suddenly catching a 5 a.m. flight tomorrow, and we have to shift some plans—”

The girls protested.

“Lindsay, at least give me fifteen minutes,” Cindy said.

Lorraine came over with a pitcher of beer, but Yuki said, “We’re not drinking tonight. Please bring bread and butter, okay?”

Lorraine said, “Okey dokey,” and disappeared into the shifting crowd before Claire could put in an order.

Claire sighed and said, “Okay, Cin. So, what happened?”

“I heard from my contact in Verne …”

I was sitting directly across from Cindy and could barely hear her. I said, “Say again?”

Yuki whipped her head around to the left and shouted at three people laughing and talking at the next table, “Will you keep it down, please?”

“Hey,” said the man sitting at that table. “Mind your manners.”

Yuki turned back to our meeting. “Cindy, you were saying?”

As if cued, Rikki’s band launched into a Calypso jazz version of “Down to the Market,” making it difficult to form or follow a simple thought.

But Cindy was still on track.

“My cop source in Nevada …”

“Wilson,” Claire and I said in unison.

“Uh-huh. He called me today. He heard about a cold case in Portland, Oregon—an ‘I said. You dead’ crime that happened about a year and a half ago.”

While twisting her ring, pulling at her curls, and focusing on each of us in turn with her big blue eyes, Cindy told us what she knew about this unsolved case.

“This woman was a divorcée in her mid-thirties. She was found dead. Hanged. But that’s not the weird part. The kicker is that when she was found, the words ‘I said’ were written on the sole of one of her shoes and ‘You dead’ on the other.”

Claire asked, “Her death was a homicide?”

“Undetermined,” said Cindy.

“You’re saying that the ME called it ‘undetermined’?” Claire asked. “This woman’s death wasn’t ruled a suicide, a homicide, or an accident?”

Cindy said, “Not officially, no. But someone knows. So, I’ll be digging for leads.”

I felt a pang of guilt. Agent Jim Walsh had told me about this same suspicious death in Portland. Now my three best friends were in on this story. Cindy Thomas, a stellar reporter and bestselling true-crime author, was determined to unlock the puzzle and get it out to the world in big black headline news. She was about to turn this cold case nuclear.

I’d promised Walsh that I would be his silent partner. I hadn’t broken my promise, but Cindy wanted help. She asked us each in turn: Could Claire speak to her counterpart in Portland? Did Yuki have any strings she could pull with the Portland DA? And did I know any cops who worked in Oregon?

I tried to stop the unstoppable Cindy Thomas.

“Cindy, can you sit on this story until Portland’s ME calls it a homicide.”

Yuki said, “I agree with Lindsay. I can see a lawsuit if you get it wrong. You really don’t want—”

Someone said, “ Excusez-moi. ”

Lorraine was standing at the head of our table, order pad in hand.

“Ladies, these are tonight’s specials. We have a jerk chicken wings appetizer, with bones or deboned if you prefer. Also, a very nice grilled sea bass …”

This was my cue to leave.

I squeezed my friends’ hands, kissed the cheeks of those I could reach, and waded through the crowd toward the door.

The streets were quiet, and the sky was still light when I drove home.