Loving Time (51 page)

“Gotcha.” Jason patted his pocket and turned to go.

Clara nodded grimly, satisfied with the outcome of the interview. She was glad Jason had the sense not to annoy her by asking about the staff appointment she’d promised him. It made it easier because she’d never intended to give it to him.

Only much later in the day did Clara realize Jason had stolen her tape recorder with their conversation on it. It wasn’t where she’d left it, and she looked for it everywhere. For a while she waited for him to blackmail her. When the shit hit
the fan and she was fired, she tried to reach him on the phone. She suspected him of using the tape to discredit her. Stealing was a flaw Clara would never have suspected in Jason’s character. The whole thing baffled her until she moved out several months later. Then she found the recorder. It had been in the bottom cupboard near where Jason had been sitting. Hiding it there, letting her think he had stolen it to blackmail her, must have been his own little joke.

But it was not the tape about the suicide of her patient that cost Clara Treadwell her job. What cost her her job was the scandal of FBI intervention on her behalf in the homicide investigation of Harold Dickey. That intervention had caused a riot on Six North and the shooting deaths of a patient and a former employee in a hospital that strictly prohibited guns on its premises. It also cost Clara her future in Washington. The good Senator from Florida changed his mind about being in such a great rush to remarry so soon after the death of his beloved first wife.

W
ednesday, November 17, was Mike Sanchez’s day off. After hanging around the Psychiatric Centre with April for several hours to house-clean three deaths in a psycho ward, they both went home to sleep it off. At four
P.M
. he was awakened out of a deep sleep to get the unofficial word that he had been transferred to the Homicide Task Force of the NYPD.

“You know where Sergeant Woo has been assigned?” were Mike’s first words.

“Nope, I haven’t heard anything on that,” said his contact in Personal Orders.

“Well, let me know, will you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Congratulations, Mike.”

“Thanks.”

Mike hung up. His mother wasn’t at home to hear the good news. He wanted to tell someone. He took a long, hot shower and thought of April Woo.

An hour later he pulled up in front of April’s house in Astoria and honked the horn. About five minutes later she came outside. He was leaning against his car waiting for her.

“What’s up, another triple homicide?” She ambled down the walk toward him. Her purse was hitched to her shoulder. She was wearing a new camel-hair winter coat and new boots. Her hair looked different. Suddenly it seemed a lot longer. The lipstick on her rosebud mouth was now a deep red-brown.

And something else was different, too. For a second Mike couldn’t figure out why April looked so spectacularly different. Then he saw a knee appear as her coat flapped open. With a shock, he realized April was wearing a skirt. He’d never seen her in a skirt, never seen her legs. April had always worn trousers to work, didn’t want anyone to look at her.

He chewed on his mustache, smitten.

“Cat got your tongue?” She grinned.

“You look great,
querida
. I never knew you had such great legs.”

“Well, now you know.”

“Now I know.”

“What’s the news? Anybody going to get arrested in this case?”

Mike shook his head. He thought of Ray Cowles, Harold Dickey, Gunn Tram, Bobbie Boudreau. Then his thoughts wandered to Clara Treadwell and Special Agent Daveys. Rumor had it Daveys would take a vacation for a while and probably not resurface in the New York area.

“I guess there are crimes people die for, crimes people lose their jobs for …” Mike stopped as he caught sight of Sai Woo’s head in a downstairs window.

“Yeah?”

“And crimes people get away with.”

April turned around and waved at her mother.

“April, you think I should take that place in the Garden Tower?”

April leaned against the car. “It has a nice terrace … and a view of Manhattan—”

“If you crane your neck.” Mike shrugged. “And a dishwasher. You ever had a dishwasher,
querida?
”

“Do you have to wash the dishes before you put them in?”

“I don’t know, but you don’t have to dry them when you take them out.” Mike opened the door for her. “They’re standard everywhere now, look good. What do you say—want to take another look?”

“At a dishwasher? Is this a proposal, Sergeant?” April laughed and got into the car.

L
ESLIE
G
LASS
is the author of the April Woo mystery novels, including
Burning Time, Hanging Time
, and
To Do No Harm
. She divides her time between New York and Sarasota.