“Excuse me, but who are you? Sister Mary Margaret of the Little Sisters of the Chastity Belt?”
“Yes, damn it. I am.”
“Why? What is your problem?”
I held up my empty beer mug so that Lorraine would bring me a refill.
“Corona coming up.”
“Lorraine,” I said, “listen to this. Cindy is sleeping with my partner, and she didn’t tell me.”
“ Uh-huh.”
“Well, don’t you think that as my friend, she should have told me?”
“Oh, no you don’t, Lindsay,” said Lorraine. “Don’t you drag me into this. I’m a very happy girl right now and I don’t want a beef with either one of you.”
“Fine,” I said. “Hit me again.”
“Be right back.”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you, Lindsay? You think I should’ve told you that I was going out with Rich when I knew all along you were going to make us both feel bad about it — and I don’t even know why!” Cindy sat back in her seat and did, in fact, look confused.
“You don’t know why?” I said. I was getting a swooping feeling in my stomach, telling me that I was wrong and she was right, that I had been uncool. And that whatever Cindy and Rich were doing together, it was their business.
Cindy didn’t know much about my history with Rich, and I wasn’t going to tell her — but maybe he would tell her.
Maybe he had.
Some hesitancy must have passed over my face because Cindy smelled blood. She leaned forward, stuck out her chin, and said, “I get it. Are you two doing it, Lindsay? Is that it? You tell me right now, because if you’re sleeping with him, I will kick that dog to the curb.”
“No. No. We’re not. Don’t want to and never have.”
“Good,” Cindy said. “That’s really great. So tell me again: what’s the problem?”
“It’s a chain-of-command thing, Cindy —”
“Are you ca-razy? I don’t work for you.”
“Conklin does! And he and I talk about stuff that you shouldn’t know — for all our sakes. And I would have liked a chance to remind him.”
“Even if that made sense — which it doesn’t — we don’t talk about you. We don’t talk about your cases. We just have great sex and watch movies in bed.”
My face heated up, and I dropped my eyes to the table. Cindy had just given me way too much information, and I’d completely brought it down on myself.
My beer was climbing into my throat when I heard, “Hey there, girlfriends.”
I looked up to see Claire clearing the aisles as she came toward our table. She had her baby in her arms, my goddaughter, Ruby Rose. And Yuki and Doc were bringing up the rear.
“I’m not finished talking yet,” I growled at Cindy.
“Fine,” Cindy said. “Don’t make me wait too long for your apology.”
Chapter 77
YUKI WAS ALMOST giddy with delight.
They were all jammed together in the booth at Susie’s, and her friends liked Doc. Correction. She could tell by their faces that all of them loved him. He was telling them about his day in the ER, saying, “A female patient comes in, says she’s been doing unaccountable stuff at night since she started taking sleep meds. Apparently she unwittingly went to her medicine chest and swallowed down a whole bottle of pills.