Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

thaw her out. Of course, there was no fire. Outside, it was already over seventy. The sky was too bright, an almost painful blue, the brilliant morning light of the end of August.

The sun poured through Bonnie’s living room window, making shining squares on a dozing Moose and on the dark wood floor beneath her.

Bonnie’s head was down, so she didn’t notice Thighs rush over and hand me a heavy shopping bag. Since all he’d turned up so far was one of Moose’s half-chewed rawhide bones under the couch, he was clearly longing for some significant sign of Bonnie’s guilt.

I emptied the shopping bag onto the coffee table. Bonnie glanced over. There were two unopened boxes: a coffee grinder and one of those expensive espresso-cappuccino machines. In the bottom of the bag was an American Express receipt: Sy Spencer, card member since 1960, had paid for them.

I walked over to her, sat down on the other side of the search warrant and fluttered the receipt in front of her. “Sy like a cup of espresso afterwards?” I inquired. “Or before?

Some guys need a little stimulant.” She didn’t answer, but then I hadn’t expected her to. I didn’t exist. Plus Gideon had obviously warned her not to say anything, and she was taking him literally. “Is your lawyer coming over?” I asked. She picked up the warrant. She looked for a pocket for it, but since she was wearing the shorts and T-shirt, she didn’t have any. She just held on to it. I shifted so I could at least look at her. Her T-shirt was from some film festival, probably a feminist thing. Across her breasts it said WOMEN MAKE

MOVIES in red and green and yellow and blue.

I rested the receipt on top of the warrant she was holding and pointed to Sy’s name. “Three hundred and fifty-five bucks for a cup of coffee,” I said, Across the room, Thighs sniggered; he probably thought the

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sound was a manly detective laugh. Bonnie brushed away the receipt with the back of her hand. It floated onto the floor.

It was so quiet. The only sound was the dog’s snoring and then the clunk, clunk of Robby walking around upstairs. I’d wanted him to be the one to find the money in her boot, the real estate listing. I told him: I’ll stay downstairs, keep an eye on her.

But she wasn’t going anywhere, and I couldn’t move anymore. I just sat there beside her. We could have been a heartbroken couple waiting for some sad appointment together, cancer specialist, marriage counselor. I kept sneaking glances at her; instead of wearing her hair loose, tucked behind her ears, or in a ponytail, she’d put it into a braid. I had the urge to reach over and, with the tip of my index finger, stroke each one of the shiny intertwinings. I’d say, It’ll be all right.

What I actually said was: “Where’d you hide the rifle?”

She didn’t move. “Bonnie, your window of opportunity is closing. You make it tough on us, we’ll make it tough on you.”

Just then, Gideon Friedman came striding in. Ninja Lawyer: baggy, rolled-at-the-cuff black cotton slacks, a black sweater, hair combed back with slickum. I stood up. “Hey, Counselor Friedman,” I said. “Good to see you.”

He walked past me and hunkered down in front of Bonnie.

“Did you say anything to him?” he asked her. “Anything at all?” She shook her head. “Good girl.” He picked up the search warrant, stood, and read it over. He saw it was okay.

He wanted it out of sight, but since he didn’t have any pockets either, he held on to it and, with his other hand, pulled Bonnie up and steered her into the kitchen.

They must have been talking softly in there. I couldn’t hear anything, not even the hum of muted 214 / SUSAN ISAACS

conversation. I walked over to her bookshelves. Most of them were paperbacks: hundreds of mysteries and novels. There were books about movies—biographies of actors and directors, Cinematographer’s Handbook, Farce in Film—and about nature stuff. Flowering Plants of Beach and Dune. Hiking Long Island. There were no sex books tucked behind Birds of North America, no Memoirs of a Victorian Serving Wench, and no Stop Being a Compliant Cunt and Get Him to Marry You, one of those books single women always seem to have.

Just then Robby clomped down the stairs. His beige loafers had thick black heels with what sounded like metal taps. He was grinning, brandishing a plastic evidence bag with the wad of bills that had been in Bonnie’s boot. I walked over to him. “Eight hundred eighty!” he announced.

“In tens or twenties?” I tried to look amazed, thrilled. “Like from a cash machine?”

“You got it.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really.” Robby seemed a little disappointed. He’d probably been hoping for a smoking rifle.

“No vibrator in the night table?” Robby shook his head.

“No interesting papers?”

“Nothing.” Shit, I’d have to go up to have a casual look-through and then find the real estate listing. Unless she’d thrown it out. “Just a lot of movie script stuff in her office,”

he said. “Rejection letters in a file. But listen, we have enough! This money is the stake in her heart. And once we get her blood samples, it’s all over.”

“Any rejection letters from Sy?”

“No, but we don’t need any. Where is she?”

“In the kitchen with her lawyer.”

“Think we should stick it to her now?” He was like a leashed, drooling Doberman; he couldn’t wait.

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“Yeah,” I said. “Might as well get it over with.”

My throat felt swollen. My chest rose, but I couldn’t get enough air.

We walked into the kitchen. Robby waved the bag of money in front of Bonnie’s face. “Eight hundred eighty dollars in twenties,” he said to her.

“If you have any comments, please address them to me,”

Gideon responded.

“Oh, sorry,” Robby said, giving him a big, shit-eating grin.

“We found this hidden in your client’s boot. All I want to