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

Sy’s death for us to be saying, The case is closed. I want those questions answered. I want the case to stay open. But it’s your call. You can stay here, go with Kurz when he comes here for you.”

“Or?”

“Get the hell out of here. With me. Now.”

Smart girl. She thought to toss all the folded laundry back into the dryer, so it wouldn’t look as if she’d run on a moment’s notice. We raced out her back door, and I led her through her yard, across an open field to a small wooded area where I’d hidden the Jag, in case Robby showed. Moose sprinted after us, if something with that big a butt can be said to sprint. Bonnie got into the car, and while the door was still open, the dog leapt in, over her lap and into the driver’s seat.

“Get her out,” I said, at the same moment as I opened the driver’s door and grabbed her collar.

“When will I get back?”

“How the hell should I know. Two minutes, if you don’t convince me.”

“What if I do?”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly she brightened. “If you put the top 266 / SUSAN ISAACS

down, I could hold her in my lap and there’d be room for the three of us.”

“If I put the top down, you idiot, there’d be a hundred witnesses who could say, ‘Oh, I saw Bonnie and her dog.

They were tooling over to Steve Brady’s, in his car. A hundred witnesses to my hindering prosecution. A Class D

felony.”

“You mean this isn’t legal?” But before she’d finished the question, she knew the answer. “I can’t let you do this.”

She put her hand on the door handle. “Don’t move,” I ordered.

She shook her head. “No. I’m getting out of here.”

I drew my gun. “You move, Bonnie, and I’ll shoot you between the fucking eyes.”

“Oh, stop it.”

Jesus Christ. My head was pounding, I was nauseous from dehydration, I was standing there holding a gun on a murder suspect I was helping escape, and there was a hundred-pound black, hairy mongrel with its tongue hanging out sitting upright, its claws gripped nice and tight into the leather, gazing out the front window, as if waiting for a traffic light to change. “I’m not going to talk about this now! Your goddamn life is on the line, so get that mutt out of here and let’s move.”

Bonnie’s voice was so low I could hardly hear her. “The back door is closed. She can’t get to her water, and if I’m not there…”

I stuck my gun back in my holster, hauled Moose out of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. Which of course was the cue for Bonnie to open her door and get out. “Get back in!” I shouted. She shook her head. I started the engine.

“Goodbye.” Bonnie whistled, two high, quick notes. Moose raced around to her side and Bonnie pushed her in.

And that’s how we came to drive to my house with MAGIC HOUR / 267

Bonnie in the passenger seat, me in the driver’s seat, and fatso Moose stretched over both our laps, barking with pleasure at this wonderful game.

Migrant workers’ shacks not being known for expansive rooms or cathedral ceilings, the architect-entrepreneur-loser I’d bought my house from hadn’t had much space to work with, so he’d made most of the place into a “family area,”

one main room that served as kitchen, den, dining and living room. Then he hacked off a little at each end, so that when he was taking potential buyers around, he could make one of those Voilà! gestures with his hand and say, “To sleep…,”

then wait for the Yorkers to say, “…perchance to dream,”

and they could all be good friends and bask in the radiance of each other’s culture, plus make a nice, civilized deal. Except I’d rather have gotten strung up by the nuts than say

“…perchance to dream,” and the architect had gotten real nervous because he knew I was a cop and therefore I might think the “To sleep…” meant he was making a pass, because he wore a ponytail, and this could queer the deal in every sense. So he’d just added, “The bedroom,” real fast and left it at that.

The master bedroom, like the rest of the house, had come furnished—since this was to be the model for the hundreds of migrant-worker shacks he had dreamed of renovating. But the bed he’d put in was just large enough for midgets to do it in the missionary position, so I’d gotten rid of it and put in a king-size bed. Once I did that, there was just enough space to get to the closets and the bathroom.

On the opposite side of the house, he’d taken the same amount of square footage and stuck in two guest rooms, connected by a bathroom. I led Bonnie into the first, which wasn’t much different from the second, except instead of scallops and conch shells

268 / SUSAN ISAACS

stenciled on the floors and around the top of the walls, it had pineapples. Since I hardly ever went near this part of the house, I’d forgotten about them, and about the hideous lamp with a green shade and a base of some fat sticks tied together with rawhide the architect had told me was a rustic touch I might conceivably wish to change. The poor guy was such a basket case because he couldn’t sell his house; I wound up putting in a bid that same day.

I pulled down the shades. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” I said, my back to Bonnie. “This is to make sure you’re not seen.”

“I won’t get the wrong idea.” Her voice had a tremor. That was the only sign she was as terrified as I sensed she was.

“Not that I get a lot of company, but just in case.” When I turned back to her, she was sitting, primly, on a small lad-der-back chair. I sat on the edge of the bed, but because the room