I’d planned to spend the following day, Friday, catching up on a whole bunch of stuff that I was supposed to have completed weeks ago: I figured if I was going to open a business, I’d better get my life in order.
It was well after midnight when I left the hospital. I was exhausted; the effects of the past couple of days were beginning to catch up with me, so I decided I’d go home, drink a little Laphroaig, eat a sandwich, relax, and then go to bed, and that’s what I did… sort of.
When I arrived back to the condo, there was an unmarked cruiser parked on the road outside.
Kate? I thought, smiling.
I found her in the living room, trying to tidy the place, picking up stuff and putting it away. Oh, yeah, I meant to do it myself earlier, but… well, you know how it is.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, throwing my jacket and holster onto a stool by the breakfast bar in the kitchen. “I thought you were going home?”
“You looked like you needed a friend,” she said. “As to what am I doing, what does it look like?” She held up a magazine. “Do you know you have magazines from the nineties?”
“Yeah, I’m saving them for the articles. Kate, you didn’t have to come over. I was going to clean up in the morning.”
She tossed the magazine onto the bookshelf, picked up a couch pillow and started fluffing it.
“Boy, did you ever piss somebody off?” she said, throwing the pillow onto the couch. “They slash your tires and now this. They must be into some really bad stuff to work this hard to discourage you. I hope you get ’em… ’cause Detective Lieutenant Eric Cable couldn’t find his own ass with the light on.”
She came over, slipped her arms around my neck and kissed me lightly on the lips. “But not tonight, sweet prince. Tonight Velda needs Mikey, so come on.” She took my hand and led me to the bedroom.
We had only taken a few steps when I pulled her close and kissed her properly. She kissed me back, then pushed me away, grabbed my hand with both of hers and, tugging hard, she backed into the bedroom.
“Aw, crap!” I said. The sheets had been slashed and the bed was a mess.
She looked at me, smiling, and laughed. “Ooo, brutal. Those were your favorite sheets.”
“Bastards!” I snarled, and then stormed off down the hall and fetched another set of sheets from the linen closet. By the time I returned, Kate had the bed stripped and ready for the new sheets.
“You can always use them for cleaning, something you don’t do often enough. Maybe they were trying to tell you something.”
“Yeah, yeah. And maybe one of these days I’ll get a maid.”
“Oui, Oui monsieur. Maybe a French one,” she said in a poor French accent. “I can wear one of those leettle black and white outfits, the ones with the ruffles.”
“Hah,” I said. “They don’t make ’em to fit busty girls like you. You’d be sticking out of it… Okay then. We’ll go shopping tomorrow.
“You think?” she asked and threw a pillow at my head.
I was glad she had a sense of humor because I was still fuming; those sheets had cost me a bundle.
She took the sheets from me and shook out the one with the corner pockets.
“Grab the other side,” she said as she tucked the fitted sheet around the corners of the mattress.
I did, and the next thing I knew, the top sheet was covering my head and she was laughing as she jumped into the middle of the bed and landed on her knees.
Geez, she’s beautiful, I thought as I grabbed the covers and threw them in a pile on the end of the bed. She sat on her haunches, slipped the Glock and holster off her belt, set it on the nightstand, pointed her finger at me and motioned for me to join her. And I did. Who the hell cared about making the rest of the bed? It was going to get messed up anyway… And it did.