Yours, Mine, and Ours Read online

  “You have to let me kill her,” she panted. She seemed to suddenly remember she was armed, because her hand was a blur as it slapped her hip. Except it slapped my hand, which I’d just managed to slap over her gun. “She’ll kill us all if you don’t let me kill her.”

  “Enough.” I let go of her with the hand not restraining the gun, took the punch to the face (oh, to be an octopus right now), and gripped her jugular until her eyes rolled up and she plopped to the floor.

  I stepped away from her, breathing hard. She did not look it at all, but was stronger and faster than I had anticipated. She had put up an excellent fight.

  The clapping caught my attention. George and Behrman were applauding and (this was the sick/annoying thing) doing so with genuine approval.

  “Wonderful, Shiro,” George said. “Really. Just great.”

  “That was awesome,” Behrman added. “What just happened?”

  George grinned. “My girl-on-girl desires were almost satisfied and everything. Whew—is anyone besides me feeling flushed? I can’t thank you enough.”

  I rubbed my lower back. “Prepare for a Splenda enema, pig.”

  chapter twenty-three

  Much later, after the fight and interrogating Behrman to be sure he was not the one we sought (though it would have been a pleasure to arrest him for any crime), I cornered George in the men’s room back at the office.

  “Finally, you appreciate the awesomeness of my dick,” he said, urinating proudly. “So, did you just want to do it right here, or should we get a motel room? Or should we stay here? It’s pretty gross in here, I dunno…”

  “Stop it.”

  “In my mind,” he said, twirling a finger near his left ear, “we do it in the mail room right next to the big copy machine, the one that starts to shake after it’s been running for an hour…”

  “Do not point that thing at me,” I ordered. “And if you do not stop, they will write books about what I do to your body before I let you die.”

  George shrugged. “You followed me into a bathroom, Shiro. What did you think I was going to do?”

  He had stymied me, the rat bastard, but I would never let him know it. “Behave, for ten seconds. Now. Since Agent Thyme is, ah, being debriefed by our lovely-and-efficient supervisor, I have an opportunity to ask you to explain.”

  “Explain…?” Zip. Flush. Stretch. Yawn. “What’m I supposed to explain?”

  “Do not pretend to be an idiot.”

  “Who’s pretending?” he asked with honest bewilderment.

  “Are you claiming zero knowledge of Behrman’s living arrangements? Knowing BOFFO’s, uh, occasional idiosyncrasies…”

  “Occasional idiosyncrasies!” he said, delighted. “That’s excellent, Shiro. I’m putting that one on my Facebook page.”

  “You will not. Are you telling me there was not anything to indicate the presence of a gigantic mirror when we least needed it?”

  “Sure there was.” George shrugged. “Got a description of his whole living situation from his parole officer.” I nodded; that was standard. Parolees had to prove they had a home and a job, and were not murdering anyone in their spare time, or committing mail fraud. “Wanted to see what would happen.”

  “What?” Why did I not foresee this?

  “She’s the New Girl, I’ve never worked with her, she might have to save my gorgeous ass someday, I’ve never seen mirrored-self misidentification before, I wanted to see her in the field—are you getting all this? I wanted to see what would happen. Did you get how she pretty much cowered in the car on the way over? Wouldn’t look in the rearview? Didn’t you wonder what would have happened if she had?”

  “No,” I said, “because I read her file. It would have been something to be devoutly avoided. Not wondered about.”

  “Not for me. I wanted to see what would happen.” He shrugged again. “So I did. Worked great. Besides, I knew you’d save the day.”

  “Would you like to see what will happen now?”

  “Not really.”

  Though I was tempted to shove his sinuses into his brain, I restrained myself. Why hadn’t I checked out the same paperwork he did? Too busy looking at the big picture for JBJ instead of the individual pieces of paper. In hindsight, it was all quite clear. The trouble was, it should have been clear before it even happened. I was smarter than this. Cadence was even smarter than this. My shame was deep.

  chapter twenty-four

  After he washed, I followed him back to our desks. Thyme was still in Michaela’s office, and though I did not envy her (having sat in that chair myself many times) I made a mental note to put in a positive word.

  Thyme had a silly problem but I admired her in spite of it. She had truly thought an evil doppelgänger was hiding in the mirror to kill her and anyone with her. So she had acted at once … to help us. Many wouldn’t. My sister wouldn’t. (My other sister would have tried to liberate the Mirror People.)

  Now here she came, head down, watching the carpet all the way up to our desk. “I’m so sorry,” she told the carpet.

  “Why, what’d you do to it?” George anxiously scanned the carpet. “Is there Splenda on it? If you put fuckin’ Splenda on this shitty government carpet, I will not be responsible for wherever I end up dumping your body.”

  “Take a tranquilizer, George. Agent Thyme is apologizing to us.”

  “More to you.” Thyme looked up. Her dark eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks puffy. She’d been terrified, then humiliated. I had no idea if telling her we saw that sort of thing all the time with newbies would comfort her, or upset her further. There was always an adjustment period—except when there was not, and the newbie ended up being institutionalized or, worse, fired. George had not been my first BOFFO partner. “I can’t apologize enough.”

  “That’s true,” George said. “You can’t. I’m still traumatized by the whole thing.” He let out a fake sob. “Oh, Agent Thyme. Hold me.”

  “Are you trying to goad me into beating you to death? Shush your flapping tongue.” I turned to Thyme. “No harm done. We have seen worse.” Much, much worse. Of course, we had also seen better. Much, much better.

  She sniffed and smiled. “Ohhhh boy, I like you, Shiro. It’s … it’s still Shiro, right?”

  “Of course it is. Can’t you tell by her grim, humorless manner and the way she pretends she’s not dead inside?”

  “I dislike you,” I told him, “so much.”

  Thyme sniffed again, then scrubbed her face with the backs of her hands. The act was reminiscent of what a child would do, and it did something odd to the middle of my chest. Uncharacteristically, I wanted to hug her and explain that it would be all right. Which was illogical, and possibly untrue.

  “D’you want to hear my top three unusual deaths?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Aw, come on, I’ve had a hard day—wait. What?”

  “I want to hear about them. And I will bet I can guess at least one of them.” I was thinking in particular of Martin I of Aragon, who literally laughed himself to death; Eleazar Maccabeus, who jabbed a spear into an elephant’s belly and was crushed to death when it died on top of him; David Douglas, who fell into a pit (along with a bull!), then was crushed and gored to death; and Sigurd the Mighty, who beheaded an enemy, strapped the severed head to his saddle, then later died of an infection caught when the dead man’s teeth scraped his leg. (My favorite. Ah, irony, you are a cruel mistress.)

  “You really want to hear?” She seemed delighted and suspicious at once.

  “I really want to hear.”

  Thyme abruptly sat down, as if she were afraid she’d lose her feet if she had not. This was alarming and interesting. “What?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day with a lot of surprises and I just … no one ever wants to hear about them.”

  “Cops and FBI agents do not want to hear about unusual deaths?” Odd. Why wouldn’t they?

  “They always say they can top me and when they can’t, th
ey get mad.” She sighed. “So nobody asks anymore.”

  “That’s terrible.” I was moved to rare sympathy. “Some people are just rude.”

  “Okay, well, since we’re talking I’d have to say my favorite is prob’ly Dan Andersson—the Swedish writer? He died of cyanide poisoning. The hotel staff forgot to air out his room after spraying hydrogen cyanide for bugs.”

  “Yes, that follows.” No mint on the pillow for him. “Though if you want to talk about writers and their odd demises, don’t omit Tennessee Williams.”

  “Are you going to listen, or just try to one-up me?” she asked irritably. I noticed her accent thickened in proportion to her mood. “That man was a disaster area … choking on an eyedrop bottle cap was just the coup de grace.”

  “Not a big Streetcar fan, hmmm?”

  “He’d unscrew the top of the bottle, stick it in his mouth, then put his eyedrops in. They think his gag reflex was reduced because of all the booze and pills, so he choked to death on the stupid thing. My gosh, a writer abusing drugs and alcohol—what are the odds?”

  “So it isn’t just the manner in which they died? We have to discuss personal lives and hobbies, too?”

  She threw up her hands. “Oh, come on!” Long gone was the fiery hysteric intent on saving me from the Thyme in the mirror. And the weepy apologizer had also disappeared. “Since when is abusing booze and drugs a hobby? Now listen up: number two on my list. Lucius Fabius Clio. Choked to death on a single hair in his milk.”

  “Good one.” Unusual and repulsive. “Keep going.”

  “Francois Vatel.”

  “No.”

  “Killed himself when he was unable to provide King Louis XIV with enough seafood to serve his guests.”

  “No. That was never proven.”

  “There are firsthand accounts! People who saw what happened.”

  “Yes, and as agents tirelessly fighting crime we have never come across an unreliable witness.”

  “It happened. You—”

  “If your list is part myth and part fact, we should just—”

  “Sorry to break up the hugely geeky argument, you huge geeks, but I’ve had enough of you two for one day.” George was checking his phone and grabbing for his suit jacket. “Later, bitches.”

  Meanwhile, Thyme had not backed off so much as one inch. “There were several sources for— You know what? You want to get some dinner and talk about it?”

  “I would. Now, if you want to talk about factual unusual deaths, I could mention Jim Creighton.”

  “Ruptured his bladder swinging too hard at a baseball. Sure, but then you’ve gotta think about Tycho Brahe, who had to hold it so long—because it would have been really bad manners to leave the party and pee—his bladder ruptured.”

  “Another myth!” I took Cadence’s suit jacket off the back of my chair (why she thought she could pull off a butterscotch-colored pantsuit I did not know) and shrugged into it. “Are these unusual deaths or unusual myths?”

  “How are you not getting that these deaths have been corroborated?”

  “So has everything in the National Enquirer, and they are constantly incorrect. They are famous for it. If you were to suggest Humayun, however, I would agree his death was unusual and factual.”

  Thyme grabbed her enormous purse and trotted after me. “Oh, what bullshit! He died in a stairwell, Shiro, a stairwell! He heard the call to prayer, and since it was his habit to kneel when he heard it, he fell down the stairs. How is a lonely, slightly hilarious death in a stairwell more unusual than someone dying because they never got to pee?”

  “All right, do not get shrill. Jeff Dailey?”

  “Nuh-uh. Teenagers die all the time—look at our June Boys Jobs! Dailey died playing video games, which is more lame than unusual.”

  “Nineteen-year-olds do not drop dead of a heart attack after marathon video-game sessions,” I protested. “They drink enormous quantities of Red Bull and ingest copious amounts of saturated fat and then try to have sex. How can you— All right. All right.” I tried to calm myself. This was a fascinating conversation. This was a wonderful conversation! “You cannot question Basil Brown’s fitness for your list.”

  “Drank himself to death with orange juice.”

  “Carrot juice,” I corrected.

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Yes. Bring much cash.”

  She did. And I won some of it. Then she won some of it back.

  I could not remember the last time I had enjoyed an evening more, though I would not deny Agent Thyme brought out an enormous competitive streak in me. By evening’s end, I was laughing almost as often as I was restraining the impulse to boot her in the ankle. It made me wonder: Is this how normal people get to feel, all the time?

  chapter twenty-five

  I opened my eyes and was thrilled to find myself in my apartment, in Shiro’s gray kimono pajamas, in my very own bed. This bed is juuuuust right!

  It was dark out and I looked at my bedside clock: 2:37 A.M.

  It felt like a gift. And an even bigger gift as I carefully glanced around. No strangers in here with me. Nothing appeared to be trashed and/or set on fire. I wasn’t in a holding cell. I wasn’t bleeding. I wasn’t even hungry, though the last meal I could remember was a hastily bolted breakfast sixteen hours ago.

  No, not hungry at all … pretty full, in fact.

  I got out of bed, stepped into my sock monkey slippers, and went into the kitchen. Shiro had left files, extensive notes, and a memo addressed to me (and CC’d to Michaela, George, and Emma Jan Thyme) on the table.

  I went to my bathroom and looked in the mirror. The skin around my left eye was slightly swollen. And I’d bet my yearly therapy bill that the explanation was sitting on my kitchen table. I always got all the gory details of Shiro’s assault shenanigans; if I occasionally woke up with a black eye or a cast, she at least kept me in the loop. Puffy skin around one eye hardly rated as an injury.

  Ah, the old saying: a day without a trip to the ER is a day without sunshine. Ha!

  Okay.

  Okay, then. Shiro had been driving our body for several hours. It could have been so much worse. (It had been so much worse.)

  Curious, I checked the fridge. I usually did that when I knew I should be hungry but was really, really full instead. There was a sizable doggy bag on the first shelf. The Oceanaire Seafood Room. Only the best place in the Twin Cities to get fresh seafood. Jeepers Louise, we couldn’t afford that on our salary! Ah … but I knew who could.

  Shiro had sure been busy, which I expected. But what was this? Everything was expected, except the trip to a wonderful expensive restaurant. She must have gone with someone; she’d never go alone. In fact, most of her meals were at sushi bars or bolted over our kitchen sink.

  Okay! Shiro had kept my date with Patrick. I would rather have gone myself, but if I couldn’t, I hoped Shiro had had a good time driving my body. Sometimes I hated having to share it. But sometimes, I was glad when another piece of me could have a little nondestructive fun.

  Bemused, I went back to bed.

  chapter twenty-six

  In the morning I sat down in a Perkins to have breakfast with my best friend, Cathie Flannery. She’d gotten there first, which was unusual. What she was doing wasn’t.

  “Agh, what are you doing? Stop it.” I flopped down into the bench across from her. “Leave that stuff alone.”

  “Back off, triple threat.” Cathie suffered from OCD, among other things. In the five minutes or so before I’d arrived, she had alphabetized everything on the table, then laid it all in a straight line (still alphabetized, remember). F is for fork. S is for salt; it’s also for Splenda, which was right next to it. And, at the end of the line, W is for water glass.

  “Give me that. I was thirsty all the way over.” I liberated the water glass from the line of OCD tyranny and gulped noisily. Shiro must have had a lot of plum wine last night—I’d woken up wanting to drink the world.

  My friend had bright re
d hair and freckles (not a huge shock for someone named Flannery), was teeny—she barely came up to my chin—and whip slender. And she had the vitality of a dozen people. This is a terrible thing to say about a best friend, but I sometimes found hanging around with her to be exhausting. I’m not even going to say how Shiro felt about it.

  We’d met, years ago, at the MIMH (Minneapolis Institute of Mental Health). She was there because she was a disturbingly enthusiastic cutter. Her folks thought it was a suicide attempt. Unfortunately, they were old school: ignore anything that could lead to years of therapy. Don’t talk about it. And get rid of the problem. And deny, deny, deny.

  So they’d institutionalized her. And when we got to talking after a T-group session, we found we were really interested in what the other went through. She was amazed that I lived at MIMH. And more so when I told her I’d been conceived there, too. And I was amazed that “normal” parents could do that to their own child.

  Anyway, we’d liked each other straightaway. Neither of us was in any position to judge the other, so the only other options were to ignore each other, be friends, or be enemies. We liked the middle choice, and went with it.

  Now, years later, I was dating her brother and she was the only family I could remember. Given what my mom did to my dad

  (look out look out look out look out PLEASE DADDY LOOK OUT)

  that was a sizable blessing.

  I greeted the waitress, who looked at the odd table arrangement but had no comment (one of the many reasons we liked it here) and ordered the usual: pancakes with extra butter and extra syrup.

  “Vomit vomit vomit,” Cathie commented.

  “Do I critique your meals?”

  “All the time. So, hey. Listen.” She rested her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “Why’d you stand my brother up?”

  That was a strange question, and it must have shown on my face because she added, “I don’t mean just you. I meant all of you. None of you showed up.”