Hornet's Nest - Cornwell Patricia (читать книги онлайн бесплатно полностью .txt) 📗

"You brought me a pair of panties and money," she said.

"Mean something?"

His tail twitched, but not enthusiastically.

"Has to do with panties?"

His tail went still.

"Underwear?"

No response.

"Sex?"

He didn't budge.

"Shit," she muttered.

"What else? Well, let me retrace this thing, work it like a crime scene. You went to the washing machine, opened the lid, fished this out, it's wet, and not been in the dryer yet. So what, exactly, did you intend to fetch and then bring to me? Clothes?"

Niles was getting bored.

"Of course not," West reprimanded herself. Niles could get clothes from anywhere, the chair, the floor. He had gone to a lot of trouble for one pair of panties.

"You went into the laundry," she said.

Niles twitched.

"Ah, getting warm. Laundry? It that it?"

Niles went crazy, twitching and nuzzling her hand. West next started on the five-dollar bill. It took only two tries to affirm that money was the operative word.

"Laundry money," West muttered, mystified.

Niles could help her no further, and believed he had carried out his assignment. He jumped off the bed and returned to the kitchen, where water washed out the King's morning greeting to his faithful subject.

Niles was disappointed, and West was late. She dashed out the door, then dashed back in, having forgotten the most important item, the little box she disconnected from her own telephone. She sped along East Boulevard to South Boulevard, and turned off on Woodlawn. Brazil was wearing a windbreaker with a hood, and waiting in the parking lot, because he did not want her to see his small place with nothing in it.

"Hi," he said, getting in.

"Sorry I'm late." She could not look at him.

"My cat's lost his mind."

Well, this was certainly starting off well, Brazil dismally realized.

He was thinking about her, and she was thinking about her cat.

"What's wrong with him?" Brazil asked.

West pulled out of the parking lot as rain sprinkled. Her tires swished over wet streets. Brazil was acting as if nothing had happened. It just went to corroborate her belief that all males were the same. She supposed that his foray through her private possessions was no different than flipping through a magazine full of naked women. A thrill. A passing turn-on like a vibrating motorcycle seat or the right person sitting in your lap when the car was packed with too many passengers.

"He's just crazy, that's all," West said.

"Stares out the window all the time. Drags things out of my washing machine. Bites me. Makes weird yowling noises."

"This is new and different behavior?" asked Brazil, the psychologist.

"Oh yeah."

"What kind of yowling sounds?" Brazil went on.

"He goes yowl-y owl-yowl. Then he's quiet, and does the same thing again. Always three syllables."

"Sounds to me like Niles is trying to tell you something, and you're not listening. Quite possibly he's pointing out something right under your nose, but either you're caught up in other preoccupations, or you don't want to hear it." Brazil enjoyed making this point.

"Since when are you a cat shrink?" West glanced at him, experiencing that same giddy sensation again, that wiggling in her bowels, as if tadpoles had hatched somewhere down there.

Brazil shrugged.

"It's all about human nature, animal nature, whatever you want to call it. If we take the time to try and look at reality from someone else's perspective, try a little compassion, it can make a difference."

"Gag," West said, and she flew right by the Sunset East exit.

"You just passed the truck stop. And what you do you mean, gagV " You sure got your lines down pat, don't you, boy? " She laughed in a not-so-nice way.

"I'm not a boy, in case you haven't noticed," he said, and he realized for the first time, to his shock, that Virginia West was scared.

"I'm a legal adult, and I don't deliver lines. You must have met a lot of bad people in life."

This honestly amused her. She started laughing as rain fell harder.

She turned on wipers and her radio, while Brazil watched her, a smile playing on his lips, although he was clueless as to what he had said to amuse her so.

"Met a lot of bad people. " I She sputtered, almost helpless.

"What do I do for a living, for Christ's sake? Work in a bakery, serve ice cream cones, arrange flowers?" More peals of laughter.

"I didn't mean just what you do for a living," Brazil said.

"The bad people you meet in policing aren't the ones who really hurt you. It's people off the job. You know, friends and family."

"Yeah. You're right." She sobered up fast.

"I do know. And guess what?" She shot him a glance.

"You don't. You don't know the first thing about me and all the shits I've come across when least expecting it."

"Which is why you're not married or close to anyone," he said.

"Which is why we're changing the subject. And you're one to talk, by the way." She turned the radio up loud as rain beat the top of her personal car.

"W Hammer was watching the rain out the window of her husband's room in SICU, while Randy and Jude sat stiffly in chairs by the bed, staring at monitors, watching every fluctuation in pulse and oxygen intake. The stench got worse every hour, and Seth's moments of consciousness were like weightless airborne seeds that seemed neither to go anywhere nor land. He drifted, not here or there, and his family could not tell whether he had any awareness of their presence and devotion. For his sons, this was especially bitter. For them, this was more of the same. Their father did not acknowledge them.

Rain streaked glass and turned the world gray and watery as Hammer stood in the same position she had maintained for most of the morning.

Arms crossed, she leaned her forehead against the window, sometimes thinking sometimes not, and praying. Her divine communi cations were not entirely for her husband. Hammer was more worried about herself, in truth. She knew she had reached a crossroads, and something new was meant for her, something more demanding, that she might never do with Seth weighing her down, as he had all these years. Her children were gone. She would be alone soon. She needed no specialist to tell her this as she watched the continuing ravenous ingestion of her husband's body.

Whatever you want, I'll do, she told the Almighty. I don't care what.

Why does it matter, really, anyway? Certainly, I'm not much of a wife.

I would be the first to confess that I haven't been much in that department. Probably not been much of a mother, either. So I'd like to make it up to everyone out there, okay? Just tell me what.

The Almighty, who actually spent more time with Hammer and was more related to her than she knew, was pleased to hear her say this, for the Almighty had a rather big plan in store for this special recruit.

Not now, but later, when it was time. Hammer would see. It was going to prove rather astonishing, if the Almighty didn't say so for Its-Almighty-self. As this exchange went on, Randy and Jude fixed their eyes on their mother for the first time that day, it seemed.

They saw her head against the glass, and how still she had gotten for one who generally never stopped pacing. Overwhelmed with the profound love and respect they felt for her, they both got up at once. They came up behind her, and arms went around her.

"It's okay. Mom," Randy sweetly said.

"We're here," promised Jude.

"I wish I could've grown up into some big-shot lawyer or doctor or banker or something, so you'd know you were going to be taken care of."

The, too," Randy sadly agreed.

"But if you're not too ashamed of us, we'll at least be your best friends, okay?"

Hammer dissolved into tears. The three of them hugged as Seth's heart slowed because it could not go on, or perhaps because some part of Seth Bridges knew it was okay for him to leave just now. He coded at eleven minutes past eleven, and the cart and team could bring him back no more.