I...write? Maybe?

I haven't written since I blew off NaNo in November. Bad Karen! Time to get moving again. I never got into my second D'Argenzio/Hashek novel, and I've been thinking that it's perhaps because, while I know and like D'Argenzio, I'm kind of "meh" on Hashek. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try to get to know her a little better. I'm going to (try to?) rewrite Spilled Blood from her POV. After all, why is she such a prickly bitch a lot of the time? I'm not really sure. Hoping to find out.

I've got a couple of paragraphs down already, starting from the morning of the first day, the same way D'Argenzio's narrative began. Hopefully I can keep this going. Doesn't common wisdom say that books with female narrators do better than male ones?

Novel: Spilled Blood, Redux
Chapters posted: 1, partial
Current novel length: 426
Excerpt length: 426
Editing: None. This is stream-of-consciousness, folks!

My alarm went off with a burst of mixed static and practiced, radio-DJ voices. Without opening my eyes, I half-sat up, reached over my shoulder, slapped the “snooze” button, and fell back into my bed. Normally, I’m an out-of-bed-two-minutes-before-the-alarm sort of person, but damn it, today I was tired. I’d been up late, not doing much of anything besides worrying and playing sudoku on my computer, neither of which had prepared me any better for the day ahead.

Besides, I had time to snooze. My alarm was set for five-thirty, which to meant that I could lay in bed for a whole half hour more and still easily be at work by eight. I’d planned it that way, knowing that I was going to have one of those mornings and that the least I could do was make sure I had enough time to wander around my house aimlessly and burn off some of my agitation.

The newest new guy started today. That was the cause of my worry; I would be getting my new partner this morning, and historically, that never made for a good morning for me. I expected this one to be worse than usual, based on what I’d read in his file. I wasn’t supposed to have access to anyone’s file, including the new guy’s, but my lieutenant, who was probably as nervous about this as me, had slipped the folder to me and looked the other way for ten minutes while I paged through it.

It hadn’t been encouraging.

The last guy, Nievers, had been younger than me, newly promoted to detective. Lieutenant Morgan had paired him with me in the hopes that, being new, he wouldn’t realize what he was getting stuck with when he met me. At least, I think that was his logic. He never put it to me in quite to many words. And anyway, it hadn’t worked. The guy had been insolently sure of himself from day one, and unwilling to stand back while I did my thing. He had also been a slob.

Overall, our partnership had been a resounding flop, which was why he was now working two towns away and I was alone again. Which brought me to the new guy - D’Argenzio, I reminded myself. I couldn’t very well refer to him as “the new guy” at work, or at least not to his face. But what kind of name was D’Argenzio, anyway? Frankly, I preferred “new guy” - it was easier to pronounce.

That's the lot for now, but I'm going to keep plugging on this for some more of tonight, so perhaps more updates to come. Whee, writing!
----------------
Now playing: Bruce Springsteen - Eyes On The Prize
via FoxyTunes

This is three days' worth of writing. SO BEHIND!

Word Count: 5348

I Should be at: ~10,000

Verdict: Not good.

**********

Three-twenty that afternoon found a slight frazzled Kat standing outside the office building Jane DiAngelo's email had described. She'd thrown on makeup and pulled up her long, dark hair into something resembling a french twist. Her suit, though she had had to rescue it from the floor, had survived with only a few small wrinkles in the seat, and overall, she was pretty sure she looked about as good as she was going to be able to with such short notice.

Still, she was nervous. This was the only job prospect she'd managed to pin down this week, and even if it did look like it would be only a short-term position, it could sure help to pay the rest for another month or two while she pursued other, more long-term, avenues of employment.

If, that was, she could talk her way into this job. Twenty dollars an hour for a basic writer's gig was nothing to sneeze at, and she was pretty sure the response email address would have been mobbed by respondants every bit as desperate for a paycheck as she was. In short, she needed to distinguish herself.

How she was going to do that, she had no idea. She had to trust herself that she could come up with something on the spot, once she was in there.

And with that thought in mind, she took a deep breath and pushed open the building door.

***************

"Katja, hello!" The cool looking blonde woman did, as she had promised, meet Kat at the door of the office suite. She politely offered a hand, which Kat took and found surprisingly warm. Jane DiAngelo was going to be hard to pin down right off the bat, Kat decided. The woman couldn't be much over thirty, if that, and she looked like a model, with hair so blonde that it was nearly white pulled back into an exacting ballerina's bun that set off high cheekbones and expertly applied makeup.

THIS was the secretary? Kat mentally revised her opinion back toward her potential employer being a womanizer. With a secretary that looked like this, when the chances were that there had been fifty applying for *that* job who were twenty years older and fifty pounds heavier, chances were good that he hadn't concentrated on evaluating her typing skills in the job interview.

"Miss Wrigley?" the model asked softly, looking at cat with mild concern on her face. "Are you alright?"

"Huh?" Kat belatedly realized that she had been standing there in the office lobbym, staring at the woman. Not the way to make a good impression, she reminded herself. Giving herself a good mental shake, she smiled winningly at Jane. "I'm sorry. I was, uh..." Think fast, Kat! "I was surprised at the size of this place. I was expecting something, you know, smaller." She paused. "Is Mr. Faber the only consultant in this business?"

Jane gave her a quizzical look, clearly not understanding the question. "No, there are a number of competitors in the field -" she began.

"Office," Kat corrected herself hastily. "I meant to ask whether he's the only one working out of this office." **Oh, wonderful,** she thought to herself. **You're here to apply as a writer and the first thing you do is get so flustered that you can't say what you mean on the first try? Yeah, they're just going to beg you to take this job, sure!**

Trying to think of a way to make up for her conversational faux pas, she smiled weakly at Jane and offered the first explanation that came to mind - which happened to be the true one. "I'm sorry. I'm just really nervous. I'd really like to get this job, so I want to ace the interview, and . . ."

Jane smiled. "I know the feeling, believe me. And to answer your question, yes, Mark is the only one here. This is his business, his office. We're a fairly small staff, though, even though the place looks so big. It's mostly me, Mark - Mr. Faber - and two assistants. The assistants are always going nuts asking for help, though, so we may be expanding. That's why we moved into the bigger office here, and -" She stopped there and interrupted herself. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I tend to do that when i try to make people feel more comfortable. Why don't we go into my office and sit down so we can really get started."

"That would be fine, Ms. DiAng-"

"Oh, call me Jane." THe model-esque smiled reappeared, but Kat was starting to think that it really was genuine in spite of its polish. "Would you like something to drink before we get started?"
"Oh, no." Kat shook her head. "I'm fine, thank you. And call me Kat."

"Ok, then, Kat. Let's head in here." Jane gestured toward a plush-looking office off to their right. "Make yourself at home," she added over her shoulder as they made their way into the room. "I know it looks expensive -" She smiled again. "- But nothing's breakable, I promise. I'm such a klutz, I made Mark promise that he wouldn't stock my office with anything I could easily destroy. That's the last thing I need, to trip over my own shoe and fall flat on a Ming vase or something!"

Kat couldn't help herself; she started laughing at the mental image of that happening. "I'm sorry," she managed, regaining control of herself after a few seconds. "It's just . . ."

Jane grinned. "Got you smiling, I see. A smiling interview always goes better, don't you think?"

"Now that you mention it . . . yes," Kat remarked slowly. "Thank you for the joke, then."

"It's what I do. Now, may I ask you a few questions about your qualifications?"

"Of course." Nervous again now, Kat could almost feel the smile slide off her face as she sat up straighter in her chair. "Go ahead."

"Thanks." Jane picked up a copy of Kat's resume that had been sitting in plain sight - not that Kat had seen it - on the corner of the desk. "You have a Masters degree in Linguistics?" the secretary asked, reading. "That sounds complicated! Did you enjoy it?"

The truth was, Kat had hated grad school, and had barely eked out her final thesis. But she'd heard again and again that *that* was not something one wanted to share on a job interview, so she fell back on her usual alibi: "It was stressful, but I enjoyed it. I have such a sense of accomplishment now."

Jane lowered the resume and looked curiously at Kat. "Accomplishment? How so?"

Kat swallowed. No one had every asked her that before. The mostly just accepted the buzzword and nodded. She decided to take a chance. "Grad school and I . . . didn't always get along," she ventured. "I didn't like the poltics that it turned out needed to be played, and I considered cutting my losses and just leaving for the real world a few times."

"But you didn't," Jane pointed out.

"No. I decided that I'd invested enough time and money - and blood and tears - that just to show all of the people who thought I wasn't strong enough for it, I was going to stick it out. So I did, and I did good work, to boot. SO when I say I feel a sense of accomplishment . . . I mean it. I accomplished something that was almost painful to accomplish."

"Is that why you took a degree - two degrees, actually, counting your BA - in linguistics, but now you're applying for jobs as a writer?"

Kat nodded. "I got burned out, I guess. I enjoy linguistics, but after grad school, it was no longer something that I found 'fun.' I've always been a writer, just as a pastime, so I, you know . . . I decided to see if I could make some money this way, doing something I love. I can always fall back on pure linguistics if I get truly desperate."

Jane cocked her head to the side, studying Kat with interest. "How close are you to being 'desperate'? You said you really want to get this job, and I can't help pointing out that while Mark pays well, the position we're talking about here is temporary, and no great shakes."

Wincing, Kat acknowledged the other woman's point. "I'm pretty close. My rent's coming due, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find the money in time if I don't get this job." She stopped short there, horrified at what had just come out of her mouth. You shouldn't *ever* talk money at a first interview. "I mean," she backpedaled quickly, desperately, "that's not anyone's responsibility but mine, of course, and I -"

Jane just waved a dismissive hand at her. "Don't worry about it. You're not the only person ever to be in this situation, I promise you, Kat."

Kat just swallowed and nodded.

"Do you have some writing samples?" Jane asked, obviously aware of her sudden discomfort and trying to move the topic along. "I'd like to see what you can do."

"Of course." Kat handed her the folder of print-outs she'd brought along. "I have some fiction excerpts in there, as well as the blurb I wrote about myself for match.com - it seemed appropriate for what I'm applying for here," she added hastily, not wanting the other woman to think she was attempting to get a date out of this. "I wanted to show that I have experience with personals as well as with regular writing."

"Hmm."  Jane's eyes drifted down first one of the pages, then another, then a third. "You are a good writer, Kat," she finally said, setting down the folder. "You have a talent for expressing yourself with humor, especially in your personal blurb. Mark would like that. I don't think he wants stilted prose when he's trying to get a date, even if he's not the one writing it."

She sounded disapproving, Kat realized. "Do you . . . not like this idea?" she asked cautiously. "His hiring someone to do his personal corresponding for him, I mean?"

"No," Jane acknowledged, "I don't. But he has such limited time that it's starting to seem like this may be the only way. He's lonely," she explained, "and he's such a nice man. I *would* like to see him find someone. It's just that having someone else do the finding for him seems very . . . cool to me, and I worry that the women he corresponds with may think the same. But," she added when Kat began to speak, "I think that if you take this position . . . I think you could help. Your writing seems to have a sense of humanity, and once you get to know Mark I think you could represent him very well."

Kat tried not to gape at her. "Are you saying that . . . um, I mean," she backtracked, "who makes the final decision about who to hire for this position?"

"Me," Jane said with a smile, "and I think I've found her. You meet all of Mark's requirements as to age, demeanor, etc, and you meet all of mine about writing ability." Her smile widened. "The job is yours if you want it, Kat."

Her attempt not to gape failed and Kat's mouth fell open. "Really? Are you serious?"

"Very. Can you start tomorrow morning?"

"I . . . I mean yes, of course . . . are you sure? You don't need to interview me any more?"

Jane shook her head. "I don't think I do, no. And quite frankly," she added, "even if you turn out to be a horrible choice, it's a temporary position. You can be gotten rid of," she said with a twinkle in her eyes that somehow negated the possible threat in the words.
Kat couldn't hold back an answering smile. "I appreciate the sentiment - and your point. What time do you want me here tomorrow?"

"How does nine sound?" Jane said. "Mark and I are both here at eight, and the hour in between will give us time to have our morning meeting and set up a game plan before you report for duty - so to speak."

"Nine is fine for me."

"You'll be on the books," Jane added, "as an actual employee - that's the only way Marlk hires his people - so would you mind bringing your Social Security card with you in the morning?"

Kat shook her head. "Not a problem. Thank you so much, Jane."
She waved away the thanks. "Don't thank me yet - you still have to meet Mark tomorrow. I'll give you fair warning now - he can be intimidating, but he's a sweetheart, I promise. So just don't run screaming, and you should be ok."

"How . . . reassuring."

"Isn't it?" Jane stood up and offered her hand to Kat again, signaling an end to the interview. "I'm sorry to rush you out, but I've got a possible client coming in to speak to Mark in about ten minutes, and he wants me to sit in on it."

"No problem. I can find my way out. Thank you again," Kat said, shaking her hand. "I'll look forward to meeting Mr. Faber in the morning."

*********

Five minutes later, Kat swept past the gloomy-looking doorman and out of the building, whistling to herself. She finally had a paying job! Andrea had been right - for twenty bucks an hour, she could tolerate a womanizing, intimidating sort of guy. Hell, for twenty bucks an hour she could tolerate just about anything. This job was going to work out just fine!

CHAPTER THREE

Katja was up with the sun the next morning, staring at her wardrobe and wondering what one wore for one's first day of doing someone else's romantic dirty work for them. Jeans, since it was likely to be dirty work? A flowery dress, the better to play up how much she resembled the "attractive, well-dressed" female her boss had advertised for? A power suit, to make the "I'm here to work, not play" message abundantly clear?

Finally, she decided on the suit. It was decidedly not anything resembling flirty, which she considered to be a plus, but it was her one designer suit, which covered the "well-dressed" requirement, and if she paid attention to her makeup, she could still cover the "attractive" requirement.

Almost back on track

A mad writing spree tonight has just about caught me up to where I should be. Not completely, but enough so it's not a huge problem. So:

Current word count: 2912

I should be at: 3334

Not bad, right? And the story actually seems to be coming together.

Also of possible interest: I'm using three different text editors to manage this year's project.

1) yWriter3, king editor of awesome novel organization, to manage chapters, scenes, characters, and everything else besides the actual typing. Everything gets pasted in here at the end of the day, scene-by-scene

2) Q10, master of full-screen word-processor-emulating anti-distractionness, to do my actual typing (now with bonus clicky typing noises!)

3) Google docs, workhorse of always-there storage, to keep my progress always available, should I be somewhere other than home at a computer and want to do some writing. Everything gets pasted in here, too, but in one big chunk.

And now, for today's progress, read on...

*********

"It's a personal ad," Kat said, sliding the paper back to Andrea. "So what?"

"It's not a personal! It's a job listing! See," she replied, pointing to the second sentence, " 'work will be done in his office.' It's a job. I got it off the GregsList job listings. It's a reputable website."

"It's also a website where people can post things wherever they want. And this sounds a whole lot like a sneaky personal to me," Kat shot back. "If it's just someone to write stuff for him, what does he care if she's twenty or eighty? Or if she's 'attractive'?"

Andrea shrugged. "Twenty dollars an hour, and you don't have to work somewhere creepy, like out of his apartment? It's worth a try."

"No. No way, Dre!" Kat rolled her eyes. "You'd think the least a 'high-powered corporate consultant' could read well enough to comprehend the instructions and put his ad where it's supposed to be so some poor jobless writer doesn't get taken in by it."

Giving the shabby contents of Kat's apartment a pointed look, Andrea regarded her friend with raised eyebrows. "Maybe it is a personal. Maybe I'm wrong. But do I need to point out that you're getting to the point where you can't really afford to pass up anything that might even resemble a job? Just apply, Kat. See what it's all about. If you're right, then you can come back to me and say 'I told you so' to your heart's content, and if you're wrong, then you can finally start making something that begins to resemble a living wage!"

"With some jerk who can't be bothered to answer his own personals?"
"Honey, he could be 'some jerk who wears his shirts backwards and his pants upside down,' and if he paid twenty bucks an hour I'd still tell you to send your damn resume!"

Kat tried and failed to smother a laugh at that. She'd only known Andrea for a matter of weeks, but she was coming to really appreciate the way this new friend could phrase things just right. Sighing, she nodded reluctantly. "I know I should apply. What's there to lose, right? Except...what if he's a total skeeze? What if his 'office' is, like, his basement?"

"Then you smack him and leave, Kat. I've seen you hold your own with our asshole of a landlord; I have a hard time believing you can't do the same with some swety-palmed guy who can't get a date except to lie about it - IF that's what this guy is."

"Ok, I get the point. You're right, it's not that I'm afraid of him or anything. It's just...have you ever seen the movie Fame?"
"Nope. What's it about?"

"Well, it's about kids at a performing arts high school, but that's not my point. My point is that there's this scene where a girl who wants to be a dancer or model responds to an ad in the paper for a 'photographer,' and she ends up getting there and he's this disgusting guy who makes her pose topless, and she does it because she wants so desperately to break into the industry that she feels like she has to."

"Kat." Andrea shook her head gently and touched her friend's hand. "You're desperate for work, but you're not THAT desperate. You can go to work at McDonalds if it comes down to it. This is just a stop along the way, you know? See if anyone even answers if you send your resume. And if you go to interview and he tries to get you to take your clothes off, you have my permission to brain him with whatever's handy. Or call me and I'll come do it for you!"

She couldn't help but laugh at that. "I don't doubt that you would. Ok, ok. I give in. I'll do it." She paused. "Probably."

"Probably?"

"I need to think about it a little more. But unless I come up with a good reason, I'll apply. You're right, there's no reason not to at least see what happens. Even if the guy IS a sweaty-palmed jerk who needs someone to help him get dates."

"That's the spirit, Kat. Here." Andrea slid the print-out back across the table to her. "Keep this. Call me in the morning and tell me what you decided, ok? And keep me up to date on what happens if you do apply."

"I will." Kat smiled and opened her arms to the other woman. "Thanks, Dre. I know you're trying to help me however you can. I really do appreciate that you keep your eyes open for things like this."
Andrea grinned and accepted the hug readily. "Even if they never seem to pan out, huh? Hey, that's what friends are for. But right now, this friend has to get going - I've got a date tonight and I've got to get ready."

"'Kay. I'll call you in the morning and let you know what I decide, and you can tell me all about the newest Prince Charming you've coralled. Deal?"

"Deal." And with great ceremony, the two women shook hands.

CHAPTER TWO

Kat stared down at the ad Andrea has given her the night before. She'd spent the night thinking it over, and she couldn't come up with a good reason to not apply. So...apply, she would. As Andrea had said, given the current state of Kat's finances, for twenty dollars an hour there were very few things she could justify NOT at least attempting to do.

Resolute now, she downed the last of her coffee and moved to sit in front of her computer. A few clicks called her email program up on the screen, and Kat took one deep break, let it out, and typed in the address the ad had given: seeker@tempmail.com.

And now, to write the actual email.

Maybe she needed another cup of coffee before she could bring herself to do this, she mused, then reprimended herself mentally. No, she'd promised Andrea that she'd call her this morning to tell her her decision, and if she put this off much longer, it wouldn't be morning anymore at all. Hesitantly, she laid her hands on the keyboard, stretching her fingers as if she was about to compose a novel rather than a short, introductory email.

And she wrote.

"To Whom It May Concern:
I would like to express my interest in the writing position that was posted to GregsList website yesterday, November first. The ad did not specify any experience requirements, so allow me to explain mine so that you may decide whether they fit the position you are offering.

I have just completed a Masters degree in Linguistics at the University of Illinois. During my time there, I specialized in Discourse Analysis, a subfield of Linguistics which studies the sociological and psychological aspects that affect who can and should say what, when. I believe that my skills in this area may be useful to you in the writing of responses to personal ads; I have, quite literally, a degree in figuring out what to say, when.

I also worked as a Graduate Assistant to a professor during my time at the University. In that capacity, I functioned as an editor of his research papers and journal articles. I am proficient at grammatical and stylistic editing, and as a side effect, have become wuite capable with most of the text-editing software in wide use these days. Also as a result of this position, I am used to working in close partnership with a supervisor, striving to say perfectly whatever he or she needs to say.

I am a linguist by training, but a writer by inclination. I have written fiction for most of my life, and currently have a completed novel that I am considering submitting to publishers.

In short, I am a capable writer and editor of both fiction and nonfiction.

I am attaching me resume to this e-mail so that you can see the rest of my Curricula Vitae, if you are interested. Please let me know if you have any trouble opening the document, or would like further information on any of the publications listed in it.

As to the requirements that your ad did list, I am, indeed, in my late twenties. I am outgoing, although not a social butterfly, and I have been told that I am not bad looking. As to well-dressed, as a fairly poor graduate student, I never had much use for expensive clothes, and my wardrobe tends to be minimalistic, but I believe that I am fairly good at selecting combinations of what I have to put together decent looking outfits.

I hope this email has provided a good introduction to me for you. I can be reached at either this email address, wrigleykat@tmail.com, or at my cell phone number, 212-555-1274. I would appreciate a response to this email just so that I know it reached you in a timely manner.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Katja Wrigley, M.A."

Sighing, Kat sat back and studied what she had written. Had she sounded too conceited discussing how wonderful her linguistic and editing skills were? She sincerely doubted that whoever read her email would care how many papers she had published. All they wanted was some young chick to write cheesy personal notes. Still, the worst that could happen would be that they'd think she was overskilled for the job, and even then maybe they'd pass it on to someone who needed a real writer, one who just happened to be able to analyze discourse on command.

Right, because there were a lot of those jobs lying around.

No, now was not the time to start pitying herself and her fultile job search again. Kat forced her attention back to re-reading the email
Had the snarky tone that had been in he rmind come through in her description of her physical qualities? She'd tried to tone it down, but she'd just never expected that she'd have to describe her jeans and t-shirt wearing self as "well dressed" just to get paying work. How the mighty grad student had fallen, she mused.

After a minute's consideration, she struck the line about requesting a response to her email. Employers today, she'd learned, would do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever the hell they wanted, and the convenience of the poor applicant was just about the last thing on their list. What did they care if she was on the edge of her seat for six months, wondering if they'd received her resume or not?

The rest of the email was about as good as she could get it. Nothing she could say would make her feel less ridiculous for answering it, and nothing she could honestly come up with would make her sound any better

She held her breath for a long second, let it out, and hit the Send button.

************************

Three hours later, just as Kat was finishing up her first read-through of the day's want ads, her computer beeped, informing her that she had a new email message. Assuming it was probably spam or a message from a friend, Kat wandered over to the machine and checked the bolded message.

She blinked.

The subject like was the same as the email she had sent to "seeker" a few hours ago, although the sender address to this email was different. Had someone really answered her application so quickly, or was this some new form of email interception spam?

Only one way to find out, she decided, and opened the email.

"Ms. Wrigley:
Thank you for your response to the job listing posted on GregsList. My name is Jane DiAngelo, and I am the executive secretary to Marcus Faber, the man for whom you would be working. I presented your email to Mr. Faber and we agree that your credentials are impressive and quite suited to the job you applied for. The need to fill this position is immediate, however, and I would need to interview you this afternoon if at all possible, to start tomorrow morning if we decide you will, indeed, fit in this position. I realize this may be inconvenient, and I apologize for the rush, but Mr. Faber needs the help immediately. Please let me know if you are able to interview this afternoon, any time after two, with me at Mr. Faber's office.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience, and I look forward to meeting you.

Sincerely,
Jane DiAngelo"

Kat stared at the screen. Interview this afternoon? Well of course she *could* do it - the whole problem was that she had nothing else formative to do with her day. And it was somewhat reassuring to know that she would be dealing with an executive secretary, as well as with the man himself. Unless the guy had written the email to her, pretending to be his own secretary. This could still be a Fame situation, she reminded herself, and she would be wise to be prepared for anything when she went in.

Which, of course, she would. An immediate job opening paying twenty dollars an hour, in a reputable atmosphere...she could almost get excited about this prospect. She quickly dashed off an email to Jane DiAngelo, assuring the other woman that she would be more than happy to come to the office today to interview, and whatever time after two was most convenient for Ms. DiAngelo would be just perfect for Kat.

And within twenty minutes, she had received another reply. Whoever these character were, she thought to herself with amusement, at least they read their email promptly.

"Ms. Wrigley:

Wonderful! How does three-thirty sound to you? Our office is Suite 7112 on the seventh floor of 367 East Forty-Third Street, right at the corner of Third Avenue. Please tell the security officer on the ground floor that you are coming to see me. He will call up to the office to confirm, then show you onto an elevator. I will meet you when you come in.

I'm looking forward to our meeting,
Jane"

Three thirty was fine, of course, but - suddenly, Kat felt a tide of panic. Were her job interview clothes clean, or had she tossed them on the floor in disgust after her last failed interview?

She made for the bedroom at a mad dash, tossing off her t-shirt as she went.

Not the Most Awesome First Day...

...but I'm just not having a good day overall, so I choose to hope it'll get better as my morale improves.

Nano wordcount: 575

******

This was end of day thirty. Katja Wrigley pushed aside today's newspaper and sighed heavily. Thirty days she'd been job hunting, and thirty days she'd been continually failing. Her masters degree hadn't done her an iota of good. Nobody cared whether the person applying for a writer's job had an advanced degree. Mostly they just cared about whether she had experience in the industry and whether she'd take twenty-five thousand dollars a year.

Kat couldn't fulfill either of those. She was fresh out of grad school, and "I helped edit a journal for my advisor" didn't cut it for the "Experience" section of the application. Not to mention that twenty-five thousand a year wouldn't pay for an apartment and the health insurance she needed, let alone for anything trifling like food.
She was running out of ideas. She'd been working her way through the want ads in every day's paper. She'd put the word out among the few people she knew in New York. She'd even put her resume on every job-hunting website she could think of. And nothing. The few nibbles she'd gotten had turned out to be false leads or no-call-backs.
She'd go through the paper once more. The few months' rent that her mother had been able to help her scrape up was just about used up, and if she didn't come up with something, anything, she was going to be living in a cardboard box before long.

Before she could reach for the paper again, though, she was interrupted by a knock on her door. Sighing, she pushed her chair away from the kitchen table and headed toward her apartment door.

"Kat!" someone was yelling before she even got the chain unlocked. "You've got to see this!"

Kat pulled the door open to find Andrea Barnes, a downstairs neighbor who she'd become friendly with, waving a piece of paper at her. "Come on in," she said absently, turning to head back to the kitchen and waving the woman in. "You want coffee? And what is it I've got to see?"

"This!"

Apparently Andrea didn't want coffee, then. Plopping back down in her chair, Kat raised her eyebrows and asked again, "What?"

"This." Triumphantly, Andrea slapped a sheet of paper down on the table in front of Kat.

She wasn't going to get any explanation out of her friend like this, Kat decided. She turned her attention to this oh-so-important paper and started reading:

Writer Wanted
35 year old corporate consultant is looking to hire a writer to write responses to my personal ads and keep my personal projects up to date. Work will be done from my midtown Manhattan office during regular office hours. Pay is $20 per hour and job starts immediately. Prefer a woman in he rlate 20s or early 30s, well-dressed, attractive, and outgoing, so that she will be on the same wavelength as the women I'm seeking. Contact seeker@tempmail.com for more information or to submit a resume.

"It's a personal ad," Kat said, sliding the paper back to Andrea. "So what?"

"It's not a personal! It's a job listing! See," she replied, pointing to the second sentence, " 'work will be done in his office.' It's a job."

"Sounds a whole lot like a sneaky personal to me," Kat shot back. "If it's just someone to write stuff for him, what does he care if she's twenty or eighty?"

Watch This Space

It's almost November first. That means I'm really, really going to start my NaNovel soon. And guess where it's going to be appearing as I write it? That's right, here! You know what that means, folks - you might actually get to see me keep my attention on one plotline long enough to (mostly) finish a story! For a whole month, only one story will appear here to perplex and delight you, and it will be going up at a (comparatively) lightning pace. 50,000 words in 30 days, dude. I might actually get somewhere!

Right now I'm trying to outline my plot, so I don't hit any big snags once I start writing. I'm itching to get started, but no, bad Karen, must wait until 11/1. Until then...I shall sit here muttering to myself and hoping that, come Thursday, a quajillion people will suddenly go "OMG! Look at this awesome blog where this girl is posting her novel! Let...I know this is revolutionary, but let's try it...let's READ THE BLOG!"

And then, my friends - then...I shall have more than three hits on this blog. And I shall be a success.

Relatively speaking.

Or, you know, the same three people who've been with me this far can cheerfully enjoy all 50,000 words. I guess that would work too.

NaNo...Ooh!

It's almost that time again. That special time of year when nutjobs all over the world abandon whatever they've been working on for the past year and turn to the complete chaos of (dun dun DUN) NaNoWriMo! Thirty days. Fifty thousand words. Gallons of coffee and kilos of sugar.

And fun. Lots of that.

NaNoWriMo is sponsored by The Office of Letters and Light, a nonprofit that runs programs supporting young writers and libraries in Southeast Asia. They're a nonprofit. A charity. That means they operate on donations, folks. Donations from nice people who write novels during NaNoWriMo, mostly, but then there are those of us who are, um, not so much gainfully employed. It's hard to donate when you've got no disposable income.

Until now! You know how marathon runners get sponsored by people who aren't actually running? Well, NaNo has set up a similar system. All you have to do is click on this link, get out your credit card, and click "Give Now" on the page that pops up. You can donate as much or as little money as you want to the cause, and 95% of it goes directly to tOoLaL.

Yeah, I'm shaking you down. But it's for a totally good cause, and you can donate any amount, from a dollar to a thousand dollars (heh, I wish). If you donate, thank you so much! And if you don't, that's ok - my nanovel will still be going up in pieces on this blog for you to enjoy.

Chapter 6, more

Yep, definitely some sexual tension.Read on...
****

“For being an ass!”

“I wasn’t being an ass,” I protested gamely. “I was -”

“Showing off like a teenaged boy,” she interrupted, finally catching sight of the position of my legs under the wheel. “Freaking figures.”

“Who, me?” I replied as innocently as I could, continuing to work the pedals but leaving the steering now to her. “Hey, you know, we make a pretty good team. We should drive like this more often.” I draped a friendly arm over her shoulder and grinned my best idiotic smile.

She twisted her head around to give me a dark look. “So help me, if you don’t take this wheel and start driving when I let go . . .” She paused to dig a pointed, but not painful, elbow into my bad leg just above my knee. “Then I’m going to just let you go and kill your knees using them to drive the whole way home,” she picked up again. “And you’re not going to get any sympathy from me when you start limping and whining.”

“Hey, I -”

“You could warn me next time before you decide to try any more high school tricks,” she added, shrugging my arm off her.

It took me a guilty second to realize she had been referring to driving with my knees and not the arm I had put around her. “Me? High school?” I protested. “I did no such thing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I bet you never tried that on any of your dates to get them to lean over and have to practically sit in your lap.”

“You’re not sitting in my lap,” I pointed out. And then, before I could stop myself, I added, “. . . Want to be?”

“Oh, shut up.” She released the wheel without warning, and like a good, chastened partner, I grabbed for it.

“You’re such a jerk,” she reminded me without any real heat as I took up all the driving again. “You’re lucky I’m not going to hold that against you and file harassment charges.”

I hit the brakes abruptly and screeched the car to a halt on the side of the road to stare at her. I hadn’t actually considered that, but she was right - what I’d just done could definitely be construed wrong by someone who was overly sensitive. “I didn’t mean -”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, not allowing me to finish. “Lucikly for you, I both have a sense of humor and understand yours. Instead of being pissed, I’m just going to plot ways to get back at you.”

“Um . . . thanks?” I ventured, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Should I be scared?”

She smiled smugly. “Yes. Very. Now, how about driving again so we can get back to headquarters sometime before bedtime?”

I gave her a salute and took my foot off the break. “Yes, ma’am.”

Chapter 6, beginning

Mmm, do I smell the beginnings of some sexual tension?

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 6
Excerpt length: 447
Current novel length: 12,580

CHAPTER SIX - Monday Afternoon

“Talk about clingy,” Hashek remarked, buckling her seatbelt a few minutes later.

“Her?” I asked as I started the car. “Or him?” I checked over my shoulder, put the car into reverse, and starting backing out of our narrow parking space.

She considered that. “Both! He looked like he hated to go thirty seconds without touching her, and she looked like she preferred it that way.”

I palmed the wheel in a circle and headed out onto the road. “You noticed that too, huh?”

“Of course I did.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her directing a haughty look in my direction. “I’m every bit as observant as you, you know - if not more so.”

Keeping my eyes on the road, I lifted both hands off the wheel in ostensible surrender. “Hey, no offense intended.”

She eyed my upraised hands, then the road. “Uh, Tony.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re supposed to be driving, remember? It helps to be touching the wheel when you do that.”

She sounded nervous. But then, she had no idea that as a teenager on Long Island, I’d perfected the art of steering with my knees for short periods while my hands were otherwise occupied with my girlfriend in the passenger seat. I had the fight back a grin as I decided to not reveal this talent, and instead milk this opportunity to get my partner’s goat. “Really?” I asked casually, keeping my hands up.

“Yes,” she said firmly, and waited for me to obey the command in her voice.

I, of course, didn’t. I was good with just my knees unless we came upon sudden traffic or curves in the road.

“D’Argenzio!”

“What!”

“You’re going to hit -” she began, sounding just slightly panicky, then stopped, reconsidered her strategy, and glared at the side of my head. “Stop being an asshole and drive!”

“Hey, I’m just emphasizing my surrender, here, and I think -”

“Fine, if you’re not going to do it,” she said, talking over me and at the same time physically leaning over me to take the wheel she thought I wasn’t controlling, “then I will be the one to make sure that Mack truck coming up in the other lane doesn’t end up wearing us.”

I surreptitiously pulled my knees back and let her make sure we stayed out of the truck’s way, which she did. When we were clear of its grill, and I was trying not to laugh at the bewildered look the trucker had given our two-person driving method, she took one hand off the wheel to smack me in the side of the head.

“Ow!” I yelped. “What was that for?”

Finally catching up

...with all the hand-writing I've done the past few weeks. And now, without further ado, the end of chapter 5! Omg!
**************
Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 2372
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer

“Tony, that’s rude!” Claire scolded automatically. “I’m sorry,” she told us. “He’s just upset for me.”

“Hm.” I wasn’t terribly impressed by that excuse. After all, it wasn’t his mother who someone beat up and then shot. In fact, I decided, I wasn’t terribly impressed by this guy in the first place. I just wanted to talk to Claire and get out of here. I that end, I looked pointedly at the mug Claire was still clutching. “How’s your tea, Claire? Feel ready to talk?”

She thought about that for a second, then nodded. “Ask whatever you need to.”

Hashek, who has been looking bored, perked up and whipped out her notepad. “When was the last time you saw your mother?”

Claire sighed and took an unsteady sip of tea to fortify herself before answering. “Last night.”

“What time?”

“About eight-thirty.” She paused, looking indecisive, then shook her head slightly and closed her mouth.

“She sees her mother every Friday night,” Tony explained for her. “They have a ‘girls night’.”

“Girls night?” I asked blankly. Sounded arcane.

“Pizza. Chick flicks.” Tony glanced at Claire, but she remained stubbornly silent. “You know,” he told me, “girl stuff.”

“Uh, right.” I stole a glance at my partner, who looked thoroughly unsurprised by this definition. “Girl stuff,” I repeated. “So you arrived at what time, Claire?”

“About five,” she replied, and looked at Tony, who nodded almost imperceptibly in reassurance. “Tony dropped me off.”

“And you left at eight-thirty?”

Claire nodded.

“Did Tony pick you up, too?” Hashek asked.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not that far away . . . I could walk if I had to, but I don’t really like going out in the dark. You . . .” She paused to lick her lips. “Anything could happen out there in a dark alley.”

Hashek and I exchanged a sideways look. In this town, the worst thing that was likely to happen to someone out after dark was a close encounter with a racoon. Still, it wasn’t unwise to play it safe, especially when one was smallish and female. And especially on the night when one’s mother was busy getting murdered. Which reminded me... “When you left, was your mother home alone then? Or were there other guests, or your father, or anything?”

She shook her head. “My dad makes himself scarce when Mom and I have one of our nights. I don’t actually know where he was, but he definitely wasn’t home, or else he’d have said hi to me.”

“And there was no one else at the house, either?” Hashek pressed.

“Just, uh . . . Tony, when he came to pick me up.”

Hashek looked at Tony, who looked mildly alarmed to have heard his name. “Did you go inside the house when you picked Claire up and dropped her off? Or did you just wait in the car?”

He studied her face for a few seconds before answering, “Are you asking whether I’ve ever beein in the Young’s house? Like for fingerprints and stuff?”

Hashek raised an eyebrow. I mentally followed suit. A little jumpy about fingerprints, wasn’t he? “Not specifically,” she said to him. “Why, do you think we’re going to find yours somewhere important?”

She’d gotten him on that one. Tony, looking shocked, could only sputter a denial.

My partner was clearly starting to enjoy herself. She raised her eyebrow again, this time higher. “No? Does that mean you’ve never been in the house, or . . .?”

“No! I mean, I’ve . . .”

Claire had watched this entire exchange with rapidly widening eyes, but now she spoke up as her boyfriend seemed to run out of steam. “Tony’s been in my parents house lots of times, so whether you find his fingerprints there or not doesn’t mean anything.”

“ ‘Lots of times’?” I echoed. “And does that include last night?” Enough fun, it was time to get back on topic.

“Yes, but only for a minute,” Claire said. “Because my mom was there, and she -”

We didn’t get to hear the end of that sentence, because as she spoke, Claire abruptly began crying again, even harder than she had been before.

All three of us sprang into action. Tony pulled his hand from the curve of her neck to snatch the teacup out of her hand before she could spill it on herself as she trembled. I whipped out the spare, clean handkerchief my mother had taught me to always carry. Hashek, not as well-prepared as I, reached for the box of tissues that sat on the coffee table.

We moved to hand her the tear-drying implements at the same time, and Claire looked confusedly from my handkerchief to Hashek’s tissues, then promptly wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“You ok?” I asked her, forcing the hankie into her hand before she could use her wrist again.

She sniffled and turned her head to look at Tony, who had set the teacup safely down on the same table the tissues had come from. He gave her a reassuring smile and resumed his position on the arm of the couch. “She’d be a lot more ok if you’d just -”

“ ‘Get out,’ we know,” Hashek finished for him. “Trust me, we’re not enjoying this any more than you guys are, but it needs to be done.”

Tony scowled, but subsided quickly. “Ask your stupid questions,” he grumbled.

“Thank you,” Hashek said with perfect poise, then turned back to Claire. “Did you get along with your mom, Claire?”

Claire took a gulping breath and nodded. “Yes. Oh, yes. My mom and I . . . I called her every day. I went over there at least once a week.” She smiled wistfully. “We’d go shopping sometimes, just for fun, even though neither of us really needed anything . . .”

“And how about your father?”

Claire blinked. “He doesn’t like to shop.”

I could tell Hashek had to fight the urge to roll her eyes in response to that one. “No, I meant, did your father get along with your mother?”

“Oh. Of course,” Claire said apologetically. “They’re married; of course they get along.” She paused. “Got.”

“Some married people don’t,” I pointed out.

Claire’s eyes narrowed on me. “Well these married people did!”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Ok, I believe you. Sorry.”

She huffed and lifted a hand to put over her boyfriend’s where it lay on her shoulder.

“Did your mother have any enemies?” I tried again in my most polite voice. “Anyone who didn’t like her, or vice versa?”

Claire looked horrified. “Enough to, you know, kill her? No. No way.”

“What about not quite enough to kill her?” Hashek suggested before Claire could add to her dismissal of my question.

That seemed to penetrate the girl’s defensiveness, and she looked thoughtful. “Well, I mean, there’s Allen Gray and Ton Wisniewski.”

I recognized the first name, but I let Claire speak for herself when Hashek finished writing down the names, looked back up, and said, “Who are they?”

“Lawyers,” sniffed Tony before Claire could speak. She gave him a quelling glance, but then agreed, albeit more politely, “Allen Gray is a partner at a rival firm of my mom’s. They used to have a friendly rivalry going, where they’d meet for lunch a few times a year to argue about who pulled off the best win.”

“Ok,” said Hashek, still writing. “And Wisniewski?”

Tony snorted again, bringing our attention back to him. “He could have killed her. Dude’s got issues, man.”

“Oh?” I asked curiously.

“Tony,” Claire admonished in a low voice. “Everyone’s got ‘issues’ of some kind, you know. Tom Wisniewski just happened to have had his ‘issues’ in front os us.” She looked at my blank look and went on, explaining, “Tom works - worked - with my mom. She beat him out for a partnership and he was seriously pissed off. He showed up at our house one night and raised a big stink until my dad had to call the police to get rid of him.”

Well that got out attention. Both Hashek and I jerked out heads up and stared at her. A jealous rival who’d acted out against her in the past? Sounded like a winner! “How long ago was that?” I asked Claire eagerly.

“Has he given your mother any trouble since that night?” Hashek asked at the same time. “And do you happen to have a case number for the police incident?” she went on when I trailed off.

Claire stared from Hashek to me, startled by the sudden intensity of our interest. “It was . . . maybe a month ago. And -”
“A month and a half,” corrected Tony.

“Ok, a month and a half,” Claire agreed without argument. “I have no idea if there was even an actual police report from that night.”

“If they came,” Hashek assured her, “they filed a report. Even if your mother didn’t press charges or anything.”

“Oh. Well, they definitely came, so . . .”

Hashek nodded and made a note on her pad. “Can you think of any other enemies your mother might have had?”

Claire shook her head. “No. People liked my mom, I swear it.”

“Yeah,” Tony interjected, “but your mom didn’t necessarily like all people in return. She -”

“Stop it!” Claire hissed at him.

Looking taken aback by her scolding, which was more vehement than all of her previous admonitions put together, Tony raised his eyebrows and shut his mouth.

“My mom got along with people,” Claire repeated, more firmly.

Hashek’s right eyebrow twitched, but she didn’t attempt to disagree. “How about the people your mom got along with best? Friends? Did she have any close girlfriends we could talk to to get more background on her?”

“That Cabrera woman,” Tony spoke up without hesitation, apparently having conquered his shock at Claire’s reprimand.

Claire nodded. “Yeah, Jackie. She’s my godmother, too,” she added. “I can give you her phone number, if it helps.”

“It would definitely help,” I assured her. Hashek, nodding her agreement, handed Claire her pen and a piece of paper torn from her notebook. “Could you write it down for us?”

“Sure.” Claire did so, then handed the pen and paper back to Hashek, who tucked them in her pocket.

“Did your mom have any other close friends?” I asked when they were done.

Claire pulled the afghan up to her shoulders and looked at Tony, who shrugged. “Maybe Sophie Drake? I don’t have her number, though. She’s a supervisor at the Met; maybe you could find her in their directory?”

“Ok, we’ll look her up. Anyone else?”

Claire shook her head. “There were lots of people she was friendly with, but not so many actual friends. I could ask my dad for more, if you want . . .”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hashek told her. “We can check with your father when we speak to him.” She paused, thinking, and seemed to come up blank. She looked over at me and said slowly, “I think we’re just about done here . . . Detective D’Argenzio, do you have anything else?”

I started to shake my head, then changed my mind and nodded. “Yeah, one more thing - Claire, what was your mother wearing when you left the house last night?”

She blinked. “Um . . . wearing? What?”

“Yeah. Was she dressed? Wearing a nightgown? DId she have on any jewelry?”

Hashek, catching on to my point, nodded her approval to me.

Claire continued to stare at us. “Um, she was wearing . . . her pajamas. Blue silk. You know, a boxy top and loose pants?”

Hashek, more the expert on female nightwear than me, nodded knowingly. “Did she have on any jewelry? And what was her hair like?”

“Just her necklace, i think,” Claire said slowly, thinking. “A gold heart locket. It was a present from my dad for their last anniversary. A lot of nights she didn’t even bother to take it off to sleep.”

I’d gotten up close and personal with Gabrielle Young’s corpse, and it had not been wearing a locket. I tensed in excitement.

Hashek, who hadn’t gotten so close, was momentarily oblivious and continued trying to pin down how much time might have passed between Claire’s departure and her mother’s death. “And her hair?”

“Um . . . down. She had it in a French twist for work, but she took it down when we were watching the movie.”

Her hair had been down when she lay dead on the living room floor. If Claire had said her mother’s hair was still up when she left, we might have been able to build a portion of a timeline off how long it took to take down and brush out her hair. The fact that it was already down, however, didn’t help us at all. Damn.

I looked at Hashek, who looked back at me and shrugged. Can’t win them all.

“I think we’re done here,” I said when Hashek hadn’t jumped in with another question after a minute. “Claire, this is my card.” I handed the rectangle of heavy paper to her. “If you or Tony think of anything else, anything you think might help us - names, times, facts - please don’t hesitate to call either me, at the number on there, or the main police department number, if you can’t get in touch with me. That’s in the phone book.”

Claire took the card and nodded. “Did anything I said . . . did it, you know, help?”

“We don’t really know yet,” I said gently. “Things like this, a lot of times you don’t see what individual facts are worth until you try to start putting everything all together.”

“Oh.” She sighed dejectedly. “I guess I knew that. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologize,” I told her. “We’re working for you. You have questions, you ask them.”

“Ok. I will.” She sounded a little more confident now. “Thank you, Detective . . . s.” She added the plural marker belatedly, glancing at Hashek, who had kept quiet during my little pep talk. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”

“Ok Claire,” I moved to shake her hand, but she kept both arms under the blanket and I pulled my hand back. “Thanks for your time.”

Tony Parker, who had been so eager to precede us into the room, didn’t bother to show us out.

Yet more 5

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 572
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer
Remaining to be typed: 4 notebook sheets

At the sound of our entrance into the room, Claire, who was curled up on the couch, looked up in what appeared to be surprise. Had she forgotten so quickly that we were on our way up?

“Hi, Claire,” I said gently, walking toward her. “Do you remember me?”

She blinked, then smiled weakly. “I almost threw up on you. That’s hard to forget.”

Of all the things to be remembered for... Still, I nodded pleasantly. “Yep, that was me. My name is Tony.” Normally, anyone over the age of fifteen would get my last name, not my first, but there was something about the way this girl was huddled under an afghan, looking lost, that made it hard to see her as twenty rather than twelve.

“Tony,” she echoed. “Like -” she nodded toward her boyfriend. “Like my Tony.”

I eyed the “other” Tony and fought the urge to shake my head in vigorous denial. J. Crew-boy and I had very little in common, but it wasn’t really necessary to point that out. “Yep, just like,” I said instead. “Do you feel up to talking to us for a while, Claire?”

“I -”

“Not until she has some tea,” Parker interrupted. He patted her shoulder. “I’ll go make it now.” He turned and disappeared into the kitchen without sparing Hashek or me another glance.

“Wow,” Hashek murmured, giving Claire a teasing nudge. “You;ve got him well-trained, huh?”

Claire turned a dull red and shook her head. “No, no. He’s not . . . trained. I mean, I wouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t do that to him!”

“Hey, she’s just playing with you,” I said, interrupting Claire’s denials and patting her shoulder as Parker had just done in an attempt to calm her. The last thing we needed was to have Claire’s obviously still-raw emotions flare up over something as small as a bad joke. With the way her boyfriend was acting, that would get us kicked out for sure.

“I know,” Claire said in a small voice, making herself relax back into the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m just -”

“A little worked-up,” Parker finished for her as he came back into the room carrying an enormous mug with a teabag dangling over one side. He handed Claire the mug and sat down on the arm of the couch so she could rest her shoulders against his leg. “I’ll tell you guys one more time,” he added, fixing a glare on me. “I think it’s buss for you to come barging in here asking questions when Claire’s mom just died.”

“Was killed,” Hashek corrected.

“What?”

“She was killed,” she explained. “She didn’t just up and die.”

Claire made a soft sobbing sound and clutched the mug of tea closer to her. I struggled against the warring urges to bean my partner with my pen for being so insensitive, and to pull the mug away from Claire before her shaking hands spilled the hot liquid all over her.

Parker, obviously having fewer compunctions than me in both areas, gave Hashek a death glare and put his hand over Claire’s, steadying the mug. He laid his other hand on her shoulder, stroking the back of her neck soothingly with his thumb and letting the rest of his fingers curl across her collarbone in the front. “It’s ok, honey. They just insensitive, dumb -” He faltered when Hashek cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him, but managed to finish, “cops.”

More chapter 5

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapter: 5 (cont'd)
Length: 1094
Editing: 1 layer. Edited for phrasing, mostly, as I copied it from my notebook into the computer

There's five more notebook sheets of this so far (compared to the two and a half that yesterday and today's posting makes up), and I'm always writing more when bored at work, so this pace should hold for a while.

“Only two apartments on this whole floor?” Hashek asked as we stepped into the hallway on the third floor.

I glanced at the door at the right end of the hallway, about twelve feet from us. It read “3-A.” It’s twin, the door to Claire’s 3-B apartment, was twelve feet from us in the other direction. “Penthouses?” I said thoughtfully, looking back and forth from one door to the other.

“With rich lawyer parents like hers? A definite possibility.” She paused, thinking, and smiled. “What do you want to bet the inside looks like an interior designer and not a college student lives there?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether her boyfriend is the type to care if she demands white carpet and pink silk pillows.”

Hashek snickered. “Only one way to find out.” She raised her hand to knock on the door.

Before her knuckles could touch the wood, though, I’d snatched her hand out of the air and forced it back to her side.

“What . . . ?” she managed, startled, as she looked down at where I was still holding her hand still.

I put the index finger of my other hand to my lips and nodded toward the door.

Finally getting the message, Hashek closed her mouth and cocked an ear toward the apartment.

“. . . are they?” we could hear a make voice saying behind the door. “I told him to send them right up!”

The murmur of a female voice answered him, but I couldn’t make out her words.

“What, did he give them wrong directions up the stairs or something?” the male voice continued, sounding definitely annoyed now.

Hashek smirked up at me. “Guess he’s eager to meet us.”

“Guess so. Let’s not keep him waiting any longer, huh?” I released her hand, only realizing as I did it that I must have been holding onto it for a good minute or more. “Oh, sorry.”

“Huh?” She spared me a distracted glance and a fraction of a second to answer, then shrugged and knocked on the door.

“Coming!” the male voice called immediately. Within seconds, the door was pulled open by a smiling young man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue. His khakis were carelessly frayed in a just-so way that no one ever got from taking a fall on the sidewalk. The collar of his rugby shirt was in a similar state of artful disarray, sticking up in the back to frame a handsome face dominated by a pair of steel-blue eyes that were as busy studying us as we were studying their owner.

The boy was almost as tall as I was, too, which meant that when Hashek moved to speak to him, she found herself on the losing end of what I recognized as an oh-look-a-cute-girl smile. “Hi,” he said, still smiling at her and not sparing me another glance.

Hashek, for all her abilities to deflect men’s advances, appeared unwillingly charmed. She blinked, then managed a weak answering smile. “Hi. Are you Claire’s boyfriend?”

“Yeah. Jim Parker. And you are?” He answered his own question a second later, without giving us a chance to. “The cops, obviously.”

“We were the last time we checked, yeah,” Hashek said, now growing visibly uncomfortable under his unwavering smile.

She gave me a subtle kick in the heel to get me to deflect some of his attention, and I dutifully stuck out a hand. “I’m Detective D’Argenzio, and this is Detective Hashek.”

Tony finally pulled his eyes off my partner and looked at me. His smile dimmed, and I thought with amusement that he must not like big brown-eyed Italian guys as much as he liked little green-eyed Czech girls. In spite of such a blow to my vanity, I gave him a full handshake and a smile. “Is Claire home?” I asked as he less-than enthusiastically took my hand.

“Yeah. She’s . . .” He paused, shaking his head solemnly. “She’s not doing too great. She’s hardly left the couch, let alone the apartment, since it happened.” After a second, he added, as if we needed to be told, “She’s upset.”

“You think?” Hashek muttered to herself, just loud enough for me to hear but too quietly for Parker. “We’d like to speak to Claire,” she added more loudly when the guy continued to just stand there looking sad.

Without warning, his face changed from mournful to accusing and he scowled at us. “I don’t think anyone should think they have the right to speak to her right now, including the police.”

“Well, we -” Hashekl began conciliatorily.

“But,” he interrupted, “Claire insists that she wants to talk to you. I tried to explain to her that she didn’t have to, but . . .” He shrugged. “So I’m just going to warn you right now - fine, you can talk to her, but the second you get her upset, you freak her out even a little, and your asses are out of herte, cops or not. Got it?”

I was tempted to tell him that we didn’t give a rat’s ass whether he wanted us speaking with Claire or not as long as she was ok with it, but before I could make that not-so-subtle point, Hashek spoke up: “We don’t want to upset either of you, Mr. Parker.”

'Mr. Parker?' I thought. It was a sure sign she was about to lay it on thick, and I wasn’t disappointed when she continued, “And we’re not here to force Claire to to anything she doesn’t want to do, including talking to us.”

Ok, I was impressed. That had been some prize-winning diplomacy, right there. She’d managed to make it sound like she was acquiescing to his demands, while actually pointing out that it wasn’t his decision to make who we spoke to or when we did it.

I couldn’t resist the urge to look down at her just long enough to give her an admiring grin and a wink.

Parker, however, managed to completely miss the point, which was just fine with us as long as it got him to let us through the front door. He considered her statement for a second, then nodded a grudging approval and stepped aside just long enough for us to pile through the door. Before we could actually take a step deeper into the apartment, though, he appeared in front of us, forcing us to follow him in the rest of the way at his pace, which happened to resemble a snail’s.

Sacrifice, chapter 5, redux

Content: The beginning of a re-written chapter five from the previous excerpt. I wanted to make the whole thing a lot less "omg look here's AN IMPORTANT PLOT CLUE" and a little more "Hmm..." Not that I've actually gotten far enough for each of those in what's posted here, but...
Length:412 - there's more in my notebook, longhand, but i haven't gotten around to typing it yet. Keep your eyes on this space :)
Editing: Not really

CHAPTER FIVE - Monday afternoon

It wasn’t tough to find Claire Young’s building when we went looking for it that afternoon. In a town like New Ferry, apartments are few, and mostly centered around the University. There were three apartment buildings clustered just at the outside edge of campus, and Claire, we discovered, lived in the only one classy enough to have a doorman.

The doorman, in fact, took his job quite seriously, and insisted on calling up to Claire’s apartment before even considering letting us further into the building. Hashek, tapping a foot impatiently, looked like she would have liked to barge right past him, but living in New York had trained me well and I just relaxed against a wall and listened to the guy on his house phone as he tried to subtly extract from whoever was on the other end any and all information on why the cops had come calling for her.

When it became obvious to him - and to those of us who were listening - that she wasn’t going to spill the beans, he sighed dramatically, nodded, and hung up the phone. “You can go up. He says she’s expecting you.”

Hashek, glad to get moving, nodded briskly and fairly dashed for the stairs. I followed, more slowly, on her heels, eyeing the stairwell and wondering how my still-sore leg was going to feel about three flights straight up. I finally decided that I might regret it later, but for the moment, I could handle it.

As I was busy convincing myself of that, though, Hashek apparently had second thoughts. She stopped short and reversed direction back toward the elevators, walking right into me in the process.

I was getting used to being walked over by my fast-moving partner, but she caught my toes right with the heel of her boot this time and I couldn’t stifle a yelp of pain.

“Damn, sorry.” Flushing slightly, she stepped away from me and looked down at the dusty new footprint she’d left on the toe of my shoe. “Sorry,” she said again. “It just occurred to me that you can’t do the stairs, so I -”

“I can do the stairs.”

“You sure?” she asked, not bothering to hide the dubiousness in her voice.

“I’m medically cleared for all of this, remember?”

“Well, I know, but -”

“I’m fine, Hashek.”

She looked at me for a second, obviously considering arguing with me, then just shrugged. “Mmkay.”

“Thank you. Now, can we head upstairs?”

Yet More Flashback

These are the two chapters I am considering killing and starting over. They're just so...ugh.

Novel: Sacrifice
Chapters posted: 5-6 (the last of what I have written)
Current novel length: 11901
Excerpt length: 4216
Editing: Again, substantially cleaned up, although strange continuity errors may still exist

CHAPTER FIVE - Monday afternoon
We didn’t have much trouble finding Claire Young’s apartment building that afternoon. In a town like New Ferry, there aren’t many buildings above three stories, and the few that exist are all clustered around the University campus. Claire and her boyfriend lived in the newest of them, which was also the only building in town that boasted a uniformed doorman. The doorman took his job quite seriously, and insisted on calling up to Claire’s apartment before letting us past him.

“Nice and close to campus,” I commented as we waited for the doorman’s blessing.

Hashek nodded. “Yeah, and way too expensive for a student to pay for without help from Mommy and Daddy. I bet you the inside of her place looks absolutely nothing like a dorm room.”

“Well, it isn’t a dorm,” I pointed out logically. “Why should it look like one?”

“Are you kidding? My apartments were decorated just like my dorm room pretty much until I moved back here and bought my house.”

“Miss Young said she’s been expecting you,” the doorman announced, hanging up the phone. “You can go upstairs. The elevator is inside and to the left.”

“Thanks.” I slipped him a dollar and followed Hashek into the building’s lobby. “Hashek, what’s her apartment number?”

“4-B. Do you see any mailboxes in here?”

I looked around and nodded. “Yeah, across from the elevator.” I led her across the room and squinted at the boxes. “Here we go: Young/Meadows. ‘Meadows’ must be the boyfriend.”

“Young Meadows,” Hashek commented dryly. “Well, at least their names match up well, thematically. Do we know his first name?”

“I don’t think so.” I followed her into the elevator.

She watched the numbers light up above the door, saying thoughtfully, “Do you think we should split them up to talk to them?”

“Nah,” I said. “Assuming he’s even there right now, let’s take them together unless we have to split them. She’ll probably be more comfortable with him there. She was a mess last night.”

Hashek smirked. “My big, macho partner’s going soft.”

“Well, one of us has to have social skills,” I shot back.

“Hmph.” We stepped off the elevator and found ourselves in a short hallway with a door at each end. “That one’s 4-A,” Hashek said, pointing to the number on the door to our left, “so that one must be 4-B. Only two apartments on a floor in such a big building?” she said, almost to herself. “What are these, mini-penthouses?”

“Might be,” I said, and raised my hand to knock on the door to 4-B.

It opened before my knuckles even made contact with it, making me take a surprised step back. We found ourselves facing a good-looking young man with dark hair and piercing blue eyes. He looked a few years older than I had judged Claire to be, which would have put him in his mid-twenties, and as he made a show of blocking the doorway with his body, I noticed that he looked like he’d fallen out of a J. Crew catalog, complete with chinos and a white oxford shirt. “You the detectives?” he asked brusquely.

We nodded and showed our badges, and he let us step into the foyer, but before we could go any farther, we found him in our way again. “I’m Paul Meadows,” he said, not offering either of us his hand. “I realize you guys have to talk to Claire, but I’m warning you now, you upset her at all and you’re out of here.”

I raised my eyebrows in response to that, and Hashek made a noise that might have been either a cough or a snort, but neither of us attempted to disabuse the guy of the notion that we’d leave on his command.

Apparently taking our silence for acquiescence and deciding we were sufficiently cowed, he finally led us deeper into the apartment, where we found Claire, looking very small, curled up on a couch and clutching a mug. Hashek, displaying an uncharacteristic gentleness, crouched down in front of the couch and gave Claire a small smile. “Claire, right?” Claire nodded. “I’m Detective Hashek. You’ve met my partner, Detective D'Argenzio,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at me, “haven’t you?”

Claire continued to stare silently into her tea, but nodded. Paul, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her this whole time except to shoot Hashek a dirty look when she had cut off his direct route to the couch, brushed impatiently past me and bent over Claire’s shoulder to tuck a knitted afghan around her. She looked up long enough to give him a wan smile and he sat down on the arm of the couch, resting his hand in the hollow between her neck and her shoulder. His thumb was at the back of her neck and his fingers were in front, resting over her collarbone, a possessive caress that I didn’t think most women would tolerate for long, but Claire didn’t even seem to notice as she lifted a hand to touch his and then looked over at Hashek. “Yes, I met him,” she said in a voice that was rusty from crying. “You . . . need to ask me questions?”

“Yeah.” Knowing better than to attempt a crouch like the one Hashek was in, I knelt next to her with most of my weight on my good leg. “We know you’re having a hard time right now, so we’ll try not to take too much of your time, ok?”

Claire nodded slightly. “It’s ok. I . . . I’m fine. I understand how this works.” She paused and lowered her eyes back to her tea. “In theory, at least.”

“Thank you,” I replied solemnly, watching Hashek produce her notebook from a pocket. “Did you have a good relationship with your mother, Claire?”

She took a faltering breath and nodded jerkily. “My mom . . . she was my best friend. We talked every day. I don’t understand . . .”

As she broke off on a sniffle, Paul squeezed her shoulder and murmured, “You’re doing fine, sweetheart. Just tell them what you know.”

I glanced again at my partner, not surprised to see that, though her pen was moving and she was taking notes, her eyes were glued to Paul Meadows.

“And your relationship with your father?” I continued quickly, reminding myself to hold their attention so they didn’t notice Hashek studying him. “Are you close to him, also?”

Claire nodded. “Not as close as with Mom, but . . . we get along.”

There was a noticeable hesitation in her statement, and I wasn’t the only one who caught it. “Her father didn’t want her living here with me,” Paul explained, looking away from Claire for the first time since he’d sat down, but keeping his hand on her neck. “So there was . . . tension.”

“No, Paul, that’s not true,” Claire protested with a gasp. “My parents like you!”

Paul just snorted. “No, honey. They put up with me, because they have to to keep you.”

Hashek shot me an unreadable look. “When was the last time either of you saw Mrs. Young?” she asked the couple.

“Every Sunday I drop Claire off at her parents’ house at about five,” Paul replied, “and then I pick her up again at eight-thirty. That’s what we did last night.”

“So the last time you saw her,” Hashek pressed, looking from Paul to Claire, “was at eight-thirty last night?”

Claire glanced up at Paul, who nodded slightly to her. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Sunday nights, my mom and I have our ‘girls’ night in.’ We were watching a movie, and then Paul picked me up around eight-forty.”

“What was she wearing when you left?” I asked her, remembering the fancy pajamas Gabrielle Young had been wearing when she was killed.

“Uh . . .” Again, as if out of habit, Claire looked to Paul, who just shrugged. “She was wearing her pajamas. They were . . . blue silk.”

So we couldn’t assume Gabrielle had had enough time after Claire left to have changed; she’d already been in her nightclothes. I stifled a sigh. Why were things never as neat in real life as they were on TV?

“Claire,” Hashek said after I hadn’t spoken for a few seconds, “do you know of any enemies your mother might have had? People who might have wanted to hurt her?”

“I . . . I can’t think of anyone who would be horrible enough to kill a person. I mean, I can tell you about the people she didn’t get along with, but . . . to hurt her?”

Hashek nodded. “We understand that, but we need to eliminate everyone who might have done it before we can narrow it down to who actually did.”

Claire sighed and wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “Isaac Lawson. He works . . . worked . . . with my mom, and she beat him out for a promotion last year. Allan Gray . . . he’s one of her big competitors for clients. Christine Miller is one of the -” She paused and looked uncomfortably away from me and Hashek. “She’s one of the ADAs in Manhattan. My mom called her her nemesis, but really, I think she was joking . . .” she trailed off uncertainly.

“Any number of Mrs. Young’s clients could have had a grudge against her for losing their case,” Paul picked up.

“And have you seen any of these people recently?” Hashek asked Claire, ignoring Paul’s comment.

Paul, not so easily passed over, answered for her: “No. Claire would have no reason to hang around with . . . people like that. Criminals.”

“Criminals,” I repeated neutrally.

Almost reflexively, Claire shook her head. “They’re not criminals unless they’re convicted in a court of law -”

“The ones that would hate your mother were,” Paul interrupted.

Claire ignored him and kept going: “- and they’ve finished with the appeals process.”

“Spoken like the child of a lawyer,” Hashek commented gamely. “So, what did you and Paul do after you got home from your ‘girls night’?”

“We came back here?” Claire said, sounding like she was asking rather than telling. “And watched some TV and went to bed?”

“What shows?” I asked at the same time Hashek said, “You both came home together, and stayed here?” We exchanged a look and then I gave her a nod, deferring to her question, which was a much more straightforward way of getting to the point we both wanted to make.

Claire nodded. “Paul drove us both home and we stayed here. I don’t like to, uh, stay alone after dark.”

Neither Hashek nor I commented on the fact that by college, most people had gotten over the whole fear-of-the-dark thing. “Did your parents get along?” I asked instead.

Claire hiccuped and nodded vigorously. “They really love each other. I never saw them fight, I swear.”

I accepted that without comment, although in truth I would be more worried about a couple that never fought than a couple that sometimes did. “Ok. And girlfriends? Did your mom have a close circle of friends?”

“Of course she did,” Paul answered before Claire could even open her mouth. “Jaqueline Cabrera, Katherine Butler, Sophie Drake - what?” he broke off at the look that had appeared on Claire’s face. “She talked about them in front of both of us.”

Claire just continued to stare at him for a second, and then seemed to shake it off and looked back at us. “He’s pretty much got them covered. I don’t know how to get in touch with anyone except Sophie, though. My dad can probably help you with that.”

Hashek, who had been jotting down the names, finished and dropped her notebook back into her pocket, an action that I interpreted as meaning, I’m done here.

I couldn’t think of any more questions off the top of my head either, so I just offered Claire a smile and a business card. “We won’t take up any more of your time today, Claire. Could you call us later with Sophie Drake’s contact information, or if you think of anything else that might be useful?”

Paul peered over her shoulder to read the card. “This is your personal line?” he asked, gesturing with his free hand to the number on the card.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by “personal,” but I nodded. “That’ll connect you to either my or my partner’s desk.”

“Ok.” He watched Claire drain the last of her tea, then looked up at us, clearly waiting for us to let ourselves out.

“We’ll, uh, get going,” I ventured obligingly, wondering why he had been so eager to walk us into the room but didn’t feel he needed to bother walking us out. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Paul replied shortly as he pulled the empty teacup out of Claire’s hands. “Bye.”

Well, that made things clear enough. Hashek and I quickly retreated. As I moved to pull the apartment door closed behind us, I heard Claire’s annoyed voice from the living room: “Paul! I can speak for mys-”

The door clicked shut and I looked at Hashek with raised eyebrows. “I guess she didn’t like him answering questions for her any more than I did.”

“Ditto.” As we started toward the elevator, she looked up at me thoughtfully. “Did you notice anything weird about that interview?”

“You mean other than the fact that he kept at least one hand on her at all times, and she didn’t seem to notice?”

She smiled approvingly. “You’re not bad at this, D’Argenzio.”

I gave her my best smug smile. “I’ve got three years on you, partner. Brilliance comes with experience.”

Hashek just rolled her eyes and hit the call button for the elevator.

CHAPTER SIX - Monday evening
We arrived back at headquarters to find our lieutenant waiting in his office and a stapled packet waiting on Hashek’s desk. A yellow post-it was stuck to the top of the pile, and Hashek pulled it off and looked at it. “It’s from Dan. He says,

‘Hi guys. Here’s the output from the cross-referencing program you asked me to do. I would have hung around to give it to you myself, but I have a date (!). Give me a call if you have any questions. -Dan.’

“Huh,” she said, sticking the note back onto her desk. “I wonder who he suddenly got a date with.”

“Wasn’t me,” I replied absently as I picked up the papers that had been under the note.

Hashek snorted. “No kidding. So, what’s in the output?”

I skimmed the top page. “Names. Lots of names.”

“Wasn’t the whole point of this cross-referencing to make it not ‘lots’?”

Thumbing through the rest of the packet, I showed her that it was only three pages. “Well, it’s less ‘lots’ than we started with.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better. How many?”

I counted. “Thirty-eight.”

She muttered something decidedly indelicate. “By the time we get through eliminating all those, whoever killed this lady will have had time to die of comfortable old age.”

“Not much we can do about that,” I said, shrugging. “We’ve got to talk to them.”

That got a short sarcastic laugh from her, and before I could say anything else, she’d turned her back on me and was marching toward Morgan’s office. “We’ll see about that.”

That sounded ominous. I hastened to catch up to her before she could barge in on our boss and get us both on his shit list. “Hashe-” I began, trying to get in front of her.

She beat me by a split second, darting around me and throwing open the office door. “We need Cimino and Hicks,” she announced loudly, startling Morgan, who had been staring at his computer screen.

He blinked and looked up at her. “What?”

I suddenly found myself relieved of the papers I had still been holding. Hashek waved them pointedly at Morgan. “We have thirty-eight potential suspects, just from the DA’s office’s lists. There’s no way we’re getting through all of them by ourselves.”

Behind her, I sighed and tried to make my posture reflect the fact that this was her idea, not mine.

Morgan, who despite his initial surprise now seemed to be taking Hashek’s offensive in stride, just shrugged at her. “You can’t have Frank and Darren.”

“Why the hell not?”

I thought I detected a hint of an eye roll as he leaned back in his chair and regarded her calmly. “Because they’re not here, first of all -”

“Well, tomorrow, then. We’re done for today anyway.”

“- and they’re not going to be available tomorrow, either,” he continued, ignoring her. “They caught a case, and until that’s cleared, they’re out of commission as far as you’re concerned.”

Hashek, who apparently hadn’t been expecting to hear that, started sputtering in a way I would have laughed at if I hadn’t known she would kill me if I did. “But - we - we can’t interview thirty-eight people all by ourselves, Lieutenant!”

Morgan considered that for a second and then sat up and checked his computer monitor, which was showing a summary of current officer assignments. “I can give you Searle and Hewitt.”

Neither name rang a bell with me, but Hashek scowled. “What about Baldwin, or -”

“Searle and Hewitt, Milena. Take them or leave them.”

“Oh, fine,” she huffed, not even bothering to look to me for my opinion. “We’ll take them.”

The lieutenant nodded and changed their assignment in his personnel program. “They should still be out there,” he told us, motioning back toward the squad room. “Go tell them what you need them to do and that I approved it.”

Hashek, still looking unhappy, nodded and headed out of the office, with me, as usual, trailing behind.

“Hey,” I said, catching up with her a few feet into the room by virtue of my longer legs, “who are Searle and Hewitt, anyway? Should I know them?”

“Probably not,” she replied, still walking, “but don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll . . . get along with them.”

“What do you mean by that?” I demanded, not liking the sarcastic note in her voice.

She just shook her head. “You’ll see.”

* * *

I didn’t know what Hashek had been so pissed about; Searle and Hewitt struck me as a very nice pair of women. Not bad looking, either. I wondered if Margie, the 911 dispatcher who had assured me that all the womanly women in the building worked as dispatchers, not cops, knew about these two.

We gave our two new partners a quick run-down of the case, which they seemed to take in stride despite the brutality of the crime.

“Sounds like you’ve got a good start,” Hewitt commented when our story ran out of gas. “What do you need us for?”

Hashek fanned out the pages of the DA’s office names. “These.”

“And . . . what are ‘these’?” Hewitt replied, looking warily at the papers and making no move to touch them.

“Names of persons of interest,” I explained.

“That whole pile?”

I nodded. “Thirty-eight names.”

“Thirty-eight?” Searle echoed, exchanging a look of alarm with her partner. “Don’t tell us you came over here to ask us to do your grunt work for you.”

“Actually,” Hashek said, smirking, “we’re here to tell you to do it. Morgan gave you to us.”

“He what?”

Stepping in before Hashek could get out any more snark, I nodded apologetically. “He did. He’s in his office if you want to -”

“They don’t need to talk to him,” Hashek interrupted loudly. “They should -”

Hewitt rolled her eyes and grabbed the list of names out of Hashek’s hands. “- do our jobs,” she finished for her. “We know.”

Surprised by the familiar, tolerant tone of Hewitt’s voice, I looked from her to Hashek with raised eyebrows. “Do you guys know each other or something?”

Hewitt smiled slightly. “We’ve worked together before.”

“And survived it,” Searle added.

I nodded sagely. “Impressive.”

“It is,” she agreed. “You should have seen them at first. I thought they were going to pull their guns on each other.”

Somehow, I had no trouble picturing that scene. I looked at Hashek, who appeared annoyed. “I see you haven’t changed, then.”

“Shut up,” she snapped, but without any real heat. “If you had a rookie up your ass asking questions every thirty seconds, you’d consider murder, too.”

I pounced on that one. “Aha! So all that trying to get me to ask you questions those first few weeks . . . you were trying to come up with a reason to get rid of me after all.”

She snorted. “And risk getting stuck with a partner even worse than you? Yeah, right.”

“Oh, that stings. And here I thought you were starting to like me.”

“Don’t push your luck, big guy.”

I smirked at her and was opening my mouth to reply when I noticed that both Searle and Hewitt were watching me and Hashek with interest. “What?” I asked defensively.

Hewitt grinned and glanced at her partner. “They’re bickering.”

“Definitely bickering,” Searle agreed, looking amused.

“What’s wrong with that?” I demanded at the same time that Hashek, speaking over me, frowned and said, “We’re not bickering!”

Hewitt kept grinning. “Yes, you are.”

“Would someone please tell me what’s wrong with ‘bickering’?” I tried again.

Searle finally took pity on me and explained, “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that it means she likes you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “It does?”

“Yeah.”

I looked at Hashek, who was shifting her weight uncomfortably next to me. “So you do like me, after all.”

She scowled and elbowed me. “No, I’ve just learned to tolerate you better than the last guy.”

“I would hope so!” I exclaimed. “At the very least, I not as much of a slob as he was.”

“The contents of your apartment aren’t exactly alphabetized, Tony,” she pointed out teasingly.

“You’ve been in his apartment?” Searle asked, looking surprised.

I ignored that, enjoying this conversation too much to pay attention to the new girl. “At least I don’t have to post a guard in my kitchen to make sure an animal doesn’t steal my dinner.”

Searle’s eyes moved to me and widened even more. “She’s had you in her kitchen?”

Hashek gave her a long-suffering look and explained, as if to a child, “We’re partners.”

“I don’t remember hearing about your last partner being invited over to your place for dinner.”

“How would you even know if I had Nievers over every night?”

Hewitt laughed. “You underestimate the gossip potential of this department, Milena.”

Groaning, Hashek just shook her head.

“It’s not that unusual to spend time at your partner’s place,” I spoke up, since she seemed to have given up on the argument. “Especially when you’re hot on a case. In fact . . .”

That distracted them, as I’d intended. All three women stopped what they were doing and waited for me to finish my sentence. “ ‘In fact,’ what?” Hashek prompted impatiently when I purposely let the silence hang there.

I took pity on her and finished my thought: “In fact, it might not be a bad idea for the four of us to go get some food while we discuss who’s going to do what on this case.”

“Just food?” Hewitt snorted. “If you expect us to chase down thirty-eight ex-cons for you, the least you could do is ply us with alcohol.”

“Fair enough.” Nightlife around here was Hashek’s area of expertise, not mine, though, and I looked down at her questioningly. She glanced at her watch and nodded. “It’s past six; we’re off the clock. Getting you drunk before we go any farther with this certainly can’t hurt,” she told Hewitt and Searle. “You in, D’Argenzio?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, and then closed it again without answering, trying to remember if I had left the cat enough food and water to last him the night.

“Tony?”

Ah, right, being the genius that I am, I’d left both bowls overflowing this morning. Experience had taught me that working a hot case with Hashek meant getting home at all hours - except the ones you’re supposed to get home at - and I’d quickly gotten into the habit of making sure my cat would be ok on his own if I didn’t manage to get home for a night or two.

Hashek cleared her throat, finally getting my attention. I nodded quickly. “Sure. Guinness is good for the night.”

“Guinness?” Searle asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve never met anyone who loved their beer so much that they personified it.”

“Guinness is his cat,” Hashek explained for me. “He claims he named him that because of the color of the cat’s fur, but somehow I’m suspicious of that explanation.”

“Suspicious?” I echoed. “Why else would you think I named him that? You think it’s the secret code name for my terrorist cat or something?”

She cracked a smile at that and shook her head. “I mean I’m ‘suspicious’ of how much of his name really just came about because you love your stout.”

I rolled my eyes and opted not to respond that, instead saying, “Well, either way, I’m good to go for the night. You ladies want to get moving, or should we stay here and discuss it some more?”