Streets of Death

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Mendoza came int0 the kitchen, hat in hand, and asked, "Feeling better, cara?" Mrs. MacTaggart was just starting on the breakfast dishes. Alison was hunched over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, her red hair slightly tousled, still in her robe. She gave him a glance of burning resentment.

"Ah, she’ll be fine," said Mrs. MacTaggart.

"If I had ever," said Alison, "dreamed-hic-after I felt so fine all the time I was carrying the twins, that-hic-this time I’d develop morning sickness, I’d never have-damn-" She leaped up and fled precipitately for the bathroom at the end of the hall.

"Poor lamb," said Mrs. MacTaggart. "But she’s near three months along now, it should clear away in a bit."

"I certainly hope so," said Mendoza. "I’m beginning to feel like an outcast around here, Mairi." Mrs. MacTaggart laughed as he went out the back door.

The four cats were sensibly indoors this chill January morning, but the twins, now officially four, were tearing around the backyard with Cedric the Old English sheepdog galumphing after them. They both hung on to his collar helpfully as Mendoza went out the gate, and then hung over the fence to watch him back out the Ferrari. He waved back at them, thanking God absently for Mairi MacTaggart; Terry and Johnny were a lively pair these days, none the worse for their accidental kidnapping last August, and in her present state Alison wasn’t up to coping with them. He wasn’t worried about Alison; the doctor said she’d be fine once she got past the morning sickness. He hoped he wasn’t beginning to feel his age, with a forty-sixth birthday coming up, but he felt a little stale and tired as he slid down the winding road toward Hollywood Boulevard, thinking of the various business on hand at the Robbery-Homicide office of LAPD headquarters.

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