First Thrills - Lee Child [115]
She thought about Susie, and about what Susie would want. But fuck, Susie was five years old, and it didn’t matter what she’d want. Children’s Day was make-believe, and only once a year.
At least she had a father who loved her. That put her ahead. Put her ahead of Miranda.
She called Lois Hampton, calmed her down. Met with her privately, lunching at the Women’s Club, Susie still holding the kewpie doll. Suggested new terms for Susie’s daddy, especially with Geoff away so much. No, no publicity, Mrs. Hampton. No publicity.
Called Rick. Got a liverwurst sandwich at Maxwell House, walked to the Owl for more cigarettes. Finally strolled over to Midget Village, watching Shorty twirl a six gun for some kids and their parents, the late afternoon sun stretching across the bay, the midgets making long shadows in the sawdust of the corral.
A cop ambled by, stood next to her.
“Hear you found the missing girl, Corbie.”
“Yeah.”
“Lost the kidnapper, though?”
Miranda shrugged, opened a new package of Chesterfields. “I don’t know, Gillespie. Sometimes a clown is just a clown.”
He stared at her. “What the hell does that mean?”
She blew a smoke ring, watching it rise high on the bay wind, drifting above the Gayway.
“It means Happy Children’s Day.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and moved on.
*
KELLI STANLEY is an award-winning author of two crime fiction series. City of Dragons (from Thomas Dunne/Minotaur Books in February 2010) continues the story of Miranda Corbie—private investigator in 1940 San Francisco—e x-escort, and the protagonist of Children’s Day. Kelli’s debut novel, Nox Dormienda, set two thousand years earlier in Roman Britain, won a Macavity Award nomination, and the Bruce Alexander Award for best historical mystery of the year. Kelli lives in foggy San Francisco and earned a master’s degree in Classics. Discover more about Kelli and the worlds she writes about at www.kellistanley.com.
WENDY CORSI STAUB
Things aren’t always as they seem,” my father liked to say, and when he said it, I would shake my head as if to say, no, they certainly are not.
Really, I was shaking my head because he was wrong.
Dead wrong.
Dead—the irony should make me smile, but I don’t dare, because they’re watching me now. Every twitch of my mouth, every word that comes out of it, makes them wonder.
Let them.
Yes, my father was dead wrong. Most things—and people, too—are, I have learned, exactly as they seem.
Take Abby. Some might assume that beyond the triple chins and homely façade must belie a sparkling wit or a generosity of spirit. Why else would the most eligible bachelor in town—my widowed father—have married her?
Not for her money, though she had enough of it. But then, he does—rather, did—as well.
Not for her well-regarded family name, either. Our own name is equally—if not more—illustrious in this particular corner of the world.
Nor did he marry her to raise his motherless daughters. I was going on five when Abby moved in with us, but my sister was a de cade older; she took better care of me than anyone. I have never needed—or wanted—a stepmother.
I barely remembered my own mother, having lost her when I was just a toddler. Yet I have always missed her. Does that make sense?
Never mind; I don’t care if my feelings make sense to anyone other than myself.
My Uncle John told me once that my mother doted on me to the point where people whispered that I was spoiled. But who could blame her for indulging her third daughter when she’d buried her second just two years earlier?
As for her firstborn—if my sister had minded being overshadowed by my birth thirty-odd years ago, she either got over it or hid it very well, because I’ve never sensed resentment from her.
Not even now.
“Are you all right?” she asks anxiously from across the breakfast table, and I’m touched by the concern in her eyes, brown and somber, like our father’s . . .
A terrible, wonderful fantasy sweeps through me, and then I realize it isn’t a fantasy anymore. It’s a memory now, a fresh one; I indulge it until my sister utters