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I ran after him.
“Rosie! Come back here! Don’t be stupid!” I yelled.
But Rosie wasn’t listening to me. Rosie threw himself in a dark gray, old-model Nissan Sentra that was parked blocking my back alley and took off. I managed to read half the license plate before he turned left on Bannock and disappeared.
I ran back to the house. Tod was standing at my back door wearing a pair of white to-the-knee jeans shorts, a wife beater and a killer pair of high-heeled, strappy black sandals with sweet little bows on the peek-a-boo toes with rhinestones in the bows. He had his hand at his chest, his face was pale, and considering the bloody areas, he’d scraped his knees and palms.
“Great shoes,” I said, trying to stay calm.
“I was coming over to show them to you, bought them yesterday,” Tod replied.
“Can I borrow them sometime?”
“Sure.”
Chowleena walked forward and shoved her face against my shins, completely unfazed by the gunplay. She was beige, small for a chow, fluffy in the extreme around her ruff with her butt shaved. The shin-butt was her way of giving a hug and saying, “hi” and, “give me a dog biscuit.” Her dads were pretty strict about her diet, but Auntie Indy was a pushover. One Chowleena hug and I had the dog biscuit box out.
We walked into the kitchen and I grabbed my cell, scrolled down to Lee’s number and hit the green button.
“Yeah?” Lee said after one ring.
“Rosie was just here. Took off north out of the alley onto Bannock in a dark-gray Nissan Sentra.” I gave him the part of the license I could remember and he related the info to someone he was with then he came back to me.
“How’s he look?”
“Not good, and he had a gun.”
“How do you know he had a gun?”
“He was waving it at me and then he shot off three rounds when Tod came over for a surprise visit.”
Silence for a beat and then, “Tod?”
“My neighbor.”
Another silent beat then, “Everyone okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d Rosie come to you?”
“He thinks I know where the diamonds are.”
Lee sighed.
“Be there in ten.”
I flipped the phone shut, threw Chowleena a dog biscuit and deposited a still stunned Tod in a chartreuse chair. I ran up the stairs to my bathroom to get my medical supplies.
I was sitting on the ottoman, dabbing at Tod’s palm with alcohol-soaked cotton balls then blowing on it to take the pain away when Tod said, “I thought you were making up a story when you said you’d been shot at. I thought it was another one of your stories.”
“I don’t have any stories. All that shit I tell you actually happens.”
Tod stared at me while he processed this.
This was a new dimension in our relationship.
I always thought Tod and Stevie accepted who I was and were so world-weary that nothing fazed them. I mean, they were flight attendants. They’d seen it all.
