Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Read Free Page B

she'd done was serve me breakfast in bed, Mrs. Goldman. I always say that when Lauren Bacall gets older, she'll look like Mrs. Goldman - if she's lucky. When her husband died and left her this two-story Victorian, people wondered if she'd be able to get along. She's doing just fine, thank you.
        Especially where I was concerned. She had me sitting up in bed drinking coffee, smoking a Lucky, and eating off a breakfast tray that offered three poached eggs, two slices of buttered toast with strawberry jam, and a glass of orange juice.
        My three cats wanted to share the meal. Mrs. Goldman and I had to fight them off. Tess was the most creative. She started at the foot of the bed and tunneled all the way up, so that her head appeared right next to my toast.
        Mrs. Goldman said, "You have to get all this down, McCain. Isn't your first appointment for nine?"
        "Umm-hmm. With the Judge."
        "Well, it's eight-fifteen. You still have to take a shower."
        "I really appreciate this."
        She touched my sleeve. "I was rebounding when I met my husband. I'd loved this guy all the way through college and he wouldn't give me a second look. The first six or seven times I went out with Ken I thought he was the dullest guy I'd ever known. How could anyone compare? But you know, after a couple of months, Ken became my whole life. And he stayed that way for almost thirty years. That'll happen to you, too, McCain. Wait and see."
        "I sure hope so."
        She stood up. "I hope you're not going to waste that food I've been slaving over for the past half hour."
        "Ah. The guilt approach."
        "You're darn right," she said. "The guilt approach. Now eat."
        I ate.
        

THREE
        
        If I were a portrait painter - and believe me, there's never any danger of that happening, given the fact that my fifth grade art teacher once delicately asked my mom if I'd ever suffered a head injury - I'd paint Judge Esme Anne Whitney in one of her tailored suits with a nice small white scarf tucked into the neck. In one hand there'd be a Gauloise cigarette burning and in the other a snifter of brandy. She's handsome rather than pretty, though she's damned handsome and damned imposing, something pretty rarely is. She's one of those people who'd look upper-crust even if she were starkers. Something in the genes, maybe. She doesn't need clothes to announce her social standing. She's in her early sixties, though she doesn't look it, and God knows she'd never admit it. The Gauloises and the brandy are with her everywhere but in court. I strongly suspect she even imbibes under water, in the swimming pool she had installed two summers ago. She came out here to lend a hand when a relative got in trouble. Her family money ran this town at that time. Somehow the years came and went and she never left, even though the Sykes clan - our visiting family from the land of Hillbillia - took over shortly after the war.
        The meeting this morning stretched into an hour, an unlikely length, given the Judge's crowded docket. At any given time, I'm working on three or four investigations for her court. A good thing I got my private investigator's license. It supported my law school sheepskin, which was little more than a bragging point for my family.
        I was reporting on the third and final investigation - the Judge had asked me to check out a new merchant's background, which she suspected would be criminal - when Pamela buzzed her from the outer office. Pamela sounded slightly frazzled. Something she rarely sounds.
        Pamela gulped and said, "Gosh, Judge, do you know who's on the phone for you?"
        The Judge rolled her eyes. I think she chose Pamela as her secretary because Pamela knows how to dress in the eastern fashion and is in all respects a lady. This isn't to say that the Judge has any respect for her. Pamela is an employee and the Judge has no respect for anybody who