Thicker Than Blood by Penny Rudolph

whistled.
    “My father taught me,” she said when the man handed her a small brown bear.
    “A dead-eye with a rifle and a trigger-happy knee. Not your average femme fatale.” He laid an arm lightly on her shoulder. Laughing and from time to time pointing at some oddity, they toured the remaining tents and booths.
    An old woman with stringy black hair thrust a long-stemmed rose into Hank’s hand. “Para la señorita, señor,” she lisped, her mouth showing places where teeth should have been. “Take it,” she said to Rachel. “You’ll get precious few pretties when you’re old.” The woman bowed her head in studied supplication. Her scalp showed blue-white through the thinning hair.
    Hank took the rose and shoved a five-dollar bill into the woman’s gnarled hand.
    When the woman departed Rachel said, “You paid her too much.”
    “She seemed so…pathetic.”
    “She’s probably got fifty thousand dollars in the bank.”
    “You always believe the worst case scenario?”
    “And I’m usually right.”
    Rachel caught sight of a clock behind a man hawking fresh-pulled taffy. “It’s almost eleven and we’ve got nine blocks to walk,” she said and quickened her pace.
    Darting around a broad Mexican woman, Rachel almost knocked over a short, thin man with a cane at the woman’s side. Hank had to jog to catch up.
    When they reached the side door of the garage she already had the key in her hand. “Thanks. I’m glad you insisted,” she murmured, more to the key than to Hank.
    “Me, too.”
    “Go get your car. I’ll open the gate.”
    He pulled up to the exit and lowered the window. “I trust you’ll give it a good home. Be careful of the thorns. It bites.” He thrust the rose at her and was gone.
    The flower, its ruby red made black by the streetlights, was beginning to droop. Rachel told herself she should just toss it out. But in her apartment she filled an empty Coke bottle with water and slid the stem into it.
    333
    By morning, the rose had lifted its head. She carried it down to the glass booth with her.
    Lonnie wasn’t there. She called, his name echoing through the garage. No response.
    Thinking he might have overslept, she phoned his home, and when his machine answered, shouted into the mouthpiece, hoping to wake him up, until the final beep cut her off.
    Rachel performed the opening chores herself. How could she have been so gullible? No one knew better than she the intricate patterns of the addict’s lies and denials.
    Of course Lonnie was using again. She should have packed him off to some inpatient program. But she hadn’t wanted to deal with it. So she had played the game, listened to his lies. She was as angry with herself as she was with him.
    When the flurry of noon traffic had subsided, Rachel headed for her apartment to grab a sandwich. Gazing dully at the elevator’s panel of buttons, it occurred to her that she was playing the same sort of game with that damn car, knowing full well that it was responsible for Jason’s death and doing nothing.
    The decision came like a pinball finally slipping into the slot it has been avoiding: She would call the cops now. Right now. What harm could there be in an anonymous phone call? Why had she let her father and Bruno frighten her about it?
    She got off the elevator at level C and walked briskly toward the water agency’s row of cars. She hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when she saw the gaping space, like a missing tooth, where the DeVille had been.
    Chapter Eleven
    The helicopter arrived mid-afternoon with a package for the water quality lab. Rachel locked up her little office, hoisted the box to her shoulder, and crossed the street to the InterUrban Headquarters, thinking she hadn’t hired Lonnie as a favor to him. She definitely needed another pair of hands and feet.
    Still, she had been curious about the laboratory, had wondered just how much science there could be in a glass of clear water. So here was her chance to see