Deep Pockets by Linda Barnes Page B

her fantasies. Her drug lord Colombian father may or may not still live in Medellín. I doubt it. The government’s been trying to capture him so long, he’s probably left the country. The poster echoes the warmth of the walls, with spectacular blue skies, fields of lush flowers, green cordilleros.
    She never makes her bed. Not being a big bed-maker myself, I don’t care.
    The next morning, I got up early and made breakfast for my sister, even though it isn’t part of our deal. My fault; our “deal” was made in ignorance. I didn’t appreciate the dating complications. I didn’t suspect the nutritional complexities. When she assured me she’d handle her own meals, I didn’t understand that meant skipping breakfast, skipping lunch, eating take-out pizza for dinner when and if she and her pals could scrounge up the bucks. I’m not a nutrition nut; far from it. I eat junk food, love it, in fact, but breakfast is a time when your mother, or a reasonable substitute, puts food on the table.
    Hey, how could I be so rebellious if I weren’t a traditionalist at heart?
    Orange juice, toast, scrambled eggs. I tried to give her a glass of milk, but she glared till I made coffee. She pours so much milk in it, it’s practically healthy anyway.
    It’s been an uphill battle since we met, when Paolina was seven and I was still a cop. I miss the scrawny seven-year-old, the feisty ten-year-old, but I doubt I’ll miss the fifteen-year-old with the pout and the overlipsticked mouth, the one who assures me that all the kids talk like that and who wants to know the fuck’s my problem. This morning, she ate in a blur, left her dishes in the sink, and was gone before I could object to her tank top. Why her mother lets her buy clothes like that, I don’t know.
    Well, yes, I guess I do. Her mother dresses the same way. Marta, married twice, abandoned twice, four kids, no skills, considers the landing of a male meal ticket the be-all and end-all of life. Probably coaches Paolina in the proper tightness of clothes. And glories in Paolina’s body, seeing her daughter’s curves as golden lures.
    I drank my coffee slowly. I hadn’t gotten a hint as to where Denali Brinkman might have stashed her love letters. I hadn’t learned her roommate’s name, but I’d taken the precaution of writing down every name that appeared on a Phillips House mailbox. The girl, Jeannie, if she lived there and wasn’t just visiting to watch TV, was probably J. P. St. Cyr.
    I needed to find out who was using the letters to blackmail my client, but my mind kept veering back to the fire. In the light of a new day, I found myself curious about exactly what had happened at the boathouse shed the night Denali Brinkman died.
    The private-eye business is all about trading favors. It’s about who you know and what they know — and what you can offer in return. I know Cambridge cops; more particularly, I know a sergeant who’d know what I wanted to know — namely, who’d responded to the fire at the boathouse — and I was in a position, due to a favor from a previous encounter, to ask. Kevin Shea gave me a song and dance, flirted lamely, and stalled around, but we both knew he’d kick up the name in the end, and he did.
    I got dressed in a hurry, briefly debated between the T and the car, decided on the car. The risk was parking tickets, the benefit freedom, and I wasn’t sure where I’d be headed after the cop house.
    Central Square’s station house is surrounded by funky ethnic restaurants and slightly seedy stores. The neighborhood gets better; the neighborhood gets worse. Right now, it’s on an upswing. You can pay four grand a month for a three-bedroom apartment on Inman Street, and dine in splendor at Centro, an upscale Italian eatery entered through a dive called the Good Life.
    Central Square is my stomping ground. I play volleyball at the Y, hang at the Plough and the Stars, eat at the Green Street Grill. I was never a Cambridge cop — Boston all