Round Robin by Joseph Flynn Page A

live?”
    “He said it was no problem. He’d been a spy.”
    “Robin, now really.”
    “For the CIA,” she added.
    Mimi stared at Robin to see what kind of morbid joke she was playing. But, for the life of her, Mimi couldn’t find the least bit of deception in Robin’s bland expression.
    “His name’s Manfred. He’s German. He moves in today,” Robin said, “I gave him the keys.”
    That was all Mimi needed to hear: spies, CIA, German.
    “Absolutely not! I forbid it!” Mimi admonished. “You need some money, fine, you just got a bonus. You let me know much you need and—”
    Robin took Mimi’s hands in hers.
    “It’s all right. Maybe you did the right thing for me. I’m going to give it a try.”
    “But what if this man ... this Manfred ...”
    Mimi couldn’t bring herself to mention any of the awful fates that could be visited upon Robin by a stranger living in her house. She hadn’t thought of that when she’d placed the ad. For her part, Robin wasn’t worried. Not about her safety, anyway. If Manfred had been a nutbag, he’d had all the opportunity he’d ever needed yesterday. That was when he could have run her through a meat grinder and nobody would ever have known who did it.
    “Mimi, I’ll be okay.”
    “But if anything happened to you, I’d feel ...”
    Mimi couldn’t complete that thought, either.
    So Robin helped her.
    “Eaten with guilt ‘til your dying day,” she said with a wicked grin. “As of course you should, getting me into this fix.”
    Mimi gave her a sour look.
    “There is something you could do to make amends, or at least start to,” Robin said.
    “What?” Mimi asked warily.
    “Switch jobs with me today? You take the counter, let me sit at the register?”
    Mimi had never let anyone else handle the deli’s cash. That was why she never worried about any of her employees stealing from her; nobody ever had the chance. She knew this was Robin’s way of getting back at her for trying to give her back that buyout check. But more than that it was Robin’s way of asking if she was still Mimi’s partner, somebody she could trust completely.
    And what could Mimi say to that?
    “Well,” she said, grudgingly, “I suppose it’d be better for you to rest your ankle.”
    “Thank you, Mimi.”
    Mimi melted. She loved the way Robin could say her name, when she wanted, so it sounded just like Mama. At least to her ears.
    “Of course,” Mimi added, remembering her place in the universe, “I know how much we take in on Wednesdays to the last penny. And if the total’s not right...”
    Continuing her theme of the morning, Mimi let that thought dangle, too.
    Robin replied, “Heck, Mimi, I know that any good crook has got to establish trust before she makes her move.”
    She said it with a smile. But then she wondered if that was what Manfred “The Giant” Welk was doing. Gaining her trust. Before he made his move.
    She couldn’t help but have her suspicions. Life had taught her not to trust men.
     
    David Solomonovich, however, was still a boy. And one that Robin thought she might be able to use.
    “What’re you doing over here?” David asked, bringing his carryout sandwich to the register.
    Robin extended her gimpy leg.
    Everybody had been surprised to see Robin behind the register. They weren’t sure if the move was a promotion, a demotion or a flanking maneuver to attack them from a new angle. Robin had told everyone she’d injured herself and shown them her ankle without going into all of the details.
    More than one wit had opined that it was a good thing the injury was just a sprain and not a break or Mimi would have had to call a vet to put her down. Robin had parried with thrusts to her patrons’ intellects, physiques, grooming or ancestry, as appropriate.
    David, however, responded only with concern, which made Robin reconsider the wisdom of what she was about to ask of him.
    The young genius asked, “Have you had an MRI? They’re expensive, but it’s