"You know I don't believe in fate," Joe heard Gabrielle saying. "Joe is not my fate."

Kevin shook his head and let out a low whistle once the door shut behind all three women. "You barely dodged that bullet, my friend. Gabe's mother and aunt are real nice ladies, but sometimes when they get to talking, I expect to see their heads spinning like Linda Blair in The Exorcist."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yeah, I think they channel Elvis, too. Magnify Gabrielle by about a thousand, and you get her relatives."

For once he didn't think Kevin was lying. He turned to the fenceman and slapped him on the back as if they were old buddies. "She might have weird relatives; but she has great legs," he said. Time to get to work. Time to remember he wasn't there to pin his confidential informant against the wall and feel her soft body pressed to his, making him so hard that he forgot everything but her breasts poking his chest and the sweet taste of her mouth. Time to befriend Kevin, then nail him for the theft of Mr. Hillard's Monet.

The next morning Detective Joe Shanahan walked into Fourth District Court, raised his right hand, and swore to tell the truth, in The State v. Ron and Don Kaufusi. The Kaufusi boys were three-time losers facing a long stint in prison if found guilty of a string of residential burglaries. The case had been one of the first assigned to Joe shortly after he'd been transferred to property crimes.

He took his seat in the witness box and calmly straightened his tie. He answered questions from the prosecutor and the boys' public defender, and if Joe hadn't already had a prejudice against defense attorneys, he might have actually felt sorry for the lawyer assigned this case. It was a real slam dunk.

Seated behind the defense table, the Kaufusis looked like sumo wrestlers, but Joe knew from past experience that the brothers had balls of steel and were as loyal as Old Yeller. They'd conducted a real gutsy operation for several months before being arrested exiting a home on Harrison Boulevard. Every few weeks, the boys would park a stolen U-Haul next to the back door of a particular home they'd cased. They'd load the truck with valuables like precious coins, stamp collections, and antiques. In one instance, the neighbors across the street had watched, believing the brothers were professional movers.

When Don had been searched, the arresting officer had found a Wonder Bar in the pocket of his twill work pants. The tool's distinctive marks had matched a dozen others left in wooden door and window casements throughout the city. The prosecutor's office had gathered enough direct and circumstantial evidence to put the brothers away for a long time, and yet they'd refused to name their fence in exchange for leniency. Some might believe their unwillingness to cooperate had something to do with honor among thieves, but Joe didn't think so. He figured it probably had more to do with good business. The relationship between thief and fence was symbiotic. One parasite fed off the other parasite to survive. The brothers were betting on a short prison stay and already planning their return to business. It didn't pay to alienate a good fence.

Joe testified for two hours, and when he was through, he felt like raising his fists over his head like a prize fighter. The odds were in his favor, and the good guys were going to win this round. In a world where the bad guys were winning with more and more frequency, it was good to take a few of them off the streets for a while. Two down and two thousand more to go. He walked from the courtroom with a slight smile on his face and shoved his sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose. He moved from the recycled courtroom air and out into the sunlight. An endless blue sky and cotton-ball clouds hung over his head as he drove to his house off Hill Road. The ranch-style home had been built in the fifties, and in the five years he'd lived there, he'd replaced the carpeting and vinyl throughout. Now all he had to do was rip out the olive green tub in one of the bathrooms, and he figured he was done for awhile. He liked the creak of the floors and the worn bricks in the raised hearth. Mostly, he liked the lived-in character of his house.

The minute Joe walked in the front door, Sam flapped his wings and whistled like a catcalling construction worker.

"You need a girlfriend," he told his bird as he let him out of his cage. He walked into the bedroom to change his clothes, and Sam followed.

"You, behave," the bird screeched from his perch on Joe's chest of drawers.

Joe shrugged out of his suit, and his mind turned to the who-what-where-when-and-whys of the Hillard case. He wasn't any closer to an arrest, but yesterday hadn't been a complete bust. He'd learned the why. He'd learned what motivated Kevin Carter. He'd learned how much Kevin had resented being from a large family. And even more, how much he'd resented the hell out of growing up poor.

"You behave."

"You need to take your own advice, buddy." Joe tucked a blue T-shirt into the waistband of his Levi's and glanced up at Sam. "I'm not the one who bites wood or pulls out my feathers when I get mad," he said, then pulled on a New York Rangers baseball cap to cover his hair. He never knew when he would run into someone he'd arrested in the past, especially at something as weird as the Coeur Festival.

It was close to one o'clock when he left his house, and he made one quick stop on the way to the park. He stopped at Ann's Eighth Street Deli. Ann stood behind the counter; a warm smile lit her face as she looked up and saw him. "Hi, Joe. I was hoping you'd come in."

The way she looked at him, he couldn't help but return her smile. "I told you I would." He liked the spark of interest shining in her eyes. A nice normal spark. The kind a woman showed a man she wanted to know better.

He ordered a ham and salami on white bread, and since he didn't know what a lapsed vegetarian would eat, he ordered Gabrielle a turkey on whole wheat-lots of sprouts.

"When I called my sister, Sherry, last night and told her that I'd run into you, she said she thought you were a cop. Is that right?" she asked as she sliced the bread and placed a heap of meat on each slice.

"I'm a property crimes detective."

"I'm not surprised. Sherry said you used to like to frisk her in the ninth grade."

"I thought it was the tenth."

"Nope." She wrapped the sandwiches and placed them in a paper sack. "Do you want any salad or chips?"

Joe stepped back and looked into the long display case filled with different kinds of salads and desserts. "What's good?"

"It's all good. I just made it this morning. How about some cheesecake?"

"I don't know." He slid a twenty from his wallet and handed it to her. "I'm pretty particular about my cheesecake."

"I'll tell you what," she said and opened the cash register. "I'll give you a few slices, and if you like it, you come back tomorrow and buy me a cup of coffee on my break."

"When's your break?"

Her smile once again lit her eyes, and dimples creased her cheeks. "Ten-thirty," she answered and handed him his change.

He had to work at ten. "Make it nine."

"Okay." She opened the glass case and cut two slices of cheesecake and wrapped them in waxed paper. "It's a date."

He wouldn't go that far. But she was nice and could obviously cook. She certainly didn't look at him as if the only thing saving him from a good sock in the gut was her belief in nonviolence. He watched her place the cake and two plastic forks on top of the sandwiches, then she handed him the sack.

"See you in the morning, Joe."

Maybe Ann was just what he needed.

Chapter Nine

Thirty striped canopies lined a section of Julia Davis Park near the band shell. A knot of impromptu musicians sat cross-legged beneath a towering oak, beating their steady fingers against the tight skin of bongos. They were joined by several pan flutists and a small group of nomadic bus dwellers coaxing haunting strains from handmade instruments. Barefoot dancers swayed, their gauze skirts and long braids swirling to the hypnotic pulse, while white bread America watched from the sidelines looking a bit perplexed.

At the Coeur Festival, you could buy healing crystals and books on the art of seeing. Get your palm read, your life charted, and past lives interpreted. The food booths offered such organic delights as vegetarian tacos, veggie stir-fry, chili con veggie, and bean loaf with peanut sauce.

Gabrielle's booth sat between Mother Soul, the spiritual healer, and Organic Dan, master herbalist. The festival was a blend of New Age spirituality and commerce, and Gabrielle had dressed for the occasion in a white sleeveless peasant blouse, embroidered with gold sunburst and unicorns and tied beneath her breasts. The matching skirt rode low on her hips and buttoned up the front. She'd left it unbuttoned from her knees to her ankles, and she'd slipped her feet into a pair of handmade leather sandals. She'd left her hair down, and the thin gold hoops in her ears matched the ring in her navel. Her outfit reminded her a little of the short time she'd taken up belly dancing.

Her essential oils and aromatherapies were selling even better than she'd hoped. So far, her biggest sellers were her medicinal oils, with her massage oils coming in a close second. Directly across from Gabrielle's booth was a woman who did mendi, and next to her, Doug Tano, the colon hydrotherapist.

Unfortunately for Gabrielle, Doug wasn't in his booth. He was in hers, regaling her with the benefits of colonic hydrotherapy. Gabrielle prided herself on her open mind. She was enlightened. She understood and accepted other people's beliefs in different metaphysical plains. She supported unorthodox healing arts and therapies, but geez, discussing waste material was beyond her range of comfort and bordered the realm of gross.