. . . .
. . .
She felt Carlton's uncertainty when she approached his desk in the morning. She was a little uncertain herself.
It had been nice to touch his lean face, gratifying to feel the heat of his skin and see the half-panicked, half-longing look in those crystal blue eyes. It had even been nice to see how embarrassed he was afterwards, as they got their coffee and drove on to their destination.
There was a time when she would have taken his discomfort personally, but not anymore. They'd come too far, been too much at each other's side, over too many years.
This felt like the year things could change, and Juliet was ready for that change.
He looked up, only faintly flushed. "Morning, O'Hara."
"Hey, partner. McNab just gave me a phone message from Jack Singer; he lives across the street from the Carrolls? Says he found some of the Carrolls' stuff in the lane behind his house."
For a moment he stared at her, but she knew that look: he was thinking about the case. Then one dark eyebrow went up. "You realize this means a singer lives across from a carol?"
She laughed. "Near a partridge, on Peartree."
He readily high-fived her, relaxed already. "You sent someone to deal with the goods?"
"Yes. Singer wants to talk to us about something else, but not at his place."
"Interesting. Where's he work?" Carlton slung his jacket on.
Juliet glanced at the note. "The community center in Alta Roja."
"Let's roll."
"That was easy," she commented, following him back out the door she'd only just entered.
"No reason to sit around drinking coffee."
"Drinking coffee is a good reason to sit around drinking coffee."
"That's true," he admitted.
Coffee made her think of Starbucks yesterday, and a quick look at him showed her his color had gone high again.
But this was okay, she thought. If he was thinking along the same lines she was, it was more than okay.
Jack Singer was in the middle of coaching basketball; his team appeared to be a ragtag collection of post-high-school young men who were more than happy to be told to play 'horse' while he spoke to the detectives.
"Over here," he said, leading them toward the double doors on the far side of the gym. "I didn't want to say too much over the phone."
"We're listening, Mr. Singer."
He began a hesitant tale which involved his eighteen-year-old daughter and her boyfriend, a college freshman he didn't particularly like. He was concerned that the boyfriend, Nick Shepherd, might have something to do with the burglaries, if not the shooting.
The items he'd found that morning were in the brush alongside the lane which separated his lot from the fields beyond and included some DVDs he knew came from the Carroll house because they were helpfully marked as such—and happened to be among his daughter's favorites.
Juliet wasn't even surprised when he said her name was Noelle.
Jack Singer looked around again and said, "Come on through here to my office." He pushed open the double doors.
"Swans!" someone yelled peremptorily.
Carlton's hand immediately went to his gun; Juliet yanked at his arm before Singer (or anyone else) noticed. "Sorry," Carlton mumbled.
Wait…
Swans?
Singer had stopped short to allow a gaggle of kids to hurry by on the other side. The voice, belonging to someone she couldn't see, went on, "If you're not in formation in the pool in five minutes, I'm calling off practice!"
Grinning over his shoulder—and still blocking the doorway—Singer explained, "Our first synchronized swimming class."
"Swans?" Juliet asked, hardly able to believe it, even as she registered the scent of chlorine and the sound of splashing.
"Yeah, the Swann family—two Ns—there's a bunch of them. Come on," he said, and led them through the swimming pool area toward his office.
Juliet felt Carlton touch her elbow. He was highly amused and that was progress too: he wasn't denying the happy madness which had descended upon them.
"Are there seven Swanns, by any chance?" he inquired of Singer.
The man did the math as he unlocked his office door. "Think so. Hey, that's funny. Never thought of that before. Seven Swanns a-swimming."
"You have no idea," Carlton murmured, and his private smile for Juliet made her feel all kinds of hope.
. . . .
. . .
"Jerk!" The voice was low and angry.
Carlton swung around. "Lady, I wasn't even talking to you—"
Juliet covered her mouth—and her laughter. The woman had her back to them, and was glowering at a churro vendor about ten feet away. The vendor shrugged and turned to his next customer.
"Not you," the woman said apologetically. "I asked for directions and he was incredibly—and unnecessarily," she added more loudly, so he could hear, "rude. And mean!"
Carlton leveled a cold blue glare at the vendor, who began to look nervous, as well as to move his cart a little further away.
"What directions do you need, ma'am?" Juliet asked her.
The woman, whose gray t-shirt bore the embroidered name 'Susan,' sighed and rattled off an address in a pricey gated residential area about twenty minutes west.
Juliet and Carlton had just come out of the office building where they'd interviewed Holly Donner, a recent victim of the home burglaries whose children were Noelle Singer's age and attended the same school. They were working on the theory that Noelle's boyfriend was indeed part of the burglary ring, and Holly Donner hadn't given them any reason to think it couldn't be true.
Carlton told Susan relatively pleasantly how to get where she was going.
She noticed his badge as he was talking (later Julie asked herself why Susan's gaze had traveled to Carlton's lower body), and said, "Oh, you're police officers."
"Yes, ma'am. But you wouldn't have needed us if certain citizens behaved like citizens instead of thugs and hooligans."
The churro guy moved away faster.
"You can run, but you can't hide," Carlton muttered. "O'Hara, get his permit number."
Juliet said serenely, "I will not."
He glowered at her; she smiled.
Susan glanced between them. "Partners a long time?"
"Twenty-eight years," Juliet said at once, thinking it would seem like no time at all, and heard Carlton snicker.
Susan laughed. "Somehow I doubt that. Anyway, thanks for the help. We're all set now." Looking beyond them, she yelled, "Girls! Time to go!"
Across the street, a number of other women in gray t-shirts had been milling around jewelry vendors and taco carts, and one by one they ambled closer, aiming at a large white panel van parked nearby.
Carlton was unable to not be suspicious. "Ma'am, you're not part of a burglary ring, are you?" At Juliet's poke to his arm, he said, "What? Sometimes they confess right out."
Susan wasn't offended. "I promise: we only clean houses; we don't clean them out." She waved and headed toward the van, and Juliet noticed the letters on the back of her shirt read "MCS."
The other women's shirts said the same thing, and Juliet counted as they piled into the vehicle.
Eight.
"Eight," Carlton said, bemused. "But no trace of a cow anywhere, O'Hara. Not so much as an stylized udder."
"Huh." She stood next to him, feeling the heat of him and liking it on this crisp December day.
The van pulled away, and as it did, they were able to read the business name emblazoned on the side.
"Oh, good Lord," Carlton said with disdain.
Juliet started laughing, and wasn't sure she could stop. "It's Fate! I keep telling you, it's Fate!"
"Well, Fate should be damned embarrassed. That is the worst pun ever."
But he was grinning, oh yes he was, as the Milliken Cleaning Service van drove out of sight.
"Eight maids of Milliken. Now, as God is my witness, I have seen everything."
Oh no you haven't, Juliet thought as she brought her laughter under control. You haven't seen me yet, not the way I hope you will very soon.
But she was pretty sure Fate was going to help her out with that.
. . . .
. . .
Carlton had been feeling a semi-constant buzz for several days. Ever since Juliet had touched his face at Starbucks, ever since she'd let him know she had… an interest in him, ever since he'd started to think the impossible could come true, he'd felt a low-level thrumming from head to toe.
Juliet, as it happened, might just like him. At least a little.
As a woman likes a man. In the conventional sense.
In the conventional, but-rarely-happens-to-Carlton-Lassiter sense.
In the this-might-kill-me sense.
Best Christmas ever, honestly, and still a few days to go.
It was going to break down, of course. They were off Christmas Eve and day, although he was on call because he was always on call (what else was he going to do on holidays except wait to be called in?), and he was sure she had visits with friends lined up. They wouldn't see each other (you could ask to see her) and so wouldn't have any opportunity (just ask her) to let Fate's silly-ass sense of humor to run wild (moron: this is the time, over all other times, when she will say yes, so ASK HER already) with a dumbass old song he didn't even much like.
"What are you doing for Christmas?" he asked abruptly, without having had any intention of speaking at all.
Juliet looked up from the photos. They were in the conference room, studying the crime scene photos from the Carroll and now Donner burglaries, searching for similarities.
Her dark blue eyes were guileless. "Well, on Christmas Eve I'm invited for dinner at Henry's. You could come too."
"No thanks." He could tolerate Henry, but where there was Henry, there would be Spencer Jr. Where there was Spencer Jr., there would be Spencer Jr. flirting with Juliet. Where that was, he would not be.
Juliet was disappointed. "There's room. He actually told me to invite you."
That was to make you feel better, he thought. If Henry wanted me there, he'd have invited me himself.
"Carlton?"
"Not my scene," he said shortly, and turned a page of the report.
"Well, if you won't come, then we should have lunch." Her tone was emphatic. "And then after I leave Henry's, we can… I don't know. Have a drink."
He looked up, surprised, and to his greater surprise, she was blushing.
"O'Hara? Are you—" No. He couldn't say it.
"Asking you out?" Her blush was deeper. "Yes. I am. I'll call you when I leave there and we can meet somewhere, and if places close early, you can come to my apartment and drink spiked eggnog with me."
He thought of something a psychotherapist said during his divorce, a quote attributed to Bob Marley: truth is, everybody's going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.
Eggnog wouldn't be suffering. Not if it was with Juliet on Christmas Eve.
"Okay." Was his voice husky?
Didn't matter: her smile lit up the room and his heart and that was all he could process.
McNab stuck his head in the door, oblivious to The Moment he was interrupting. "Just had some more of the Carroll items turn up at a pawn shop. Owner says he has video footage."
Juliet was on her feet fast, but Carlton didn't mind. He wasn't sure his legs would work at all, and if she was between him and the door, no one would see him lurching.
On the way over to the pawn shop, she was quiet, but whenever he peeked at her, she was smiling.
His low-level thrumming notched up a bit.
It made him 'nicer' than usual to the pawn shop owner, or nicer than he usually was to pawn shop owners until he believed they didn't deal in stolen goods. Since this case had gotten a lot of press because of the shooting, a number of shops were finding it behooved them to cooperate with the law to the fullest.
Rudy Snow looked weary. He didn't even say hello when they came in, but merely gestured to the back office while his able and well-tattooed associate took over the counter.
The security video was pretty clear, but the young man who brought in the bits of jewelry—and one Colly bird—must have known he was being filmed. He wore heavy-rimmed glasses, had his hair pulled back in a pony-tail, and kept his head down. He touched nothing, careful not even to brush his fingertips across the counter, and kept the envelope from which the items slid.
Once the merchandise was closer to Snow than to the suspect, Snow told him flat out he recognized it as stolen property, and the guy took off.
The associate had chased him—netting the envelope, which fell out of the runner's back pocket—and that too lay on Snow's desk with the loot.
"Very nice, Mr. Snow," Carlton said, somewhat impressed. "You've obviously been down this road before."
"I want my customers to be aboveboard so I can stay in business. The less opportunity I give anyone to shut me down or put me in jail, the happier I am." Said with an air of utter weariness, the word 'happier' didn't quite fit, but Carlton would take it.
"The police department and the city of Santa Barbara, along with the Carrolls, thank you sincerely." Juliet bagged the envelope and other items.
The associate buzzed through. "Hey… how you feel about ceramics again?"
"Indifferent," Snow said, eyeing the intercom with some disdain.
"But they're naked."
Carlton and Juliet glanced at each other and then at Snow.
Snow spoke to the machine. "The customers?"
"Uh. No. The ceramics."
He sighed. "I'll come take a look."
Yeah, well, most men would.
They followed him out into the store proper. The customer was an white-bearded elderly man, eyes-a-twinkle (no, Lassiter, it is not Kris Kringle; stop that crap right now). "I brought them back from the war," he said most genially, picking up one of the figurines and winding it at the base.
Carlton, with Juliet's palpable amusement a very real sensation not just at his side but… all over, gave the ceramics a look.
"There used to be ten," the not-Kris man said, still twinkling. "But my cat knocked one over."
The figures, which were indeed naked, represented ladies in various dancing poses.
"Prancer is such a rascal," not-Kris added affectionately, finished winding the figurine in his hand, and the little nude brunette twirled on her pedestal quite merrily.
Carlton felt as if his heart was whirling around merrily too, and he looked down at Juliet to find her smiling up at him.
"Nine ladies dancing," she whispered. "We're almost there."
As if he knew everything, not-Kris reached over and patted her on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas, young lady. This new year will bring you a great deal of happiness."
She thanked him, and they left in silence, but in the car, she reached over to take Carlton's hand for a long lovely moment, and said one more time, "We're almost there."
. . . .
. . .