The Heat of Angels Read online

  “Maybe you should. You’ve been single since your ex decided to cheat on you in a massively royal fashion. It’s natural that you’ve been kind of sequestered, but I’m glad you met this woman. Besides, being all safe and orderly hasn’t gotten you too far lately.”

  “I was raised to do things by the book, Paige. That’s my comfort zone. This…I don’t even know her!”

  Paige whispered into the phone like she was narrating a horror movie. “Getting to know her is how it starts.”

  “Now you’re freaking me out. I have no idea who she is, where she lives, or what she does for a living. She could be a 5150 or a serial killer or something.”

  “So, take your gun.”

  “Paige…”

  “Is your Spidey sense going nuts?”

  “A little.”

  “Chris, chill out, really. It might not be about her. It might be that your own disciplined head is in higgledy-piggledy chaos.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Listen to me. You’re going on a date, not a domestic-violence call. You’ll be fine. I’m sure she’s nice and you’ll have a great time. And if you don’t, it was just one date. No harm, no foul.”

  As Chris turned north on La Brea Avenue, her radio squawked. “I gotta go, Paige.”

  “Did that help?” It was Paige’s favorite sign-off.

  And Chris always replied in kind. “No.”

  Chapter Three

  With Abel safely secured in the backyard kennel and his mister on, Chris showered quickly and was parking close to the Canyon Country Store with five minutes to spare. As she walked up Kirkwood Street, she automatically put her hand into the pocket that carried her cell phone. She checked its presence out of habit in case someone was texting to say they were running late or needed directions.

  Clicking on her recent calls she suddenly realized she didn’t even know Sarah’s last name. It felt a little reckless to agree to meet someone who was effectively a complete stranger. What if her last name was Dahmer or Manson? If she thought about it too long she’d worry that, much like a tightrope walker staring at the absence of a net below, this might not be a good sign.

  Looking toward the sky, she tracked where the smoke was darker in some areas than others, just to see where she was in relation to the hot spots. Though Laurel Canyon wasn’t threatened by any immediate danger, it was still a canyon. Angelinos knew these areas could be subject to increased winds and, because of their tight geographical shape, temperature inversions, which rapidly accelerated the travel of fire.

  She’d heard too many stories of people caught in canyon fires. But the worst she’d deal with today were irritated eyes.

  Sarah was standing beside Lilly’s Coffee Cart when Chris rounded the corner. She wore tight jeans with white threading and a white peasant top. Chris loved the more casual look as much as the sweater and skirt. When Sarah turned and smiled at her, all of Chris’s concerns dropped to the sidewalk and she quickly stepped past them.

  The cart sat in front of the Canyon Country Store, a historical building that had served the locals since 1929. Tucked up under a wide awning, the cart was designed to look like a gypsy caravan, with a canvas roof stretched over curved wooden frames and elaborately carved and painted trim along the top and sides. They ordered iced cappuccinos and sat at a table so diminutive their knees touched. She flashed back to the first time she saw Sarah walking through the store, and a buzz of exhilaration swept through her because they were this close now.

  “These fires are crazy,” Sarah said. “This is the worst season I’ve seen.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. This heat isn’t helping at all. I hope the winds die down and they’re able to get control.”

  A moment of silence fell on them. Chris thought Sarah’s expression was warm with amusement or something like that, but she was nervous as hell inside. Blackberries were the only thing they had in common so far.

  “When I mentioned Lilly’s,” Chris said, hoping to quell the quiet, “I was glad you knew about it.”

  “I come up here every so often. It’s such a great neighborhood.” Sarah looked around and then pointed. “Did you know Jim Morrison and Pam Courson lived right there? At 8021 Rothdell Trail.”

  “I knew they lived close by and that he wrote ‘Love Street’ about their place.”

  “I adore everything about the counterculture movement of the sixties. This area was, like, Los Angeles’s answer to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.”

  Chris nodded and the tendrils of her nervousness began to recede. “Joni Mitchell and Dave Crosby hung out here, too, I understand.”

  “I don’t smoke pot or anything,” Sarah said. “I mean, I love the hippie culture, but I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. I mean, you’re a cop.”

  “Oh.” Chris finally understood the segue. “Thanks. Yeah. I’m not too keen about drugs.”

  “I did have my wild phase, I suppose.”

  “When you were younger?”

  Sarah nodded. “Didn’t we all?”

  “I didn’t.” When Sarah’s expression turned into a dubious gaze, Chris said, “My parents were both in the military. My father retired early and then served ten years at my station as a sergeant. So I grew up in a very strict house. There was good and bad, right and wrong. That was it. And drugs, of course, were wrong.”

  “Didn’t you rebel?”

  Chris thought a moment. Why would she rebel when her whole childhood had been about garnering her parents’ approval? If she walked the narrow line of obedience, she got infrequent praise. Hugs and kisses, things she saw her friends receive, were out of the question.

  “I guess,” she said, mentally fast-forwarding to her teen years, “they thought my being gay was a pretty serious rebellion. But when I joined the police force, my father was already there and watched my every move.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “No, he retired a few years ago. But he keeps in touch with all the guys, which is a pain in the ass. It feels like he still has me in his bead.”

  “Bead, as in bead of a gun sight. I get it. Cop humor, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Chris smiled. “Where did you grow up? And, for that matter, where do you live now?”

  “I grew up not too far from here. Now I’m on Holly Oak Drive.”

  “I know where that is. Under the Hollywood sign, right?”

  “Pretty much, yeah, but it’s a hell of a hike.”

  Chris laughed. The altitude change between Sarah’s neighborhood and the sign was about nine hundred feet, almost straight up.

  “Did you grow up around here?”

  Sarah sipped her coffee before answering. “Yeah. I’m a native. You?”

  “Raised at Camp Pendleton. My mom and dad are Marines. Retired, now. They live in El Toro, and I moved far away the very second I graduated from high school.”

  “Your holiday gatherings must be as fun as mine.”

  “I don’t know. Mine were drinks at exactly seventeen hundred hours followed by dinner at eighteen hundred hours, with a mandatory disappearance of children at nineteen hundred hours.”

  “You might have mine beat. The drinks part was the same, but usually everything went to shit after that because everyone was falling over or fighting.”

  “I believe you might have won the fun contest.” Chris liked Sarah’s wit. She seemed genuinely real and sincere. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I don’t work.”

  There was a pause, which piqued Chris’s interest. She’d seen that look before in people she’d questioned on the street. While she didn’t believe Sarah was concocting a lie, she was definitely doing some careful word-selecting.

  Sarah looked straight into Chris’s eyes, as if she was waiting for the slightest of clues in Chris’s expression. “I’m a trust-fund baby.”

  That was a surprise. Chris’s only point of reference were the few reality TV shows where the sight of hordes of shoes, lots of drama, and snotty attitudes made her change channe
ls faster than when she clicked over to swamp pig fighters and repo bounty spectacles. She wasn’t sure how to respond so she said, “You don’t look like a trust-fund baby.”

  Sarah chuckled. “I try not to revel in it. I do a lot of volunteering and keep to myself a lot.”

  “So I won’t be seeing you out at the clubs with anyone whose last name is a hotel chain?”

  “No!” Sarah almost spit out her coffee, but it still seeped out of her mouth and down her chin.

  Chris began to reach up with her thumb to catch the drops and suddenly clenched her fist. She wasn’t used to involuntary reactions, especially when they were intimate, and especially when they involved someone she’d just met. But Sarah’s unexpected dribble was so adorable, the urge to touch her, to make a connection, was intense.

  “Hey,” Chris said, to buy time to sort out that impulse. “Wanna take a walk?”

  “I’d love to.”

  They got coffee refills and headed up Rothdell Trail.

  “What kind of volunteer work do you do?” Chris said as they passed Jim Morrison’s old house with its unassuming brown exterior and brilliant magenta-flowered bougainvillea spilling over the high, brown walls like foam from a root-beer bottle.

  “I work with animals, mostly. In a wildlife-rescue place up in the hills off Mulholland.”

  “I’ve called them a few times because of some injured animal calls.”

  “Really? I’ve never seen your squad car pull up.”

  “I don’t go there. I just call them to make a pickup. But I’d like to see it.”

  Sarah turned to her with a crooked smile that Chris imagined could mean a lot of different things.

  “I’d love to give you a tour,” she said. “Do you like animals?”

  “I’d better. I’m a K9 officer.”

  Sarah stopped walking. “You are? Why didn’t I know that when I met you?”

  “Because he gets a bath quite often.”

  “No. I mean I didn’t see it on your shirt.”

  “It was there.”

  “Where?”

  “Left chest, below my name.”

  “The blackberries must have temporarily stymied my skills of observation.”

  “Yeah, that must have been it.”

  “What’s your dog’s name?”

  “Abel.”

  “He’s your partner?”

  “Badge and all.”

  “I’d like to meet him.”

  “If I get a tour of the rescue facility, then you can meet Abel. Deal?”

  “Absolutely.”

  As they turned right onto a back street, Chris felt happier than she usually did on a first date. The ease of their talking was a delightful change from the nervous and choppy exchanges she usually had in similar situations. Those conversations were usually more difficult to keep alive than the flicker of a candle in a windstorm.

  “You’re easy to talk to.”

  “I like that about you, too.” Sarah bumped Chris’s shoulder with her own.

  “Sarah, what’s your last name?”

  “You’re going to run me, aren’t you?”

  “I may,” she said, trying to look serious, though she felt so energized, she wanted to giggle.

  “Pullman,” she said. “It’s German, I think, and it means ‘bottle blower’ or something like that.”

  “Bottle blower, huh?”

  “Exciting, I know.”

  “Bergstrom, my last name, means ‘mountain stream’ in Swedish. I just got a travel-brochure picture for a name, and you got a cool occupation.”

  “I suppose ‘mountain stream’ is better than ‘littered alleyway.’” Her impish grin pulled her eyes into a very cute squint.

  This time, Chris did giggle. “You do have a way of looking at the positive.”

  Sarah turned to her with a bright face. “How’d you guess my middle name?”

  “Sarah, the optimistic bottle blower. I like it.”

  “What’s your middle name?”

  “It’s after my Asian grandfather, Pee Yee Yinda.”

  Sarah hesitated and then narrowed her eyes. “Chris peeing in the mountain stream. Nice.”

  “Well, I’ve never been, but I hear China’s a great place.”

  “It is,” Sarah said.

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Once, when I was a teenager. I raised money in high school to go. A group of us went. My best friend, Natalie, and I sold chocolate. Can you believe that?”

  “Those bars with almonds?”

  “Yes!”

  “I love them.”

  “We wanted to get enough money to pay for our trip and give a donation to a children’s abuse shelter in Hollywood. We sold that chocolate to everyone we could find.”

  “So, China was great?”

  “Yeah. We spent a week in Shanghai and got tattoos.”

  “You did?”

  Sarah pulled up her left sleeve. A beautiful group of Mandarin characters wrapped around her shoulder. The ink was dark purple, which made it seem softer.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Even in hell, angels can find you.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty profound.”

  Her reaction seemed delayed, like she had to bite her lip. Chris wondered what the impetus of the tattoo had been. Whatever secret seemed poised on Sarah’s lips, it didn’t seem like she wanted to share, so Chris didn’t ask.

  “What else did you do in Shanghai?”

  “Oh, there was more to do than we had time. But we did go to the park called Fuxing. It’s got paths and trees, and in this one area couples, like they’re on lunch break, are dancing to a loud radio in this round courtyard, and benches and benches of old women in pajamas are belting out Chinese opera. It’s amazing.

  “And we also spent a day on Dongtai Road, where they have this incredible antique flea market. Streets of stuff, but if you go just a few blocks east, you’ll find a plant and animal market. A local told us about the cricket fights, and we went to one.”

  “Cricket fighting. Are you serious? Is that like dog fighting?”

  “No, not at all. The crickets don’t get hurt. They just get pissed off at each other, and the first one that backs off is the loser. They fight according to their weight class, and a championship match can have many, many bouts.”

  “I think you’re pulling my leg.”

  “No, I’m not! People spend millions and millions of dollars on cricket breeding and housing. They even have funerals for the champions. Crickets, as I found out, have been a big part of Chinese culture for centuries. They’re considered good luck around the home. And if there’s a swarm of them, it means you’re supposed to gain wealth.”

  “You and Natalie like to go off the beaten path when you travel, huh?”

  “I just really like the different and diverse parts of our world. Plus, it’s a lot more fun to see and do things that the normal tourist doesn’t even know about. Even here in L.A., I avoid the touristy areas, which is hard, but the most entertaining stuff isn’t where you’d expect it. And I can tell you that you won’t see me on Hollywood Boulevard taking friends to see Grauman’s Chinese Theater.”

  “Because there’s no cricket fighting?”

  It tickled Chris that Sarah’s laugh was so immediate.

  “Hey, look.” Chris pointed when they’d reached a small T-junction. The street sign read HAPPY LANE. It was a short road of houses that, with characteristic Los Angeles intention, were completely hidden from the street below and comfortably nestled like baby sparrows in a big woodsy nest.

  Sarah said what Chris was thinking. “What a great name for a street.”

  They stopped and looked around. The air was so fresh the L.A. smog must not have known about this little neighborhood. From higher up, a breeze whistled down through the hills, and the California bay laurel trees around them seemed pleased because their leaves looked like they were all clapping.

  Then Chris felt Sarah’s hand slide into hers. She me
ant to be a little more discreet but instead looked down in surprise.

  A confident grin spread across Sarah’s beautiful face. “This…being here with you…feels nice.”

  Though usually Chris would never do something like this, so quickly, so early on, holding hands seemed exceptionally straightforward and right. And though this wasn’t on her normal timeline of the typical dating ritual, it was exciting and calming at the same time. Chris’s chest swirled with the flush of their touch while her stomach relaxed to the calming gesture. Chris marveled that, to her, a first date was about seeing what future steps to take while being shaped by past encounters, yet Sarah was quite impressively in the here and now.

  Chris squeezed Sarah’s hand as they turned to walk back and wondered if this might be the start of something special.

  When they got back to Lilly’s Coffee Cart, Chris said, “May I walk you to your car?”

  “How about I walk you to yours?”

  “Okay.”

  “But here’s the challenge,” Sarah said. “If I can guess which car is yours, then you have to kiss me.”

  Well, that was an unexpected twist. Holding hands and now a possible kiss? She only had a moment to think, or she’d be sure to appear somewhat of a drip. Ah, hell.

  “If you’re that good, you deserve a kiss.”

  “Just point in the general direction.”

  Chris did and they began walking.

  “What if you don’t guess correctly?” Chris said when they were nearing the street she’d parked on.

  “Oh, that won’t happen. I’m good at this.”

  Surprisingly, Sarah turned the right direction on Kirkwood Street.

  “The BMW’s not yours. Too stuffy. That Tesla isn’t yours either.”

  “Why don’t you think I could own that Tesla?”

  “Because it’s mine.”

  Chris looked back at it. Five-Robert-Tango-Alpha-One-Two-Seven, she read to herself out of habit. The plate was standard issue, not personalized like most of the higher-end cars she pulled over.

  They walked a little farther.