Chapter 36

I had an idea on the way toward the bedroom, and I stopped in the living room, knelt down by the coffee table, pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote it down: "See what NCIC can do." The acronym referred to the National Criminal Information Center, a computer database that makes information on criminals available to law enforcement agencies nationwide. Not being a cop, I don't have access to NCIC, but I know cops and could ask a favor of one. I'd probably call Rudy, since I couldn't see calling in a marker when my friend would do it and never worry about who owed who how many favors.

With the note in my pocket, I got back to my feet and resumed my trip toward the bedroom. When Cecelia wants to purr, I like being able to accommodate her.

It didn't take long to get a shower, since I omitted shaving. I'd be bristly in the morning, but I'd live with it. I dried off and combed my hair, and put on a pair of sweat pants before going back out into the living room. Cecelia was there on the sofa, the fire suit unzipped a little more though still not immodestly. She patted the cushion beside her, and stood while I sat. She then sat down on my lap, turning so that her shoulder was against my chest, and somehow getting her head under my chin, even though she's only an inch shorter than I am.

I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed. "Do you know how much I love this?" I asked.

"No more than I do," she said. "I would surrender all my material possessions, if that were the price of being your beloved."

"Not a hard decision?"

"Not at all. What would it profit me if I had the whole world, and lost my husband?"

"Now you're paraphrasing Jesus."

I could tell by her voice that she was smiling, though I couldn't see her face. "Why, yes I am! How perceptive of you to notice that."

"Shoot, C, the one area where I ain't stone cold ignorant is the Bible."

"You are no ignoramus, not in any area, though you sometimes sound like one. But it is true that you know the Bible quite well."

"I been studyin' it for a few years now."

"When was it, again, that you became a Christian?" she asked.

"Back in 89, in December."

"So you have been a student of the Bible for almost 20 years. It would be surprising if you didn't know a great deal of what it says; one would need to merely skim parts of it now and again to remain ignorant of the Bible after 20 years."

"What galls me," I said, "is that there are so many Christians who do exactly that."

"True – but you are not one of them, and I choose not to discuss them just now. I intend to purr, mi paloma, and I therefore call for a more pleasant topic."

As we spoke she'd been relaxing, going into that bonelessness that only cats, and certain women, can achieve. I rubbed my hand over her shoulder, and along her upper arm. "How's this? If I'm your dove, then I'm in trouble, 'cause cats eat birds."

"And because I like to purr you consider me a feline?" I could hear the amusement in her voice again.

"Well, you like to purr, and you relax like a cat, and you've got those cat eyes, and you're as unpredictable and incomprehensible as a cat..."

"Oh, you can comprehend me well enough, Darvin. You understand me as well as you understand anyone."

"Maybe so," I said, "but that don't mean I understand you real well. It's not women who confuse me – it's human beings."

"That cannot be entirely true, or else you could not be a successful detective."

"What you don't know, C, is that I accomplish most of my work by main strength and awkwardness."

Cecelia giggled. "Why is it that you, who were born and reared in California, sound – but for your accent – so often as though you're a native of the south, and I sound like I'm from the west coast?"

"I ain't got no accent, lady – no native Californian does. That's how you sound, by the way – like you was borned and raised in California."

"A tangential observation, as I might have expected from you. Pray address my point, before I punish you for not doing so."

I grinned and rubbed my chin gently against her kinky hair. "I'm married – threats don't frighten me. And as to your point, all I can say is that where I'm from is south of the Mason-Dixon line ... though some of the south ain't."

"Indeed? I had not been aware of that."

"Shoot, from where you're from all y'all can see is the Gulf of Mexico." Leanna, Cecelia's hometown, isn't quite that far south, but it is in southern Alabama. "But look at a map sometime. The Mason-Dixon line is the southern Pennsylvania state line, and West Virginia's panhandle, or whatever they call it, extends a fair ways north of there – an' you'll remember that originally West Virginia was part of Virginia. An' some of the south is actually north of parts of the north – Virginia's northern line is north of the southern end of New Jersey, for instance."

"I hadn't known this – and yet I'm from the state which housed the Confederacy's first capitol."

"I really doubt," I said, "that you're much of a Confederate partisan. If the CSA had succeeded, you might have been born a slave."

"Possibly, though I am not certain that the institution could have survived forever – economic and technological forces would have militated against it. Either southern slave owners would have had to abandon slavery and buy machinery to run their plantations and farms, factories and assembly lines, or the south would have collapsed due to its inability to compete with the north."

"Yeah, but I bet you're glad there was an Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13^th and 14^th amendments to the Constitution."