would simply stand outside the bathroom door and let loose whatever was on her mind. “Not only am I the greatest crime fighter in the history of the city, I brought dinner. And I don’t want to hear any complaints about my choice of … oh. You’re here.” Andy had made her way into the living room mere seconds before I was about to commit to my new role of midwife to the ex-wife.
“Andrea,” Sandi said, making no attempt to hide her disappointment not only at being interrupted but being interrupted by Andy, a woman of whom she had never grown fond. There are people whose outward contempt for one another often masks a deep-rooted respect and admiration for the other party. That was not the case here. They truly couldn’t stand one another. In deference to me, they were civil when the planets aligned to put the three of us in the same room, though I would have liked to see the two of them settle their differences with a good old fashioned mud wrestle — or at least a pillow fight. About the only thing these two headstrong women could agree on was their mutual need to chastise me for the way I ate, looked, dressed, worked, etc. The only way it could get worse would be if my mother joined them in the room.
“I didn’t realize you were having company,” Andy said.
“I didn’t either.”
“Winston and I had something very important to talk about.” If Sandi thought her not-so-subtle hint would cause Andrea to leave, she had temporarily forgotten who she was dealing with. Andrea does not like me to be alone with my ex-wife. She thinks I’ll do something stupid. Like get her pregnant. “Winston is going to be there for the delivery.”
Andrea nearly dropped the extremely large pizza box onto my birch floor. “Him?” she asked.
“Yes. We may not be married any more, but we’re still very close.”
“We are?” I asked. Both Sandi and Andy looked to me for clarification. “I mean, you know, you asked me, but I didn’t realize I had responded in the affirmative.”
“You did.”
“I did?”
“Yes Winston. Don’t deny it. You can’t back out now just because you’ve got backup. I’m counting on you to be there for me.” She stood up. “Just like I’ve been there for you all these years.” That statement was even more ludicrous than the notion of me in a delivery room, but I was too stunned to argue.
“But this is Winston,” Andrea interjected. “He cries if he has to squish a spider, for god’s sake.”
“That’s not true.”
“Right. That would presume you could get close enough to a spider to do the squishing.”
“Exactly.”
“None of that matters,” Sandi insisted as she put on her coat. “I know that when I need him, Winston will be there, strong and ready to support me in this most important moment. I can count on him. You should have more faith in your friend.”
“Right,” Andy replied. Sandi left in a huff, which was the way she made most of her exits. Andy continued to smile her Cheshire Cat grin, always pleased at having caused Sandi to leave a room, as she carried her takeout victuals to the small tiled area that passed for my kitchen. “Come and eat,” she commanded. She reached absentmindedly for two wine glasses and helped herself to a bottle from the rack.
“Cabernet?” I scoffed. “With pizza?” She slid it back into the rack.
“You would suggest?”
“Something gentler, like a Pinot Noir. One mustn’t overwhelm the palate with so bold a beverage without a meal of deeper substance.”
“You’re such a dork.”
“It’s true.” Andy ignored my sommelier instincts and pulled out the Cabernet.
“So who’s the world’s best detective?” she asked.
“Sherlock Holmes.”
“I meant living and non-fictional, though if I were fiction, I’m sure I’d be in the same category as Holmes.”
“I would have put you closer to Clouseau.”
“Certainly you should remember I’m about to crack your case wide open before you go insulting me.”
“‘Crack the case?’ Wow. Talk about shock and awe.”
“I’m about to tell you of my major crime-solving finesse, and you’re busy snobbing me out about my wine selection.”
“You simply cannot expect me to take you seriously if you plan to use ‘snob’ as a verb.”
“Gerunds offend you now?”
“A gerund is the other way around. You were saying about cases being shucked?”
“Cracked. We found something at the crime scene.”
“What?”
“Prints. Better yet, prints in our system.”
“They left their prints on the goalpost?”
“Not that crime scene. This one.”
“You CSI’d my place?” Andrea frowned at my pop culture reference; she watched just as much TV as me, but it bothered her when I felt I knew something about her job based on what I’d seen on the box. “Why would they have touched the door?”
“They didn’t. They did, however, dump their spray paint cans into the bushes in your back alley.”
“You are thorough.”
“Clouseau be damned.”
“But how do you know those are the paint cans used to badly misspell homophobic graffiti?” Instead of answering, Andy, whose mouth was full of the gigantic pizza slice she had extracted from the box without benefit of utensil, plate, or napkin, pointed at her midsection, a gesture she normally used to remind me she had abs of steel, but which this time was intended to demonstrate she had solved the great graffiti caper through her infallible gut instinct. “Oh well, at least there are sound scientific principles involved.”
“Prints were left on the cans.”
“So you said. But that makes no sense. Those were definitely kids in the hallway. If they’re young offenders, why were their prints in the system?”
“They weren’t. We found the prints of a twenty-eight year old ex-con who did time in the late nineties for drug trafficking.”
“And?”
“And we got lucky. He works in a hardware store not six blocks from here.”
“How is that going to help us?”
“How many cans of spray paint do you think he sells to teenagers in this neighbourhood?”
“Sounds like a bit of a long shot to me. How do you know these paint cans were the ones sold to our graphic artists?”
“Oh,
