Chapter 15: Dry Cleaning

Mara's POV

I woke at the workbench with a stranger's coat over my shoulders and a pie at my elbow.

The coat was black wool and very heavy.

It smelled of cedar and the soap Cain Rourke supplies in every bathroom he owns.

The pie was peach, still faintly warm, with a lattice top.

On the back of my legal pad was a note in handwriting I knew from fourteen months of contracts.

Peach pie in the morning. Don't fight me on this one.

I read it three times.

Then I took out the ledger and did the only thing I knew how to do.

Coat, one, borrowed in my sleep. Pie, one, delivered at four a.m.

I wrote Owed: me, crossed it out, and wrote Owed: him.

I sat there with the pencil over the page, because for the first time I did not know which column a thing went in.

I took the coat to the cleaners on Eastern Avenue myself.

The man held it up to the light and said, "Wool. Expensive. Somebody loves you."

"Somebody owns a lot of wool," I said.

By Wednesday I had it back in a garment bag, with a bill pinned to the lapel.

I wrote the bill on the back of a store receipt.

Dry cleaning, $18. Button sewn back on, a favor, no charge. One pie, peach, received: settlement pending.

I carried it all down to Locust Point on the bus, and the coat got a seat to itself.

The security man in the lobby stood up when he saw me.

"Mara," he said, which he had never once called me before. "Mr. Rourke said if you came, send you up."

"Also, there's a man in a gray car on Fleet Street at night now. Mr. Rourke put him there Monday."

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