Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

have to be that careful, but it's just the way she is. She doesn't do it because of my experiences."
    "Yeah. Abby's awesome. You all think you'll ever get married?"
    "I doubt it. Maybe when we're older. Although, if anything happened to me, I'd like her to get my pension, and we'd have to be married for that."
    "Well, it's a lot less likely that anything's going to happen to you, now that you're detective."
    "Yep. That's one of the reasons I did it." He gave me a sly grin. "I kind of like not getting shot at."
    I laughed. "Yeah, I'd think that would be preferable."
    We drank in companionable silence for a few minutes. I said, "I hate to keep bringing this up, but...I’ve been wondering if maybe Jennifer knew more than she's told about what was in those boxes."
    "Huh." He thought about that for a minute. "Well, we know she's less than completely truthful sometimes. She never told the truth about how much money she was spending when we were together. If she thinks it's going to get her in hot water, she keeps her mouth shut." He laughed a little. "You’re suspicious of her, huh?"
    "Um...yeah . She just doesn’t come across as 100 percent sincere."
    "I know she doesn’t." Kevin glanced at me. "I know none of you thought much of her. Especially compared to Val. Jennifer could never hold a candle to Val, and she knew it. That's one of the reasons she didn't like being around the family."
    "Yeah. I didn't realize, until I saw the apartment, that I'd never even been there."
    "Well, no, you were in England most of that time."
    "Yeah, but I came home a couple of times."
    "You came home to Oceanside when you did, or to San Francisco if you were going home with Ethan. There wasn't any reason for you to come to LA then."
    "No. Guess not."
    "Anyway." Kevin finished his beer and stretched out on the Adirondack chair. "If I was Belardo and Eckhoff, I'd have another talk with Jennifer, just to make sure she wasn't leaving anything out. They're at an impasse otherwise, right? It couldn't hurt."
    "Yeah. Maybe it’ll turn out that Jennifer knew Brashier somehow."
    “Yeah. Speaking of which...” Kevin got to his feet. “I’d better call Tim. We’ve got to talk to Belardo and Eckhoff ourselves.”

    So Kevin and Abby moved, and I was officially living with Pete. Of course we’d been living together for nearly six months, and everything had been great. But now there was no going back. And, of course, it was shortly thereafter that we had our first real argument.
    Pete and I rarely argued. We agreed on all the big things: politics, religion, Star Trek vs. Star Wars (Star Trek, duh). We both liked the outdoors and all the activities that went with it - hiking, running, fishing. Since we both worked in academia, we understood each other's work issues and schedules. We both read a lot. We were both neat, but not obsessively so. We were both adventurous eaters. Pete cooked, I cleaned. We were a good fit for each other in most ways.
    But we both had our little idiosyncrasies that drove each other crazy. I liked to read in bed, but Pete couldn’t sleep with a light on. I was apparently a blanket hog. Pete was pretty traditional when it came to sex, and would only top; I preferred more variety than that. And we were both younger brothers, so we'd learned the fine art of picking a fight.
    The real problem , that Sunday before Christmas, was that it was raining. It had been raining for several days. In the Southwest, rain is good, and during the week I don't mind it. But the weekends are for being outdoors, and that's tough to do when the rain won't stop.
    And two big guys, being stuck indoors in a 968 square foot space, is a recipe for problems.
    We'd gotten through the morning okay. Pete had made a big breakfast, then cleaned up from that and started cooking again. He'd gotten a bunch of tomatoes at the farmers' market the day before and wanted to make homemade spaghetti sauce and probably other stuff to freeze. So he was happily ensconced in the kitchen. I, on the other hand, was restless. So, I cleaned the townhouse from top to bottom, moving furniture to vacuum behind it, dusting everything that didn't move, taking everything off the closet shelves and out of the closet floors to vacuum and dust. I unloaded the linen closet, which had gotten a little disorderly, and refolded and rearranged everything. I stripped the bed down to the mattress and washed everything. I washed all the towels and all the dirty clothes. I was on a