Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

many a night in the back of one of their cabs, smelling like beer and cigarettes. And best of all? No matter how drunk you were, you could always remember their number. Usually.
    “… that they dropped a fare off at St. Thomas but that the cabbie had asked permission from the resident assistant on duty to use the bathroom and had gone inside. When he came back out, the cab was gone. Apparently, someone—and we never found out who that was—had stolen the cab and taken it for a joy ride. We found it down by the river, running, with all of the doors locked.” He took a big bite of bread. “Come to think of it, you were there then, right?”
    “I guess I would have been. You’re on the job almost twenty, right?”
    He nodded.
    “Then I was there.” I took a sip of my martini.
    “Do you remember hearing about that?”
    I nodded. “It was all the talk for about a week or two.”
    He dug into the bread basket and pulled out another roll. “It wasn’t you, right?” he said, his face serious.
    I almost spat out my martini. “No! Why would you even ask that?”
    He smiled. “I was just kidding. You? You were probably studying for a test that was two weeks away, or polishing the nuns’ silver.” He leaned in close. “I know you weren’t a bad girl.”
    But I am now, I thought, but didn’t say it. “You’re right about that.” I speared another olive. “Straight as an arrow.”
    He finished his bread. “It’s a good thing we never found out who did it. I don’t think that kid realized that they were in for a heap of trouble if they had been caught. Stealing a car is serious business.”
    The waitress dropped our salads in front of us. “Well, I hope it didn’t give you a jaundiced eye toward all students at St. Thomas,” I said.
    He pushed his salad around on his plate. “Nah. It seemed like the whole lot of you were just a bunch of immature, naïve girls. That’s why the cab getting stolen seemed so out of character for the type of girls we usually met from there.”
    “You didn’t go trolling for girls on campus, now did you?”
    “I was married. Remember?”
    “Oh, right,” I said. I was trying to forget that, actually.
    “And speaking of marriage …” he started.
    “Yes?”
    “Are we going to talk about it?”
    “I’m having a tough week, Crawford,” I said, looking over his head at the river view beyond. Max is the only person who knows why August is the worst month for me; although I had alluded to it once with Crawford, I never did tell him just what a complete funk I go into at the thought of approaching both my mother’s birthday and the anniversary of her death. Fortunately, he’d been working a lot and hadn’t gotten the full force of my melancholy this month. I know—I love him and should share everything with him. I just feel like I’m a lot to handle and have a lot of baggage so I need to keep things to myself, especially when his job requires him to confront death on a daily basis.
    If asked by one noted television psychologist, “How’s that working out for you?”, I would have to admit: not very well.
    “You’re always having a tough week when we start to talk about this.” He exhaled, frustrated, but he let it go, just as he had the few other times it had come up. “You’re either too busy, or too tired, or changing the subject.” He laughed but it was a laugh devoid of humor. “I’m starting to get a complex.” It was clear that he was getting tired of trying to get a true, honest answer out of me, but he had been with me long enough that he knew that if he pushed too much, my reaction was unpredictable at best. His assumption, if I had to guess, was that my first marriage had left me with some deep wounds, and he would be right. But there was much more to the story and I really didn’t feel like getting into it now or ever.
    The waitress came back to the table. “How’s everything here?” she asked.
    “Wonderful,” I said. Not exactly saved by the bell, but close enough. Saved by—I squinted to read her name tag—Tameka. Thank you, dear Tameka. “Excellent, as a matter of fact. Where’s your restroom?” I asked, knowing that it was right by the front door. I figured the longer I kept her engaged in conversation, the more likely it would be that Crawford would start his salad and get distracted. Tameka gave me directions to the bathroom and I headed off, assuring Crawford I wouldn’t be long.
    I was entering just as Lydia Wilmott