Free What's a Girl Gotta Do by Sparkle Hayter

and wanted to go. Before I
left he extended the olive branch. “It was nice seeing you again,
Robin.” he said. He almost got me with that voice of his, that
great damn, deep, slightly gravelly voice that made me want to
cross my legs and bounce my foot. But then I realized his motives.
Sure, he wants us to be friends, I thought. It’d make his life so
much simpler. There’s nothing Burke hates more than a loose wire,
especially one that carries high voltage, like me. Why the hell
should I go out of my way to make his life easier when he’s made
mine so crummy? So I said nothing. I smirked and turned and left
with Claire.
    “Do you feel like you need to be alone, or
would you like to go somewhere and talk?” Claire said, as we hailed
a cab.
    “To tell you the truth, Claire, I’m starved.
Do you want to grab something to eat?”
    “Sure. I know a great vegetarian restaurant
near here.”
    “How about Old Homestead? Expand your
horizons.” Old Homestead was a minor New York landmark, an old
steak house off Fourteenth Street. She just laughed. Claire and I
were friends and colleagues who liked and respected each other and
agreed on almost everything. But food was one of those areas where
Claire and I just didn’t agree. I still ate red meat, although not
more than once a week, but Claire had opted out of the food chain
and ate only fruits and vegetables, which included large quantities
of green leafy things, lots of seaweed stews, and whole platters of
cooked grain.
    The restaurant she took me to, Tatiana’s, was
one of those converted diners so popular among the Unrepentant
Yuppies of New York City. It gleamed of chrome and neon and looked
like an art deco railway car that might break loose from its
moorings at any moment and go careening down First Avenue. It was
upscale vegetarian—no leftover hippies with ponytails, jeans, and
acoustic guitars in this joint. They knew Claire at the door, but
then she never took me anywhere where they didn’t know her.
    “You’ll like the food,” Claire said as we
opened our menus. “Besides, they have eggs and dairy so you can
have a cheese omelet if you like.”
    Frankly, I find vegetarian restaurants are to
a gourmet dining experience what Christian them parks are to
Amsterdam nightlife, but I try to stay open-minded. A waiter came
over and reeled off the nights specials, which included tofu
fritters served in a pool of sorrel essence and a ground millet
mousse in a light orange sauce, which is what Claire ordered. I
ordered the cheese omelet.
    “Are you worried?” she asked me.
    “Naturally. Whoever killed that guy is still
out there, and might have some information about me I’d rather
people didn’t know.”
    “Think maybe it’s just that fan of yours,
Elroy?”
    “Nah. He’s been my fan for five years now.
God, come to think of it, that’s one of my longest relationships
with a man. Anyway, he doesn’t want to hurt me, he wants me to hurt
him. Now, Christine Muke, she’s got a whole harem of disturbed
fans.” Christine, was one of our prime-time anchors, an
aristocratic-looking black woman with a voice so sultry “men in the
deep arctic instinctively mop their brows when they hear it” (TV
Guide).
    “Remember that guy in brown polyester pants
with rubber bands around the cuffs?” I asked. “The one who claimed
if he and Christine didn’t merge--”
    “Fuse. He said they had to fuse together or
else the planet would blow up.”
    “Yeah. I dunno, maybe Elroy did hire Griff.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but then who else would be so
interested in my past? And was it just me this guy Griff was on
to?”
    While we waited for our food, I played the
tape of my interrogation for her.
    “You think someone at ANN killed the guy,
don’t you?” she asked.
    “I don’t know. But I think he had the goods
on someone else and that’s why he picked the Marfeles Palace that
night.”
    “Well, like you told the cops, he could have
been