Free Tinkerbell on Walkabout by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff Page A

when, over lunch, she asks
casually: “So, you want to help me plan my wedding?”
    “Your what?”
    She smiles into her Thai coffee. “Wedding. You know the
thing where you stand in front of a minister and trade poetry?”
    I’d be standing in front of a Buddhist monk and a Russian
Orthodox priest, but whatever. “When?”
    “July, of course.”
    “Wouldn’t miss it, but I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.
You may recall that I flunked Wedding 101.”
    Her smile fades and she gives me a glance screened by long,
coppery lashes. She’s about
to apologize for something she couldn’t possibly have saved me from.
    I spare her the awkward moment. “I didn’t know you were
dating.”
    “I wasn’t. I don’t do dating.”
    “So, who’s the lucky guy? Do I know him?”
    “Yeah, pretty well, as a matter of fact. Lee Preston.”
    “Lee? Criminy, July, you’ve known Lee forever .”
    She shrugs. “You think of someone as a friend long enough,
sometimes you don’t know there’s more there until something happens, and you
realize things can change. You know what I mean.”
    I do. Dad had nearly died when I was thirteen. He’d been on
the Grass Valley PD then, and a drunk driver had nearly taken him out during a
routine traffic stop. I still can’t drive through the intersection of Sutton
and Brunswick without sweating.
    “Lee got a job offer from a radio station in San Francisco.
As we discussed whether he’d
take it, we realized . . .” She shrugs eloquently.
    “So he’s staying at KNCO?”
    “Nope. He’s going to SF. I’m going to the SFPD.” She pauses
to give me an oblique glance. “Which your Dad has apparently not mentioned.”
    “Dad knows? ”
    “He helped set up the interviews.”
    “I owe him one,” I say, not sure exactly what I owe him.
    We spend the afternoon bumming around Grass Valley and its
über-touristy twin, Nevada City. That evening we dine with July’s parents and
Lee, who has grown from a geeky adolescent to a drop dead gorgeous man. All in
a compact 5-foot-7-inch frame.
    “You’re too tall for him,” I tell July as we police the
kitchen after dinner.
    “Height-ist are we? That’s one step away from sexism. You,
of all people, should be sensitive to issues of stature.”
    “I’m just
saying,” I object, “that you could’ve
let me have him. He’s
a titan in my little universe.”
    We sit on the Petersen’s deck, playing Gin Rummy by fragrant
citronella candles (which seemed to amuse the mosquitoes more than deter them),
and watching the breeze toss the treetops below the house. Further down the
hill, the security lights of the Petersen’s brickworks spill into the two lane
county road that separates it from Wray’s Wrecks.
    The lights at the wrecking yard are dimmer, and I can make
out a row of trees on the opposite side of the long, two-story garage. I catch
the flash of car headlights from the highway beyond the lot. Good place for a
wrecking yard. Easy access for tow trucks, and Highway 49 does a bang-up job of
supplying business.
    “July says you’re thinking about becoming a private eye,”
Lee says as he trounces us at Gin for the third time.
    Jan Petersen—short for January—makes a tsk-ing sound.
“That’s a dangerous job,” says she whose only daughter went into law
enforcement right out of high school.
    I’m not thinking about becoming anything at the moment, but
I rise to the bait. “Not with the proper training.”
    Jan shakes her head. “It’s just hard to imagine you skulking
around alleys, carrying a gun.”
    “Taurus Magnum,” I announce. “Lightweight, small, and a
pretty shade of blue. Recoil’s
a bitch, but I take target practice twice a week.”
    Lee grins at me across the table. “I’d think you’d have an advantage not looking
like a textbook P.I. Who’d suspect Tinkerbell of casing them?”
    July agrees absently. “Uh, huh . . . Now
what’s gotten into Bob?”
    We all follow her gaze. Wray’s Wrecks is ablaze