Unscrewed Page 10

  I stumbled to a halt at a stop sign. Thank God for traffic. I didn’t have an appointment until eleven o’clock. If people weren’t impeding our progress by rushing off to work, I’d have to feign a broken ankle…again.

  “I didn’t say that,” I huffed, squinting gratefully at the passing cars.

  Elaine loped onto the street. Seems like the traffic had suddenly stopped in both directions. Like Moses at the Red Sea. Only it was Brainy Laney at Riverton and Stagg.

  “You don’t believe him,” she repeated.

  I lurched back into a shambling limp and panted up beside her. My feet hurt and my bladder was starting to whine. “He admitted that Gerald was still infatuated with her.”

  “Gerald?”

  I shrugged at the nomenclature. Rivera looked more like a gerbil than a Gerald.

  “He actually said that his son was in love with his own fiancée?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “So you’re psychic, too?”

  “Yes.” Monosyllables were my friends. “And he doesn’t believe she called him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He hedged when I asked.”

  “Ahhh.”

  I took a few moments to huff up a mogul-size mountain. “I think Rivera had their security code.”

  “And went in uninvited?”

  I scowled.

  “Is that what his father thinks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say as much?”

  “His eyes did.”

  She gave me a look. “What did his mouth say exactly?”

  “That Gerald knew that he and Salina were incompatible.”

  “And by that you determined…”

  “Who did Salina look like?” I panted.

  “Salma Hayek?”

  I managed a nod. “Have you ever known a man who’d consider himself incompatible with Salma Hayek?”

  “Besides Jeen, you mean?”

  I stopped beside a row of oleander and bent double. “I think I’m going to ralph.”

  She laughed. Elaine has a nasty side. Sometimes I forget that, until I’m stupid enough to exercise with her again. “So you think he believes his own son killed his fiancée?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I gritted my teeth and straightened, scrunching up my face and holding my guts in with my hand. “There was a crapload of mixed messages.”

  “Is he interested in you?”

  “What?”

  She shrugged, did a few stretches. Twenty feet away, tires squealed. Someone honked, long and angry. It must have been a woman. Men don’t get angry when Laney’s stretching. “I think it’s been established that he’s not above stealing his son’s love interests.”

  I forgot about the pain in my side. “That’s crazy.”

  “Hmm?” she said, all innocence.

  But I knew what she was doing. I’m a trained professional. “He is not trying to make me believe Rivera is guilty so I’ll transfer my supposed interest to him.”

  She shrugged and jogged in place. I thought the old guy walking by with his Lhasa apso might swallow his teeth.

  “He’s not.” I started off at a slow jog, hoping all my viscera would stay inside where they belong.

  “And what has led you to this conclusion?”

  “First of all, I’m not Rivera’s love interest.”

  “What are you?”

  “Wish I knew. Secondly, Miguel had Salma Hayek.”

  “Maybe he thinks he can upgrade to Christina McMullen.”

  There’s a reason I put up with Elaine’s perfection. It’s because she’s perfect.

  “Ph.D.,” she added.

  I scowled. Mostly ’cuz it was the only expression I was still capable of performing that far into the run. “Discounting the mixed messages, the senator seemed like a decent enough guy.”

  “He probably is, then.”

  “He wouldn’t intentionally cast suspicions on his own son.”

  We trooped along. She didn’t comment.

  “On the other hand.” My mind was working about as efficiently as my body. If I was lucky I’d survive long enough to die on Laney’s walkway. “He is a politician. In which case, it’s lucky he didn’t eat his own son. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But it doesn’t matter to me, does it?”

  “Because you’re not getting involved.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Mac.”

  I turned toward her. Her voice sounded funny.

  “You make a lousy hero,” she said.

  “Do not,” I countered, but she was right. Last time I’d tried it was when her boyfriend had gotten himself in big-ass trouble and had inadvertently pulled her in after him. It had taken a full SWAT team to save the lot of us.

  “Do, too,” she said. “Besides, you don’t even like him.”

  “That’s true.” We trotted along side by side. Some people say they get their second wind after a mile or so. I was still waiting for my first one. “And God knows he doesn’t need my help.”

  “He’s a police lieutenant,” she said, apparently by way of agreement, but it got me thinking.

  “The senator thought that might be the problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He thinks Rivera has made enemies.”

  “I believe I remember you threatening to kill him.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t have anything against Salina. Not until I realized she looked like—”

  “Salma Hayek,” she said.

  I tried a “There you go” shrug. Only one shoulder still functioned. “And she was already dead when I first saw her.”

  “So you’re pretty sure you didn’t do it?”

  “Almost positive.”

  “How about the senator?”

  “I’m less sure about him.”

  “Where was he supposed to be when it happened?”

  “On a plane.”

  “To where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because you’re not involved?”

  “And because he didn’t tell me. How’d your audition go?” Life is too short for proper segues.

  “Which one?”

  “For the warrior princess.”

  “Amazon queen,” she corrected. “I don’t know.” Both of her shoulders seemed to be functional. “Okay, I guess. But I haven’t heard from them. I think they wanted someone…” She searched for the word. I watched her face. When I run I sweat like something in the porcine family. She glows. Honest to God. If she ever gets pregnant her husband won’t need a night-light.

  “With only one breast?” I guessed.

  “Sexier.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “The woman after me wore a string bikini and stiletto heels.”

  “I didn’t even know Amazon queens had stiletto heels.”

  “And she could sing.”

  “Wow.”

  “And the girl after her must have been six-one in her bare feet.”

  “Can she find the square root of six-digit numbers in her head?”

  “I forgot to ask.”

  “Missed opportunity,” I said.

  “I’ll remember next time.”

  We turned onto Keswick and headed downhill. It was only half a mile before I could die in peace by Laney’s front door.

  “Do you think I should throw in the towel?” she asked.

  “What?” I turned toward her in mild surprise. I was pretty sure I had heard her wrong, but I’d been fantasizing about Magnificent Mint Julep ice cream, so it was difficult to be certain.

  “Should I quit acting?”

  “Seriously?”

  She sighed. Apparently, both lungs still functioned, too. Bitch. “I’m tired of rejection.”

  “What are you talking about? Didn’t the producer give you his phone number last time?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And his cell, e-mail, and firstborn?”


  “Look at you,” she said. “You accomplished what you set out to do.”

  “What are you talking about? Do you see ice cream in my hand?”

  “I’m thirty-three years old and still hopping from audition to audition, begging for menial parts.”

  “That’s because men are idiots.”

  “Some of them are women.”

  “They’re jealous idiots.”

  “That’s what Jeen says.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Yep,” she said, and grinned. “You’re thinking like the Geekster.”

  We jogged along as I ruminated on that sour news.

  Three blocks from our beloved destination, we dropped down to a walk. I was chanting “Thank you, Jesus” in my brain.

  “So you haven’t heard from the dark lieutenant lately?” she asked, hands on hips as she swayed toward home.

  “Not since he stopped in to terrorize me.”

  “Then you don’t know if he’s on active duty or not.”

  “Could have been voted king, for all I know.”

  “You haven’t called him?”

  “No.”

  “Because the new Chrissy’s too smart to get involved?”

  I gave her a stiff head bob. “Because the new Chrissy’s too smart to get involved.”

  11

  And thanks to Christina McMullen, who has taught me that common sense and intelligence need not have any correlation whatsoever.

  —Sister Celeste, during her retirement speech

  GOOD MORNING-TIDE, Sensei.”

  It was neither Elaine’s garbled twist of Middle English and Japanese nor her husky accent that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was her ensemble. “Is that…alpaca?” I asked. I had seen her only a few hours before, during our run, and wasn’t quite prepared for the metamorphosis.

  She glanced down at herself. Some kind of multicolored fur covered her chest…almost. Below that her midriff was bare. Taut with muscle the color of clover honey, it swept in a shallow valley down to a silk wraparound skirt.

  “I got a callback,” she said.

  “No kidding? For Xena.”

  “Amazon queen.”

  “That’s fantastic. When do you go in?”

  “This afternoon. I’m crazy nervous.”

  “Nervous! Don’t be ridiculous. One look at you in that”—I motioned to her chest—“dead thing, and they’ll be handing over their babies wrapped in movie contracts.”

  “You think?”

  I tossed my purse onto a chair and gave her another once-over. “Absolutely. Is Amazon Xena from the Orient?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I inferred an intriguing Asian bent to the dialogue, but I’m flying blind here. I couldn’t—Whoops. Client at two o’clock,” she said, and suddenly Amazon Xena was gone, replaced by a smiling Brainy Laney dressed in conservative silk.

  Ten minutes later I was sitting in the day’s first session. Bonnie Reinhart was forty-six years old, a kleptomaniac, and lots of fun. In fact, I couldn’t find a single reason she might feel the need to steal, except of course that she enjoyed it. After five weeks of therapy, that’s all I had discovered.

  My next client wasn’t quite so enjoyable. He’d been baptized Jeremiah Denny, but I’d been informed that his friends called him Jenny. His parents were concerned that it was because he was uncertain about his sexuality. But judging by his unrelenting concentration on my boobs, I was pretty sure they could rest easy on that count. They might have wanted to consider the fact that he was obsessed with sex and lacked any sort of social skills, however.

  Angela Grapier entered my office not four minutes after Jeremiah shambled off. Angie’s been my client since her dad decided she’d be better off without drugs and the certifiable boyfriends that went with them.

  “Who’s the perv?” she asked, tossing her backpack on the floor and curling up in the corner of my cushy couch. Angie’s one of those people who can sum things up pretty quick. It had cost Jeremiah’s parents a few hundred bucks for me to come to the same conclusion Angie had made for free in fourteen seconds.

  “Can’t tell you,” I said, and refrained from adding “Na na na boo boo,” even though Angie tends to bring out the kid, and the tuba player, in me. “How’s school?”

  “Got an A in French. He always stare at boobs like that?”

  I considered being coy. It hardly seemed worth it. “Oui,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Hope you get paid good,” she said, and moved on to concerns about her upcoming college plans and guys who thought they were funny but really weren’t.

  Five minutes after she left, the doorbell tinkled. Thirty seconds later, Elaine rang from the reception desk.

  “Bonjour,” I said.

  “Ms. McMullen.” Elaine was using her professional voice. It rarely precedes good things. I wondered vaguely if she’d had time to stow her broadsword behind the file cabinet before the latest arrival.

  “What’s up?” I have a professional voice, too, but I don’t like to risk wearing it out.

  “Two officers are here from the LAPD to see you, Ms. McMullen.”

  I gripped the receiver a little harder. True, the boys in blue were bound to arrive sooner or later. Still, I felt my blood run cold. There’s nothing like a personal visit from a professional crime fighter to make you feel as guilty as sin.

  “Tell them I went home,” I said. “I’ll hide under my desk.” This wasn’t an original idea. We’d tried it with Lieutenant Rivera once, in fact. It hadn’t worked out real nifty. But Father Pat of Holy Name Catholic High School had been a big believer in the theory that practice makes perfect. It was one of several reasons I kept sneaking boys into his rectory for heavy-petting sessions. When I had justified my sins by saying that kissing “don’t always come natural,” he’d been less than amused.

  “Let me check the appointment book,” Laney said.

  I could hear her shuffling pages and scowled at nothing in particular. We both knew I had squat going on for the next three hours. We could get in a seventeen-course meal and five games of Parcheesi before my next appointment. I’m not particularly fond of Parcheesi, but it sounded better than being accused of murder one and crammed into the backseat of a cruiser that smelled like hookers and alcohol-infused urine.

  “You don’t have a client until five o’clock, Ms. McMullen,” Laney informed me, “but you mustn’t forget about your dental appointment.”

  To Laney there’s a fine line between lying and acting. Fictionalizing is what she did. I love Laney. “How do they look?” I asked.

  There was the slightest pause. “Yes,” she said. “With Dr. Beckett.”

  “Dr. Beckett” was code for “smart and sensitive.” After her emancipation from braces, acne, and terminal shyness, Laney had been inundated with every possible type of proposition, but we had kept a standing date to watch Quantum Leap every week until the powers that be lost their minds and cancelled the show in 1993.

  “Does he have Bakula’s soulful eyes?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” she said.

  “If I let them in, you have to promise to get them out of here in ten minutes.”

  “Certainly, Ms. McMullen.”

  “Thanks, Laney. Wait,” I said, on the verge of hanging up. “Are they both Becketts?”

  “One moment.” I heard her flipping papers again. “That’s Father Overmeir,” she said. “At six o’clock.”

  Father Overmeir had taught freshman Algebra. I believe I’d once told Laney I wanted to lick his earlobes and/or bear his children. Father Overmeir was good-looking, tall, and amusing. Two years after graduation I could have sworn I saw him at a club called Master Blaster. He’d been doing the grind with a girl in pigtails who had size 11 feet and the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow. But that didn’t make him any less entertaining.

  “Soften them up,” I said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Five minutes later my lip gloss was fresh and my hair firmly in place. I did
n’t want to look like a bag lady for Dr. Samuel Beckett.

  “Officers,” I said, standing very tall in my heavily discounted sling-backs. I was wearing a jungle green skirt that ended just shy of my knees, modest yet stylish, and accented with a bone-colored sleeveless shell. “Oh,” I said, recognizing the scholarly officer from Senator Rivera’s house. “Hi.”

  They were both holding their hats in their hands and seemed momentarily at a loss. “Ms. McMullen,” said the nearest, rising to his feet. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Officer Bjorklund. This is Officer White.”

  Laney had worked her magic. Bjorklund, aka Beckett, appeared to be composing poetry in his head, while Officer White looked happy but flushed beneath his milk chocolate complexion.

  “Come in,” I said, motioning magnanimously toward my office. “I’m sorry I haven’t more time.”

  They trooped in, barely stumbling at all as they tried to pretend they weren’t sneaking one more glance at Laney. I closed the door firmly behind them. On my desk, I have a photo of a good-looking guy holding the reins of a leggy red horse and smiling. His hair is tousled and streaked with silver. Sometimes clients assume he’s my husband. In actuality, the picture came with the frame. But I can honestly say I respect him more than most any guy I’ve dated.

  “Have a seat. Would you like some coffee?” I asked. This is me being hospitable. Yowsa.

  They declined.

  “Cold water? I’ve got Fiji.” Personally, I risk my life on tap water on a daily basis, but Laney insists on impressing clients with designer fluids.

  “I’ll take a bottle,” said White. Bjorklund held out. I think I may have been interfering with his rendition of “An Ode to Laney’s Eyes.” He probably would have been crushed if I’d told him it had been done a dozen times before we were juniors, so I handed over the bottled water and sat down, crossing my legs at the ankle and tucking them demurely beneath my swivel chair. “I imagine you came about Salina Martinez,” I said.

  “Yes. Just a few follow-up questions,” said White.

  “Very well.” I sounded so damned polished, I wished I’d had myself recorded for posterity.

  “On the evening of Ms. Martinez’s death, you were at home. Is that correct?” asked Bjorklund.

  “Yes.”