Unscrewed Read online

  “You said overbearing.” She was pulling a bottle of liquid gunk out of my mini-fridge and pouring it into a glass. It was the color of slime, which, I thought muzzily, was the same color as the carpet my mother had installed in her living room when I turned five. If the seventies were put in a blender, that’s the color they’d be. Taking something out of her purse, Laney dumped it into the glass and stirred it with a spoon she’d probably had stashed in her bra. It was metal. Laney doesn’t believe in plastic.

  “Rivera can get his own ass out of trouble,” I added.

  “He is a cop,” she said, and tapped the spoon twice on the glass. The noise made my eyeballs twitch.

  “Isn’t he just,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Cheers,” she said, and giving me a salute, she handed over the slime.

  By that afternoon I was back on track. I had again sworn off alcohol, carcinogenics, and paper that wasn’t at least seventy percent post-consumer waste.

  I don’t know what was in the garbage Laney poured down my throat, but it must have been some powerful stuff, ’cuz I had also, at some point during the night, vowed to learn Hungarian and take harpsichord lessons.

  I was pondering the age-old question of where to buy a harpsichord while being pulled down the dog food aisle behind a bicolored moose, when a pseudofamiliar face passed me.

  It stopped. Turns out, it was attached to a person.

  I tried to stop, too, but the moose was still on the move.

  “Christina?”

  I planted both heels and dragged Harlequin to a halt. “Yes?”

  “Rachel Banks,” she said. “From the visitation.”

  I recognized her then. Maybe it was the fact that she wore a pink Prada suit and looked as if she’d just been pulled off a Miss America runway, not a lint ball on her jacket, not a hair out of place.

  I tried to coax my own coiffure into some semblance of order, but I’d just spent ten minutes in the car with an animal the size of a eighteen-wheeler.

  “You shop here, too?” she asked, eyeing my dog from a safe distance.

  I considered a smarmy comeback, then realized she had a dog, too. It could have fit into the cavity of my molar and was sitting beside her like a hirsute princess.

  “Yes.” I reeled my hound in before he could swallow hers whole.

  She gave him a wary glance. “What does he eat? Or should I say, whom?”

  I gave her a careful smile. I felt itchy and overfleshed.

  “Listen.” She scowled a little, looking a thousand times more sober than the last time I’d seen her. “I’d like to apologize for the other night.”

  I would have commented, but I was busy having my arms yanked from their sockets while trying to look serene and in control.

  “I shouldn’t have said those things about Salina. She and I were friends….” Emotion flickered across her face. It might have been regret. “Once.”

  “Once?” Not that I cared. I had sworn off. Remember?

  She looked at me. “Long time ago.”

  Not too long. She’d barely reached puberty. Besides, I wasn’t listening.

  “Before we were both members of Jack’s Club.”

  “What!” The word had a shitload more emphasis than I intended. She raised her perfectly groomed brows at me. Maybe because my eyeballs were popping out of my head, or maybe because Harlequin was lunging against his collar like Moby-Dick at the end of a harpoon while her dog sat like a silky little bean beside her designer footwear.

  “Hey,” she said. “Do you want to grab a drink or something?”

  Jack’s Club! What the hell is Jack’s Club?

  She tilted her head at me, eyes narrowed a little. “You’re not in love with him, are you?”

  “What? No. I’m not…What? Who are you talking about?”

  She gave me a little smile. “I think we should talk.”

  Jack’s Club? “I’d love to,” I said, my voice a nice blend of pissy sophistication. “But I’m afraid—”

  “Meet me,” she said. “At the Quarry. On Burbank. I’ll be the one with the dirt on your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my—” I sputtered, but she was already continuing down the aisle, fur ball sashaying sassily beside her.

  I purchased fifty pounds of dog food in a haze and hoped it would last until morning. By seven o’clock I had fed the beast and showered. By 7:30 I had curled my hair and artfully applied makeup. But for no particular reason. I just like to look sharp as I lounge around in the evening. It wasn’t as if I was stupid enough to drive halfway across town for no apparent reason.

  By eight o’clock I was dressed in a taupe linen sheath and pacing.

  It was 8:42 when I walked through the door of the Quarry.

  I found Rachel instantly. She was drinking something clear. I didn’t think it was Sprite.

  “Christina,” she said, and gazed at me with bird-bright interest. It wouldn’t have been necessary for me to schlep drinks for half a decade in order to tell she was getting sloshed. “You didn’t have to dress up for me.”

  “What? Oh this,” I said, barely glancing at my most expensive ensemble. “No. I had a meeting.”

  “On Saturday?”

  “Psychotics never rest,” I said.

  She raised a needle-thin eyebrow. “So you are dating Jack,” she said.

  I meant to object, but just then a waiter arrived.

  “What can I get you?” He was cuter than a pile of puppies.

  “Do you have organic tea?” I asked.

  “This is L.A.” he said, tone bored.

  “How about…” I paused, trying to think of a beverage that wouldn’t make me wish I were dead. “Jasmine.”

  “You got it,” he said, and turned back toward the bar.

  Rachel gave me a look. “Organic tea?”

  “I’m cleansing.”

  She laughed. I’d heard Laney talk about cleansing a dozen times. No one laughed at her. Men drooled and women called their personal trainers to ask why the hell they weren’t cleansing. “Good God,” she said, “you’re never going to be able to climb the Rivera family tree that way.”

  Jack’s Club? I thought crazily, but I leaned back in my chair, looking regal and unconcerned. “I’m afraid you got the wrong impression,” I said. “Lieutenant Rivera and I aren’t—”

  “Whole damn family’s nuttier than baklava, but he’s Houdini between the sheets, isn’t he?”

  My mouth was still caught on my denial and soured up like I’d taken a double shot of lemon juice. “I beg your pardon?”

  She sipped her drink. It looked like Absolut. I’d never seen anyone drink it straight before, and working at the Warthog had offered me the opportunity to see quite a lot. Folks having sex doggie style under the tables, for instance. That was a staple.

  “Jack and I…we never meshed.” She shook her head, glanced up. “He wasn’t into politics. Couldn’t play tennis worth a damn. And half the time he’d show up looking like he’d been running marathons in his sleep. But get him in the sack, and hold my calls.” She blew out her breath and laughed, but it sounded funny, like she might rather be crying. She cleared her throat. “How’d you meet him?”

  I didn’t squirm. I was too busy trying to figure her out. The shrink was on the job. “As I was about to say,” I said, “we’re not dating. We’re just—”

  “Dating?” When she laughed this time there was a little more feeling behind it. “God, no. We weren’t dating, either. It’d be like playing chess with a breeding stallion.”

  “Breeding—”

  “Better equipped for other things,” she explained, leaning toward me.

  The waiter arrived carrying my tea. I thanked him. “So Salina,” I began when he was gone. “Did she…play chess with breeding stallions?”

  “She’d play with anything if it was a means to an end. Or had an end with means.” She laughed. The sound was hollow.

  “So Rivera was just a stepping-stone?”

  S
he studied me for an instant. “Rosita tell you that?” she guessed.

  I blinked. “Rosita who?”

  “Oh, please. Don’t play a player.” Did that mean she had spent time with breeding stallions, too? “What else did she say?”

  I considered denying any knowledge again, but it seemed like I should know something about something. “Mrs. Rivera wasn’t very fond of her.”

  “No shit?” she said, and leaned back, arm flung loosely across the back of her chair.

  “Said she couldn’t cook.”

  “Sal?” She shrugged. “She had a cheesecake recipe that would make you want to bitch-slap Betty Crocker. She baked about once a month, whenever she was ready to break up with some moony sucker. Balm for their weepy wounds or something. Or maybe her way of saying she was just the girl next door and had to follow her heart. Man, she could work them, could read men like a deck of cards. Knew what they liked, what they were hiding, what drove them mad.” She drank. “I learned from the best.”

  I shook my head, trying to pretend I was dumb as a doorknob. It wasn’t real difficult.

  Leaning forward, she propped her elbows on the table. “Sal, she knew the value of sex.”

  Could one be struck dead for speaking poorly about the deceased? I squirmed a little and took a chance. “I heard she wasn’t actually paid for it.”

  She grinned. “She got her pound of flesh one way or the other.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Gossip is like mother’s milk in the world of politics. You must know that.”

  “Just organic tea for me,” I said, raising my glass. “New Year’s resolution.”

  She narrowed her eyes, drank. “I bet you drive him crazy.”

  I tasted my tea, straight up. No sugar. Made me thirsty for paint thinner. “Him?”

  “He doesn’t like to be outsmarted. Makes him angry.” Her eyes glowed. “And when he’s angry…” She tilted her head back a fraction of an inch, as if imagining. “Not everyone’s got a pair of working handcuffs, you know. And when—”

  “Listen!” I cleared my throat and lowered my voice. “I appreciate you inviting me here, but I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea. Rivera’s an attractive man, but—”

  “He didn’t kill her.”

  “What?”

  “He might hang for it just the same, though. Depends how the cards fall.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I admit”—she leaned across the table, expression suddenly earnest—“a few years ago, I would have been judge, jury, and executioner, but…” She scowled, shook her head. “Now…I’ve aged. Mellowed.”

  She looked about as mellow as a hand grenade.

  “What changed?”

  She paused a moment. “Let’s just say there were lots of people standing in line to kill her. Rivera…” She gazed at her drink, as if she could see things that weren’t there. Come to think of it, after that much vodka, it was pretty likely. “He would have been way toward the end.”

  “Who was at the front?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Where were you?”

  She laughed. “In D.C.”

  “When did you get into town?”

  She leaned toward me, eyes bright. “I can see why Rivera hates you.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t get me wrong. It’s not an insult. He’d never get serious about a woman he couldn’t hate.”

  “Did he hate Salina?”

  Her lips quirked into a parody of a smile. “There was a time.”

  “But no more?”

  She shook her head.

  “Is that why you think he didn’t kill her? Because he didn’t hate her?” And if that was the case, what did that say for my own longevity?

  “That and pride.”

  “What?”

  She drank, raised her empty glass to the waiter, and turned her attention back to me. “He’s too damn cocky to kill her. Wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.”

  “Ummm…”

  “Christ!” She snorted a laugh. “She was screwing his old man. You think that didn’t get his dick in a twist? Back in the day, it drove him crazy just thinking she might…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Thinking she might what?” I asked.

  She shrugged. For a moment I thought she’d remain silent, but Absolut is not a great speech inhibitor. “When they were engaged…” She paused. “Shit, it seems like a hundred years ago. He must have been…what? Twenty maybe. Eyes like a fucking forest fire.” She chuckled at her own fanciful thoughts. “Anyway, there was a rumor.”

  I waited.

  She drew a deep breath and fiddled with her straw. “A rumor that she was sleeping around.”

  “With whom?”

  She laughed, waited, then, “His old man.”

  What a tangled frickin’ web. “Was it true?”

  “He seemed to think so, and I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.” She shrugged and narrowed her eyes. “She did it eventually anyway, didn’t she?”

  “Is that what broke them apart? The rumor?”

  She was silent for an instant. “That? No. Actually…” Her face looked pale, kind of stretched tight. “I think he might have been more upset for his mother’s sake than his own.”

  “How’d she handle it?”

  “Rosita?” She grinned and made a sort of salute with her glass. “Now, there’s a woman who knows how to hate.”

  “Enough to kill?”

  She tilted her head, noncommittal. “If she did it, it’s going to put Jack in a hell of a spot, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’ll have to choose between his mama and his badge.”

  “You think he’d cover it up?”

  “She’s his mama. He’s Latino.”

  “Still…”

  She sat up straight, eyes bright, staring at me. “Good God! You don’t know him at all.”

  “We’re just—”

  “You really haven’t slept with him?”

  “As I said—”

  She laughed, mouth open. “You really haven’t.”

  I gave her a prissy look. “There are others I haven’t slept with, too.”

  “Touché,” she said, and finishing her vodka, she watched me over the top of her glass before setting it on the table.

  I refused to squirm under her perusal. “What about the senator?” I asked. “Was he in love with Salina?”

  “If you’re asking if he killed her…” She shrugged, accepted a fresh drink with a tipsy smile. The waiter moved away. She watched his ass, sighed, turned back to me. “You really haven’t slept with him?”

  “No.” I felt a little like slapping her, but I refrained and wondered if I would regret my phenomenal restraint later. “What about the senator? Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “But I don’t think he’d let Jack take the fall.”

  “There’s bad blood between them,” I reminded her.

  She raised a brow at me as if I were too stupid to breathe. “How would it look if the good senator’s son murdered their mutual fiancée?”

  She had a point. “Not good?” I guessed.

  “I knew you were smart.”

  “You make him sound a little cold-blooded.”

  She breathed a laugh and drank. “Boa constrictors are cold-blooded, honey.”

  She almost said it with admiration, making me wonder if she was in the habit of lying down with snakes. “Who do you think was at the head of the queue?”

  “It was usually the one she just screwed over who wanted to kill her most.”

  “But she’s been with the senator for over a year, hasn’t she?”

  She made a face. “Are you from the Midwest or something?”

  “I don’t know what that has to do with—”

  “You think she was faithful to him?” she asked, dumb-founded, as if the idea were ludicrous.

  “Holy cra
p.” I felt a little breathless.

  She laughed.

  “Who was she sleeping with?”

  She put her glass down. “Like I said, I’ve been in D.C. Didn’t keep track of her affairs anymore.” She studied her drink, lips tight. “And Miguel didn’t say.”

  “You kept in touch with the senator?”

  She ignored the question and narrowed her eyes a little. “But Danny Hohl is awful pretty. Just the kind of boy toy Sal would enjoy.”

  “Hohl? The Ken doll?”

  She laughed. “So you noticed him, too.”

  My mind was grunting beneath the weight of the conversation. I shook my head, trying to clear it. It was patently unsuccessful. “Did the senator know she was unfaithful?”

  Her fingers tightened on her glass. “It’s possible.”

  I was missing something. “But love is blind?” I probed.

  “While lust is merely deaf and stupid.”

  “Who was Salina’s latest beau?”

  “Beau?” She gave me a squishy smile.

  “I have a Ph.D.,” I said.

  She laughed. “I have a master’s from Harvard. Sal and I went there together.”

  “Harvard.” Damn. I hated being impressed. “Where’d she get the money?”

  “She got a full ride. God, she was smart. Could have done anything if she hadn’t…” Her voice broke.

  My ears perked up. My voice dropped a few decibels. “Hadn’t what, Rachel?”

  “She should have stayed away from the men. They just used her.”

  I watched her face. I’d seen that expression a thousand times in the quiet confines of my office. It was remorse, haunting and cold. “Why’d you start the rumor?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The rumor about her and the senator,” I said, and she started to cry, low and muffled and filled with a decade of regret.

  18

  In fifty years it won’t matter if he’s handsome, ugly, or dumb as a post. Just try to find someone who don’t make you want to shove a pitchfork up his nose.

  —Ella McMullen, Christina’s paternal grandmother, on connubial bliss

  I DON’T LIKE to use labels,” I said.

  “That means yes.” Bruce Lincoln was, without question, the best-looking client I had ever had. In fact, he might be the best-looking fantasy I’d ever had. Of course, his physical looks didn’t matter an iota. I’m a professional. Still, when he smiled, my salivary glands always felt a close kinship to Pavlov and his drooling canines. But then, they do the same thing for hot fudge. So maybe my response training was skewed. “You think I’m a sex addict.”