07 Uncorked - Chrissy McMullen Mystery (16 page)

“I suppose it’s too much to ask that the fucker might have drowned.” I swallowed my bile and looked sadly at my ice cream. I’d lost my appetite.

“Well…if I see a guy with a black eye and a limp, I’ll kill him myself,” he said.

My face twisted into what might have been a grin. “Shouldn’t you question him first?”

“I can’t see why.”

“Seems fair. I’m sure there’s only one person in L.A. with a bruised face,” I said, and refrained from touching my own wounded cheek.

His eyes gleamed a little, but he went on. “Who do you think it could have been?” I opened my mouth. He raised a hand.

“Other than Joel.”

I shut my mouth.

“Have you pissed anybody else off lately?”

“Not since I arrived here,” I said, and dropped my gaze to the table. “I try to be on my best behavior when there’s ice cream involved.”

“Oh, come on, a girl like you can’t have many enemies.” I raised my brows at him. “I just about broke Coggins’s nose. And he’s a police officer.”

“Well…” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t look any worse broken.” I felt my shoulders slump. “The funny thing is, I don’t even like Rivera.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, and stared deep into my eyes.

I exhaled noisily and licked the perimeter of the cone, but I had lost my gusto. “We gave it a shot, but he’s not…” I let the words trail off.

“What?”

I shrugged and cleared my throat. “It would never work out,” I admitted, and ignored the sting of tears behind my eyes. “Still…he’s the father of my Great Dane.” He stared at me a second. “Brindle or merle?”

“Harlequin. Black and white.”

“Well…” He shook his head. “A harlequin like that’s well worth throwing a few elbows for.”

I gave him an appreciative if watery grin. “I’m sorry I did it.”

“I’m sorry we had to haul Rivera in.”

“Are you?” I asked. It was my turn to watch him.

“Sure,” he said, then glanced at the table and fiddled with a napkin. “I mean…we’re never going to be BFFs or anything. Rivera’s a…” He shrugged. “Sometimes he’s kind of a…”

“An ass.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But he's a good cop, and I never want to see a fellow officer go down. Neither does Joel. Not really. Believe me,” he said. “It wasn’t him. He’s a little rough around the edges, maybe. Has a grudge against women sometimes. But the allegations that he…” He stopped himself, tensed, tried to relax.

"What allegations?" I asked but he shook his head and grinned a little, leaving me with nothing more than suspicions.

“He’s a good guy at heart.”

“If you say so,” I said. I was too drained to pry. And that's saying something.

“I do. So who else might have a grudge against you?”

“I’ve give that some thought,” I promised, and left the Cold Stone sanctuary a few minutes later

.

Chapter 16

Men, they have the two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, you fix him the burrito.

—Rosita Rivera, who was well acquainted with politicians and men
I was true to my word. I gave it some thought…a lot of thought. Okay, the fact is, I was obsessed with the thought. Who, I wondered, had I pissed off? The answer was a little depressing; there were enough of them to turn an intimate gathering into a nice-sized orgy. I mean, let’s face it, I rub elbows with an awful lot of weird-ass people. And then there are my clients. Still, I couldn’t think of anybody who would want to do me bodily harm. Except, of course, for the people who had tried to do me bodily harm in the past. It was also depressing to realize how many of those there were.

I ran through the list as I ate breakfast. Peanut butter on bagels—breakfast of pale, flabby Americans with more girth than stamina.

But I didn’t care about girth or stamina just then, since staying alive seemed more important than being svelte. To emphasize that point, I put another bagel in the toaster, then found a notepad in my junk drawer and started a list with the name Emery Black at the top.

Mr. Black had once been J.D. Solberg’s boss. He was guilty of some pretty-big-money blue-collar crimes and had spent a good deal of time in jail because of that. It was possible, I supposed, that he blamed me. I did, after all, have a little something to do with his incarceration. And he was a free man now, so it was conceivable that he might have sent someone to avenge him, but even in the pen he’d kept his head down and played nice. This just didn’t feel like something he would do. Especially since he was back to making a sizable income again and probably would rather enjoy it than spend the rest of his life back in a box the size of his money safe.

There were others, of course, who hadn’t fared so well financially or physically after their interaction with me.

Gordon Adams, for instant, the man who had attacked me while gunning for my fucktard brother, Pete, was dead. Rivera had killed him with a single bullet to the temple when he’d threatened to do the same to me. And son of a bitch that Adams had been, I doubted he had come back from the grave to haunt me. Neither did it seem likely that there would be anyone else who was fond enough of him to make trouble for themselves.

I over-peanut buttered another half a bagel and let my mind move on.

Robert Peachtree was another person who had felt compelled to try to kill me. He was a wealthy octogenarian who had become embroiled in Rivera’s weird-ass family circumstances. Suffice it to say, there had been a shitload of things Peachtree had tried to keep quiet. In fact, he had been more than willing to brain me with a poker to achieve that goal. But it was extremely doubtful that he was the culprit, since he had eventually succumbed to age-related complications while in Folsom.

A shiver ran through me. Maybe it’s a good sign that it’s still a little disconcerting when someone tries to kill me. And let me tell you, somehow it’s even worse when cute little old men take offense to your existence. Still, my current problems probably didn’t stem from that front, considering his wife had also since passed and none of his extremely wealthy heirs had surfaced to complain about their benefactor’s demise.

I moved on. Theodore Altove had been a truly disturbed man with a legitimate beef.

Unfortunately, I had been the discoverer of that beef: Apparently he had been humming his way through life, helping Senator Rivera with his various and sundry campaigns, cohabitating with his beautiful wife and daughter, when one unhappy morning he realized that the daughter resembled the senator a bit more than she resembled him. A rather bloody escapade followed. After which, he had made a serious attempt on the senator’s life. Failing to succeed in murdering the one man he hated above all others, he had killed himself with a bullet to the brainpan.

I sighed as I wiped a droplet of chocolate milk off my notepad. Theodore Altove was gone, but he did have a daughter, or…at least he had a young woman who had believed she was his daughter, a young woman whose life had surely been turned upside down at the advent of his death.

I followed his little epilogue with a dash and the name Thea.

That led to David Hawkins. My hand shook a little as I wrote his name. He had been a colleague of mine. A friend, in fact. A respected member of the community.

Unfortunately, he had tried to murder me when I figured out he’d not only killed his wife but the man I was accused of murdering. I had subsequently proven his guilt, and he’d gotten life imprisonment. Signs were good that he was still holding a grudge. He had money, brains, and motive. The evil trifecta. Still, I wasn’t sure how much damage he could do from a prison cell the size of my molar.

So who did that leave? I drew a deep breath and let my mind sweep back a few months to when Laney had been kidnapped by the crazed, just-released-from-prison drug dealer man named Jackson Andrews. In an attempt to retrieve his brainchild, a drug called Intensity, from her misbegotten jacket, he’d stripped her naked, tied her to a chair and threatened her life before we were able to set her free. If a man was willing to do that to the nicest woman in the universe, what would he be willing to do to me…the most irritating woman on the planet? The woman who had foiled his plans and sent him to jail.

Facts and fears jostled around in my head like well-oiled popcorn. I tried sorting them out, but it was tough. Memories of near-death experiences tend to make me a little jittery, and the thought of Rivera in jail seemed to throw the whole world off kilter.

Although he was, more often than not, a royal pain in the ass, he was also the epitome of law and order, the very standard by which such things were set.

I dialed the phone without further thought.

“Hola.” The woman’s voice was young and smooth and a little accusatory. I scowled.

“Hello? Is Senator Rivera available?”

“Who is this, please?”

I could hear someone murmur something in the background. The woman’s voice was slightly louder as they discussed the situation.

“Why do you not wish for me to know who—” she began, but then the receiver was muffled. It took several seconds before the senator was on the line.

“Hello?”

“Hello. Senator?”

There was only a momentary pause as he sorted my voice from the surely thousands he knew. “Christina, it is so good of you to call, but I’m afraid I am quite busy. My political advisor is here to discuss some future possibilities. But I cannot tell you how it gladdens my heart to hear your lovely voice.”

He sounded flirty and effusive. I could imagine his current political advisor grinding her teeth in the background. But perhaps she would have to take the pacifier out of her mouth to do so. To say the senator liked younger women would be an understatement of statutory proportions.

I put that thought out of my mind and jumped into the fray. “I was wondering if you’ve heard anything about your son’s situation.”

“My dearest Christina, as I have stated before, I do not believe it is in his best interest for me to interfere with his life at this point.”

“His best interest or yours?”

“Qué?”

I clenched my teeth to prevent more vitriol from seeping out. Vitriol, while lovely, poisonous stuff, often does little to improve interpersonal relationships.

“You know he didn’t do it,” I said.

His breathy sigh seemed longsuffering. “I am always heartened by your faith in him, Christina. He is indeed lucky to have you.”

“He doesn’t have me.” I felt irritable and itchy and frustrated. I also kind of wished I had a political advisor of my own. “We broke up months ago, remember?”

“And yet you call to inquire about his well-being, si?”

“I had other things to talk about, too,” I said, but for a moment I couldn’t remember what they were.

“He cares deeply for you as well, Christina. You must know that in your heart of hearts.”

“That’s not why I…” I paused, conflicted. “Do you really think—” I caught myself before I stumbled further into stupidity enabled by hope and enhanced by loneliness. “I just called to ask about Thea.”

The phone went quiet. “Thea Altove?”

“Yes.”

“My…daughter?”

To his credit, he still had a bit of trouble saying the words. Maybe that was because he had cuckolded an old friend to create that daughter. Maybe because he had been kind of attracted to said daughter before he realized the kinship they shared. It’s hard to say exactly. All I know is that the McMullens are not the only family that puts the fun in dysfunctional.

“Yes,” I said simply, though I was thinking of a butt-load of sarcastic addendums with which to follow up that statement. “Your daughter.”

“What is it you wish to know about her?” He sounded a little leery, a little protective.

Apparently, he didn’t mind throwing his son under the bus, but messing with his daughter was verboten.

“How’s she doing?” I asked.

He drew a deep breath. I could hear him thinking. Senator Rivera is not a stupid man.

Which is funny. Most men either have brains or looks or money. Ten years ago, I would have given my spleen for any guy who possessed one of the three. Now I realized I might want to keep my spleen.

“Christina…” His voice was soft. “Thea is not responsible for Gerald’s incarceration.”

“I know,” I said. And I really did. From what I had seen, Thea Altove, long-legged beauty that she was, adored her half brother. It was one of the many things I resented about her. Her long-legged beauty being the first.

“Honey Bear…” I could hear his political advisor’s voice in the background. It had gone from angry to silky in less than sixty seconds. I envied that speed. When I’m mad I stay mad for approximately…well…there seems to be no statute of limitations on my anger. “I am tired.”

He covered the phone with his hand, but it was pretty ineffective.

“… just be a minute. Why don’t you—”

“And I am hot.” Her voice might have been a little louder than it needed to be to be heard by the senator. But just about loud enough to be heard by me.

“Turn up the air, then, and I shall…” He stopped. I wasn’t sure if I imagined it or if I really could hear silk sliding against well-moisturized skin, but I was sure about his raspy intake of breath.

I rolled my eyes and waited for some of his blood to flow back up to his brain cells.

“Christina,” he said after a few sparse droplets had, apparently, rejuvenated his cranium. “I’m afraid I must run.”

“Someone tried to kill me,” I said, and noticed with some satisfaction that the end of the phone went absolutely silent. Apparently murder attempts got his attention irregardless how much well-moisturized skin his political advisor had exposed.

“Dear God, no,” he whispered. “Not again.”

“Again.” My voice was miraculously steady. In fact, my hands were hardly shaking at all.

“And you think my daughter is somehow implicated.”

“The possibility has crossed my mind.”

“Because you were involved in her father’s death.”

“Not technically,” I said, reminding him with my tone that he, in fact, was her father.

I wondered vaguely if it was difficult for him to justify his chronic womanizing when his current conquests made his daughter look like an aged spinster by numerical comparison.