07 Uncorked - Chrissy McMullen Mystery (9 page)

“Think on it, Christina. My son is a good man in his own way. But he is, sometimes, impulsive. Rash, even. Does it not seem that he might well be capable of doing something…” He shrugged again. “…illegal, if he felt it would accomplish his goals?”

“Goals?”

A flicker of sympathy zipped across his fatherly expression. “He has, for a long while, been extremely concerned with your safety, my dear.”

“What?”

“Surely you have considered the possibility that he has done this to make certain that this Jackson Andrews does not harm you.”

I blinked. I honestly had not considered that. And I really didn’t care to consider it now. I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Perhaps you do not realize how very much he cares for you.”

“I…” I shook my head again. It still didn’t do much good.

“We Latinos,” he said, “It is a problem of ours, but …sometimes we love too much.” One of my eyebrows rose of its own volition. “What’s that?”

“The fact that he was with another…” He shrugged. “It does not mean that he cares any the less for you.”

I blinked. “So you’re saying your son doesn’t care enough about me to keep his pants zipped, but he cares enough to spend the rest of his life in prison?” The senator lifted his hands, palms up, as if to say he had finally found a woman who understood his kind. I stared at him.

“This actually makes sense to you?” I asked.

“Well, my dear, I care a great deal for Rosita.”

“Your ex-wife.”

“Si. She is the light of my life.” He placed both weirdly expressive hands over the place where his heart might have been if he hadn't thrown his hat into the political ring.

“The flame that ever burns in my-”

“Do you always cheat on the light of your life?”

“I did not cheat…so much as…” He lifted his shoulders, letting his hands drop to the table. “Stray.”

“You—” I stopped myself before my head began spinning like Linda Blair’s and icky things came spewing out of my mouth. Although I’m a firm believer that cursing is our God-given right and an excellent stress reliever, I have yet to see documentation that it improves inter-personal relationships. I cleared my throat, smoothed a wrinkle from the pristine white napkin in front of me, and gave him a prim smile. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what this has to do with your son.”

“He…strayed from you.”

“Okay.”

“The culture of our people…the passion of our people makes us…” He wobbled his head back and forth as if searching for the perfect word. The term assholes popped into my mind but I held it captive pending later release. “There are times when it makes us wander.”

I waited.

“But the American culture…” He shrugged. “It suggests we should confine our passions to but one woman forever.”

I remained spectacularly silent.

“This…what is the word? This dichotomy…it tears at us,” he said, and made a ripping motion with his hands. “There is the passion we feel in our hearts that must be quenched. But once our ardor is sated, then there is the guilt.” I settled back in my seat, took a deep breath and wondered if it would be wrong to stab him in the nuts with my sterling silver fork.

“Let me get this straight.” I narrowed my eyes at him. He watched me steadily. More cowardly men, I have to admit, have dived under the table at less provocation. “You believe your son cheated on me, then felt so guilty about it that he attempted to murder a man in an attempt to save me from him.”

He shrugged. “As I have said, Christina, we are a passionate people.” I opened my mouth to spew forth the aforementioned venom, then closed it judiciously and smiled a little. “All right. Well…” I spread my hands and did not consider how it would feel to tighten them around his throat. “Wouldn't that same passion guarantee that you would try to exonerate your only son?” His sigh was heavy and long suffering. “I would so love to, Christina. Truly I would, but as I’ve said, I feel it is time for Gerald to fight his own battles, to—”

“Senator?”

I turned my head at the sound of a female voice. The woman standing beside our table was in her late thirties. She was round on top, small on the bottom, and disappeared to practically nothing in between.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt.” She sounded a little breathless. Maybe I would too if I had no in-between. “But could I bother you for a photograph?” The senator delayed just a moment, as if debating whether it would be better to insult a potential constituent or to interrupt a conversation concerning the continued well-being of his only son. In a fraction of a second, he graced her with his million-watt smile.

“Certainly,” he said.

She gushed. They stood. Someone took about forty-seven pictures.

“Thank you so much,” she crooned.

“My pleasure.”

“And I hope the rumors are true.”

“Rumors?” he asked.

She leaned in close. “A little birdie told me you might yet run for president.”

“Well…” He smiled. “Let us keep that between us and the sparrows, shall we?”

“Of course,” she said, and giggled as she made a motion to zip her lips.

He smoothed a hand down the front of his thousand-dollar suit coat, sat down and sighed. “How I long for a simple life,” he said.

I still didn’t stab him. “You could move to Nelson, Nebraska,” I said.

“What?”

“Population four hundred and twenty-seven. I hear it’s very picturesque.” He stared at me a moment, as if trying to ascertain if I was kidding, but I kept my expression deadpan, and he sighed again. “There are times when I would like nothing better than to return to my agrarian roots, Christina, but I feel that this great country of ours…this wonderful, sprawling land”—he waved one benevolent hand at the world at large as if blessing it with his presence—“it is not finished with me yet. And I cannot in good conscience leave—”

“You’re selling him out.” The idea struck me like a thunderclap.

“What?” He looked both shocked and appalled. “Christina—” he began, but I huffed a laugh.

“You’re hoping for another public office and you want your constituents to believe you’re so honest, so unbiased, that you won’t even pull any strings to save your own son.”

“Christina, you cut me to the quick!”

I jerked to my feet, finding, with some surprise, that my fork had come with me. But he was still talking.

“You wound me to the core.”

“I might,” I snarled and tightened my grip on the sterling silver handle, “if you don’t even try to the learn the truth!”

He held my gaze with steely steadiness. “Is it the truth you want, Christina? Is it really?”

I blinked. “Of course it is.”

He nodded once, as serious as death. “Sit down, my dear.” I felt an odd premonition tingle the soles of my feet, but remained as I was, bent at the waist, leaning into his face like a slavering hound. “I prefer to stand,” I said.

“Very well then,” he said. “The truth is this; Gerald was at Andrews’ house the night he was shot."

“What?” I felt myself weaken at the knees.

“Sit down, Christina.”

“You’re lying,” I said. My tone sounded fuzzy.

“Sadly, I am not.”

I searched his eyes, his expression, his body language. He looked old suddenly and hopelessly honest. “How do you know?” My voice was barely a whisper.

“I know because Gerald told Captain Kindred that it is so,” he said.

I blinked, nodded, took a deep breath and drifted back into my just-abandoned chair.

"What else did Kindred tell you?"

"He said it would do my son no good if I got involved."

Chapter 9

Reality is for guys who don’t know how to make shit up.

—Michael McMullen, who made up quite a bit of shit

“So Rivera was seen hanging around Andrews’s house on the night of the shooting?” Elaine was sitting in my kitchen, nibbling on an organic lettuce leaf like an environmentally friendly French Lop.

“That’s what the senator said?”

“You don’t believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe. I don’t even know where Andrews’s house is.” She looked pale but resolute even though talk of Jackson Andrews must have stirred up the same shit-storm in her gut that it did in mine. Said shit-storm had caused me to call Cedars-Sinai three times since breakfast just to make sure Andrews was still confined to their critical care unit. So far so good. “Not in Glendale anymore?” I tamped down the memories that tried to engulf me and shook my head. “A family bought his place there half a year after he was incarcerated.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Yeah.” During a particularly serious bout of anxiety a few months earlier, I had stopped in at Andrews’ old address. It was now home to the all-American family. A dad, a mom, 1.8 kids, and four thousand plastic toys strewn about the living room like confetti on New Year’s eve.

She nodded, thinking. “If the senator knew Rivera had been at Andrews’ home he must know where that home is.”

“If he did he didn’t share the information with me.”

“How about Captain Kindred? What did he say?"

"He hasn't returned my calls."

"Then how are you going to question Andrews's neighbors?"

"I'm not."

She snorted.

“I'm not!” I said. “I can't. I don't know anything." Frustration was bubbling like an unstable volcano inside me. "No one will talk to me. I think there might be some kind of gag order. I think they're making him the fall guy."

“That's ridiculous.”

“It's not ridiculous, Laney. He's innocent.”

“It’s not your job to prove that.”

“Then whose job is it?”

“I’m sure he has an attorney.”

I opened my mouth to interject, but she spoke over me.

“An excellent attorney.”

“On a cop’s wages?”

“His father is one of the most powerful men in California.”

“His father thinks he’s guilty.”

She paused, almost winced. “He didn’t say that.”

“He barely said anything. He didn’t even want to discuss it. All he wanted to talk about was…” I shook my head. “Skank Girl.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“He said…” I paused to remember. “His are a passionate people and they sometimes can’t help themselves. They have to cheat on the women they love.”

“And you let him live?”

I slathered some Skippy’s on a freshly toasted piece of white bread. From what I had read it actually had negative nutritional value. “The restaurant was pretty busy.” Laney nodded her understanding, then scowled a little. If I ate as many lettuce leaves as she did, I’d scowl a whole lot more. “You know, Mac, just because the senator cheated on his wife, doesn’t mean Rivera cheated on you.”

“Hmmm.” I made a ruminative noise and narrowed my eyes as I chewed. “Does that translate into just because his dad’s a dick, it doesn’t mean he’s a dick?”

“Something like that.”

I gave that some judicious consideration as I polished off my peanut butter toast. I am nothing like an environmentally friendly French Lop. “I’d believe you, Laney. Really I would. But it just so happens I know a little something about human psychology.”

“And?”

“And…” I pulled a pencil out from under the oven mitt atop the table and doodled fretfully on a frayed napkin. “It’s been scientifically proven that if one’s father is a dick, one has an eighty-seven-point-three percent chance of becoming a dick oneself.”

“Eighty-seven-point-three.”

“I might be point-seven percent off.”

“Well, if it’s scientifically proven…”

“One can’t argue with mathematical equations,” I said, but I knew she would anyway.

“Mac—”

“Listen.” I stood abruptly. “I don’t even know why we’re discussing this. The point is not whether Rivera cheated on me or not. I don’t even care. I’m over it. Moved on.

There’s a new man in my life. A wonderful man. Why, just the other day…” I paused, searching frantically for his name in a mind that had suddenly turned to mush.

“Marc,” she supplied.

“Marc!” Fuck it. “Anyway, the point is whether Rivera is guilty or not.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then he deserves to be exonerated.”

“Even if he slept with Skank Girl?”

I was cool. I was calm and sophisticated and grown up. Besides, I had never been with a man as wonderfully sensitive as… Dammit! Marc! Still, thinking about Skank Girl made it a little more personal. I felt the pencil snap in my hand, hid it against my appropriately sized thigh and raised my chin a little. “I’m a big enough person to look beyond that to make certain justice is served.”

She stared at me for a couple seconds, then, “No, you’re not.”

“What?”

“You’re not big at all.” She stood and faced me. “Remember Maynard Carlson?”

“No.” It wasn’t even a plausible lie. Maynard had been my main squeeze throughout my freshman year of college.

“The guy with the Mazda and the teeth,” she reminded me. “I believe you threatened to castrate him with a spoon if he took Liz Geddy to the formal.”

“I did no such thing.”

She scowled. “You’re right. It wasn’t a spoon.” She paused, thinking, face scrunched up in a manner that would make a lesser woman look like a garden gnome. “It was a cantaloupe—”

“A melon baller!” I snapped, then drew a steadying breath and gave her a who cares kind of look. “That was a long time ago.” There was no point denying the castration threat. Have I mentioned Laney and her freakishly accurate memory? “And I think you’ll agree that since then I have grown up considerably.” She ignored my last statement and nodded. “A melon baller. That was it. You were going to castrate the man with a melon baller.”

“I wouldn’t have really done it, of course,” I said, although teenage Chrissy had been even crazier than thirty-something Chrissy. “Probably.”

“But you threatened to do it. You threatened him and you didn’t even like him.”

“I did too like him. He had really nice…fingernails.” She narrowed her eyes as if thinking hard. The expression scared the hell out of me.

Sometimes when Laney thinks hard, things spontaneously combust.

“What?” I asked cautiously.

“You lied to me,” she said. Her voice was level and thoughtful, her gaze elsewhere, as if she were carefully picking her way through a minefield.