An Affair to Dismember (10 page)

UNCLE HARRY dismissed us quickly after that in order to attend to his business. My mind was reeling. The little old man who lived across the street from my
grandma had been a bank robber, and he might have been murdered by his former gang members because he hid bank robbery money from them. I wondered how much Peter knew. Obviously he wasn’t looking for termites in the walls, but did he know that his father had hidden a big score from his partners? Did he know that his father’s partners might be looking for the money, too, and may have killed his father because of it?

Lucy unlocked my car door. “This is fabulous,” she said, her face beaming. “We just have to find the partners, and we can solve a murder! This is much better than the stupid book club Bridget forced me to join. Like I give a hoot about the cultural impact of feminist literature. But murder! I feel alive just thinking about it. I feel like Monk. No, that’s not right. I feel like a sexy, female Monk. Who would that be? Hercule Poirot! No, that’s not right, either. Anyway, I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine, darlin’. It will be fabulous. Best-buddies detectives, out to fight crime, like Abbott and Costello. No, that’s not right. Like Rodgers and Hammerstein. No, that’s not right, either.”

Lucy walked around the car to the driver’s door, talking to herself about the joys of murder. I wasn’t beaming as much as my Southern friend, but I couldn’t help forming a plan in my mind to find Jimmy the Fink and Chuck Costas.

“Lucy, maybe we should go to the library first to see if we can find something on the partners.”

“Great idea, Gladie,” she said, pointing the keys at me.

“Not so fast.” Police Chief Spencer Bolton tapped me on the shoulder. Gone was his usual cocky, arrogant expression. He was dead serious, and his eyes bored right through me. “What do you think you are doing?”

“I’m getting in the car.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. He stood six inches away.
He smelled of cologne and Uncle Harry’s cigars. Suddenly the day felt warmer.

“I’m not?”

“No. You and Scarlett O’Hara are going to poke your upscale noses in something that doesn’t concern you, and I can’t let you do that. This is police business.”

“Police business?” I asked. “So it
is
murder and not an accident. I knew it.”

Spencer turned a light shade of puce. “It is not police business. I mean, it wasn’t murder. The coroner ruled it an accident. There’s no reason to suspect murder.”

“But
you
suspect murder,” I said, poking him in the chest. “You guys jumped to a conclusion about an old guy slipping and hitting his head, but his family is not so sure, and Randy Terns has a shady past, and now you have your doubts, like Uncle Harry said.” I was pretty proud of myself. I was some kind of detective genius.

Spencer wasn’t thrilled by my powers of deduction. He looked like his head was going to blow up.

“Listen, this is not safe.” He waved his arms in the direction of Uncle Harry’s mansion and guard shack.

“Uncle Harry? Oh, please.”

Spencer ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up. “All right, then. You’re coming with me.”

“What?” I asked. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m going with Lucy.”

Spencer turned to Lucy, who stood watching our conversation over the car, her hand on her chest, her eyelashes fluttering at an alarming rate.

“Is this vehicle insured?” he asked her.

“My Mercedes SLR? Does Elvis eat pork chops on Sunday? Of course it’s insured.”

“Good,” he said, and walked to the back of the car, where he kicked in the taillight with the heel of his shoe.

“Oh, my,” exclaimed Lucy, sounding more like a satisfied lover than a recent victim of vandalism.

Spencer grabbed me by the wrist. “You’re under arrest. You’re coming with me.”

“On what charge?”

“Broken taillight.”

“It’s not my car,” I yelled, stumbling in my high heels as he pulled me away from the Mercedes.

“Prove it,” he said.

“Lucy,” I called. “Show him your registration.”

Spencer stopped and turned toward Lucy. “Don’t do it, Lucy, or I will impound your vehicle for the next two months.”

“Oh, darlin’, I need my Mercedes. I have an important meeting in L.A. tomorrow.”

“Lucy!” I yelled. “What happened to ‘I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine’? What happened to Abbott and Costello?”

“Well—” she began.

“Don’t do it, Lucy,” Spencer said. “I’ll have her back by dinnertime. Promise.”

Lucy shrugged. “You two have a good time! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, which for your information, you devilishly handsome Mr. Police Chief, is not much.”

“Attica! Attica!” I shouted.

Spencer opened the passenger side of his Buick. “Get in,” he ordered, gently pushing me forward. I ducked down, but not enough, and banged my head on the door frame.

“Ow!”

“Why did you hit your head? You did that like it’s the first time you sat in a car,” he said.

I rubbed the side of my head, where a bump was already forming. “You were supposed to do the head thing. You were supposed to protect my head with your hand and say, ‘Watch your head.’ ”

I got out of the car and punched him square in the solar plexus. It was like punching a wall. “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you ever seen
Cops
?” I demanded. “They always protect the heads of murdering, shirtless crackheads when they arrest them. You couldn’t have done the head thing for me, an innocent bystander? You put a woman in a cop car, you do the head thing. Didn’t you learn the head thing?”

“I learned the head thing,” he said. “We do the head thing for criminals in handcuffs when we put them in the back of a squad car. You’re not in handcuffs. You are just getting in a normal car like a normal person. Normal person, hmph. I should have known.”

I leaned close to him, giving him a good view of my bump. “Is there blood? I feel blood.”

“There’s no blood. C’mon, get in the car.”

He walked me back over to the car and put his hand on my head. “Watch your head,” he said.

We drove ten minutes in silence. Then his cellphone rang. “Hey, baby,” he said. He smiled and glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. “Sure, baby. I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty.… Whatever you want. You can wear nothing as far as I’m concerned. In fact, that’s a good idea. Wear nothing.” Spencer chuckled and turned off his phone.

I opened the glove compartment.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m looking for a barf bag.” I stuck my finger in my mouth and made a dramatic gagging sound. Spencer leaned over and slammed the glove compartment shut.

“You obviously have plans, and you’ll have to get ready,” I said. “What do you metrosexuals do to prepare for hot dates? Don’t you need to wax something or prune something? Before you get your nails buffed, you can drop me off at my grandmother’s.”

“You’re coming to the station, where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Only until your date. Then I can do what I want. You might as well get rid of me now.”

“I’m the chief of police. I have people who can watch you when I’m out.”

“You promised Lucy you would have me back by dinnertime.”

“I lied.”

“What if I promise not to look into Randy Terns’ death?”

“Now you’re lying.”

I crossed my arms in front of me. He had me there. I was a big fat liar with my pants on fire.

We drove the rest of the way in silence. The police station was located on Park between Lake Indian Springs and Cannes Center Park. It was a two-story building made of stone and glass. I recalled hearing something about a new police station, and it definitely looked new.

Spencer parked in the lot in the back. He got out and opened my door for me. “Watch your head,” he said with a smirk, his sense of humor having returned—probably because he had won and I was officially in custody. I got out, and he stepped closer to me. He bent down, grazing my face with his lips as he spoke low in my ear.

“Pinkie,” he said, “make no mistake. I don’t wax, prune, or buff. I’m more the come-as-I-am kind of man. I come natural.”

A tiny droplet of spittle dripped from my mouth. Okay, I wasn’t immune to his charms. But the man was responsible for my false arrest, a bump on my head, and the derailment of my investigation into my neighbor’s death. Besides, Spencer Bolton had a well-known scorched-earth policy when it came to women. He was
pure poison to anyone in a dress. He was the Al Qaeda of penises, and I was determined to never see him naked.

It was a matter of national security.

We passed two giant bronze, stainless steel, and glass fountains shaped like magnifying glasses on our way to the back door of the police station. The inside was smaller than the one in
The Closer
but larger than I had imagined. It was shiny, too. The main room consisted of six desks with computers and phones. On the side, I counted three offices, one that looked like a lunchroom.

Spencer garnered a lot of attention. He was clearly in charge and was approached immediately by two policemen in uniform with questions. He answered them quickly. “Is Brody here?” he asked one of the cops.

“No, he’s out. Lytton is on desk.”

Spencer walked me to the corner office—his, I assumed. Plaques, awards, and photos scattered across the walls and his desk drew my attention. I sashayed over to a photo of him and the mayor of Los Angeles.

“No, Pinkie. Over here. Sit.” He pulled out a chair, and I took it. He sat on the edge of his desk and took a deep breath.

“I can’t actually arrest you,” he said.

“Now you tell me.”

“Let’s say you’re my guest. I need you here for a few hours. Don’t look at me like that. I’m trying to keep you safe. It’s just until I can get some things worked out. You’ll be treated with the utmost respect. I promise.”

“You wanted to see me, Chief?” A tall, lanky, red-haired policeman poked his head in the door. He saw me, and a flash of recognition passed over his smiling freckled face. “Hey, it’s Underwear Girl! Hi, Underwear Girl. I’m Fred. Sergeant Lytton, I mean.”

Spencer’s jaw dropped, mirroring my own. Birds could have nested in our mouths. He put his hands in
his lap in a defensive gesture. “This is Gladie Burger, Fred,” he said. “We’re not going to call her Underwear Girl.”

“Oh, okay,” Fred said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Fred, why don’t you take Gladie with you?” He turned to me. “Fred’s doing a tour of our new facilities for a VIP group. You’ll enjoy it.” Spencer grabbed my hand, tugged me up with a jolt, and steered me out of his office with gentle pressure on my lower back.

I jogged to keep up with Fred’s long legs. It would have been very easy to sneak out. I could have simply said that Underwear Girl needed some fresh air, and I would have been free. But it occurred to me that not only wasn’t I under arrest, I was now a VIP with special access, and where better to find information on bank robbers such as Jimmy the Fink and Chuck Costas than at a police station?

“You’re in for a real treat, Miss Burger. This new station is sweet. Back home we only had three metal chairs and a desk from the local junior high.”

We walked through the main room toward the front lobby, which was decked out in green marble and a birch front desk with overstuffed chairs for visitors. Sweet, indeed.

“Where are you from, Fred?”

“Me? Utah. Not anywhere you ever heard of. I found out about the job here and moved six months ago.”

“Have you been a policeman long?” Except for his height, he didn’t look old enough to have a driver’s license, let alone carry a gun.

“A year and a half. Well, here we are.”

Fred motioned to the lobby with more than a little pride. Three other VIPs were there, ready to take the tour. Two men and a woman, all older and pillars of society. I recognized them from my grandmother’s house, from one committee or another, and said hello.

“Welcome, everybody,” Fred began. “As you know, we are in the five-point-four-million-dollar facility built to bring Cannes’ law enforcement abilities into the twenty-first century. This building houses the field operations bureau, the criminal investigation division, the communications center, animal control, and the public information center.”

“How many cops you got here, son?” asked a gentleman in shorts and flip-flops.

“Good question, Mr. Smith. Currently we have the chief, three sergeants including me, eight patrol officers, and a school resource officer. The chief is looking to get us two full-time detectives, and we’re going to have our very own 911 call center. I’ll show you that in a moment. If you call 911 at the present time, you get the neighboring town. It can cause some confusion. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to processing.”

We walked through a doorway on the right. “Here’s where we bring in suspects and process them,” Fred said. “If you want, I’ll give you your very own mug shot and fingerprint card to take home. It’s not like the movies. We’ve gone digital here. Come take a look at our cutting-edge technology.”

But nobody moved toward the fingerprint scanner or the mug shot camera. Instead, we all stood paralyzed in place, our eyes glued to a spot on the wall where an almost life-sized photo hung of a woman’s rear end, covered in pink Victoria’s Secret boy-cut underpants, her upper body hanging down and her face in profile in the midst of a scream.

Me.

The VIPs seemed to recognize the subject of the photo at the same time, and they turned their heads toward me, slowly and in unison.

“Uh …,” I said.

“Oh, you noticed Underwear Girl,” said Fred, perceiving
what held our attention. “I mean Miss Burger. I’ll tell you, that picture sure calms down the collars. They come in here and they’re like, ‘Wha? Huh?’ A lot of us guys like to have our coffee in here, too.”

I gasped and clenched my fists. Fred flinched.

“We can hold off on the mug shots till later,” he said, his eyes sliding toward me. “Let’s go see that 911 call center now.”

We meandered through the call center and the interview rooms. I spotted an empty office with a computer, perfect for my purposes. I planned on feigning a trip to the bathroom so that I could get into their files.