MalContents (9 page)

Deschler exchanged a look with Joseph, which didn’t go unnoticed, and Sunny’s resentment grew. It wasn’t Joseph’s chest taped back together after getting split open. She loved him, her big, strong he-man, but for one blinding instant, she also hated him.

“Hello, I’m here, in the hospital bed,” she said.

“Sunny,” Joseph admonished.

It wasn’t
him
, she reminded him with a harsh look, her body language impossible to misread. This had happened to her.

Deschler coughed to clear his throat, then spilled. “Her name was Rona Bustamante. Does that sound familiar to you?”

It didn’t. “No, should it?”

“Ms. Bustamante applied last season to be a contestant on your show,
Slice and Dice
.”

“
Slice
isn’t my show,” Sunny said. “I’m just on the judge’s committee. Wait, you said ‘was’.”

“We found Ms. Bustamante in the town of Lovell Green. She rented an apartment above a garage. We tracked her there through the catering company’s records. At this point in the investigation, we believe she acted alone. We guess that the woman had a hell of a grudge against you, and she signed on with the caterers as a way to get close enough to you to let you know it.”

“Yes, I told you—while she was trying to hack me into tartar, she said I stole one of her recipes. Only you can’t copyright a recipe, therefore you can’t plagiarize or steal one. And even if she did apply to the show, I don’t cast the contestants. I don’t know her, and I didn’t steal anything from her, no matter what she says.”

“
Said
. By the time the Lovell Green police got there, Ms. Bustamante had taken her own life.”

Sunny choked down a dry swallow and tasted something foul. “I’m not overly sad to hear that.”

“And I don’t blame you. You might, however, find this nugget of information ironic. She pulled a Sylvia Plath.”

Sunny tipped a glance at Joseph, who shrugged, before turning back to Deschler. “I don’t get . . .”

“Sorry, blame that one on a semester of elective American Lit. It was either that or pottery. Bustamante stuck her head in the oven after blowing out the pilot and sucked down a deadly cocktail of natural gas. She’s dead, so apart from the devil and the details, the case is pretty much closed. You can rest assured that she paid for her psycho Ginsu knife circus act in full. Now, all you need to do is heal.”

Yeah, heal was all she needed to do, easy as that, no sweat.

Knife wounds, she was told, were dirty business, and Sunny’s didn’t disappoint. Despite a hardcore cocktail of intravenous antibiotics and post-surgical care, the wound grew infected around the sutures and had to be drained. More antibiotics and added humiliation followed and, soon, Sunny’s right breast took on the appearance of a war wound.

The physical agony was difficult enough; the mental that accompanied far worse.

Before the attack that late May night, Sunny slept on her right side, on the right side of their bed, a position that was both natural and reassuring because it put her in clear view of Joseph, who normally slept sprawled on his back, and usually naked.

In early June, after the infection cleared up and the mottled skin around the wound stopped looking like rancid meat, Sunny took to facing away from him, on her left side, and only then after a nightly pain pill that didn’t so much help her to sleep as knock her out. Lying on her back was impossible. She’d never slept on her spine, even before running into Rona Bustamante’s knife.

Joseph’s hand wandered over her outer thigh. She imagined him, so handsome with his swarthy, unshaved face, the face of a pirate, his emerald eyes filled with mischief. He growled in that lusty way that normally did the trick while touching her the way she loved, only now his advances felt like an invasion. She pushed his hand away.

“No.”

Joseph kissed her shoulder. “Why?”

She knew why. She wasn’t ready. She felt ugly, splayed open. But mostly because the bitch who’d tried to slay her was still in the room, an apparition lurking in the shadows. Rona Bustamante was dead, but she’d never really left.

“You sure?” he persisted.

Sunny felt his stiffness jabbing into her, and the scrape of his hair-covered athlete’s leg against hers. She wanted to want him; he was a god among men, at least on the outside, and he was crazy about her. She didn’t want to because she knew the agony would far outweigh any ecstasy. Still, she caved to his advances and was proven right.

The wound necessitated certain changes from their normal repertoire of positions. Sunny rode him reverse cowboy, in which Joseph couldn’t see her face but more importantly her front. He mistook her sobs for moans of pleasure.

“I need to see it,” she said. “The place where Bustamante offed herself.”

Deschler looked at her like she’d asked him to fuck a goat. “You’re joking, right?”

“Lieutenant, the day some insane asshole runs a knife through your flesh, you can question my sincerity. Until then . . .”

“Why?” the policeman asked, shooting her a look from across a desk littered with the clutter and chaos of fresh crimes.

Sunny fought the urge to cry and won the battle. It was getting easier to vanquish the tears, not so easy to abolish the nightmares, the night terrors, or the phantom chills that Rona Bustamante was somehow still out there, lurking in wait to come at her again.

“Because I’m not convinced the bitch is dead and buried,” she admitted, aware of the tick in her lower lip and the nagging nervous twitch she’d developed under one eyebrow.

“She isn’t,” Deschler said matter of fact. “She was cremated. Her ass is mostly ash now, floating around in the clouds. The rest of her is in an urn at the county coroner’s office, waiting for someone to claim it. So far, nobody has.”

“I need to see the place where she lived. Where the bitch died. Please,” she stressed. “If I’m ever going to get over this and not piss myself every time I walk into a bathroom un-chaperoned . . .”

Deschler sighed. “Fine. I’ll take you over.”

“Thanks, seriously.” She started to rise.

Deschler lifted his dress shirt by the corner, taking the gray T beneath up with it. “Seven years ago.”

Sunny’s eyes zeroed in on a zipper-shaped scar, worse in scope than hers, which the best plastic surgeon on the East Coast had promised to remove once she was ready.

“And just so you know, he was insane
and
an asshole.”

Sunny nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Deschler waved it off. “Come on, let’s do this so you can get over your fear of powder rooms, and I can get back to the active cases trying to bury me alive.”

She didn’t tell Joseph. Riding beside Deschler in the front passenger’s seat of the unmarked police car, she questioned the decision. Though sitting up front, Sunny imagined herself in the backseat, behind the metal security screen, a prisoner forced to ride on seats where other criminals had bled and puked. Her pulse galloped. Joseph would be pissed to know she was traveling north of Boston, headed to Lovell Green. Pissed, because she hadn’t really moved on, as she’d lied, hadn’t returned to cooking, or to YUM!, even with the new seasons of
Sunny’s Side Up
and
Slice and Dice
being readied for pre-production. But how could she get over what had happened when she still didn’t understand why?

Over a friggin’ mushroom recipe? Sunny remembered the nauseating shudder of crab-stuffed crimini right after the bitch stuck her. The basic yet beautiful recipe, which had pulled crab, butter, garlic, breadcrumbs, fresh basil, salt, cracked pepper, minced shallots, and mushroom together, creating the perfect bite, had appeared in her newest cookbook,
Sunny Soirees
. A basic recipe from the third season of her flagship show, ideal for entertaining. She hadn’t stolen it. Legally, such a crime didn’t even exist. The only thievery in the kitchen existed in the paranoid family cooks who either kept their recipe boxes under lock and key or grandmothers determined to take their favorite creations to the grave.

Sunny drew in a deep breath. The lingering blood and barf in the car struck her imagination like crab-stuffed criminis. She vowed never to eat another mushroom for the rest of her life.

The house was a typical 1970s split level, with an atypical detached two-car garage and an apartment above it. They pulled to a stop across the road, on a pitted stretch of asphalt the color of faded denim. Sunny’s heart hammered in her chest. The twitch behind her eyebrow ticked.

“So this is it?”

“This is it. The owner of the house isn’t too happy about this, just so you know. She lost the rent, and the renter. You’d think people would be lining up to take the place. The whole celebrity angle. But from what I’ve heard, they haven’t.”

“My heart’s done bleeding, literally and figuratively,” Sunny said, exiting the car.

On the march toward the garage, Deschler said, “I’m just warning you. The landlady’s got a thorn in her ass and it’s made her prickly.”

The woman stood at the base of the outside staircase, keys in hand, a lit cancer stick clutched between the fingers of the other. A question mark of noxious gray smoke curled above her. She was hag-gard-looking, short, with bottled red hair.

“Mrs. Whittenburg,” Lieutenant Deschler said.

The woman fixed her dark eyes on Sunny, tisked, and exhaled a locomotive breath. “Make this fast. I’ve got someone coming in to check the place out at four-thirty.”

She ran her eyes up and down Sunny, slaying her with a look, then turned. The smoke cloud dispersed as she ascended the stairs. Deschler moved up next. Sunny followed, and the healing wound pulsed with her steps, the ache reignited by gravity and memory pressing down on tender flesh.

The steps blurred underfoot. Sunny drew in a deep breath and held it. Breathing hurt now, too. She was the closest she’d come to Rona Bustamante since the night of the party, the night of the stabbing, and her body knew it. The body didn’t forget, and seemed to be remembering the intimate details of the attack on a cellular level.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sunny huffed, willing the anxiety to vanish.

The phantom pain crackled out, and her next sip of air came with greater ease. Rona Bustamante was dead, reduced to ashes. It
was
time to move on. First, she needed to move in and see the place for herself.

The Whittenburg woman unlocked the door. A smell of must and spoiled food wafted out, bitter on the nostrils. “I’ll leave you to it. Don’t touch anything.”

She lobbed another hate-laced leer at Sunny, then plodded down the stairs and out of sight.

“Must be a fan,” Sunny said.

Deschler snorted a chuckle. “Do you want me to go in with you?”

“Yes,” Sunny said. Deschler started to move, but she touched his arm, stopping him in place. “But for my purposes, I think I need to go it alone.”

He nodded, and Sunny wandered into the gloom.

It was a square place, with every curtain drawn and plenty of dark corners. The sort of apartment where a recluse hiding from exposure to the light and the outside world would flourish. The perfect place for growing mushrooms, Inner Bitch said.

The door opened on a living room. The furniture was overstuffed and appeared somewhat ominous in the shadows. Sunny flipped on the nearest light switch. A pair of lamps on occasional tables lit. The long sofa bore splotchy stains and, she noted, the rotted core of an apple. Sunny pressed forward, passing the first of three doors at her left. A bathroom, she saw through the half-open door. Piles of clothes littered the floor. The next was a bedroom. She had neither the need nor the desire to go in there after catching a private glimpse of Rona Bustamante’s former life, displayed in layers of mess and clutter. Besides, Sunny was there for the kitchen.

The musty stink of spoiling food grew stronger on those final few steps. The kitchen occupied the right side corner at that end of the apartment. There were two windows, both cloaked in dark fabric. Sunny flipped another switch. An overhead light snapped on and rained an unhealthy fluorescent glow onto a dirty white gas range, where her adversary had done the deed, a mismatched harvest gold fridge, a spice rack, and a sink filled with dirty dishes. Sunny guessed that the source of the putrid odor in the place originated in the soup of that brewing science experiment.

Sunny covered her mouth and glanced around. Builder beige walls. A wine rack, with three bottles. Cutting board. Knife block. Sunny exhaled a breathless, “Fuck,” and pulled out the blades, one at a time, noting the sharpness of each. She then turned toward the refrigerator. The door to the side-byside’s freezer was broken. Even before opening the fridge side, Sunny’s Inner Bitch opened an internal dialogue with her.

I’d never eat at Sally’s house.

“Sally?” Sunny asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Yeah, Sally Monella . . .

Sunny shook her head and opened the door. A stink of rotting food spilled out, enough to make her gag. She slammed the door shut, but not before catching a look at what was inside. Among the rotting vegetables, she saw a pair of whole crabs sitting on a platter, well past rancid. There was nothing quite like the smell of spoiled seafood.