Not One Clue (14 page)

“Don’t scream,” he rasped, and I didn’t.

14

Conscience … nature’s way of making sure we don’t have too much fun.

—
Officer Tavis, who didn’t
actually believe there was
such a thing as too much
fun

“W
hat do you want?” My voice sounded like the croak of a waterlogged bullfrog.

The man behind me pressed a little closer. I swallowed and tried to breathe. “What are you offering?” he rumbled.

“My wallet’s—” I began, but in that instant my memory clicked into place. This same scenario had played out just a few days before. I took a deep breath through my nose, straightened slightly, and shifted my gaze cautiously to the left. “If you’re Rivera I’m going to kill you,” I said.

There was absolute silence, then, “What if I’m not Rivera?”

Something thumped in my chest. I think it was my heart hitting the light pole. I turned slowly, then glanced up.

Officer Tavis stood not three feet away. Tall and handsome and as innocuous as flan. He was eating an ice-cream cone that he held in his left hand.

“I take it you and Rivera aren’t quite ready to tie the knot,” he surmised. The words were a little muffled as he licked his cone.

“What the hell is wrong with you guys?” I asked. Tavis was a cop for a McTown nestled quietly up against the mountains a half a lifetime to the west of L.A. I’d met him while checking into a grisly murder that had taken place in sleepy little Edmond Park. He’d propositioned me within the first ten minutes. I wish I could say I resented that.

“Me? I just brought you an ice-cream cone,” he said, and shoved his right hand forward as proof.

“An ice-cream cone? An ice-cream cone?” My voice had risen into the range where only gerbils and cockroaches can hear it. “I don’t want a damned ice-cream cone. I want to be able to walk into a parking lot without having the bejeezus scared out of me by some hulking—”

“You don’t want it?”

“No, I don’t … Oh, give me that,” I said, and yanked it from his hand. It was starting to drip.

I licked the perimeter. Chocolate vanilla swirl.

“So I scared you?” he asked.

I gave him a glare. “What the hell were you doing lurking like a …” I searched for the proper words. “… gargoyle between the damned—”

He laughed. Golden-haired and beautiful, he looked like a happy angel. “I didn’t think you
got
scared, Chrissy.”

The ice cream was beginning to chill my nerves and restore the usual munificence I reserve for all mankind. “I didn’t think
you
were an idiot.”

“Really?” When he smiled his dimples popped out. It was like trying to stay mad at Buddha.

“But I was obviously wrong,” I said.

He put a palm to his chest. It looked broad and capable. “That’s the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Yeah, well …” I opened my car door. “Stick around,” I said, and he laughed.

“I was
hoping
for an invitation.”

I scowled over the driver’s door at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Me?” He could look as innocent as a choirboy when he wanted to.

I gave him a look. He dimpled again.

“I came in for the premiere of the new Jonas Brothers movie.”

I stared, waiting for him to crack a smile. Nothing. “You’re a Jonas Brothers fan?”

“Don’t you think they’re dreamy?” I canted my head at him.

“I have two nieces living in Covina,” he explained finally. “They assure me the Jonas Brothers
are
, in fact, dreamy.”

“You came all this way to see a boy band?” I was going to have to readjust everything I knew about this man … which, admittedly, wasn’t much. But maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was, after all, California. Half the population was invited to red carpet shindigs. Westwood Village was always shining with starlets.

“Well, for that,” he said, “and to ask you to have sex with me.”

I shook my head and put my foot inside the Saturn.

“Chrissy?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you’ll have sex with me?”

I snorted and lowered myself toward the seat. I had almost quit shaking.

“Don’t you even check your backseat?” he asked.

Sometimes I truly hate men. “Thing is,” I said, “I find that the real crazies are in the parking lots.”

“Hey,” he said, and stepping forward, crouched in my open doorway. “I have a question for you.”

“No sex in the backseat!” I snapped.

A woman walked past holding a little girl’s hand. She scowled through the windshield at me. We watched them go by in silent tandem.

“Wow,” Tavis said as they disappeared from sight. “That was embarrassing. Anyway, I was wondering if you’ve heard anything about something called Intensity.”

I scowled, licked off my cone, and watched him. “Is this some sort of lead-in to more sex talk?”

“Do you want it to be?”

I put my key in the ignition, but he put a hand on my arm, and even that little touch did something odd to me. Fear sometimes heightens my libido. I know it’s weird. But so are emu.

“I’m serious as a heartache, here, Chrissy. Intensity … you heard anything about it?”

I lowered my hand and stared at him. He did, in fact, look serious. And ridiculously handsome. “What is it? A new form of Russian roulette or something?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

I shook my head and he sighed.

“Meth’s a problem in Kern County, but I think there’s some new shit hitting the fan.”

“How do you mean?”

“We had two kids die in the past month.”

“Teenagers?”

“Yeah.”

“From overdose?”

He shook his head. “Nothing showed up in the tox reports.”

“And there were no other signs of trauma.”

“Coroner says they died of asphyxiation.”

“Some weird sex thing?”

“There was no sign of anything sexual.”

“So you thought of me?”

He laughed. “I was wondering, you being a psychiatrist—”

“Psychologist.”

He grinned. “Thought maybe you’d heard something.”

“Why do you think there are drugs involved?” He shrugged, heavy shoulders lifting and falling. “There was some erratic behavior reported concerning the girl.”

“Erratic?”

“Friends say she was doing great for weeks. Happy. Good grades. Then one day she became aggressive. Thought everyone was out to get her. The next morning she was dead.”

“Did she have a history of drug abuse?”

“Not that anyone knew of.”

“Lots of kids are good at hiding their addictions.”

He nodded and backed away so I could close the door. “Well, call me if you hear anything, will you?”

I agreed.

“Or if you change your mind about that backseat,” he said, and I drove away, squirming a little.

* * *

B
y the time I got home, I was dreading seeing Solberg, but the house was notably sans irritation.

Laney smiled as she took a casserole from the oven. Domesticity in blue jeans. “How was your day?”

“Weird,” I said. “Where’s Solberg?”

“I didn’t think you’d feel too neglected if he ran a few errands while we ate.”

“I’ll try to survive.”

She had the table neatly set. The pile of reading material I usually keep atop the place mats was M.I.A. Every woman should have a wife.

We were eating in a matter of minutes. The casserole was something involving broccoli. Which normally would be a bad thing, but there was cheese and crunchy onions and some kind of noodles.

“Solberg made this?” I asked.

“Full of surprises, isn’t he?” she asked.

“I hope not,” I said, and finished off my plate. “I’ve been thinking about those letters.”

She scowled. “You shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

“I wish we had copies.”

“And you assume we don’t?”

I gave her the eye. “You’ve kept copies?”

“Mac, seriously, did you think I wouldn’t know an obsessive-compulsive like you would need to pore over them?”

“You think I’m obsessive?”

“And compulsive.”

“Oh,” I said, and helped myself to a second serving. But just a little one since I was on a low-broccoli diet.

* * *

“S
o the length of each letter hardly varies at all,” I said.

“Two or three are a few sentences longer.” Elaine was standing upright, gazing at the letters laid out in chronological order across her mattress. Hers had been a better option than mine, as it didn’t look as if a humpbacked monster were lurking beneath the scattered covers.

“And each begins with Dearest Ms. Ruocco. Your stage name.” I scowled. “Very formal.”

“So maybe he’s an older man,” Laney said.

“But not so old that he’s shaky. The words are extremely well formed.”

“His speech is quite proper, so I would guess he’s educated.”

“And it’s written with …” I leaned down, putting my face close to the papers. “A fountain pen?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Does that mean he’s … Catholic?”

Even though Elaine is decidedly un-Catholic, we had attended Holy Name Catholic School together for more years than I care to remember. The nuns there thought ballpoint pens were instruments of the devil. “Or he just really likes fountain pens.”

“He must have some resources,” she said.

I nodded. “Either he followed you here to L.A. or he lived here in the first place and traveled to Idaho.”

“Every loop is approximately the same size as the last. And the spacing between the words is uniform. He’s very careful.”

“So he wants to impress you,” I said, and scowled. Laney had never met a man who didn’t hope to make an impact in one way or another. I wasn’t surprised one would finally stoop to penmanship. More than a few had tried poetry. Several had sung ballads. Three love-struck fellows had tattooed her name on some part of their anatomy and one particularly inventive chap had christened his prize-winning bull after her. Butterfield wasn’t really that bad a name for a dairy animal.

“His letters are narrow and vertical,” she said. “Suggesting a need to control.”

I looked at her.

She looked back. “I was paying attention during
Murder, She Wrote.”

“Seriously?”

“Are you saying I’m wrong?”

“It’s bound to happen once.” I scowled. “But I think the fact that you believe Solberg to be Homo sapiens has covered that eventuality.” I was chewing my lip. We were both staring at the letters, considering our findings.

“So, in review … he’s probably past middle age,” she said. “Judging from the phraseology.”

“But not yet old.”

“He’s relatively wealthy.”

“And educated.”

“Possibly Catholic.”

“Repressed.”

“Definitely
Catholic,” we said in unison.

“Formal,” I said. “Yet with each letter he seems to become increasingly familiar.”

“As if he knows me,” she said.

“Or
feels
that he knows you.”

She nodded. The paparazzi had been pretty busy lately. As far as we knew, none of them had yet realized she was slumming in Sunland with her dearest friend. So Letter-Writer must have gotten his information elsewhere. I wondered if it made him feel important to have obtained knowledge that others would have paid money for. “He’s controlled,” Laney said.

“Neat.”

“Polite.”

“Obsessed.”

We scanned the letters. Each one was almost identical to the next. “Methodical,” Laney said. The salutation was the same, the body of the letter was short, direct, and adoring.

“And infatuated,” I said. “Which probably brings the possibilities down into the millions.”

15

Apparently a large number of people are extremely bored.

—
Patricia Ruocco, aka Elaine
Butterfield, after hearing of
Amazon Queen’s
phenomenal viewership

T
he next week was a whirlwind of activity. I saw a zillion clients, shopped for shoes, and finally perused Laney’s list of cast members, aka potential whack jobs. The sheer numbers were daunting. Who knew it could take that many people to make a cheesy, international hit?

It was Monday night. I glanced up from the kitchen table at Laney, who stood beside me, reviewing the same list. “Yikes,” I said.

“I know.”

“Anybody you have any bad vibes about?”

“I’m not feeling great about judging people on a passing whim,” she said.

“How do you feel about me getting shot in my sleep?”

“Iffy,” she said.

“Good to know. Anyone?” I asked again.

She skimmed the list, scowling a little, then pointed to a name. “He’s kind of …” She shrugged a shoulder. “Different.”

I read the name. Benjamin Vanak. “What kind of different?”

“I don’t know. He’s …” She shook her head, thinking. “Aloof maybe.”

I raised my brows and looked over my shoulder at her. “Are you saying he’s not smitten?”

“Shocking, isn’t it?”

“And refreshing. How long has he been with the
Amazon Queen
team?”