One Hot Mess (2 page)

“So this has nothing to do with your son?” I asked.

“Well, in a manner of speaking…” he said, and let the
sentence dangle as he motioned toward my couch. “The past few days have been rather taxing. Do you mind if I have a seat?”

“No. Of course not.” It seemed wrong to say yes, even though, in fact, I did kind of mind. My hair was greasy, I was dressed like a down-on-her-luck stripper, and politicians tend to make me nervous, even when they're not my pseudo-boyfriend's prestigious sire.

The senator sat like he did everything—with a kind of polished panache. I tried to do the same, but Harlequin has ruined many of my grandiose gestures. Pulled off balance, I plopped into my La-Z-Boy like a kid on a trampoline, grateful that my T-shirt was long enough to compensate for my shorts, which were rigorously true to their name.

Wrestling the beast back under control and myself into an upright position, I stared at the senator. He looked as calm as a table leg. I, on the other hand, felt like there were Pop Rocks in my abbreviated pants.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” I asked. It was approximately five hundred degrees in the shade and had been for days, despite the fact that Thanksgiving had come and gone. Hence the practically nonexistent shorts and my growing suspicion that L.A. would, once again, be bereft of a white Christmas. “Water, soda?” I felt as dehydrated as pumice. “An IV drip?”

He smiled. “I'll take a bottle of water if you have it.”

I didn't. Elaine Butterfield, best friend and staunch tree-hugger, had warned me against the evils of plastic. One and a half million barrels of oil wasted annually on PET and all that. “Is tap water okay?”

He assured me it was, so I locked Harlequin in my solitary bedroom with his squeaky toy, Lucky Duck, then pattered
into the kitchen for the proposed beverage. It was lukewarm and a little brown, but I handed it over and sat back down, determined to look classier sans giant dog.

“Now, what can I do for you, Senator?” I asked, crossing one nearly naked leg over the other. I have pretty good legs, long and relatively slim. It's my torso that tends to resemble a steamer trunk—well stuffed and sturdy.

He sipped the drink, somehow refrained from making a face, and stared soulfully into my eyes.

“You are an intelligent woman, Christina.”

I waited. In the past, such statements have generally been followed by
“So why the hell are you acting like such a twit?” A
query that has been posed with the regularity of the setting sun.

“Articulate, well spoken, intuitive,” he added.

“Well… I wouldn't say—”

“You would be an asset to any organization.” He took another drink and nodded, staring ruminatively off into middle space.

I narrowed my eyes a little. “What organization do you have in mind?”

He shifted his gaze back to me and smiled as if just remembering I was there. “Tell me, Christina, have you ever considered becoming involved with politics?”

No. But I'd never really thought about having a dentist drill directly into my brainpan, either. “I'm afraid I have my hands full with my practice,” I said. My response sounded as diplomatic as all hell to me.

“I am certain you do,” the senator replied, diplomacy obviously not lost on him. “You are, after all, a successful businesswoman in your own right.”

Success is a matter of opinion, I suppose. The truth is, I
rent a little office in Eagle Rock, where I counsel the good, the bad, and the gorgeous. I had once been a cocktail waitress in the greater Chicago area but thought that getting a Ph.D. might provide a better income whilst allowing me to display a bit less cleavage as I ministered to the mentally unfortunate. I was partially right; my decolletage is almost always above my nipples these days. But while I could afford to buy a peanut buster parfait pretty much whenever I wished, I couldn't manage to pay for a new septic system. Thus SuperSeptic's third visit of the year.

I refrained from fidgeting while the senator continued. “Well educated. Intelligent.” He scowled a little and seemed to stare through my left eyeball and into the world beyond.

“Are you feeling all right, Senator?” I asked. Usually, when conversing with Miguel Rivera, it felt as though every other woman on the planet had mysteriously disintegrated. Perhaps it was that single-minded focus that made him so successful in the political arena. That and the fact that he looked like a slow orgasm in Armani.

He shifted his attention back to me with an apologetic smile. “I always wanted a daughter, Christina. Did you know that?”

No I didn't know that. In fact, according to his only son, Miguel Rivera should have been rendered impotent at puberty, but maybe that was a biased opinion. Most children have them. I myself have often compared my mother to a burying beetle, which, if the spirit moves it, will eat its young.

“Someone like you,” he added. “Bright, resilient.”

Was he hallucinating? “Listen—” I said, but he interrupted again.

“Practical, yet instinctive.”

“Ummm. Thank you.”

“Not to mention beautiful.” His smile brightened a little. He took a deep breath and leaned back, intensifying his focus by a couple hundred watts. “Any man would be lucky to have you,” he added, his voice soft and speculative.

“I—” I began, but suddenly the realization hit me like a linebacker on steroids: He was coming on to me. I jerked to my feet. It wasn't as if I hadn't fantasized about the good senator a time or two, but having your X-rated ideas reenacted in your living room is a little different than simply playing them through your mind when it's just you and your high-amp Frenchman. “I know Jack and I generally seem mutually homicidal,” I yammered. “But really, we're—”

“Good for each other.”

I let the rest of my intended monologue hang unspoken in the cranked-up silence. “What are you doing here?” I asked finally.

He looked mildly confused, then his eyes widened and he rumbled a good-natured laugh. “Surely you did not think that I was… that I was propositioning you, Christina.”

It took me a moment to catch my breath, longer still to zap my brain waves back on track. “Of course not,” I said, and stomped down my politically incorrect irritation. I mean, apparently I'm bright and beautiful and all that other crap, so why the hell
wasn't
he coming on to me? “Why
are
you here, exactly?” I asked, managing—quite successfully, I believe—to disguise my annoyance.

“I came to beg your help,” he said, and stood. Suddenly
his voice was darkly dramatic and as enticing as hidden calories.

Sometimes my late-night conversations with François began similarly but I didn't think this was going to be that kind of interlude. “My help?”

He held my gaze. “There has been a death.”

I flinched. My own life had been threatened on more than one occasion during the past year. It tends to make a person a little squirrelly.

“The police have not determined the cause, and I feel in here”—he placed a perfectly manicured hand on his chest—”that the mystery must be solved or there will be dire consequences.”

“What kind of consequences?”

“Unthinkable ones.”

The hair at the back of my neck crept upward like tiny fingers. “Such as?”

He watched me in silence as if wondering how much to say then: “I, too, am intuitive, Christina,” he said. “It is a gift from my mother's side.”

“Uh-huh. But what does this have to do with me?” I was trying pretty hard to act casual, but my heart seemed to be a little bit stuttery in my chest.

He gave a brief shrug. “Perhaps nothing.”

“Perhaps?”

Stepping forward, he took my hand in both of his. They felt warm and strong. “I did not mean to frighten you. It is simply that…” He paused. Emotion flashed through his ever-earnest eyes. Regret, sorrow, fear. Or maybe he was just a really first-rate actor. “I, too, am fearful.”

“Of…”

He drew a fortifying breath. “The truth is this: Last night I was visited by a dream,” he said.

I waited, but he failed to continue. “Is this a version of Dr. King's speech or…”

“About Gerald.”

“Oh?”

“As you know, he and I have had our difficulties.”

In fact, “Gerald” had at one time accused his old man of murdering the woman whom they'd shared as a fiancée— a long, twisted, and somewhat perverted story.

“But he is my only son. My heir,” he said, and fisted his hand against his chest. “The produce of my loins.”

Whoa
, I thought, and wondered if it was time to swoon like a wilted lily.

“I have no wish to see him hurt.”

I shook my head.

“In my dream…” He spread his fingers and swept his hand in the air between us, as if seeing the scene in panoramic color. “He was lying on the concrete. Eyes open, face pressed against the cold cement.”

Despite the theatrics, I felt my heart slow dramatically. My own dream last night had been similar, although in mine, there had been another body beside Rivera's—an unidentified woman. I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “What does this death have to do with Jack?” I asked.

“As of yet… nothing.”

“Then why—” I began, but he pulled a Polaroid from his breast pocket.

I reached for the photo with some misgiving, peered at the image, then turned it right side up and looked again. It took me a minute to determine the logistics. Longer still
to realize that the thing I was looking at had once been human. “Holy shit!” I rasped, and, jerking back, dropped the snapshot.

There was a moment of silence, then the senator stepped forward to retrieve the photograph. “I am sorry,” he said.

My hands were shaking. “What was that?”

“At one time that was a woman. Her name, I believe, was Kathleen Baltimore.”

I pulled my gaze from the picture to his face. “Why are you telling me this? Showing me this?”

“Because my dream also revealed
her.”

The shattered images of my own nocturnal imaginings jolted through me like a cruel electrical current.

“She lay on the concrete beside my son's unseeing body.” He paused. I said nothing. I felt too sick to my stomach to remind myself that I didn't believe dreams were the harbingers of evil to come. Neither did I set much store by the boogeyman or extraterrestrials. “So you see why answers must be found. Before it is too late,” he said.

“But who is she? How is Jack—”

“So far as I know, Gerald does not know Ms. Baltimore.”

“Then why—”

“Neither is he acquainted with most of the victims with whom he becomes involved. And yet he is put at risk with each new tragedy. Therefore, we must do something. For her as well as for him. Before my dreams become reality. As they so often do.”

I shook my head again. Thus far it wasn't helping the situation a great deal. And it was something I was good at.
“The LAPD is a huge department,” I said. “Are you sure Jack is even involved?”

“I believe my son has yet to review this case.”

I turned my head a little, maybe believing it would help me think. Couldn't hurt. “You got the picture before he did?”

He paused for a second. “In truth, Ms. Baltimore died in Edmond Park.”

“Edmond Park! That's—Is that even in California?”

“It lies some miles northwest of our fair city.”

“Nowhere near Jack's jurisdiction.”

“Maybe it would not be quite…
kosher
for Gerald to become involved in this tragedy, Christina, but he is a strong-willed man. A
stubborn
man. A man bent on justice, and I feel in my heart, in my
soul
, that he will become embroiled for some reason, and…” He shook his head, seeming to subdue a shudder. “My dreams of late have been quite vivid, filled with evil. With death. How would I forgive myself if something were to happen to him, my only son, before amends were made between us?”

I remained mute for a moment, trying to separate honest emotion from calculated sensationalism. But he was a politician. Perhaps the two had blended into one quixotic toxin years ago. “Listen, Senator,” I said, “I appreciate your concerns, but I don't know what this has to do with me.”

“It was you who solved the mystery of Andrew Bomstad.”

“That was different.” And quite personal. Bomstad had been determined to rape me before he dropped like a slapped housefly at my feet. It hadn't seemed quite fair that I might be held responsible for his death.

“What of Robert Peachtree?” he asked.

“Sorry about that,” I said, but it probably wasn't my place to apologize. Old Peachtree, had, after all, murdered the senators fiancée, Salina Martinez, and
tried
to do the same to me after I'd learned the truth. I know it seems unlikely—a nice person like me—but these things happen … repeatedly.

“I am not above begging,” the senator said.

“I'd like to help you. Really I would, but—”

“All I am asking is that you look into the situation. Learn the truth about her death before Gerald becomes involved. I would consider it an enormous favor.”

“I wish—”

“Indeed, you would be a hero to the great state of California. A shining example of feminine ability.”

“That's nice, but—”

Someone rapped a happy beat on a window not six feet from my head. I jumped, shoved my heart back into the too-tight confines of my chest, then excused myself to open the back door. SuperSeptic Guy stood there. His coveralls were still gleaming, as was his smile.

“Are you finished already?” I myself may have been a little more on the scowly side.

“I'm afraid you've a bit of a problem,” he said.

My spleen knotted up despite his toothy expression. “A problem?”

“It looks as if your pipes may need to be replaced.”

“Replaced.” My spleen did a free fall, waving dismally to my stomach as it headed toward my knees. “Which pipes?”

“All of them. It appears as if you're going to need an entirely new system.”

“I can't—”

“And the sooner the better.” He turned away, one happy little camper.

“Wait,” I said, stepping onto my dry, crackly lawn. “There must be something else you can do.”

“Traid not,” he said, and was already whistling as he disappeared around the corner of my house.