Unplugged (25 page)

I licked my lips and pulled away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He slammed his palm against my countertop. I jumped as if shot.

“Why the fuck won’t you let me help you?”

“Help me?” I rasped. “Half the time you’re accusing me of murder. The other half—” I thought he’d just been toying with me, firing up my hormones, confusing me. But his eyes were bright with some emotion I couldn’t quite identify, his body tight as a fiddle string.

“What about the other half?” he said, grabbing my arm and nudging me up against the refrigerator. His body felt as hard as the appliance behind me.

I kept myself absolutely stiff, lest I start humping his thigh. “I try not to get involved with men who accuse me of manslaughter on more than one occasion.”

He ran his hand down my arm. The air crackled like fireworks around us. “I think we’re already involved, McMullen.”

I was melting from the inside out. But I braced myself. “Leave me alone, Rivera,” I said. “I’m not drunk enough for this.”

He smiled, the edge of that wolfish smirk, and then he kissed me.

I felt the starch go out of my knees. I felt my mind go limp.

He drew back. I caught the edge of the counter with the heel of my hand and propped myself upright.

“If I hear you’re withholding information, McMullen, I’ll throw your pretty ass in jail.”

I blinked.

“Lock the door behind me,” he said, “and get rid of that damned rat.”

18

There is wrong. There is dead wrong. And then there’s Miss McMullen.

—Father Pat,
who never quite forgave Christina for her various, but imaginative, indiscretions

I
WAS SOUND ASLEEP
when my phone rang on Saturday morning, but my mind kicked into gear with unusual speed. The past few days had been hard on my nerves, but pretty good for my mental clarity.

“Chrissy.” It was my mother. As far as I know she never sleeps. Three o’clock in the morning, eleven-thirty at night—it didn’t matter when I had been sneaking into . . . or out of . . . the house. She always knew. “You sound funny. You okay?”

“It’s . . .” I turned the alarm clock toward me on my bed stand and resisted swearing. Mom wasn’t above traveling two thousand miles to wash my mouth out with soap. “Early,” I said.

“It’s after eight.”

“In Chicago,” I corrected, and hoped she would remember a little thing called time zones.

“Oh, that’s right. Well . . .” Her tone was breezy. “I wanted to tell you Peter John got home safe and sound.”

“Great.”
My
tone might have lacked a little enthusiasm. But I really
was
glad. If he was in Chicago, he wasn’t in L.A.

“Well, it
would
be great, except Holly won’t let him in the house.”

I sat up in bed, immediately impressed. I didn’t remember Holly as being particularly bright or confrontational. “What?”

“She says she’s having second thoughts.”

“Holly?” I was never sure she’d had a first thought.

“Yes, Holly.” There was a momentary pause. “I want you to call her.”

“What?”

“You’re a psychologist. I want you to call her and tell her to take him back.”

I think I breathed a weird sort of laugh. “Mom, this is none of my business. I can’t just—”

“Never mind, then.” I could imagine her drawing herself up. Like a martyr ready for the flames. “I guess you don’t have time to help out your family.”

And there it was—the guilt. Right there below the surface, ready to erupt like a festering boil at the least provocation.

“Well . . . I’ll let you get back to sleep,” she said.

I gritted my teeth, but the words came out anyway. “Okay. I’ll call her.”

“No. Don’t bother. I’ll—”

“I’ll call her,” I repeated.

We hung up not twenty seconds later. I went to the bathroom, drank a glass of water, and tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. Cursing a blue streak, I pattered barefoot across my kitchen floor, dragged my address book out of my top drawer, and called Pete’s latest phone number.

Holly answered on the third ring. Needless to say, she was surprised to hear from me. I don’t exactly have my brothers on speed dial as I’m rarely in a huge rush to have someone force-feed me sheep droppings.

“Chrissy.” Her voice was as little-girl sweet as I remembered.

“Yes, hi.” I cleared my throat, having no idea whatsoever where to go from there. “Ummm . . . how are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Good. I’m good. Say, I just wanted to make sure Pete got home okay.”

“Yes.” There was a pause. “He’s back.”

“Good.” I nodded. “Excellent. He seemed upset, you know, and I wanted—”

“Did your mother tell you to call?”

“Well, actually . . .” I was hoping she’d interrupt before I completed the sentence, but she didn’t. “She was worried . . . about you . . . and Peter.”

“He’s not a child, you know,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She drew a heavy breath. “Listen, Chrissy, it’s nice of you to call and all, but . . . Peter’s not as perfect as you think.”

“Perfect . . .”

“He’s . . . Sometimes I think he’s just in it for the sex.”

Jesus! “I—”

“Not that the sex is bad. I mean, really, it’s amazing. He can make me—”

“Holly!” I think I might have shouted her name, but if there was one thing I didn’t want to hear about at 6:33 in the morning, it was my brother’s phenomenal sex life. “I don’t think Pete is perfect.”

“You don’t?”

For God’s sake, had the world gone mad? “No. I think . . . I think he might have a few flaws.”

She sighed. “He’s just . . . Sometimes he’s kind of immature.”

Kind of? I had a dead rat that suggested she was being rather generous here.

“But, I mean . . .” She paused. “I still love him.”

And wasn’t that just the kicker. The man had the mind of a possessed two-year-old. But she loved him. I leaned back in my slatted wooden chair and let those words sink into my fuzzy brain. “Have you two considered counseling?”

“Counseling?”

“Therapy.”

There was a long pause. “I don’t think he’d go for that.”

Neither did I, but an errant thought struck me. “Where’s he staying now?”

“I think he’s in his old room.”

“At Mom and Dad’s?” I think I grinned a little at the thought. If I remembered correctly, Pete liked to have a few beers in the morning and sleep in. Mom had a habit of waking everyone at six-thirty sharp. Like revelry.

“What if you said you’d consider taking him back if he went to couple’s therapy?” I asked.

“I don’t think he’d do it.”

“Then you don’t have to take him back, do you?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I closed my eyes and chastised myself in silence. If Mom heard about this, she’d be on the first plane west.

“But I . . . I love him.”

“Then you have to decide whether you’re willing to put up with his infantile cr—” I stopped myself judiciously. “You have to decide what you want, Holly. It’s up to you.”

There was a long pause. I waited. “There’s, um . . .” She cleared her throat. “There’s something else.”

Her tone sounded funny. I felt a premonitory tingle of trouble along the arches of my feet. “What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

I remained absolutely mute. Unable to speak. My brothers were morons. My brothers were adolescent. But there was one thing they’d consistently done right—they’d failed to procreate. It had been like a miracle. But now . . .

“So, see?” Her voice was even softer than usual. “That’s why I have to just . . . accept him as he is.”

Something inside me—good sense maybe—insisted that I keep my mouth shut. But it opened anyway. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” I said. “That’s what his ex-wives always did.”

The conversation lasted another thirty minutes. I hung up feeling kind of queasy.

I spent the rest of the day waiting for the phone call that would banish me from the family, smoking, and searching for clues about Jed and Lopez.

Mom didn’t call. I smoked half a pack of Slims, and I found nothing on either criminal. There simply wasn’t enough information.

But I had to find Solberg. If my conversation with Holly had taught me one thing, it was that the little geekster wasn’t as bad as he could be. True, he was as irritating as hell and not good enough to breathe Laney’s air, but at least he hadn’t gotten her pregnant and skipped town. In fact, he hadn’t even tried to sleep with her. Maybe he really loved her. And maybe he was really in trouble. And maybe, proba-bly even, that trouble was somehow tied to NeoTech.

I had to find out. That much was obvious. Perhaps it wasn’t so obvious that I should drive back to Hilary Pershing’s house, slither through her yard like an egg-hungry weasel, and try to sneak a peak through her window again. But I was planning to do just that, because someone had embezzled from NeoTech, probably the same someone who had caused Solberg’s disappearance. And wouldn’t it make sense if that someone made considerably less money than her fellow employees?

At 11:42 I sat in my car down the street from her house. My palms were sweaty, but I had my flashlight and stool and I was determined.

At 11:47 I made myself leave the sanctuary of my Saturn. The street was dark. My shoes sounded loud against the blacktop. Pershing, like ninety-five percent of L.A.’s paranoid populace, had erected a metal fence around her property, but by this point in my investigative insanity, it was little more than a nuisance. After a minute I was on the inside, carrying my stool and slinking along the side of her house. I could hear my own breathing in the darkness. If I didn’t start jogging again soon, I was going to die of cardiac failure long before anyone got the chance to shoot me.

When I had reached the window in question, I stood with my back pressed to the rough stucco of the house. All was quiet. It was now or never.

I positioned the stool, stepped onto it, and switched on my flashlight.

“Turn it off,” ordered a voice from behind.

I froze like a Fudgsicle, nerves cranked up tight.

“Did you hear me?”

I switched off the flashlight and tried to look behind me, but something poked me in the back.

“If you turn around I’ll shoot you. Swear to God.”

“Hilary?” My voice was shaking.

“Who are you?”

It
was
Hilary. I didn’t know if that should make me feel better or worse. I guess when someone has a gun pressed to your spine, the assailant’s identity isn’t of utmost importance.

Ideas were whirling through my head like water down a toilet. I caught one and spun it out.

“I’m a cop, Hilary,” I said. “And I know the truth.”

“You’re not a cop.”

“I am.” Sweat trickled between my breasts. “Officer Angela Grapier. Precinct twelve. My partner knows I’m here, Hilary. Frank’ll be meeting me in a couple minutes.”

“Get down from there.”

I did so, slowly, joints stiff, not daring to turn. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Hilary. You’re in trouble, but I can help you.” Or hit her in the face with my flashlight and run like bloody hell. “Put the gun down. We can talk. I know about you and Solberg. I know he . . .”

But there was a thud and a moan behind me.

“Hilary?”

“I love ’em.”

“Ummm . . . Can I turn around?”

“I love ’em so much. Don’t take ’em away from me.”

I turned slowly, the hairs on my arms prickling. She was on her knees. A short-handled broom lay on the grass beside her.

“I know I’ve done wrong.” She was scrunching her fists up against her chest. “But I can’t let ’em go to just anyone.”

“Ahhh . . . Is he inside?”

“They all are. All of them.”

My mind blinked and struggled. “All of . . .”

“My cats. All my cats. I know I have too many. City ordinance and all that. I know. But they’re like family. Damn Solberg for turning me in.”

“Ummmm.” Now, here was a weird turn of events. “Where’s Solberg?” I asked.

She looked up. Her face shone with tears in the uncertain light. “How the hell would I know? That snotty little worm. What does he care how many cats I have? He’s known about ’em for years. All of a sudden, he’s some goody-two-shoes. Says I should get rid of ’em. Like they’re trash or something. I coulda killed ’im.”

“Did you?”

“What?” She blinked. “Of course I didn’t kill ’im. What would happen to my babies if I was in jail? I confronted the nasty little mongrel, but he just walked out.”

My mind was buzzing. “Walked out of where?”

“His room in Vegas,” she said, and scowled. “It was twice the size of mine. That bastard Black has always favored ’im.”

O
kay.

So I could cross Hilary off the short list. She was as nutty as a granola bar and as bitter as hell, but she hadn’t killed Solberg and stored his rotting body in her spare room. Instead, she had stored forty-seven cats. Apparently, Solberg had known about them and threatened to tell City Hall. She’d retaliated by promising to remove his balls if he did. That’s when he thought it prudent to leave his room. It was also when Elaine had called.

Anyway, I took one look at all those cats, told her she had six months before the Los Angeles Police Department came down on her like a ton of farmyard waste, and fled the premises.

“But I live in Irwindale,” she said, which was an excellent point, but I was already out the door and halfway to my car.

T
he next morning I drove up to what I referred to as Wilderness Point again and spent a zillion hours watching the two houses on Amsonia Lane. Tiffany had come and gone and come and gone. Neither Solberg nor Mr. Georges, the esteemed barrister, had shown so much as a wilted tail feather.