Unscrewed (10 page)

11

G
OOD MORNING-TIDE, Sensei.”

It was neither Elaine’s garbled twist of Middle English and Japanese nor her husky accent that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was her ensemble. “Is that…alpaca?” I asked. I had seen her only a few hours before, during our run, and wasn’t quite prepared for the metamorphosis.

She glanced down at herself. Some kind of multicolored fur covered her chest…almost. Below that her midriff was bare. Taut with muscle the color of clover honey, it swept in a shallow valley down to a silk wraparound skirt.

“I got a callback,” she said.

“No kidding? For Xena.”

“Amazon queen.”

“That’s fantastic. When do you go in?”

“This afternoon. I’m crazy nervous.”

“Nervous! Don’t be ridiculous. One look at you in that”—I motioned to her chest—“dead thing, and they’ll be handing over their babies wrapped in movie contracts.”

“You think?”

I tossed my purse onto a chair and gave her another once-over. “Absolutely. Is Amazon Xena from the Orient?”

“I don’t know. I thought I inferred an intriguing Asian bent to the dialogue, but I’m flying blind here. I couldn’t—Whoops. Client at two o’clock,” she said, and suddenly Amazon Xena was gone, replaced by a smiling Brainy Laney dressed in conservative silk.

Ten minutes later I was sitting in the day’s first session. Bonnie Reinhart was forty-six years old, a kleptomaniac, and lots of fun. In fact, I couldn’t find a single reason she might feel the need to steal, except of course that she enjoyed it. After five weeks of therapy, that’s all I had discovered.

My next client wasn’t quite so enjoyable. He’d been baptized Jeremiah Denny, but I’d been informed that his friends called him Jenny. His parents were concerned that it was because he was uncertain about his sexuality. But judging by his unrelenting concentration on my boobs, I was pretty sure they could rest easy on that count. They might have wanted to consider the fact that he was obsessed with sex and lacked any sort of social skills, however.

Angela Grapier entered my office not four minutes after Jeremiah shambled off. Angie’s been my client since her dad decided she’d be better off without drugs and the certifiable boyfriends that went with them.

“Who’s the perv?” she asked, tossing her backpack on the floor and curling up in the corner of my cushy couch. Angie’s one of those people who can sum things up pretty quick. It had cost Jeremiah’s parents a few hundred bucks for me to come to the same conclusion Angie had made for free in fourteen seconds.

“Can’t tell you,” I said, and refrained from adding
“Na na na boo boo,”
even though Angie tends to bring out the kid, and the tuba player, in me. “How’s school?”

“Got an A in French. He always stare at boobs like that?”

I considered being coy. It hardly seemed worth it.
“Oui,”
I said.

She shrugged. “Hope you get paid good,” she said, and moved on to concerns about her upcoming college plans and guys who thought they were funny but really weren’t.

Five minutes after she left, the doorbell tinkled. Thirty seconds later, Elaine rang from the reception desk.

“Bonjour,”
I said.

“Ms. McMullen.” Elaine was using her professional voice. It rarely precedes good things. I wondered vaguely if she’d had time to stow her broadsword behind the file cabinet before the latest arrival.

“What’s up?” I have a professional voice, too, but I don’t like to risk wearing it out.

“Two officers are here from the LAPD to see you, Ms. McMullen.”

I gripped the receiver a little harder. True, the boys in blue were bound to arrive sooner or later. Still, I felt my blood run cold. There’s nothing like a personal visit from a professional crime fighter to make you feel as guilty as sin.

“Tell them I went home,” I said. “I’ll hide under my desk.” This wasn’t an original idea. We’d tried it with Lieutenant Rivera once, in fact. It hadn’t worked out real nifty. But Father Pat of Holy Name Catholic High School had been a big believer in the theory that practice makes perfect. It was one of several reasons I kept sneaking boys into his rectory for heavy-petting sessions. When I had justified my sins by saying that kissing “don’t always come natural,” he’d been less than amused.

“Let me check the appointment book,” Laney said.

I could hear her shuffling pages and scowled at nothing in particular. We both knew I had squat going on for the next three hours. We could get in a seventeen-course meal and five games of Parcheesi before my next appointment. I’m not particularly fond of Parcheesi, but it sounded better than being accused of murder one and crammed into the backseat of a cruiser that smelled like hookers and alcohol-infused urine.

“You don’t have a client until five o’clock, Ms. McMullen,” Laney informed me, “but you mustn’t forget about your dental appointment.”

To Laney there’s a fine line between lying and acting. Fictionalizing is what she did. I love Laney. “How do they look?” I asked.

There was the slightest pause. “Yes,” she said. “With Dr. Beckett.”

“Dr. Beckett” was code for “smart and sensitive.” After her emancipation from braces, acne, and terminal shyness, Laney had been inundated with every possible type of proposition, but we had kept a standing date to watch
Quantum Leap
every week until the powers that be lost their minds and cancelled the show in 1993.

“Does he have Bakula’s soulful eyes?” I asked.

“Definitely,” she said.

“If I let them in, you have to promise to get them out of here in ten minutes.”

“Certainly, Ms. McMullen.”

“Thanks, Laney. Wait,” I said, on the verge of hanging up. “Are they both Becketts?”

“One moment.” I heard her flipping papers again. “That’s Father Overmeir,” she said. “At six o’clock.”

Father Overmeir had taught freshman Algebra. I believe I’d once told Laney I wanted to lick his earlobes and/or bear his children. Father Overmeir was good-looking, tall, and amusing. Two years after graduation I could have sworn I saw him at a club called Master Blaster. He’d been doing the grind with a girl in pigtails who had size 11 feet and the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow. But that didn’t make him any less entertaining.

“Soften them up,” I said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Five minutes later my lip gloss was fresh and my hair firmly in place. I didn’t want to look like a bag lady for Dr. Samuel Beckett.

“Officers,” I said, standing very tall in my heavily discounted sling-backs. I was wearing a jungle green skirt that ended just shy of my knees, modest yet stylish, and accented with a bone-colored sleeveless shell. “Oh,” I said, recognizing the scholarly officer from Senator Rivera’s house. “Hi.”

They were both holding their hats in their hands and seemed momentarily at a loss. “Ms. McMullen,” said the nearest, rising to his feet. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Officer Bjorklund. This is Officer White.”

Laney had worked her magic. Bjorklund, aka Beckett, appeared to be composing poetry in his head, while Officer White looked happy but flushed beneath his milk chocolate complexion.

“Come in,” I said, motioning magnanimously toward my office. “I’m sorry I haven’t more time.”

They trooped in, barely stumbling at all as they tried to pretend they weren’t sneaking one more glance at Laney. I closed the door firmly behind them. On my desk, I have a photo of a good-looking guy holding the reins of a leggy red horse and smiling. His hair is tousled and streaked with silver. Sometimes clients assume he’s my husband. In actuality, the picture came with the frame. But I can honestly say I respect him more than most any guy I’ve dated.

“Have a seat. Would you like some coffee?” I asked. This is me being hospitable. Yowsa.

They declined.

“Cold water? I’ve got Fiji.” Personally, I risk my life on tap water on a daily basis, but Laney insists on impressing clients with designer fluids.

“I’ll take a bottle,” said White. Bjorklund held out. I think I may have been interfering with his rendition of “An Ode to Laney’s Eyes.” He probably would have been crushed if I’d told him it had been done a dozen times before we were juniors, so I handed over the bottled water and sat down, crossing my legs at the ankle and tucking them demurely beneath my swivel chair. “I imagine you came about Salina Martinez,” I said.

“Yes. Just a few follow-up questions,” said White.

“Very well.” I sounded so damned polished, I wished I’d had myself recorded for posterity.

“On the evening of Ms. Martinez’s death, you were at home. Is that correct?” asked Bjorklund.

“Yes.”

“Were you there alone?”

“Some of the time.” I already found that I wanted to expound, but I kept my answers concise. I’ve seen
Law & Order.

“You had company?”

“Lieutenant Rivera visited.”

“For how long?”

“A short while.”

“What were your plans?”

I raised a brow. As long as playing nice was advantageous, I was all for it. But I had to stop short of the full truth here. Because the plans I’d had for the dark lieutenant on that particular night may not have put me in a very positive, or moralistic, light.

“My plans?” I repeated.

“For the evening,” he said.

“We had hoped to dine out.”

“Anywhere specific?”

“A barbecue establishment in Rosemead,” I said.

“What was the name of the place?”

I didn’t want to say Big Bill’s Big BBQ for fear it might make me sound less than classy, but going anywhere else for ribs would simply make me look naïve, so I admitted the truth.

Bjorklund scribbled madly. “Did you have reservations?”

“I believe we did.”

They glanced at each other. It seemed like simple enough information, which made me wonder why they didn’t already know it. Certainly Rivera would have told them this much. “Did you call in the reservation, Ms. McMullen, or did the lieutenant?”

“Lieutenant Rivera said he would take care of those details.”

“But you never made it to…” Bjorklund glanced at his notes. “Big Bill’s Big BBQ?”

I played along, still wondering. “Lieutenant Rivera received a phone call before we left my house.” But not before I’d found myself plastered up against the bathroom wall like human linguini.

“Do you know who called him, Ms. McMullen?”

“No, I don’t.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

Seemed pretty obvious. “I’m afraid he didn’t.”

“But you must have had an idea.”

I tilted my chin down, gave them a long-suffering glance through my lashes, and crossed my right leg carefully over my left. Laney had done a good job revving up their guy hormones. I could tell because they watched my movement like tick hounds tracking a beef bone. “All he said was that there was trouble with his father. I didn’t know at the time that the senator was on his way to Seattle.”

“Boston,” Bjorklund corrected distractedly.

White looked mildly peeved, like he was just coming out of a trance. I’d seen it happen a thousand times before. In high school we’d called it “Laney Land.”

“Yes, of course,” I demurred, and hid my wily smile as I packed away the info.

“How long have you known Lieutenant Rivera, Ms. McMullen?”

“Since August twenty-fourth,” I said.

They scowled in unison. I could feel their mental wheels spinning. I refused to help them turn.

“Was that your first date?”

“No.” I knitted my fingers in my lap and watched them. Cool as pastrami, hardly remembering the dead body that had lain between us the first time I’d met Rivera.

“But you are dating him.”

“I wouldn’t refer to it in those terms.”

“How would you refer to it?”

Stupid. “We’re…acquaintances.”

“Did you know he was once engaged to Ms. Martinez?”

I kept my mouth firmly closed, so the scream I heard must have come from inside my head.

The bastard had been
engaged
to her? Engaged to his father’s fiancée, and he’d never said a word about it?

“No, I wasn’t aware of that,” I said.

White checked his notes. “Almost thirteen years ago.”

“It’s good of you to tell me,” I said, and wondered rather wildly why he had. “But Lieutenant Rivera and I only know each other casually.”

White glanced toward my door. Bjorklund nodded. “At approximately what time did he leave your house on Saturday night?”

“Eight-nineteen.”

“Exactly?”

“I think my kitchen clock is two minutes fast.”

“You’re very precise, Ms. McMullen.”

“One has to be in my line of work.” What a bunch of monkey doo-doo. I was a psychologist. It made cocktail waitressing look like a cross between brain surgery and deep-sea diving.

Officer White looked as if he was about to ask another question, but at that moment Elaine popped her head into my office and the interview came to a jolting halt. She was wearing the dead thing again, which meant that she’d bared her midriff. But she’d added a longbow to her ensemble. The string sliced across the melon of her left breast and underscored her right.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

No comment. Bjorklund looked like he’d just been struck by writer’s block in the middle of his sonnet. White’s eyes were the size of ripe tomatoes and his mouth was agape.

“Your mother eats raw sewage,” I intoned. Neither of them even glanced my way.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. McMullen,” Laney said, ignoring my statement. “But it’s three-ten, and traffic is going to be considerable.”

“Yes, of course. My root canal.”

“Dental appointment,” she corrected.

“Right,” I said, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if I’d told them I was going for bullfighting lessons which I took every Monday and Wednesday without fail from an aging matador in Madrid. “And you obviously have to morph into a warrior princess.”

“Amazon queen,” she said.

“Holy God,” someone mumbled. I think it was Bjorklund. His lips had gone white.