07 Uncorked - Chrissy McMullen Mystery (10 page)

“What are you talking about? No, I didn’t. He had exceptional fingernails.

Exemplary fingernails. He kept them nicely trimmed and hardly ever chewed them. In fact…” I was prepared to pontificate further and the state of his nails, but she gasped softly.

I started and jerked my eyes expectantly toward the front door, but was pleasantly surprised to see that no marauding bandits were attacking just yet.

“You never believed Rivera cheated on you,” Laney said.

I yanked my gaze back toward her, but her attention remained elsewhere, as if she were divining the truth from some unseen force.

“What?” I rasped. “That’s crazy. Of course I did. I saw them together in his car. They were—” I began, but she barely even noticed I existed.

“I was wondering why you were so calm. Why there were no death threats or cherry bombs or—”

“That cherry bomb incident was years ago.”

“For a while I thought you must not care about him as much as I thought you did, but now I realize the truth.” She turned slowly toward me, expression placid, eyes eerie. “You just wanted a way out.”

“What are you talking about? A way out of what?”

“Out of love.”

I stared at her for a second, then threw my head back like a hyena on a hot scent and cackled. “That’s insane.”

She didn’t argue, but I wasn’t done raving.

“Being a star has made you delusional.”

“Living alone has made you a coward.”

I was honestly stricken. Laney doesn’t say mean things. Not unless they are absolutely true and might somehow be helpful. But I was far beyond caring about that kind of ridiculous detail. “I am not a coward.”

“Then why didn’t you make Rivera explain himself?”

“He did explain.”

“Once. He explained it once. After which, you failed to demand a hundred replays of the situation. Instead, you simply decided not to believe him.”

“Because he’s male.”

She gave me a WTF look.

“He’s male,” I explained. “And therefore he lies.”

“That’s the dumbest…” She paused, took a deep breath. “What exactly did you see?”

“What?” I felt a little skittish suddenly, though I couldn’t have said why. I mean, I had the moral high ground.

“When you saw them in his car, what were they doing?”

“She was sitting on his lap.”

“On his lap. In the car.”

“It can be done. Trust me.” In fact, if one was truly motivated it could be done while wearing a tuba. Go, teenage Chrissy!

“All right. What were they wearing?”

I swallowed and steadied my hands. “He was naked.”

“Naked.”

“Yes.”

“You could see that even though she was sitting on his lap?” I gritted my teeth. “Listen, Laney, I know Rivera. He’s not the Dalai Lama or anything.”

“So you know he had his pants off. Somehow divined it.”

“Yes.”

“So when he saw you…when he came running after you, did he put on his pants first?”

My lips twitched.

“He didn’t follow you buck naked, did he?”

I glanced toward the door.

“Did he?”

“Of course not. We were in the middle of Highland Avenue.”

“But he had his pants on by the time he caught up to you.”

“He’s very fast,” I said.

She remained silent, watching me.

“He’s had a lot of practice. The man’s a—”

“He didn’t have his pants off, did he, Mac?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter what he had off. I knew his intent.”

“So you were ready to take a melon baller to Maynard, who, for the record, did not have particularly dazzling fingernails, but you weren’t willing to even hang around to find out what Rivera was doing?”

“I knew what he was doing.”

“Really? Then Skank Girl must have been naked.”

I pursed my lips. “For your information, people don’t have to be entirely unclothed to have sex.”

She looked puzzled. “Are you sure? That’s not what I’ve been told.” I sputtered something nonsensical at her, but before I was even done, she interrupted.

“Nobody wants to be hurt, Mac.”

“That’s exactly—”

“But you can’t bail just because you’re afraid it might happen.”

“He propositioned—”

“I don’t lie to you,” she said, and there was something about her expression that sucked all the air out of my lungs.

I stood there frozen for several seconds, then closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. “I just…“ I drew a careful breath. “When I saw them together, I... I couldn’t stand to have my heart…” I stopped myself before the words spilled out, but it was already too late.

“Oh, Mac…” She slipped out of her chair and hugged me. “You don’t know he’ll break your heart.”

I laughed. “I didn’t…I wasn’t going to say that. You know my heart’s made of shoe leather. I just didn’t want to be…” I managed a shrug even though she had a death grip on my shoulders. “Disappointed.”

She drew away a couple of inches. “You don’t know he’ll disappoint you, either.” I found myself swallowed up by Laney’s caring. “Why would it be different this time?” My voice was very small.

“Sometimes things change,” she said. “Sometimes things get better.” I looked at her, trying for a cynical expression, trying to ignore the fact that my eyes were stinging and it probably wasn’t allergies.

“Sometimes there are happy endings,” she said. “You know that. Just think of—”

“Don’t mention Solberg,” I warned, but the threat might have been a little offset by a sniffle.

“Solberg and I are—”

“Don’t say you’re blissfully happy."

“—blissfully happy.”

“Shit,” I said, and wiped my nose with the back of one hand.

“Before him I didn’t know sex—”

“Dear God,” I said, and tried to pull away, but Laney has a grip like a grizzly.

“—could be so great.”

“Ohh…” I rolled my eyes. “I’m in hell.”

“He’s so gentle and—”

I covered my ears with my hands and started singing God Bless America. It’s been said that I couldn’t carry a tune if you shoved it in an alligator tote, but I didn’t care. I sang it at the top of my lungs, blurting out lyrics I hadn’t even known when I was in elementary school.

“I know where he is."

I stopped singing, tilted my head at her, removed my hands. “What?”

“Rivera,” she said, expression solemn, eyes steady. “He's being held at Men's Central."

Chapter 10

I’d like to apologize…but I’m Irish.

—Shamus McMullen, Chrissy’s great grandfather, shortly before beginning the Grand
Brawl o’ London in 1889

The gray block building that makes up the largest jail in the world was only slightly more depressing than I expected it to be. I arrived there at eight in the morning, presented my picture I.D., got searched, surrendered my cell phone and waited until I was ushered into the visiting area with fourteen other guests.

The previous evening with Laney had been enlightening and terrifying; despite myself, I had to reluctantly admit that I had no real proof that Rivera had cheated on me.

Maybe Laney was right. Perhaps fear and latent Irish stubbornness had made me jump to conclusions. I owed him the chance to explain himself. And perhaps…just maybe, I owed him an apology.

I waited impatiently in front of the glass partition. Rivera arrived in a few minutes.

He looked lean and hard and tired. His gaze settled on me for just an instant before he sat down and picked up the phone that connected our worlds. I did the same. “What’s wrong?” His voice was taut and gravelly.

I stared at him. I had had no way of knowing how seeing him dressed in cheap blue prison garb would affect me. But suddenly I felt weak and watery. My lips moved.

Nothing came out.

“God damn it, McMullen! What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” I tried to buck up. I mean, he was the one in jail, and he wasn’t crying. In fact, he just looked kind of pissed about the whole thing. His gaze swept the part of me he could see above the counter. “You’re okay?”

“Yes. Of course. It’s you—” Had there not been a guard, a glass wall, fourteen other visitors, and a million unresolved problems between us, I would have gladly thrown myself into his arms and reenacted a jungle scene from Animal Kingdom.

“What happened?” he asked. “What’d you do?”

I shook my head. “What do you mean?”

He drew a deep breath, flaring his nostrils. The gesture reminded me a little of his father and a little of Spirit, stallion of the Cimarron. Both were sexy. “You didn’t call D, did you?”

“D?” Dagwood Dean Daley, better known as D, if you recall, was the Chicago gangster who had come to my aid on more than one occasion. He and Rivera might still have some unresolved issues, even though they had duked it out on one auspicious occasion. “No. Why would I?”

“Don’t get him involved,” he warned.

It was said that if D’s loans weren’t returned in a timely fashion the borrower would sometimes turn up missing internal organs. I didn’t believe a word of it. Usually.

“Chrissy!”

“I didn’t call him,” I said.

He scowled at me. “How about Angler?”

“Vinny?” Vincent Angler was a defensive lineman for the L.A. Lions. He had helped me once, too, and even though I hardly knew him, I liked to throw his name around whenever an opportunity presented itself. “No.”

Rivera lowered his brows even farther. “Are your brothers somehow involved in this?”

“Of course not.”

He pursed his lips. “Then, who’d you piss off?”

Anger washed the tears right out of my eyes. “I didn’t piss anyone—” I began but he laughed. The sound was low and rumbly.

I fortified my resolve and drew a deep breath, determined to start over, to think clearly, maybe even to apologize for my past transgressions. My lips and my sphincter tightened against the idea. Turns out I’d rather eat Spirit’s wild horse dung than admit a mistake, and I was pretty damn sure Rivera wasn’t going to make it easy.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m…” I shook my head. It wasn’t as if I had never apologized in the past. I’d just never done it without someone holding my head over a toilet bowl. I swallowed. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

His brows rose a fraction of an inch and maybe his body relaxed a little, but he said nothing.

I cleared my throat. “You look good.” He looked, in fact, good enough to put on top of a cake and devour whole. Or put in a cake. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those women who’s attracted to criminals. Except for Nicolas Cage in Con Air and Sean Connery in anything.

“Say something,” I said.

“I’m waiting for you to get around to your reason for coming.”

“I just stopped by to make sure you were all right.” The left corner of his mouth quirked.

“And to tell you that I’m…” The word was stuck in my throat like an orange in a whisky bottle. “I’m concerned about your well-being.”

“My well-being.”

“And I… I’m…” For the life of me, I couldn’t cough up the word. “What happened?

I mean…” I shook my head. “Why are you here?”

“I think you know that one.”

“I know you didn’t shoot Andrews.”

He shrugged. Only one shoulder lifted. “Turns out there was an eyewitness.” My breath stopped in my throat. “A witness! Who? Where?”

“That’s not something you need to worry about.”

My lips moved of their own accord, fueled by outrage and terror and a dozen other emotions I wasn’t quite ready to own up to. “You’re being framed,” I barely breathed the words. “Set up. Who says they saw you? Why are you here? Why aren't you at least out on bail?"

“Don’t get all riled up,” he warned.

“Riled up?” I choked a laugh. “What the hell are you talking about? Have you spoken to the senator? Maybe if you apologize for…" I shrugged spasmodically. "…

whatever, he can get you out."

"Bail's set pretty high."

"How much? I can get some money together, and if I ask Laney, she'll-"

"Forget it," he said and sat perfectly motionless, eyes steady, body still as granite as he watched me.

Wild emotions sluiced through me. I leaned closer to the glass. “Some people think you did it to save me,” I said.

“Some people?”

“But I know better.” Fear was cascading through me like water over a ledge. What if I was wrong and his father was right? What if he was here because of me? The senator seemed to intend to do nothing about Rivera’s incarceration. Was that because he had already determined there was nothing he could do? Was he simply cutting his losses?

“You’re not that dumb.”

His eyes were steaming, and through the smoke I envisioned two people going at it on a kitchen table that looked a lot like mine. “You sure?” I swallowed, pulled into his eyes, drawn under the memories. But I yanked myself off the slippery slope and shook my head.

“You’re a pain in the ass, Rivera, but you’re not particularly stupid.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his right leg. His lips remained immobile, but there was a light of something in his dark devil eyes. “Gee, I’m so glad you stopped by,” he said. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.” I drew a fortifying breath, feeling better, but then I noticed the bruise on his left temple. I winced against my will. “Tell me what happened.”

“Go home, McMullen,” he said. “This isn’t your problem.”

“Not my problem? Are you kidding me?” The emotions were pouring in again though I tried to keep them wrangled up. “You’re rotting in here while—”

“Take it easy.”

I drew a deep breath, trying to do just that. “While the real perpetrator goes free.” I leaned forward, employing my very best self-control. “Who was it, Rivera? Another cop?

Was it someone you know?”

He jerked forward, all semblance of congeniality gone. “Don’t do this.”

“I can help,” I said. My brain was storming through a half-dozen other cases in which I had been involved. “Let me help. I know you didn’t—”

“I fucked her!”

I blinked. “What?”

“The woman you saw me with. It wasn’t the first time.” I sat absolutely still, mouth agape.

“I’ve known her for years.”

I could feel my heart beating a slow dirge in my chest, could feel the air passing into and out of my lungs. The world spun slowly on its axis.