Steamed (A Maid in LA Mystery) (12 page)

 
“Your ex is?” Big G asked.

 
“A producer.  Jerome Smith.”

 
He nodded.  “Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”

 
“Well, they don’t approve of him, any more than they approve of me and my career choice.”

 
“Want me to throw the lot of them out?  Your parents and Cal?  I mean, Cal and I are old friends, but I’m a sucker for a pretty woman.”

 
I stood on tip-toes and kissed his cheek.  “You are very gallant, Big G.  A true hero.  I’ll keep the offer in mind.”

 
“Go use my office.  If they come looking, I’ll tell them you had a business call.”

 
I called the boys. 

 
Hunter picked up.  “Hi, honey,” I said.  “I just called to see how you and your brothers are doing.”

 
He launched into updates on their day’s activities, then passed the phone to Miles, who in turned passed it to Eli.

 
All in all, not much was said.  They were having a great time.  They’d been swimming every day.  I reminded them to eat some vegetables and use sunscreen. 

 
It wasn’t earth shattering, but I felt better and more grounded after connecting with them.

 
The boys might drive me crazy, but I missed them.

 
I felt like I was better able to cope with my parents and Cal when I went back to the table.  “Sorry.  Business call.”

 
“What sort of housekeeping emergency is there at almost eight at night?” my mother asked.

 
I really don’t think she means to sound condescending.  I don’t believe she thinks she’s a snob, but truth is, she does and she is.  I glanced at Cal and he looked embarrassed on my behalf. 

 
Most of the time, I let my mother’s comments simply zing past me, but having her belittle me in front of Cal made it hard to ignore.

 
“Mom, I run an important, honest business.  It’s supported me, the boys, Tiny and all our employees.  We do quality work.  It might not be brain surgery, but it’s honest and what we do is important to the people we work for.”  I said the words gently, but I saw her register them, then look at Cal, then back at me and finally, at my father.

 
“I’m sorry,” she said.  “It’s just you could have been anything. You were such a great student, and you could have—”

 
“Mother, what you mean is, I could have done something else that you could be proud of.  Do you remember right after I got that bit part in
Lucky in Love
, you asked me how on earth you could brag to your friends about me being the other-woman in a two bit comedy?  Well, here’s the thing, Mother, I don’t live my life in order for you to have braggable news.  You’ve got the boys for that.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get home and get some sleep, I’ve got a boring, non-braggable job I need to get to early tomorrow.”

 
“Quincy, I’m sorry.”

 
“I am, too, Mom.”  I got up and with a great deal of pride, picked up the check.  I found Big G.  “I know the waitress normally takes this, but could you ring me out?”

 
He did, and I included a super nice tip, because I knew what it was like to work for tips.  Then I waited at the door for my parents and Cal.  I wished for my own car to magically appear, but it didn’t.  I’d ridden with my parents and Cal had driven himself.  I could either ride home with my parents like I’d planned, or ask Cal for a lift.

 
I asked Cal.

 
My father hugged me goodnight and whispered, “She doesn’t mean it.”

 
He’d told me that before, but truth was, she did.  She loved me.  But she didn’t consider me a success by any stretch of the imagination.

 
“We’ll see you tomorrow night,” I assured Dad.  “Text me the information.”

 
Cal didn’t press me for conversation on the ride home.  As he pulled into the drive, he turned off the engine and had his hand on the door latch, as if he planned to get out with me.

 
“Thanks for the ride,” I said in such a way I hoped he realized he was not invited inside. 

 
He put his hand back on the steering wheel.  “I don’t think she meant to be dismissive,” he said.

 
“She did,” I assured him.  “My uncle went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. He was the lone black sheep of the family until I came along.  Uncle Bill and I are the only non-MD’s in the family.  He went to jail and got a tattoo, and I clean other people’s houses.  In my mother’s eyes, there’s not a lot of difference.  She loves me, but she can’t brag about me to her friends at bridge club, or whatever she does for fun.  My doctor brothers and their doctor wives should be enough and they might be, if I had some other job.  Being an actress was bad enough, but being a maid is worse.”

 
“Quincy…” Cal didn’t say anything else and that was fine because there was really nothing else to say.

 
“You can always get very busy tomorrow night with some new case if you want to get out of the dinner.”

 
“No. I’m looking forward to it.”

 
“Okay then.  Good night.”  I started to open the door and he reached across the car and caught my arm.

 
“Really? You’re not even going to kiss me goodnight?  I mean, it was our second date.”

 
I couldn’t help it, I laughed and some of the sadness over my relationship with my mother eased.  “It wasn’t a date.  And we’re not going to kiss until after I’m sure you’re not going to put me in jail for a murder I didn’t commit.”

 
“So, let me be clear, once we find out who really murdered Mr. Banning, we’ll be kissing again?  We’ve got a deal?”

 
I looked at this man and knew what my answer was.  “Yes.  Deal.”

 
“Well, stop snooping around so I don’t have to worry about you, and I’ll try and have this case wrapped up in record time.”  Even in the murky light from the streetlamp, I could see him wiggle his eyebrows in a suggestive way.

 
I laughed again.  “Thanks again, Cal.”

 
“Any time, Quincy.  You know, when you’re not driving me crazy, I really enjoy being with you.”

 
“Uh, thank you.  And ditto.”

 
I got out of the car and hurried inside. 

 
Cal didn’t try to follow me.

 
I wasn’t sure if I was happy about that, or disappointed about it.

Chapter Nine

 Late the next afternoon, I stared at my whiteboard.  My list of suspects didn’t look very, well, suspicious what with the huge X’s through them.  Not his ex’s.  Not his daughter.  Not his girlfriend. 

 
And today, rather than trying to find some new suspects, I’d done something horrible.  Terrible.  Frightening beyond belief.

 
I’d gone shopping with Tiny.

 
I glanced at the garment bag on the back of the door.  I’d survived the shopping trip, but it had been a near thing.  I’d barely had time to recover and now, I had another terror to face.

 
Dinner with my whole family.

 
A dinner where conversations about medicine were the norm.  Where new surgical techniques and diseases were discussed in the same way the boys talked about sports.  Since I didn’t care much about sports or disease in general, I tended to sit back and let conversation flow around me. 

 
But tonight I’d have a conversation of my own to focus on.  A certain murder investigation.  Not with my family, but with Cal.

 
I didn’t imagine that he would give me any information freely, but if I could convince him I knew more than I did, maybe something helpful would slip.

 
First, I need to slip into that dress.

 
In addition to the dress, Tiny had insisted I buy…  I forget what brand name she used, but I’m going with body-sucker. 

 
Basically, it was a torture device that required me to stuff myself into the spandex horror show in a meat-into-a-sausage-casing sort of way.

 
I took one last longing look at my whiteboard and unzipped the garment bag.

 
The color hit me like a glass of cold water after a shock. 

 
Or, given the deep red color of the thing, maybe a glass of wine would be a better analogy.

 
It was red. 

 
It was slinky in a classy way.

 
That’s how Tiny described it.

 
I opened the bag on the bed and pulled out the body-sucker and stuffed myself into it.  I think my lungs were only capable of filling to half their capacity with it in place.  And I was pretty sure that my organs actually shifted their positions because of the pressure.  But as I pulled the dress off the hanger and slipped it over my head, it fell light as a feather into place.

 
I walked over to the mirror.

 
Tiny was right.  The dress was slinky, but in a classy way my mother couldn’t object to.  And between the body-sucker and dress, my curves seemed sexy, not baby-poochy.

 
I felt…pretty.

 
I put on make-up and flipped my hair into a bun.  Tendrils escaped and maybe it was an illusion thanks to the dress, but rather than look messy like it did most days, it looked sexy.

 
I felt sexy.

 
I felt more than capable of taking on Detective Caleb Parker.

 
I paced in the living room, waiting for him. 

 
When the doorbell finally rang, I wanted to sprint to the door, but I didn’t want him to think I’d been waiting, so I put on my shoes first, just to complete the look.  Then I walked slowly to the door because slowly was the only speed I had when wearing heels and having access to only half-lung breaths.

 
I opened the door.  “Hi, Cal.”

 
He didn’t answer.

 
He didn’t move.

 
He just stared. 

 
He stared in a way that made me forget I was the mother of three teenaged boys.  No, his look made feel desirable.

 
“Cal?” I repeated.

 
“Uh, Quincy, you’re ready.”

 
“Yes, ready on time.  I’m punctual.”  And sexy, I added to myself as a reminder.  I was sexy enough to get all kinds of information on the case from Cal.

 
“Okay, then let’s go.”  He didn’t say much as we drove across town, but he kept glancing over at me with a puzzled expression on his face.

 
When we pulled in at the hotel, he valeted the car.  Normally, I just park my car myself and walk, so having it valeted was a treat.

 
“Come on,” he said, giving me another puzzled look.

 
I stopped.  “Is there a problem?”

 
He gave me an up and down look, the announced, “You look weird.”

 
All my confident, sexy feelings evaporated.  “Gee, thanks.”

 
“No, that’s not what I meant.  You look beautiful but not like you normally do.”

 
“So, normally I don’t look beautiful?”

 
“Normally you look beautiful, but normal.  Right now you look…”  He must have been thinking about the right phrase because he snapped his fingers and said, “red carpet.  You look like some Hollywood actress walking the red carpet.”

 
Now that was actually very nice.  Much nicer than
weird
.  I felt my confidence return.

 
“Thanks.  You look very nice, too,” I assured him.  He did.  He filled out his suit perfectly. 

 
We headed into the Shelby, which was a beautiful old hotel.  Over the years, various owners had added to it, but the newest owner had recently renovated the entryway and reception area back to its original glory.

 
I suddenly did feel very red-carpety. 

 
Anywhere outside Hollywood might question the word red-carpety as a valid choice, but here, everyone totally understood it.

 
While Cal checked with one of the desk guys, I stood in the middle of the lobby and simply took in the blue and gold décor. 

 
When I’d moved to LA this is how I pictured my life.  Award shows, beautiful old hotels.  Red carpet moments.

 
That’s not what I’d gotten, but even though this was beautiful, I was very happy with the life I had.

 
Well, I would be once I got out of this body-sucker and found Mr. Banning’s killer.

 
Cal interrupted my thoughts.  “This way.”

 
“I should probably prepare you.  My family is…not normal.”

 
“Whose is?”

 
“I mean, more than most.”

 
“Your parents seemed nice enough.”

 
“Oh, they are.  But…  Well, you’ll see for yourself.  Just remember, there is no escape until after my father wins his award.  You’re my ride, and I have to stay that long.”

 
“I’m not going anywhere.”

 
We found my parents at one of the head tables.  I felt self-conscious as Cal held a chair out to me.  My first instinct was to assure him that I was capable of pulling out my own chair, but I looked at my mother and let it slide.

 
“Cal, you’ve already met my parents, and this is my brother, Gil and his wife Tanya, and my brother, Art, and his wife, Marie.”

 
Everyone shook and murmured meaningless hellos. 

 
“Dad said you’re a cop,” Art said, eyeing Cal as if he were a creature in the zoo. 

 
“Yes.  A detective, to be precise.”

 
Art nodded, and with that, the conversation moved to some new engineered T cell technology that killed tumors, but not regular cells.  Yes, I’ve hung around with doctor types long enough to have understood that much.  But from there the conversation moved into areas that held little interest to me.

 
No, what did have my interest was Cal’s investigation. 

 
So, I turned toward Cal and concentrated on inhaling deeply, which meant my lungs expanded, and since the body-sucker had left so little lung capacity, my breasts expanded, as if to accommodate that extra oxygen. “Can you believe it’s only been a week since we’ve met?”

 
“It seems like I’ve known you longer than that,” Cal said. 

 
I noticed that his eyes didn’t seem to be looking into mine.  As a matter of fact, they seemed to be looking a lot lower.

 
I took another deep breath.  “Poor Mr. Banning.”

 
Cal’s eyes were definitely looking lower.  All this oxygen along with the body-sucker had given me cleavage.  “A week and his murderer’s still unsolved.”

 
“We’ll find out who did it,” he assured me.

 
I exhaled and inhaled quickly.  “It wasn’t either of his ex’s, his daughter or his girlfriend.  That narrows the pool of suspects.”

 
It didn’t just narrow my suspects, it eliminated all of them.  I wasn’t sure where else to look.

 
“When we find that computer, we’ll find the murderer,” he said more to himself than me.

 
I remembered the antiquated computer on the desk by the fireplace.  “I saw one on the desk when I was cleaning.” 

 
He shook his head.  “That was old.  According to our techs, he hadn’t used it in more than a year.  He lived with his laptop.  Whatever his new project was, he liked to work on it at the bar on his laptop.  You didn’t see it at his house, did you?”

 
He looked at me with a cop-intensity and I had a feeling that no amount of inhaling would phase him.

 
“No.  I didn’t see a laptop in the rooms I cleaned.  Just some underwear on the ceiling fan and under the sink.  I told you that.”

 
“It was his girlfriend’s underwear.  They’d had a few people over, and afterward…”  He smiled suggestively.

 
I remembered Cassandra’s smile as she talked about that last night with Mr. Banning.  She’d mentioned his new project and that he liked to work at some bar.  That the bartender inspired him.

 
What if he’d left the laptop at that bar?

 
Find the computer, find the murderer
.  And probably find Tiny’s pictures.

 
Find the computer
.

 
In order to do that, I needed to find out where that bar was.  There was a chance that’s where the computer got left.

 
That phrase flitted around my head because it was much easier to hold onto than my family’s conversation move from T cells to talk of an enzymatic pre-treatment, nanoparticles and biopolymers.  It was some new Spanish technique for something medical.  Art seemed especially animated about it.

 
And Art being animated was hard to discern from Art being his normal self-contained self.  But as a sister, I could see the difference.  I doubted that Cal was going to be able to notice the distinction, especially since his eyes seemed to keep moving in the general direction of my chest.

 
I breathed in deeply not to gain the upper hand, but to give him a treat.  Tomorrow I was back to a sports bra, a Mac’Cleaner’s t-shirt and jeans.

 
“…Dr. Martin Mac,” an announcer who I hadn’t realized was speaking until that moment said.

 
My father rose.

 
He gave a nice speech thanking the organization (I have no idea what medical organization it was) for the recognition and the award.  He talked about his new medical procedure, but he might as well have been talking Greek.

 
He took the trophy and made his way back to the table, and I couldn’t help but think of Mr. Banning and his Mortie of death.

 
I turned to say as much to Cal, when he patted his suit pocket and whispered, “I’ve got a call.  Be right back.”

 
He left me.

 
With them.

 
My father’s new award was gleaming on the table as people from other tables got up and congratulated him.

 
My mother was glowing next to him, as if his award cast its luminosity on her.

 
That left my brothers and their wives.

 
Rather than basking in my father’s medical prowess, they all turned to me in a sort of Stepford Wives synchronicity and Gil said, “So he seems nice.  How’d you meet?”

 
Now, I don’t lie.  I skirt issues, ignore them or sometimes even blatantly change a subject, but I don’t lie.

 
I tried skirting.  “That’s some award Dad got, huh?”

 
“About Cal?”

 
“Cal and Mal.  They rhyme.”  Okay that was a poor attempt at changing the subject.