Unscrewed (21 page)

25

Y
OU OKAY?” Eddie was at my elbow the moment I left Manderos’s office.

“Yes,” I said, but I felt numb and hazy as I pulled my keys out of my purse.

We made it to the car, but Eddie nudged me aside. “Go sit down.”

I did as I was told, folding myself into the passenger seat and staring blankly ahead.

He locked the doors and turned on the ignition. “What happened?”

Excellent question.

“Christina?”

I looked at him. “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I think the senator killed Salina.”

“Holy shit! Did Manderos tell you that?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“He said Miguel was on the plane and he was with Salina.”

“What?”

“I think he lied.”

“Why would he—”

“Loyalty.”

“So you think Manderos really was in the air?”

“Leaving the senator with Salina.”

“What now?”

I shook my head. “Stay a million miles away from the Rivera family?”

“But you think the lieutenant’s innocent.”

“I think he knows his father isn’t.”

He released a breath. “I thought he hated his old man.”

“Yeah, but maybe blood really is thicker. Or maybe…” The thought made my own blood run cold. “Maybe it’s money. Maybe no matter how much he hates his dad, he can’t give up his inheritance.” My mind was boiling. “Maybe he went to the crime scene to destroy evidence that would incriminate his father.”

Eddie shook his head, confused. “You think the old man’s paying him to keep him quiet?”

“Or it might be blackmail or…Crap.” I covered my eyes with my hand.

The Saturn’s little tires hummed busily along Rosemead Boulevard.

“Could be you’re jumping to conclusions,” Eddie said finally.

“Manderos admitted the senator had hired him that night. Why would Rivera do that unless he was planning something he doesn’t want others to know about?”

“Point taken,” Eddie said. “But maybe you’ve got it all wrong. Maybe Manderos really was with Salina.”

“Why?”

“So the senator could be elsewhere.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s a cat burglar.”

I gave him a look.

“Okay. Maybe he was cheating on his fiancée.”

“Yesterday I would have thought that impossible.”

“And now?”

“Men are sick.”

“Yeah.”

“She was so beautiful, Eddie.” I sighed. “Amazing. Stunning.”

“Some guys want more.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What do
you
want?”

He glanced my way. “Someone like you, but with chest hair.”

I watched him for a moment, wishing things that were never to be, then leaned my head back against the cushion again. “Just my luck that you’re gay.”

“I didn’t do it to spite you, Chris.”

“You’re gay, Rivera’s somehow involved in a murder, and I think I spoke
pirate
to the best-looking offer I’ve had in a decade.”

He didn’t say anything. I turned toward him. “I didn’t misread Clifton’s signals, did I?”

“Huh?” He didn’t look at me.

“Clifton. The dancer. He
was
coming on to me, wasn’t he?”

“Oh…yeah…I mean…” He laughed. It sounded weird. “Who wouldn’t?”

The car went quiet. Reality dawned by slow, painful degrees. “He made a pass at you, didn’t he?”

“No!” He turned abruptly toward me. He was as pretty as a picture framed against the black glass of the driver’s window.

I felt my libido take a nosedive and watched my self-esteem streak past it to ground level. “He made a pass.”

“No, he didn’t.”

I was staring at him.

He fidgeted. “All right. He did ask if I’d be interested in seeing
Dorian Gray.
”

I stared at him, unblinking, like a tree frog.

“It’s a play.” He loosened and tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “At the Forum. I’ve heard good things.”

Fuck.

“But he thought you were very nice. Kind of…odd…but nice.”

I remembered my pirate fantasies and considered dying. But spontaneous death isn’t as easy as you’d think.

Eddie pulled the Saturn into my driveway. I was still plastered against the seat. He got out of the car, rounded the bumper, and opened my door.

“Shoot me,” I said.

“I don’t have a gun. Come on,” he said, and hoisting me out, he half dragged me up my heaving walkway to my stoop. Wouldn’t you know it, in my life the stoop was the only thing that was heaving.

“You could poison me,” I suggested. But my heart wasn’t really in it.

“Forgot my magical herbs,” he said. “Open the door.”

“Hit me over the head until I’m dead.”

“Too messy. Hurry up with the keys, will you?”

“Strangle me.”

“Now you’re talking. But open the door first, will ya?” he said, shifting his arm against my waist. “You’re getting heavy.”

“I
am
heavy.” I felt the sniffles bubbling up like a sulfur bog.

“Christina.” His voice was immediately contrite. He cupped my face with his free hand. I felt myself slipping toward the broken concrete. “You’re beautiful. You know that.”

My throat was closing up.

“And intelligent.”

I sniffed.

“Kind.”

“Now you’re just lying,” I said.

“Of course I am,” he admitted, jostling me. “Damn it, Chrissy, open the door.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Pulling away, I shoved my key in the lock. I punched in my security code and stood in the foyer, feeling silly and a little drippy about the nose and eyes. Harlequin crammed his nose under my hand, either consoling or wanting to be consoled. Maybe both.

Eddie was staring at me. “Are you okay?”

“No. Yes!” I blew out a breath. “Please.” I waved a floppy arm at him. “Take my car home, will you? I just…I’m really sorry to drag you into this.”

“It’s no problem.”

“Yes it is. It’s just…my life….” I was feeling teary and stupid. I should never drink, not under threat of death. I forced myself to brighten. “Did I tell you Laney got the lead in a TV series?”

“Elaine Butterfield?”

I was going to cry. “Yeah. Isn’t that great? It’s a…huge break for her.”

He didn’t look very happy. Maybe he was going to miss her terribly. Maybe he’d been her best friend since fifth grade and thought he was worth something by the simple virtue of being her friend. But maybe that’s me.

“But she’s going to be staying in L.A., right?”

I cleared my throat. “Sure. Well, some of the time. But they’re filming—”

“I’m going to stay the night,” he said.

I looked at him through fuzzy eyeballs. “You’re still gay, right?”

“Gay as you are straight.”

“That’s…” I remembered the pirate. It’s damn hard to forget a good pirate, even if he did proposition your nicest male friend. “…disappointingly gay.”

He had the most beautiful smile on earth.

“You don’t have to babysit me,” I said.

“Babysitting?” he scoffed, and let Harlequin out in the yard for a run. “You kidding? I’m dead on my feet. I just don’t want to drive home.”

“And don’t patronize me.”

“Okay, I like to babysit. You know what those kids get paid these days?”

“Go home, Eddie,” I said, but he had already wandered into my walnut-size kitchen.

“Nope.” He started rummaging in my freezer, brought out the ice cream, dredged up two spoons.

I helped myself to one. We dug in together. “My couch will kill your back,” I said around a mouthful of Mango Explosion.

“No it won’t.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’re such a hard-ass,” he said.

“That’s not what you implied earlier.”

He laughed, leaned a hip against my counter, watched me, spoon empty. That’s probably why his ass
is
hard. ’Cuz he could live with an empty spoon.

Tapping the cover onto the ice cream, I tucked it into the freezer and padded over to the couch. Eddie took the seat across from me, elbows on knees, watching.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“How much do you like this Rivera guy?”

“I hate—”

“Honestly,” he interjected.

Interjected. Good word.

I sighed. “Half the time I hate him.”

“And the other half?”

“His other half looks pretty good.”

His eyes smiled. Such pretty eyes. I should have known he was gay the first time I looked at him. “Maybe his efforts to protect his father are noble.”

“And maybe he killed her himself.”

“Could be he’s perfectly innocent in every regard.”

“If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that Rivera’s not perfectly anything.”

“Is he capable of killing?”

I thought for a moment, lost track of time, leaned back. The world was getting sleepy. “Maybe we all are.”

“Under the right circumstances?”

I shrugged. Eddie could discuss philosophical nothingness for hours. I was pretty sure I had another thirty-two seconds in me. I can always sleep, but when I’m tipsy it’s pretty much mandatory.

“Go to bed, Christina.”

“Eddie?” I dragged my eyes open. The task was tantamount to self-imposed brain surgery.

“Yeah?”

“You ever get lonely?”

“You’re drunk, honey,” he said.

“You know how long it’s been since I’ve been…” He seemed to be lifting me from the couch. I tried to make it easier for him by wrapping my arms around his neck but my limbs were kind of watery. “You know.”

“I
don’t
know.” He huffed a little under my weight. But he’d said I was beautiful…and a hard-ass, so he was probably just out of shape.

“Intimate,” I said.

He pushed the bedroom door open with his shoulder. Luckily, I hadn’t made the bed, so there was no need to pull back the sheets. Good thinking on my part. He set me on the mattress and sat down beside me. The light from the living room softened his face, like a rugged angel. “Are you using ‘intimate’ as a euphemism for sex?”

“I thought they were one and the same.”

“Uh-huh.”

I dragged my eyes open and flopped my right arm above my head. “You mean the nuns were wrong?”

He didn’t answer. When I turned he was gone. But in a minute he was back, Harlequin at his side. “Move over,” he said.

I tried.

He rolled me onto my side like a Vienna sausage and stretched out beside me. Harlequin grunted onto the mattress on the other side.

“I suppose you think it’s easy for a gay guy.”

“Oh, please.” The words were a little slurred. “You were just propositioned by a pirate.”

“You’re hallucinating.”

“He looked like a pirate. Had an eye patch.”

“But not on his eye.”

“Lucky, frickin’ eyeemabob…thing…th…”

“And now you’re mumbling,” he said, and wrapping his arm around me, he pulled me close. “Sleep tight, honey.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

26

M
Y NOSTRILS TWITCHED at the smell of bacon. My pirate rumbled a laugh as he bent over an open flame. His chest was bare except for the bandoleers that crossed his sun-darkened torso. There was a scar on the right side of his mouth and—

“You alive in there?”

I opened my eyes. There was no pirate, but Eddie was waving a platter of bacon in front of my nose. I sat up, said a brave good-bye to Bandoleer Guy, and took a strip. It was golden brown, fried to perfection, not microwaved within an inch of its life like some people were wont to do.

Wont…I am wont to ravage you, lassie.
Okay, maybe the pirate wasn’t completely gone.

Harlequin sat mesmerized beside the bed, watching the platter as if it bore the crown jewels…or bacon.

“Don’t give him any,” Eddie said. “We already had a bowl of oatmeal.”

I eyed the dog. He eyed me back, head tilted, ears cocked. He knew he looked cute that way. “He eats oatmeal?”

“And the bowl it’s served in. I was going to make you a quiche,” Eddie said, and sat down, “but then I remembered you were from Chicago, so I just fried up some fat.”

I didn’t rise to the bait, unless the bacon was the bait, in which case I was jumping like a fat trout at daybreak. The second piece was just as good as the first.

“How’s your head?”

I shrugged, assessed, chewed. “All right.”

“And I see your stomach’s okay.”

“I will survive,” I said, gazing dramatically into his Everclear eyes. “Ohhhh, as long as I know how to love—”

“Please don’t sing.”

It was a leftover joke from when he’d first told me he was batting for the other team. The gay team. I cleared my throat and slowed my chewing.

“Thanks for staying,” I said.

“No problem.”

“I’m not usually such a baby.”

“I know.”

I fiddled with the bedsheet and debated eating another five hundred grams of saturated fat.

“Did I tell you Pete’s girlfriend is pregnant?”

“Pete?”

“My moron brother.”

“The one I met last Thanksgiving?”

I nodded, tried to resist the call of bacon, failed, munched. “Moron number deux. Holly’s due in June.”

“Wow. They getting married?”

I leaned forward, trying to get the kink out of my shoulder. He dragged my pillow up and plumped it behind me. I leaned back with a sigh. “I was sure they would. I mean, he’s been married about forty-seven times. What’s wrong with forty-eight?”

“He’s a good-looking guy.”

“He’s a troglodyte.”

Eddie shrugged, set the platter on the mattress, and gave Harlequin a stern look. Somehow it worked. “A good-looking troglodyte.”

“Mom thinks it’s my fault they haven’t already made a nest in a charming little bungalow just down the street and named their firstborn after her.”

“How’s that?”

I glanced out the window. “It might be because I told Holly not to marry him.”

“Mothers!” he scoffed.

“But the depleting ozone layer…she thinks that’s my fault, too.”

“The oil companies told us it wasn’t the carbon fuels.” He tapped his forehead with his palm. “I should have listened.”

“She likes to call me Saturday mornings to remind me that I’ve ruined the world as we know it.”

“The ice caps
are
melting.”

“I was just trying to help. I mean, we have to put a beer can on Pete’s shoe to get him to tie his laces. What kind of father forgets to tie his laces?”

He didn’t say anything.

“So I just suggested that Holly…give it some thought, maybe make a few suggestions, see if he’s willing to bend, to grow up, to prove himself. I didn’t think she’d listen. I mean, if she’s foolish enough to get herself knocked up by the dumbest…” I paused. Sighed. “I was just trying to help.” I sounded like a teenybopper in a poor script. “But now I think, maybe…” I didn’t quite manage to complete the sentence.

“You’re afraid you did it out of spite.”

I glanced up, appalled. “I am not.”

“You’re afraid you’re jealous.”

“I am not jealous of my infantile brother who—”

“Who’s going to have a baby, make a family, have a life.”

“Yeah, well…life sucks,” I said, and dropped my skull against the headboard.

He laughed. “You could call her up and tell her what a great guy Pete is.”

“Did I tell you about the sheep droppings?”

“I believe he made you eat them on your cousin’s farm in North Dakota.”

“He left a dead rat in my freezer at Thanksgiving.”

“I think I’m in love,” he said, and stood up. “Come on. I’ve got to get going, and you stink. On your feet, take a shower, call your mom.”

“I’d rather shove marbles up my nose,” I said, but I shuffled out of bed. The bacon was gone. There was no reason to remain.

“I tried the marble trick once when I was three. It’s not that great.” He put Harlequin outside and sauntered into my office. “Hey, who’s the doll-faced boy in these pics?”

I glanced out of the bathroom and was just able to see him past the door frame. He had the photos Solberg had printed fanned out beside the rubble on my desk. “Name’s Daniel Hohl,” I said. Closing the door most of the way, I undressed behind it. Leaving my clothing in a heap, I struggled to turn my robe sleeves right-side out.

“Of carpet empire fame?”

“Has everyone but me heard of him?”

“Probably.”

I looked in the mirror. One glance suggested it would be foolhardy to do so again anytime soon.

“Brains and money and…” I could hear him shuffling papers. “Holy cow. He’s pretty even when he’s scowling. He still look like this?”

I stuck my tongue out at my reflection. Shrugging into the robe, I cinched it tight. “Pretty much. Why?”

“Why?” More shuffling. “Geez, it’s like the land of good and plenty. Who’s the gorgeous chick with the Spanish dude?”

“What Spanish dude?” I asked, but Eddie had abandoned the photos and returned to the bedroom to retrieve his wallet. He straightened just as the phone rang. Premonition wafted through me.

“Don’t answer that,” I said.

He grinned, tripped past me, and picked up the receiver. “McMullen residence.”

I stopped, dumbfounded, watching in horror.

“Eddie Friar,” he said. He was Mr. Congeniality. “Is this Mrs. McMullen?”

I was shaking my head and making rapid slicing motions at my neck.

“I’m a friend of Christina’s. I hear congratulations are in order.”

Even from across the room I could hear her question.

“Pete’s going to be a father, right?” He listened, nodded. “Well, I’m sure Chrissy didn’t mean it that way. She’s always telling me wonderful stories about her and her brothers. Picnics on her cousin’s sheep farm, that sort of thing.”

He smiled at me. If I still had the rat I would have shoved it down his pants.

The volume on the other end of the line picked up a little.

“Perhaps she was using reverse psychology in an attempt to convince Holly to marry him,” he suggested. “She
is
a therapist. And very bright.”

Silence. He raised his brows at me.

My mouth had frozen.

“Well, thank you, but no. We’re just friends. I dropped by to make her breakfast.”

“I’m not here.” I couldn’t even hear my own words. “I’m jogging. Tell her I’m jogging.”

“What’s that? Oh, sure. She’s right here. It was very nice talking to you, Mrs. McMullen,” he said, and handed me the phone.

I gritted my teeth at him and mouthed the worst swear word I could think of. He laughed. Damned gay guys. “Hi, Mom,” I said.

He kissed my cheek and headed for the door. “I’ve gotta go. Call me later.”

“Who was that?” The harsh glare of Mom’s criticism had dulled a little under the light of Eddie’s charisma.

I wasn’t that easy. “I thought he told you.”

“I mean, what’s he doing in your house at this hour of the day?”

I took a deep breath. It had been like this since the beginning of time. My brothers could prowl the neighborhood like hot-blooded tick hounds, but I was supposed to be as pure as popcorn salt—apparently until the day I died or got married, whichever came first. It was probably the reason for my early promiscuity. Well, that and the fact that Marv Kobinski was a champion kisser. No, seriously, I think he won awards.

“He likes to cook,” I said, and dropped into a slat-back chair. “He made me breakfast.”

“What’d he make?” Her voice was suspicious, happy to catch me in a lie.

Eddie waved from the open door, still grinning. I slapped a hand in his general direction and turned away.

“Bacon,” I said.

“Bacon! That stuff will kill you.”

I closed my eyes. “You made bacon all the time when we were kids.”

“That was for your father. And your brothers. Men can digest food girls can’t begin—”

“Listen, Mom…” I snapped my eyes open and turned toward the door, searching for an escape. I really didn’t think I could bear to hear the men-can-eat-whatever-they-want speech. “I’ve got to get—” But at that moment my lungs collapsed.

Jack Rivera was standing in my doorway, looking as long and mean as a smoking pistol.