“Obviously not,” I said, trying not to gawk at the hot mess before me. I’d never seen her looking like this—not even when Dad died. I knew she probably cried then, but it was behind her perpetually closed doors and perfectly coiffed facade. “What, did Bill Brandon call you a bad name in the Los Angeles Times today?”
She turned her back to me and rubbed her eyes with a clean dishrag next to the sink. This was highly unusual. I’d caught her in a real weak spot. Maybe I could actually win this one.
“No, this isn’t about Bill Brandon.” She faced me with renewed strength in her bloodshot, mascara-smudged eyes. “This is about you. Only you.”
Oh, snap.
I told myself to think happy thoughts. I scratched at the thin wax coating on Granny Smith and imagined landing a sweet high kick. Buying a new pair of Steve Madden cowgirl boots. Kissing Liam Slater while we lay on the beach. Wait, where did that come from?
“Please stay with me,” she said with a note of uncharacteristic hysteria in her voice. “I really need you to not do that thing where you close yourself off and think of other things and direct your attention onto inanimate objects.”
I set down Granny Smith—like she’d ratted me out. “Wow, so you’re a psychic now?” I asked. Since when had she paid attention to me long enough to figure out my war tactics?
“I may not be perfect, but I’m not stupid.” She rounded the counter and stood opposite me. “I know we’ve been distant…and I haven’t really been here for you…”
Not this conversation. I was so not in the mood for one of our strained heart-to-hearts.
“This past year has been difficult to say the least. Losing your father, fighting for my campaign, this whole LeMarq debacle. It’s fair to say, I’ve really been thrown for a loop.”
Excusez-moi? Did she just say that me shooting a man in the head had thrown her for a loop?
“I want you to know I love you very much.” In my peripheral vision I saw her fiddling with her wedding ring, like her words weren’t only meant for me.
I looked up. I hadn’t heard her say the word “love” in so long. Something inside me felt soothed by that one simple sentence, reminding me of a better time when it felt true.
“I know I haven’t been spending enough time with you and that I’ve been relying too much on Dr. Teresa for updates, which is completely unacceptable.” She pinched her eyes shut. “But that’s not the way it’s going to work anymore.” She opened her eyes and focused on me with a scary intensity. “And I need to start by telling you something important. Something I should have told you a long time ago—but never found the right time.”
She paused and put her lips in position to say something, but nothing came out. This was becoming too painful to endure.
“I need you to know that everything I’ve done is to protect you, provide for you, and help you. And I will never stop trying to do that.” With her hand over her heart, she nodded at me to make sure I understood. I didn’t.
“What are you talking about, Mom?”
“Regardless of what has happened, or what will happen, I want you to remember that, OK?” A full-blown heat rash had developed on her neck. She started rubbing at it without taking her eyes off me. Her agitation did nothing to comfort me.
“Just tell me what you’re talking about. Am I in trouble with the police? Are you going to have to press charges against me?” I gulped, not sure I wanted the answer.
“No, Ruby, that’s not it. No charges will be brought. I don’t want you worrying about that.” She rounded the counter and brushed some of the hair off my brow. That simple touch felt like stars springing to life inside of me after years of living in darkness.
“It’s about your dad.” She hesitated, pulling away before I was ready. “I know I never showed much appreciation for the way the two of you spent so much time together, shooting and fighting and whatnot.”
“That’s a bit of an understatement,” I said, wondering where she was going with this. “All you ever did was punish him, and me, for it.”
“I know,” she said with a grimace. “And I’m sorry.”
Jane Rose said the S-word? And not in a sarcastic way?
“Turns out, he was right.” Tears emerged in her eyes. “He was a good man, and he would have wanted me to tell you—”
A loud chime reverberated through the house.
“Are you expecting someone?” she asked, reaching up to smooth her hair.
“No.” I shook my head, thrown off by (a) Mom’s most sincere moment in years; (b) what Dad “would have wanted” my mom to tell me; and (c) the sound of the doorbell. Normally, people had to press the call button and get buzzed in to get past the entry gates. My parents couldn’t be too careful with all the criminals they’d put away.
She grabbed the kitchen towel again and attempted to wipe away every sign of emotion before she took off toward the door, putting the Guccis back over her eyes.
As I absorbed the whiplash of emotions she’d just put me through and listened to the abrasively familiar click-clack of her heels on the tile as she walked away, I wondered who’d dared to trespass. Who was pulling my mom away just when she was finally opening up to me?
Before I had time to prioritize the feelings of annoyance at being interrupted and anger at Mom leaving me hanging again, I heard her gasp.
“What the hell!” She sounded scared. My mother was never scared.
I froze, allowing my mind to conjure all the fatal possibilities.
Just as I managed to gather myself to search the kitchen for some kind of weapon, the air pressure in the house changed, opening the front door with a gust.
I was out of time.
Clutching the steak knife I’d grabbed and listening for any indication that Mom was in danger and I needed to act. Why would she have opened the door if she was scared? Maybe she wasn’t the one who’d opened the door at all.
“Hello, Jane.” A deep Spanish-flavored voice boomed through our grand entryway. I knew that voice.
“Detective Martinez, is there some reason you didn’t call my office?” my mother said in her trademark passive-aggressive tone.
My fingers uncurled from my weapon as I realized I no longer needed one—and that brandishing a blade wouldn’t win me any points with the man investigating me as a murderer. I dropped the knife and cringed when it clattered into the stainless steel sink.
“I apologize,” Martinez muttered, sounding entirely unapologetic. “But I did call your office. Several times, in fact.”
“So you show up unannounced at my home?” my mother seethed. “This is hardly appropriate, Detective.” She may have been irritated at his unexpected drop-in, but I was terrified. Even though he wasn’t the first dangerous person who’d come to my mind when my mom gasped, he was dangerous nonetheless. Perhaps he’d found evidence to contradict my sworn statement. Maybe he was here to catch me in my lie—that I’d never heard of Charlie LeMarq before the night I killed him—and take me in with hands cuffed behind my back. Or maybe he really was at the art show, and he knew a lot more about the investigation than he’d been letting on.
“Have I interrupted something?” Martinez asked.
“No,” she said, as if she’d completely forgotten that we were just in the middle of a rare moment of her opening up to me about my father. I tried not to let her lie sting.
“Good, because we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About the investigation, of course,” he said, inviting himself in. “Is Ruby around?”
I tiptoed across the acoustic tile and peeked around the corner.
“Yes, but I would prefer it if we talked privately,” she said, trying to corral him into her office. Instead, he walked around the foyer as if looking for something. He stopped in front of the framed family portrait, his face scrunching up in a weird way as he stared at my father’s image. His goatee, his thick gold chain necklace, and unnecessary black leather jacket made him seem more like an actor
playing a part on Law & Order: LA than a real cop. He was more good-looking than I remembered—and probably less good-looking than he remembered. Arrogant ass.
“Detective, please, my bureau if you would,” she ordered, more aggressive than passive at this point, gesturing with her hands for him to move away from the picture and behind the closed doors of her bureau. Like using the French word made her office fancier, or more official.
He reluctantly followed her command, muttering something in Spanglish that I didn’t understand. I knew she was only trying to protect me—my rights, my emotional stability. But I didn’t like being kept in the dark. And I didn’t think I could wait one second to hear what update he had on the investigation.
“Hi, Detective Martinez.” I popped out right before the office door shut. His head swung around at my voice, and I saw a hint of excitement on his face before he narrowed his eyes into a stern-cop look.
“Hey, Ruby,” he said. “Your mother and I were about to have a chat. But you’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”
I glanced at my mom. Her jawbone was about to break. “No, Detective, I already told you I would prefer if we speak alone.”
“She’s a big girl. She can decide for herself.” He wasn’t intimidated by my mom or her D. A. attitude. Huh—that was rare.
“Yeah, Mom,” I said, walking past them into the bureau. “Don’t you think I deserve to know what’s going on?”
She followed me and whispered in my ear, “Listen to me. Don’t speak, even if he asks you direct questions. Let me answer for you. Do you understand?”
“Mom, he’s here to tell me what’s going on, not to interrogate me,” I whispered back, not believing my own words.
“Don’t be so naive, Rue.”
She sat me next to her on the couch, and motioned for Martinez to sit across from us in an armchair.
“So tell us, Detective, what news do you have to report?” she asked, firmly in command again. “What has the quick-as-snails Homicide Unit discovered?”
He gave her a look of disgust before focusing on me. “Well, it looks like your story has been corroborated by the forensics,” he said, leaning forward, elbows braced over knees, practically oozing testosterone. If he was trying to establish some kind of male dominance here—good luck. “We dumped LeMarq’s cell phone and found several texts and calls from an untraceable disposable cell. We know now that an unknown suspect promising a ‘blonde delivery’ lured LeMarq there. We assume it was this same unknown suspect who texted Ruby that night.”
I exhaled a little.
“This theory is also substantiated by the fact that LeMarq did not transport the young girl in his van. There were no hairs or fibers found in his vehicle, which leads us to believe that the unknown suspect, who lured both LeMarq and Ruby to the warehouse, also kidnapped the victim and used her as some sort of bait for both of them.”
I felt my mom tense up. “Excuse me, Detective—bait?”
“That’s right…bait.” Martinez continued staring me down, not even bothering to look at my mom. “Why do you think someone would want to lure you there?”
“Detective, she is not going to answer that.” Mom slung a hand over my lap like we were in a car and she’d slammed on the brakes.
He knew I was hiding something. He wasn’t as dumb as his muscles made him look.
“Detective,” my mother said, “I want to know who sent that text. I need that man caught.”
The heat from her laser glare must have gotten to him, because he finally took off his stupid leather jacket. As he draped it over his leg, I noticed a tattoo on his right forearm. It looked like the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor Marine Corps symbol. Dad had that same exact tattoo, in the same exact place. I knew they’d been partners sometime before I was born, but matching tattoos? Maybe it was a common Marine thing—
“I’m working on that, Jane,” he said, finally directing his focus to her. There was a venomous quality to his voice now. And he looked at her in a way that felt—inappropriate. Like he knew her better than I thought, and this wasn’t the first time they were having a fight.
“Are you working on it with the same intensity as the department is working on finding my husband’s killer?” she said in a raptor-like pitch. It startled me. Something strange was happening to my mom. “Sergeant Mathews tells me that Jack’s case has gone nowhere. It’s unacceptable—”
“Jane, relax.” He cut her off and stood with his hand up to her, as if he was blocking out her deathly atomic waves. “You know the department is committed to finding out what happened to Jack.”
She rose to face him. She wasn’t going to let him have the upper hand in anything, and certainly not in elevation—not with those heels.
I was wondering if he was going to bring up anything about the art show (since I wasn’t going to)—or if I was legitimately delusional and waiting in vain—when my phone vibrated in my back pocket. My mom was standing in front of me, blocking me from Martinez’s view, so I risked taking a quick look.
A photo text stared back at me. A girl tied up, gagged, and bleeding from a head wound. This one looked incredibly like me, too. At least, under the gag it seemed like it—blonde hair, pale-gray eyes. The message read:
11800 Ninth Street. This time, no police.
I blacked out the screen. I couldn’t stand to look at it.
Maybe, hopefully, probably, it was a fake. Since the official story about the LeMarq debacle was leaked to the media, I’d received dozens of threatening texts purporting to lead me to more setups. Each time, I told my mom and she’d report it to the forensic-analysis team assigned to my ongoing case. Nothing ever came from any of them. According to my mom, the texts were sent by a series of punk kids from school, a dirty paparazzo, and an insane person who had nothing better to do with his time.
We’d finally changed my cell phone number. It had been three weeks since I’d received anything. Only Alana, Alana’s big mouth, and my mom knew my number.
As Detective Muscle Head argued with my mom, I considered the odds of this message being real. None of the other messages had included photos, certainly not with a girl who looked so similar to me—and just like Riley Bentley. As far as I knew, no one had picked up on that detail yet.
I’d never been warned not to involve the police, either. Something about this message felt different.
“Is something wrong?” Mom’s voice stopped my runaway train of thought. “Honey, are you OK?”
I looked up. She’d called me honey again. I ground my teeth, thinking about how to respond. The text said no police, and yet, a detective was standing right here in front of me. Despite the warning, there was no way I could heed it. If the message was real, that girl needed help.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I’m not OK.” I turned on my screen so they could see the image. “And neither is this girl.”
Mom grabbed the cell out of my hand like it was a bomb only she could defuse.
“Did this just come through now, Ruby?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Detective…” My mom turned back to Martinez, as though putting the picture closer to his face would help him react quicker. “This needs to stop. Get your forensic team to look into it immediately. If it’s authentic, do something about it for once. I’m not sure how well my office, or your department, can handle another incident.” She motioned for him to leave.
At first he didn’t budge. He stood there, waiting, like a black chess piece eyeing his next move toward the white queen. Then his glare shifted to me. His eyes burned through me in a way that panicked me more than the photo did. Did he blame me for this?
“I’ll have forensics trace the call immediately. Forward it to me, Jane—you know my number—so we can analyze the picture, too,” he said, clenching his jacket in his fists.
My mom started sending him the text and picture. Did she have his phone number memorized? And didn’t he need to take my phone with him? Or did he already have my phone tapped
?
“But, Ruby,” he said, moving in my direction and holding out a white card. “Take this. In case you need to talk about anything.”
I looked away from him, trying to remember the research I’d done on what gestures marked deception or guilt. I was pretty sure I was doing all of them: rapid eye movement, hands near mouth, shifting in seat. I felt like the words “guilty stalker” were stamped across my forehead.
As I hesitated, my mom stepped in and took the card instead. “You should go now.”
He stared her down for a good five eternities before leaving without another word, a potent trail of spicy aftershave following in his wake.
My mom threw my phone on the couch next to me and started rubbing her temples. She was definitely hiding something from me. I’d picked up a subtext in her fiery conversation with Detective Martinez. I was so busy keeping my secrets hidden that I’d almost missed hers.
“Mom, what’s your deal with him?”
“Let’s finish this conversation later. I need to make some phone calls.” She made a dignified dash for her desk, like there was a VIC (only not a victim—more like a Very Important Conversation) that couldn’t wait. “Go rest. I’ll get some dinner delivered and we can talk then.”
“OK, but what was that thing you were going to tell me before he got here?”
She finally looked up, and I watched the blood drain from her face.
“If it’s about my case, I think I deserve to know what it is.”
“You’re right,” she said, closing her eyes in defeat. “You do deserve to know.”
Instead of coming to sit next to me, she took her place behind her desk.
“I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to get it out,” she said. “Before you came into our lives, I…had an affair. With Detective Martinez. It was the greatest mistake of my life, and not a day goes by that I don’t regret it.”
My stomach dropped along with my jaw. Why did it feel like she just admitted to cheating on me?
Killing Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series) Page 5