Unzipped

by Lois Greiman

  But Laney didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, her voice perfectly modulated to soothe, “it’s extremely difficult to understand you when you scream at that decibel. What did you say your name was?”

  The voice lowered to a dull shriek.

  “Mr. Solberg, my apologies, but Ms. McMullen isn’t in today.” She lifted her electric green gaze to mine with absolute innocence. “Stole your Porsche. I’m certain you’re mistaken, Mr. Solberg.” Her tone was a perfect meld of unqualified certainty and quiet affront, which was amazing, because I’d seen her at auditions. She wasn’t going to be the next Meryl Streep. In fact, Pamela Anderson had nothing to fear. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Ms. McMullen is the consummate professional. But if you’ll give me your phone number I’ll make certain she calls you at her earliest convenience.”

  Thirty seconds later he’d given her six methods of contacting him and proposed twice. It was like that with Elaine.

  She hung up the phone and crossed her arms over her gravity-defying chest. “Tell me.”

  “I just borrowed it,” I said, but there was a twist of guilt in my gut that made me hungry for dark chocolate. Being fresh out, I shambled into my office, trying to ignore the spot from whence they’d removed Bomstad’s dead body.

  She followed me in. “Tell me everything and start at the beginning.”

  My head was starting to pound. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Christina Mary McMullen, nothing is what’s been going on with you for the last year and a half. Something is when you steal a guy’s Porsche and park it smack dab in front of your office building!”

  I considered arguing. In fact, I opened my mouth to do just that, but finally I plopped my head onto my desk and groaned through my eyeballs. “Holy crap, Laney, I’m in deep shit.”

  She grabbed a chair and scooted it across the floor. I could hear it being dragged along. “Because of the Porsche or because of the dead guy?”

  I moaned again, but the front bell rang simultaneously, interrupting my pity fest. And it had promised to be a good one.

  She lifted one finger in a request to hold that thought, donned her professional persona like a feather boa, and marched through the door.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, but the next voice brought my head up like a muskie on a hook.

  “Lieutenant Rivera.” There was a slight pause. I assumed he was showing her his badge. He had a tendency to whip the thing out like an Olympic medal. “I need to speak with Ms. McMullen.”

  “Lieutenant . . . Rivera is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry, but she didn’t feel up to coming in today.”

  “That’s understandable.” His voice was unmistakable, as deep and dark as I remembered in my nightmares. “She’s been through quite a shock.”

  “It’s a terrible shame. I’m Elaine Butterfield, by the way,” she said. I could imagine her extending her slim hand and wondered if he would pass out when her arm squeezed up against her breast. She’d dropped better men with a hello. “Elaine Butterfield.”

  “You’re her secretary?” So he’d survived the handshake. Impressive, but I was still betting on Elaine. She’d been called Brainy Laney in elementary school. About the time she started filling out, the middle-school boys had thought of a few less cerebral monikers, but she’d had the last laugh; she’d only dated outside the district, operating on the idea that fraternizing with your schoolmates was tantamount to incest.

  “Secretary and actress,” she corrected, but her tone was, as usual, self-deprecating.

  “Is that what you were doing on . . .” He paused as if to check his notes. “August twenty-fourth?”

  “Audition,” she said. “For one Silvia T. Gilmore, Attorney-at-Law, tough but with a soft side. You have a very nice smile, Lieutenant.”

  I rolled my eyes. Rivera’s smile made him look like a cannibal at a fat farm, but maybe he’d given her the genuine article. I was almost tempted to peek around my door frame just to see if there was such a thing.

  “So you weren’t in the office when Bomstad arrived last Thursday?”

  “Had to make it all the way across town. You know how the Five is once we working slobs punch out.”

  “But you’ve met Bomstad before. On previous visits?”

  “He seemed like a nice guy.”

  “How nice?”

  “Clean fingernails. Nice shoes, that sort of thing.”

  “And what about his relationship with Ms. McMullen?”

  “She liked his shoes, too.”

  “Anything else she appreciated about Mr. Bomstad?”

  “He paid his bills on time.”

  He paused a moment as if trying to figure her out. I almost wished him luck. Elaine was an enigma in 38C’s. “So she never said anything about dating him?”

  “Dating him!” She laughed. The tone was perfect. “Certainly not! She’s the consummate professional.”

  “Bomstad was thought to be a good-looking man.”

  “Wasn’t he just.” Her voice sounded dreamy. “I have to admit to fantasizing about dragging him into the broom closet myself.”

  Her acting skills may leave something to be desired, but she could lie like the devil himself. Elaine needed another man hanging around her like I needed a tub of lard stuck to my ass.

  “I didn’t know there was a broom closet here.”

  “Luckily, there isn’t,” she said, and laughed again.

  He chuckled in return. I canted my head at the sound, but I was pretty sure I had heard right. “So you’d say theirs was a strictly professional relationship.”

  “Ms. McMullen and Andrew Bomstad? Absolutely.”

  “And what of her character?” he asked. “Would you say she is, generally speaking, an honest individual?”

  Elaine paused. I could almost feel him lean in, ready for the kill.

  “Please speak freely, Ms. Butterfield. I’ll make certain none of this gets back to your employer.”

  “Well, if you want to know the truth . . .” Another pause. “I think she’s too honest for her own good. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Well, people like to be . . . flattered. You know, have their egos stroked. But Christina, Ms. McMullen, she just says things flat out.”

  “So she’s confrontational?”

  “Confrontational?” She seemed to consider that for an instant. “No. I wouldn’t call it that. Just . . . forthright.”

  “Then, in your opinion, she’s got nothing to hide?”

  “Sometimes she bites her fingernails.”

  He laughed. “Nothing else?”

  “The truth is, she’s too good for her own good.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I go through her office,” he said, and suddenly footfalls were rapping across the floor.

  My mind spun into overdrive, and although my professional image quailed at the idea of diving under my desk, my sense of survival insisted I do just that.

  “Well. Ms. McMullen.” He was standing in my doorway, his tone as dry as aged chardonnay. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

  And so I had been right again. He was a shitty actor and a sarcastic son of a bitch to boot.

  “Mr. Riverman.” I tried hard to imbue my tone with the same cocky nonchalance as his, but I might have fallen a bit short, since I was simultaneously dragging myself out from under my desk. My chair scooted away, but I managed to wrangle it under control and slip between the cushioned armrests. “I didn’t realize we had an appointment.”

  He didn’t bother to address that. “You should keep your employees better informed. Ms. Butterfield seemed to believe you weren’t in today. But maybe you were under your desk when she checked. Did you lose something?”

  My mind scrambled for a dozen excuses before I realized he was toying with me. So I crossed my legs as if I hadn’t a care in the world and hoped my ears wouldn’t burn off my head like fried torti
llas.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Reverence?”

  A tic jumped in his jaw. I almost smiled. “When I was reviewing my notes I realized I had neglected a few relevant questions. You don’t mind if I ask them now, do you?”

  “Well, actually—”

  “Good,” he said and, reaching back, closed the door in Elaine’s face. Her expression as it swung shut was beyond surprised. Elaine hadn’t been closed out since she was five years old and knocking on the “boys only” clubhouse. “I’m going to need a list of Bomstad’s friends.”

  “As you know, Mr. . . .” I shook my head. My father had once suggested that I was possessed by the devil. In the last few days there had been little enough to prove him wrong. “I’m sorry. What was your name again?”

  He gave me a predatory smile. “Rivera,” he said. “Lieutenant Rivera.”

  “Right. But as you know, Mr. Reever, I can’t give out that kind of information. Client confidentiality.”

  “Which is, of course, superseded in a murder investigation.”

  “Murder! You said yourself that Bomstad overdosed on Viagra.”

  He shrugged with minimal effort, as though I wasn’t quite worth the energy of real movement. “That was the original assessment. But further analysis suggests a trace of some additional chemical elements in the wine.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. “What elements?”

  That carnivorous smile again. “I’m afraid that’s confidential information, Ms. McMullen. But certainly you can understand my concern, and my need to determine who might have had access to the wine.”

  My first thought was to drop to my knees and beg him to believe my innocence, but I managed to stay upright.

  He sat down on the edge of my desk and crossed his arms. “I don’t believe he purchased the wine himself.”

  My throat felt dry, my hands clammy. “Any particular reason?”

  “Several, actually. The Bomb made a good deal of money, and while he had a host of personal foibles, frugality wasn’t amongst them.”

  I waited.

  “A seven-hundred-fifty-milliliter bottle of Asti Spumante retails at about thirteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. That’s pretty cheap. But you’d know that, what with your previous experience.”

  I shrugged, feeling itchy. “I delivered drinks,” I said. “That doesn’t make me a drinker.”

  “Really? Even after all those years of being in such close proximity to it?”

  “You’re in close proximity with crime on a daily basis,” I said. “That doesn’t make you a . . .” I paused. “But I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

  His lips twitched. “But you know something about liquor.”

  I shrugged. “Just what any woman knows. It makes men act like asses.” I batted my lashes at him. “Might you be a drinking man, Mr. Rivven?”

  He squinted his eyes, as if he might smile, but didn’t. “What’s your drink of choice, Ms. McMullen?”

  “I like root beer,” I said. “Mug. But I prefer it in ice cream.” There was no way he could have known I liked Spumante. Was there? And why the crap would he care unless he really thought I’d killed Bomstad?

  “I spoke with a—” He checked his notes. “Mrs. Lily Schultz.”

  “You called Lily?” Maybe I sounded as shocked as I felt, because his eyes were gleaming like a crazed werewolf’s.

  “She said you’d sometimes have a glass of wine after your shift.” Perhaps he was waiting for me to confess and throw myself upon his mercy, but my mouth was too dry to speak and I strongly suspected he had no mercy. “She mentioned that you liked Spumante,” he added.

  I was going to be sick, right there in my own office. But I swallowed hard and raised my chin. “I didn’t send Andrew Bomstad the wine,” I said. “I didn’t know he had it. I didn’t tamper with it, and I certainly didn’t kill him.”

  Rivera’s eyes were as steady as a snake’s. “Of course not,” he said. “But I thought you might be able to help me ascertain who did so I can let you get back to work.” He glanced around as if assessing every detail of my diminutive office. “Or whatever it is you do here.”

  “Shall I assume you disapprove of me?” I asked. “Or that it’s mental health you detest?”

  “Although I’m sure you did a wonderful job with the Bomb, I think sometimes your . . . profession . . . can do more harm than good.”

  “Would you suggest my clients all pull themselves up by their bootstraps instead, then?” I asked.

  “Or have a stiff drink,” he said, “maybe of Asti Spumante.”

  I tried to think of some snappy rejoinder, but I was out of spunky witticisms. He stood up, managing, once again, to loom.

  “I’ll need a list of Bomstad’s acquaintances,” he said. “Anyone he might have confided in.”

  “As I told you—” I began, but in that instant he pulled a plastic Baggie from his pocket. Inside was a piece of card stock, two inches by four inches and creased down the middle. He held it out to me, but there was really no need. I have excellent eyesight and I could see the words scrawled across the paper in dark, fluid letters. “For tonight. C.”

  “Someone sent him the wine,” he said. “Someone with the initial C.”

  Perhaps I should have responded, but the floor had just fallen out from under me.

  “Any comments . . . Christina?”

  Holy crap! Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.

  “Ms. McMullen?”

  “I always knew I should change my name,” I said.

  He watched me.

  “Maybe to Xenia. To avoid confusion.”

  “You’re maintaining that you didn’t send the wine?”

  “Repeatedly.” My mind was clicking away a mile a minute, but it was all ridiculous. What possible motive would I have to murder my own client? Which was a question the irritating Rivera must certainly have asked. I felt my blood pressure simmer down to a rapid boil. “But I’m sure you know that,” I said. “Otherwise I would have already faced a firing squad. Most likely the highly acclaimed LAPD has already found the culprit.”

  He said nothing. I tried another smile and managed, yet again, not to ralph on my shoes.

  “His diary would surely attest to the fact that he and I had a strictly professional relationship.”

  The silence lasted a second too long. I almost grinned for real as the truth of the situation dawned on me. He knew nothing about the journal Bomstad had begun years before I met him. The journal where he’d recorded thoughts and deeds. The journal which, I was suddenly sure, could exonerate me.

  True, the Bomb had turned out to be a lying scumbag pervert, but even lying scumbag perverts keep notes for posterity. “You did find his diary, didn’t you?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure how to read his expression. There was definitely irritation, but there was wariness, too, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a flicker of grudging surprise hidden carefully behind his double espresso eyes.

  “There are several avenues yet to be pursued,” he said.

  Several avenues. I would have laughed out loud if I could manage to swallow.

  His gaze narrowed the slightest degree. “You’re a relatively attractive woman, Ms. McMullen. Did it ever occur to you that Bomstad may have employed your services simply because he wanted to get into your pants? That maybe every word he told you was a lie toward that end?”

  In light of recent circumstances, I had wondered something disturbingly similar. And although the question certainly deserved some consideration, it was the words “relatively attractive” that I fixated on. It was childish, but the phrase made me want to yank out his short hairs with a tweezers.

  “Whether that was the case or not,” I said, pursing my lips and using my most professional/anal-retentive tone, “the fact remains that he did not, as you so tactfully put it, get into my pants.”

  “Terribly disappointing for you, was it?”

  I almost said no. I should have said no, immediately and emphatically
with a good deal of righteous indignation, but I’d been raised Catholic. Lying is tantamount to murder, and it was that moment’s hesitation that lured that wolfish grin back to Rivera’s lean face.

  “Hoping he’d be the one to end the dearth?” he asked.

  It took me a moment to realize he was referring to my sex life. I think it’s safe to assume no one wants her sex life referred to in terms of deprivation.

  “If you can manage to find the diary,” I said, gritting my teeth around the words, “I’m certain you’ll ascertain that my behavior with Mr. Bomstad was the epitome of professionalism.”

  He paused, doing nothing but watch me, and for an instant I was sure he could hear the blood pounding like panicked rhinos in my veins.

  “If you think of anything to add to your statement, the L.A. Police Department would greatly appreciate it,” he said and, turning away, walked out the door.

  Elaine materialized a moment later, looking wide-eyed and a little discombobulated. Apparently, she was no longer Silvia T. Gilmore, Attorney-at-Law. “Remember when Zach Peterson said he’d found your panties in Matt Montgomery’s car?”

  Sadly, I did.

  “But he was lying about the whole thing so you’d tell him how far you’d really gone with Matt?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This is similar.”

  I thought about it in something of a haze. “Except a misplaced pair of panties isn’t likely to get me ten-to-life in Folsom.”

  “True,” she agreed, scowling into space. “And Peterson didn’t have such a great butt.”

  6

  Maybe knowledge is power, but it’s damned hard to think a burglar to death.

  —Glen McMullen,

  in defense of the Beretta under his pillow

  THE NEXT FEW HOURS were a blur. By five o’clock on Wednesday my eyes felt gritty and my skull too tight for my brain.

  Elaine opened the door a crack. “All is well?” she asked. Her enunciation was strangely stilted, I noticed. She wore her hair tacked up with knitting needles and spoke with the palms of her hands pressed together.

  Either she was an imposter or she was practicing for the role of unassuming Japanese secretary.