by Lois Greiman
Nevertheless, I pulled on a sports bra, shimmied into my shorts, and strapped myself into my running shoes. The lawn crunched under my feet as I stepped off my walkway. Remembering Rivera’s insulting comments and Mrs. Al-Sadr’s disapproving stare, I wandered around the side of the house to turn on the hose.
Water arced out of the sprinkler, easing back and forth, and for a moment I was tempted to simply watch its hypnotizing rotation. But I could feel the fat coagulating around my waistband and finally forced myself onto the street.
The air was heating up already, but early morning traffic was light. I did two cursory stretches, thought “screw that,” and pushed myself into a jog.
Mr. Harendez’s roses were in full bloom on the corner of Orchid and Woodland. And up on Grapevine a dog jumped at its fence and barked ferociously. It looked like a cross between a grizzly and an orangutan. I feigned courage and lumbered on past.
Three miles later I was back home, my bra soaked with sweat and my body odor starting to wreak havoc with my still-functioning neurons.
There was a puddle on the lumpy soil beneath the sprinkler, but my lawn had yet to erupt into tropical glory, and though I was pretty sure I should move the sprinkler around, I was in desperate need of a shower and I had no desire to share the water pressure with the yard. I’m a strong proponent of survival of the fittest. It was me or the lawn. Stumbling around the corner, I bumped into someone and almost screamed.
Rivera glared down at me.
I clasped my chest in an effort to keep my heart from erupting through my ribs. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, my voice an abbreviated croak.
He watched me for an instant. “I was concerned about the condition of your grass.”
“My—”
He gave me a look that suggested my mind might not be functioning at warp speed. “I’m working on a case,” he said. “Dead guy in your office.” He took a step forward. I took a step back, remembering my peculiar post-running aroma. Rivera looked as crisp as a lettuce leaf. “Ring any bells,” he asked, “or did last night rattle all that dull homicide stuff right out of your head?”
“Last night?”
“He make a habit of staying over?”
I scowled, not following his line of thought.
“Garage door man,” he said, nodding toward the street.
And then I spotted the Beetle, still parked halfway on the sidewalk. So then I came to it. The first dilemma of the morning. Should I let him think I was so desperate even the Geek God hadn’t wanted to stay, or let him think I was so desperate the Geek God had stayed.
“I’d have to check to be sure,” I said, “but I don’t believe my personal life is any of your concern.”
“A guy was found dead in your office,” he argued. “Everything’s my concern. I have a few questions for him.”
“Who?”
He gave me that look again. “Have you got more than one man in your bed this morning, Ms. McMullen?”
My mind rattled around a little more. I can exercise or I can think. Both at the same time is a bad bet. “Solberg?” I asked, reality finally filtering in. “What do you want to ask him?”
“You two so close you field his questions now?”
I wished to hell I didn’t care that I smelled like pulverized fish guts or that sweat was dripping out of my saturated hair and into my eyes. “Ask him anything you like, Ribald.”
He gave a sarcastic dip of his head, as if grateful he had my permission, and said, “I tried the door. It was locked.”
“You tried to get into my house uninvited?”
He shrugged. “I knew you’d want to help with the investigation any way you could. Law-abiding citizen that you are.”
The man had balls the size of cantaloupes. Maybe, I thought, and noticed that he wore dress pants today, dark blue, belted low on his rock solid waist. Crap.
“You have a key,” he asked, “or is lover-boy supposed to let you in?”
Still didn’t know what to say. Still was debating the age-old question about size. Rivera was looking at me funny, like maybe I’d lost my mind.
“I tried the doorbell,” he said. “No one answered. You didn’t kill him, too, did you?”
My mind clicked back to the matter at hand. Better late than never. “They must think you’re a riot down at the precinct.”
He gave me that almost smile. “In a scary sort of way.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You going to invite me in?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Afraid I’ll be intimidated by your man’s sheer . . . magnetism.”
I gritted my teeth. “Solberg is not my man.”
“Just out for a little nooky like he said, then?”
It dawned on me at that precise moment that he was having entirely too much fun. “I do have some information for you, after all,” I said.
“Yeah?” His eyes sharpened.
“Yes. Turns out you’re an ass.”
His eyes gleamed. “Rouse Don Juan,” he ordered. “I’ll only take a minute.”
And so we finally came to it. I took a deep breath. “He’s not here.”
There might have been a flicker of surprise in his expression. In fact, there might have been something else.
“Lost him?” he asked. “Running?”
“He . . .” I remembered Solberg’s lies from the night before, and since they tended to cover my own rather exposed ass, I decided to corroborate them. “He took a cab home and left the Beetle for me. My car’s in the shop.”
“An epidemic,” he said.
“His vehicle’s going to be done today.”
“Ahh.” Something sparked in his eyes. I didn’t like it.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Just ahh.”
“It just so happens Solberg and I are no more than friends. In fact, we’re not even friends.”
“Business acquaintances, I believe you said.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, and remembering the pond in my front yard, bent to shut off the water.
When I straightened and turned I couldn’t help noticing that Rivera’s gaze was just skimming up my body to my face. His eyes were smoldering. I swear they were. My stomach did a funky little double loop. But I was sure it was just hunger.
“You run every morning?” he asked. His voice was deep and primordial.
My heart rate jumped up another notch, which it didn’t usually do because of hunger. Still, I couldn’t possibly be attracted to this man. I was a psychologist. He was an ape. But I’d always thought the ape was the sexiest of the lower primates. I moistened my lips and remembered to breathe. “Most days,” I lied, and couldn’t help but notice there was a bulge just to the right of his fly.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. He clenched his fists, eyed my chest and took a step toward me. “Got any protection?” he asked.
And in that precise instant my hormones fired up like a kiln. It was stupid. Asinine. But I hadn’t seen a man look at me like that for a couple of lifetimes, and if I wasn’t ready to apply for renewed virginity I should do something about it quick. Maybe I should have been glad he was concerned about protection, but right then I really couldn’t think about anything but the tingle in my shorts. “Yeah.” It was all I could manage.
His gaze raked over me, hotter than hell. “Where do you keep it?”
I was breathing like a racehorse.
“Dresser drawer,” I managed.
Chemistry burned like a torch between us.
He scowled. “You run alone and leave your pepper spray in your bedroom?”
“Pepper spray?” My voice sounded hoarse. My mind clipped disjointedly back to reality. Pepper spray! Holy crap!
He was staring at me as if I was one bean short of a hot dish. “You don’t have a gun in there, do you?”
Oh, fuck!
“Most firearm accidents are perpetrated by their owners on themselves.”
“I . . .” I felt faint. And a littl
e sick. “No. No gun.”
He took a step closer. My face felt hot. Hell, my knees were blushing.
“Do you know the penalty for lying to an officer of the law?” he asked.
“I don’t have a gun. I swear it.” If he produced a warrant and found the aging condoms stashed away beneath my underwear I’d have to kill myself—with the rubbers, since I didn’t own a firearm.
He was looking at me funny. “But you do have self-defense spray.”
God save me. “Of course.”
“How old is it? Sometimes the propellant goes bad. The chemical’s still viable, but it won’t do you a hell of a lot of good if it doesn’t spray.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing quite fervently that I was dead. “You’ll have to excuse me. I have a ten o’clock appointment.” I turned like an automaton, hoping the earth would swallow me, but it was pretty doubtful, even in L.A.
“I have some questions for you.”
“Just bought it a couple months ago,” I jabbered. Digging my key out of my shoe, I shoved it into the hole. “Zapped the mail carrier just last week. Worked like magic,” I said and escaped into my house like a squirrel into a nuthouse.
9
Booze and boys, ain’t nothing in the universe that’ll make a girl stupid faster.
—Lily Schultz,
when she bailed her husband out of jail for the fifth time in as many months
“MR. ANGLER.” I stuck out my hand like a real grown-up.
Vincent Angler didn’t reciprocate. Instead, he stared at me, head tilted back slightly, dark eyes hooded. He was tall, black, and as broad as a freight train. He was also a defensive lineman for the Los Angeles Lions. Solberg had dug up a list of the team’s phone numbers as promised and had subsequently given it to me. I had started calling immediately, thinking there was no time like the present.
The first two players had been polite but unhelpful. The third had spouted profanity like poetry. Angler was fourth on the list, and while he had been less than ecstatic to meet with me, he had agreed. Thus my excursion across town to a squat, graffiti-riddled bar called the Hole. Just looking at it made me miss the aristocratic class of the Warthog.
“You McMullen?” I wasn’t sure why my name seemed to amuse Mr. Angler, but his expression suggested that it did.
“Yes. I am.” My hand was beginning to feel self-conscious.
He nodded and his ebony eyes roved down my midline.
I withdrew the hand. “I appreciate your willingness to meet me.”
He gave me a lazy-eyed smile. It was the kind of expression one might see on the face of a cat. But there would invariably be feathers involved. “Was wonderin’ ’bout you,” he said. He had high cheekbones and arms that bulged like pythons beneath the short sleeves of his tomato red T. He nodded with a thin snort, and his gaze rested on my breasts for an elongated moment.
There’s a saying about not letting them see you sweat. I had never thought of it in a literal sense before. Always good to broaden one’s horizons, I thought, and wished to hell I had changed out of my office suit. Once again, I was hardly dressed provocatively, and yet I felt strangely exposed in the thin ivory rayon and Gucci sandals. But full-body armor might have been incongruous with the Hole’s decor—early pigsty. I had only given his bar of choice a cursory glance upon arrival, but I was feeling paler by the minute and beginning to suspect the clientele hadn’t originated on some drafty, northern isle, like that from which mine tended to descend.
Angler leisurely met my gaze. If I encountered him on a football field I’d run like hell. If I met him in a dark alley I’d be lucky not to soil myself.
He lifted one hand, motioning me toward the bowels of the establishment. I steadied my knees, slipped past him, and slid into a vinyl booth. He eased into the other side, his movements strangely graceful as he draped an arm across the back of his seat. “So you was Bomber’s shrink.” Something about the way he stretched his arm out across the cracked vinyl reminded me of Bomstad—before he had me racing around my desk like a broken-down greyhound. My bladder felt weak.
A half dozen pair of dark eyes were watching me. All male, all steady. I kept mine on Angler. As if I had a choice. I’d seen snake charmers with less magnetism. “His psychologist. Yes,” I said.
He nodded, still staring. I tried a smile. He didn’t reciprocate.
“Figures.”
“Really?” I tried to sound intrigued but casual. I may have managed coherent. “How so?”
His gaze dropped again. “You got tits.”
For a moment I was certain I had heard him wrong. In fact, I turned my head slightly to hear better. “I beg your—”
“Fucker couldn’t keep his dick in his jock long enough for sprints.”
I tried to think of some sort of response. A question, an answer, maybe a hand gesture. Nothing came to mind. I just stared, and before any earth shattering witticisms sprang into my head, a server appeared.
“Mr. Angler,” he said. I creaked my neck to the side. He was in his early twenties and had a million-watt smile. Even in my current state I could tell he beat the hell out of me in the adorable department. Had I not been sitting across the table from Conan the black barbarian I would have felt like an overgrown troll. “Good to see you again.”
Angler gave the waiter a curt nod. “Bring us a pitcher of draft, will ya, Jeff?”
“Right up,” said Cutie, and turned away.
The feminist in me cleared her throat before I could throttle her. Damn feminists! You can never trust them to keep their mouths shut. “I’ll have an iced tea.” Another couple pair of eyes turned toward me. Cutie raised his brows in unison with the corner of his lips. “With a twist of lemon,” I added. Because hell, if you’re determined to get your throat cut, why not do so with panache?
The waiter raised his gaze to Angler’s for just a moment, then turned away with a grin. Angler was staring at me.
“So . . .” It was as good a way to start as any, I thought, and tried to pretend this was just another business meeting. But the word “tits” had eroded the genial atmosphere. “How long did you know Mr. Bomstad?”
“How long you fuckin’ him?”
My mind bumped to a screeching halt, then scurried along like a rat in a maze. Should I cut and run, act offended, pretend I hadn’t heard him? After a brief internal debate, I settled on a professional tone—no nonsense, but patient. “As you probably know, Mr. Bomstad died in my office.”
His lips rose again, showing unreasonably white teeth and a questionable sense of humor. It gave me the chills. “So I got you to thank, maybe,” he said, and slipping his arm from the booth, propped both elbows on the table as he leaned toward me. “But that don’t answer my question.”
I blinked, my mind stalling. “I take it you weren’t overly fond of Mr. Bomstad?”
His eyes narrowed, his smile eased back. “Figure that out on your own, did you, Shorty?” His gaze shifted to my breasts again, lingered. “Must be why he hired you.” He pointed to his own cranium. “Sharp as a blade.” He watched me in silence for a moment. “Where’d you go to school? One of them fuckin’ ivy places?”
The professional image is hard to maintain when you’re sweating like a stallion. “I don’t believe my education has any correlation—”
He laughed, then leaned close and mimicked me. “‘I don’t believe my education—’ Shit, yeah. You’re the one he’d choose all right. ’Cuz he could sure as hell put on a show, could the Bomb. You musta thought you got yourself one of your own.”
Panic was beginning to bubble closer to the surface, and it was getting harder to breathe. “If I could just ask you a few questions—”
“Dinners at the country club.” He put his index finger and thumb together as if gripping crystal stemware. His forearms were as big as my neck. The air felt close and cloying. “Weekends on Daddy’s yacht.”
If I were in a session I’d say his mood was deteriorating rapidly. As it was, I was wonder
ing what the hell I had been thinking coming here. I would like dinner at the country club. And a weekend on someone’s yacht sounded fabulous! I forced myself to breathe. In and out, just as if I expected to continue living. “There have been some discrepancies surrounding the circumstances of Bomstad’s death.”
“Sipping champagne out of your damned—”
“Shut the hell up!” I snapped. I wasn’t sure who was more surprised, Angler or me or one of the dozen patrons who stared at us from nearby, but I was too damned mad to care. “I didn’t work my ass off just to listen to some overpaid jock yak about something he knows nothing about.”
His eyebrows were somewhere in his hairline. “Shit, girl,” he said, and grinned again, but it was different now. A little less cannibalistic. He leaned back, stretched both arms along the booth, and seemed to relax a bit. “You got yourself a pair of balls on you.”
I cleared my throat, feeling stupid. My professors had been very clear about the necessity of keeping cool in high-stress situations. Dr. David would probably have known Bomstad’s shoe size by now and have Angler scheduled for anger therapy two times a week—Mondays and Wednesdays without fail. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a bit . . . overanxious since Mr. Bomstad’s death.”
“Overanxious.” He snorted as if mildly amused. “Yeah, I ’spect a dead guy in your office can do that.” He eyed me for moment, his gaze narrowing. “You have a thing for him?”
His expression was sober now. An honest question. I decided on an honest answer. Just to see how it went. “He’d been a client for several months. Came in for therapy every Thursday night.” I drew a careful breath and steadied my nerves. “The last time, he tried to rape me.”
Something shone in the recesses of Angler’s bottomless eyes. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I changed my mind about that dark alley scenario. If he ever accosted me, I’d just slit my wrists and get it over with. He could kill you with a glance anyway.
“Tried?” he said.
I exhaled carefully, keeping my hands steady. “I screamed, kneed him in the crotch . . .” I planned to go on, but it was harder than I expected. There seemed to be a lack of oxygen in the room.