by Holly Jacobs
The phone rang.
I picked it up—an automatic response—and wished I hadn’t. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. But I said, “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom it’s Miles.”
Miles. My boy.
He was off having fun, not realizing his old mom was headed to jail for a murder she didn’t commit. She’d come out a few decades in the future with her wrinkly unicorn tattoo and a felony murder conviction following her around.
My eyes started to itch and my nose sort of tingled.
“Hi, sweetie,” I said, my voice sounding sort of oddly flat. I forced some pep into it as I asked, “Are you guys having fun?”
“Sure. We’re teaching Peri how to scuba dive.”
“That’s nice.” Nice boys. My boys were so very nice. And now they’d have to live with the stigma of having a mother convicted of murder.
I looked for something to wipe my nose on and found a napkin by last night’s pizza box.
“So what’s new with you?” Miles asked.
I couldn’t tell him, I’m officially a suspect in a murder and grounded to the city of LA. So, I settled for, “You know me, same old, same old.”
“Mom, you’ve got to get out and live it up a bit. You’re single for the next month. Single in LA. Go out and do something crazy.”
“Crazy,” I murmured. Crazy like investigating a murder? “Sure, honey, I will,” I promised honestly.
“Good. We’ll call every couple days,” he promised. “I just wanted to be sure you were okay. I know you miss us when we’re gone.”
“I do, but I’m fine. Don’t worry about me and just have fun.”
“You, too. I mean it, Mom. Do something different. Shake your life up a bit. Love you.” He hung up.
He’d said love you. Would he still love his tattooed convicted murderer mother?
He wanted me to shake up my life? I started to shake again, and pulled the afghan close around me, clutching the not-quite-so-empty file folder to my chest.
My boys. They’d be home in a month not knowing they’d be coming home to a mother on death row.
Hey, wait a minute. Did California have a death row? I was sick that I didn’t know the answer to that. What kind of person doesn’t know if their state has a death penalty?
Now, Texas has a death penalty, but I couldn’t think of another state that did. I’m sure there are death-penalty states as well. I should know which ones were.
I should lobby against them, especially if I was going to be on death row. Okay, so maybe then it would be a conflict of interest.
Once I cleared up this whole suspicion-of-murder thing, I was going to be a better citizen. I’d get active in politics. I was going volunteer on someone’s campaign—an honest politician with integrity if I could find one. I’d know things about California’s penal system.
There was a whole world of things I was going to try and do.
But first I had to find out...who killed Mr. Banning? So, where did someone start an investigation like that?
Talk to the witnesses.
But I was the only witness I knew of and I hadn’t witnessed the crime, just the after-effects.
Maybe I should start with what I remembered about the house before I cleaned it up?
Maybe there was some clue that I hadn’t noticed because I didn’t know that I needed clues when I cleaned. I opened the file and wrote panties on the ceiling fan. Or was the bra on the ceiling fan and the panties under the sink?
Man, I was going to suck at this.
Those panties and the bra had to be a clue. Maybe the murderer was a D cup woman who went commando around town.
That didn’t help. I suspected there were a lot of women in LA who went commando. I tried to jot down other things I remembered cleaning. I’d steamed footprints, polished the award…
The doorbell rang.
Maybe it was Tiny. She’d ignored my plea for some quiet time and had come over to sit with me.
Aw, what a good friend. It was that friend ESP thing again. Tiny and I had it in spades.
I opened the door, ready to be swept into her hug.
There would be no hugging tonight.
“You,” I said by way of a very impolite, less-than-enthusiastic greeting.
You being one Detective Parker. Darn, he still looked hot. Maybe even hotter than he looked at Mr. Banning’s. Yeah he was right up there with all my hunky fictional detectives in his hotness. He was Nathan Fillion’s Castle’s hot. Oh, wait, better yet, he was Nathan Fillion’s Firefly’s Captain Mal hot. Not that Firefly was a detective show that had any bearing on my case.
And not that I cared that Detective Parker was hot.
He was the man who wanted to fry me in the electric chair, if California had one. Maybe that’s what I’d do after I finished writing my list…look up whether or not California had the death penalty. Then find out what method they used if they did.
I like to be prepared for any eventuality.
“Ms. Mac. Can I come in?” he asked in his low, gravely voice. It was the kind of voice that made knees go weak. The kind of voice meant for whispering suggestive phrases.
But the man attached to the seductive voice wanted to put me in jail for a crime I didn’t commit. I forced my wobbly knees to lock straight and I faced Mr. Sexy Voice.
“I’m sure you can, but that’s not what you meant to ask. You meant to ask, May I come in. And the answer is, I don’t think so.” Okay, so that sounded sort of hostile, but hell, I was feeling sort of hostile. This man thought of me as a suspect and not just a hot babe.
Or even a semi-warm babe.
“I really need to ask you some more questions,” he said, all businessy sounding. He edged his foot into the space between the door and the frame.
I wondered if he could arrest me for assault if I slammed the door on it?
Thinking about slamming his foot made me smile and I felt a bit better, a bit stronger. “I have a lawyer. He says I’m not to talk to you without him being present.”
I also had a file folder. I didn’t need super-cop to solve the mystery. I was going to do it myself.
“A lawyer?” he said. “That was fast for someone who’s innocent.”
“Hey, I know how you cops work. You need to pin this crime on someone before all the other Mortie winners in LA get nervous. And how about all the Emmy and Oscar winners? Golden Globes? Kids’ Choice, even? You could have a city in panic. Since I was at Mr. Banning’s and accidently cleaned the murder scene, I’d be a handy target. Well, I’m not going to jail for something I didn’t do.”
“Listen, lady,” he said, a hint of frustration in his voice. “I told you, I have to investigate you simply because of the circumstances. But I don’t seriously look at you as a suspect. There’s no motive.”
“How do you know? Maybe I had an affair with Mr. Banning. Maybe it ended badly. Maybe I walked in to find his new babe’s undies hanging from the chandelier, her bra under the sink because he had a topless-woman-washing-dishes fetish. Maybe I went nuts and did him in. You don’t know. If that’s the kind of investigation you run, then I’m doomed.”
Oh, geesh, way to go Quincy. Try and convince the cop you did it. I shook my head.
He was shaking his head as well. “Did you have an affair with him?”
“No.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. But you don’t know that,” I pointed out.
“Ah, but now I do,” he grinned, as if he’d won some point. “You just told me. And how about helping me out some more and telling me what I need to know?”
“Like I said, I can’t talk to you without my lawyer.” I should have slammed the door and taken a chance at assault charges, but curiosity won out. “But what exactly did you want to know?”
“I want you to tell me everything you can remember about what the house looked like before you cleaned it.”
Great minds think alike.
I guess I had detective potential after all. I�
��d been on the right track. Trying to remember what the house had been like...that was a great idea.
And his request sounded innocent enough. Not as if he was looking for a way to convict me, but rather like he was looking for the real killer.
“So, can I come in?” he asked with an endearing little grin that probably made women between the ages of eighteen and eighty not only say yes, but say oh, yes to anything he asked.
I glanced over my shoulder.
The boys’ packing debris littered the living room.
I was tempted to say yes anyway, but didn’t want him thinking I was a pig. I was a maid...I should have a clean house.
“Sorry, but no,” I said.
“Are you hiding something?”
Sure I was hiding something...a huge mess. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Unless you have a warrant, you are not coming into my house.”
The endearing grin faded away, replaced by a narrowed-eyed look.
Slowly, he said, “I could probably get one.”
“How long would it take?” I asked, trying to decide if I’d have time to clean up before he could get back with one.
“Why?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Just because I’m curious.”
“Listen, I’m not here to arrest you, I just want some information about the condition Banning’s place was in when you arrived.”
I didn’t say anything. I was glowing with the knowledge that I’d been on the right investigative track and feeling more than a little a bit smug.
At least I felt smug until he said, “Fine, if I can’t come in, then let’s take this down to the station. You can call that lawyer of yours and have him meet us there. But I’d advise you to cooperate. I might not think you had anything to do with the murder, but I might just start thinking about obstruction charges.”
Darn.
I didn’t want to go to the station, but I wasn’t about to let him in my house.
Thinking fast, I said, “How about a compromise?”
“A compromise?” His eyes were still narrow as he studied me. I was used to the pretty-boy well-waxed eyebrows of Hollywood. Detective Parker was not one of those. As a matter of fact, his eyebrows bordered on bushy, but not in an offensive way, but rather in an I’m-a-real-man-with-a-real-job sort of way. And since right now his job was finding Mr. Banning’s killer—a mysterious someone I knew wasn’t me—I found his sort of bushy eyebrows comforting.
I realized he was waiting for me to respond as I studied his eyebrows, so I nodded. “Yes. I don’t want to let you in, but I don’t want to go to the station. So, let’s go somewhere else and I’ll tell you what I can remember.”
“And your lawyer?” he asked slowly.
“I don’t think he’d mind my cooperating with your request. After all, I might remember something that will help you find the real killer. And I can’t tell you how much I want you to find the real killer.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
“Hold a minute. Let me get my purse.” I shut the door in his face.
I looked at the huge mess.
I was going to come home and clean it, whether or not I felt like it. I was a maid, which meant I had a certain cleanliness standard to uphold. So I’d clean before I started my own investigation into Mr. Banning’s murder.
I hurried back out the door, shut and locked it, then turned to the detective.
“Okay, where do you want to go?” I asked. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Why don’t you ride with me?”
“Why do you want me to ride with you? Because you’re afraid I’ll escape?”
“No,” he said, then in a softer tone he muttered, “You’re absolutely driving me insane.” His voice rose again as he finished, “I thought you could ride with me because it will simplify things.”
Now it was my turn. I sighed one of my big you’re-driving-me-nuts-as-well sighs. I normally reserved them for my ex-husband or the boys, but I didn’t figure they’d mind me using one on Detective Parker.
“Fine,” I said.
I sucked in my stomach and started down the stairs. I stopped at the bottom, gripped the rail hard. I felt sort of light-headed.
He turned. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said again, but I lied. I didn’t feel fine at all. I felt shaky at best.
Detective Parker gave me a hard look. Not the sort of oh-baby look he probably gave other women. This was an assessing sort of look. He’d given me those before and I recognized it.
But even if it wasn’t designed to, that look made my knees feel weak in a way that had nothing to do with my light-headedness.
“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked.
I thought about it. It’s never a good sign when you have to think about when your last meal was. “This morning.”
“Lady, you need a keeper. Come on,” he grumbled and took my elbow. It wasn’t a police hold, but more of a supportive sort of thing.
He mumbled to himself about ditzy women who cleaned up murder scenes and couldn’t even remember to eat.
I should have felt insulted—I am many things, but I am not ditzy—but the day had been too bizarre for me to feel anything but sort of numb.
He tucked me into a very plain looking dark sedan and got in on the other side. I was thankful to find myself in the front seat, not the back, although his car didn’t have that plastic police barrier and the back seat looked rather normal from where I was sitting.
I glanced from the normal back seat I wasn’t in, to the man driving. “What’s your name?” I asked. “I don’t like referring to you as Detective Parker. It reminds me that you want to send me up the river. Or is it down the river?”
“I don’t want to send you in any direction on any river. To be perfectly honest, I want to finish this interview, clear you, then get as far away from you as I can.”
“Yeah, men tend to have that reaction to me.” He hadn’t told me his name, and I wasn’t about to ask again.
I had my pride.
We drove a few minutes in silence.
I jumped when he said, “It’s Caleb. You can call me Cal.”
“Cal. That’s nice,” I said.
It was a good solid name. The name of someone you could count on.
“You can call me Quincy,” I added.
“I’d planned to.”
That was sort of rude, but I didn’t comment on his lack of manners. Instead, I asked the question that had been burning away at my brain. “Hey, Cal, do you know if California has the death penalty?”
“What?” he asked. He took his eyes off the road and glanced at me.
“Watch the road,” I scolded. I didn’t need a traffic accident on top of everything else that had happened today.
“I mean,” I said, when he’d turned his attention back to the road, “I just want to know if you convict me for murdering Mr. Banning, am I facing life in prison, or death row? I already know that if I go to jail I’ll end up tattooed like Uncle Bill. I’m thinking a unicorn...a permanent statement of my innocence. But I’m not sure a unicorn tattoo would age well. What do you think?”
“Listen, lady—”
“Quincy. You were going to call me Quincy, remember?”
“You are not going to jail, Quincy. You are not going on death row. And you are not getting a tattoo, unicorn or a skull and cross-bones. You’re going for pasta. My buddy makes the best in LA. You look like crap. I’m going to feed you and then you’re going to tell me everything you can remember about Banning’s place. Then I’m taking you home and hopefully that will be the last you hear from me.”
“But about the death penalty?” I pressed.
“Just sit there and be quiet will you?”
“First you want me to talk, then you want me to shut up. You need to make up your mind.”
He didn’t respond to that. He just made this strangled, growling sound.
“Do men have PMS? If so, I think you’ve got it. I recognize the symptoms
. Short tempered, surly. You have those two nailed.”
“Real men don’t get PMS, but they do get surly with suspects who won’t shut up.”
“Ah ha, you just admitted I’m a suspect.” Despite the fact he thought I was a suspect, I felt triumphant. I got him. Man, I was going to make a great detective. I’d wrap up Mr. Banning’s murder in a week and clear my name no problem, no death row and no tattoos.
“Yes, I suspect you,” he said, pausing a moment before adding, “Suspect you of severe stupidity, and possibly of having some sanity issues, but I do not suspect you of murder.”
“See, surly. Very, very surly. And you just called me dumb. I’m not, you know.” Even in the dim light, I could see his lips moving, even though he was silent. I think he was praying. That made me feel a bit better.
A guy who talked to God, probably wasn’t in favor of the death penalty and maybe that would help my case.
He pulled up in front of Big G’s Italian Restaurant.
“Big G’s?” I asked.
“Yeah. Tony’s last name is Garrakowski. That doesn’t exactly say Italian food, does it? And Tony’s is a bit cliché as far as names go. So he went with Big G’s.”
“Oh.”
Detective Parker—Cal—got out and walked around the car as if he were going to open my door for me, but I didn’t wait. I opened the door myself and got out.
He just shook his head and said, “Come on.”
He led me into the small, dim restaurant. He didn’t wait to be seated, but took me right through the restaurant and into kitchen.
“Hey, Tony,” he said to the man at the big stove.
The man turned. He was shorter than Cal, but unlike the detective, he smiled at me. All Cal did was scowl.
Cal introduced me. “This is Quincy. She needs food, and I need your office.”
“Help yourself to the office,” Tony said. “Although why you’d want to hide away a woman like that, I don’t know.”
He took my hand and shook it. “Tony. Tony Garrakowski. They call me the Big G. Want to know why?”
It was such an outrageous statement that I couldn’t help but smile. “Quincy Mac,” I said. “And I don’t think you should tell me why...at least not the first time we meet.”