“Hello, Ms. Thorne,” she said. She put the bag on a chair near Nathaniel and pulled a camera out of it. Still in the bag was a set of clothes. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been worse,” I slurred.
Nathaniel said, “We need to document what happened if we’re going to file.”
Carmela took a set of photos of the worst of it—the cut on my side, the bruise on my stomach, the side of my face. She checked them on the screen and then nodded.
Nathaniel took a powder blue, oversized t-shirt and matching sweatpants out of the bag and tore the tags off. He tossed the clothes to the foot of the bed. “I’ll get your pills from the pharmacy.”
He disappeared into the hospital while two nurses prepared me to go home. They checked all my bandages and helped me dress. The clothes were soft and loose and still irritated my skin next to the dressings.
“You ready to go?” one nurse asked me.
I nodded.
An orderly wheeled me into the elevator and took me downstairs to the loading area, where Nathaniel and his Mercedes sedan were waiting for me.
He helped me put the seatbelt on.
“He’s going to hear about this, isn’t he?” I whispered.
No need to explain who I meant.
Nathaniel put on his turn signal. “He pays my invoices. Remember that.”
* * *
Stevie freaked out when she saw me. It’s not that hard to predict my sister’s reactions in certain circumstances, and my ending up in the hospital was one.
By the time Nathaniel got me home, it was seven o’clock. We drove through the electric gates installed only two months before. Gary had had the gates installed after someone tried to kill me—actually, more than one person had made the attempt, because I’m quite the overachiever. Nathaniel swung his car around the fountain in the center of the cobblestoned courtyard in front of the Tuscan-style mansion and parked next to Anne’s car.
The doors to the garage building were closed, which meant Gary was here, too. Unless he’d taken the car service to the movie set that morning, in which case he wasn’t back yet and maybe hadn’t heard what had happened to me. Zeus almighty, I was so disoriented I couldn’t even remember where Gary was supposed to be that day. One of the reasons Stevie and I had this cushy little setup living at Gary’s house was that one of my jobs was to take care of him and know where he was at all times. If I messed that up, my life would be more difficult than it already was. Dammit.
My lawyer helped me out of the car as the front door opened and Stevie came running out of it, still wearing her favorite pink-and-purple floral apron. While waiting for me to come home, my sister had channeled her energies into whipping up one of her seven-course meals. “Dru!” she yelled.
Anne appeared behind her. She did not come running across the courtyard.
When my sister got close I held up one hand. “Don’t hug me,” I told her. She had a nasty tendency to hang on to me like a cobra when she needed reassurance.
She flopped her arms out a few times. I gave her a quick, loose hug, careful to keep her to my right side, which hurt a hell of a lot less than my left. It wasn’t easy: my sister is twenty centimeters shorter than I am. We make an odd pair for hugging.
When she pulled away, she was saying, “Are you okay?” over and over again. It sounded like an incantation.
I nodded. “I’m fine. They wouldn’t have let me out of hospital if I weren’t.”
“Anne told me....” Her voice cracked. “She told me what happened.”
I made a mental note to make Anne understand she should not tell Stevie things. Ever. I put my hands on Stevie’s shoulders and stared at her. “Ask Nathaniel. He was there when they let me go. He knows precisely what they said.”
We turned to look at him.
He gave me an absolutely flat look before nodding. “Clean bill of health. Just...you know. Take it easy.” He held out my bag of prescription medications. “I’ll give you a call and check in.”
Stevie took the drugs from him. Because she knew me all too well. “Please join us for dinner. There’s plenty.”
“My sister likes to prepare for any uninvited guests who might join us,” I said. “For instance, the Russian Army.”
Nathaniel’s quick smile did not show his teeth. “I have heard about your cooking. But I can’t.”
“Sweetie, he’s been sitting at the hospital all afternoon with me. And the man doesn’t get paid ten thousand dollars an hour to sit in hospitals.”
Stevie’s head cocked to one side. “Twenty million a year, that’s—”
“That’d be a good year,” Nathaniel said.
“You didn’t calculate overtime,” I said. “You only figured for an eight-hour day.”
He laid his fingers on my arm lightly. “I’ll call you tomorrow—”
“Wait!” Anne’s voice bounced off the facade of Gary’s manse, echoing around the courtyard. She was waving her phone in her hand as she came running down the wide front steps and over the brick inlay of the courtyard. “Don’t go! Don’t go yet! Did you hear about this already?”
“What the hell,” Nathaniel said.
When Anne joined us, all of her attention was on him. Her eyes were as open as they could get and she was breathing heavily. “Did you know about this?”
“Know about what, Anne?” I asked.
She sucked in huge quantities of breath, trying to catch up. “Roger Sabo’s charging us with assault.”
“Us?” I said.
“And there are restraining orders. And did I mention assault?”
“What?” I said. Too loudly: I strained my stomach muscles.
Nathaniel shook his head. “Did you get a case number?”
She nodded rapidly and handed him a piece of paper.
“Okay. I will look into it. In the meantime, don’t—”
“—talk to anyone,” the four of us said in unison.
“Yes. I understand.” I looked over at Anne. “Remind me never ever to help you out with a story.”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “I’m never leaving my house again.”
CHAPTER THREE
IN THE MORNING the pain in my head was throbbing unmercifully, and that was only the hangover pain from the Vicodin. My side hurt. My jaw hurt. And I was being charged with assault by a lowlife who liked to beat up women.
If I wasn’t careful, I might overreact to recent circumstances and lash out in a reckless and ill-advised manner. And now I had some prescription and completely legal drugs in my possession. Well, they weren’t as yet physically in my possession. Stevie had them, which meant I would need to moan enough for her to retrieve one or two from their hiding spot before doling them out to me. I would pay careful attention to where she went, at which point maybe I could figure out where they were.
However, she’d be expecting that and might have already stashed them in various locations around the house.
It’s a toss-up as to who’s sneakier, me or my sister. I get points for quantity; she gets points for no one believing she’s capable of it.
My best course of action was to hunker down at the estate for the day, watch telenovelas, moan from time to time, and have painkillers handed to me.
My ribcage hurt when I took a shallow breath, so I forced myself to take deeper ones. Every step out of bed and into the bathroom shook my body and I tensed up, waiting for the pain. A shower was probably more trouble than it was worth. The mirror showed the injuries: the bandage on my left side, the fist-sized purple bruise on my right. That was already turning green, so that was good news. The cut at my hairline had steristrips layered over the stitches. Lifting my arms was unpleasant, but I arranged my hair to hide the bandage.
I dressed—carefully—in floppy, comfortable clothes and headed downstairs—slowly.
Anne was on the oversized sofa chaise, arms and legs stretched out like a giant pink beached sea star. The bright pink flannel pajamas were Stevie’s. They had ruffles on the
cuffs. She was out like a light.
After we enjoyed Stevie’s dinner feast, Anne drank herself silly and I made a mental note of how many cocktails I had to forfeit because of these circumstances. Anne became more and more morose as the evening went on, upset about how crazy the whole day had been and how she was sorry for everything and how scared she’d been and how she didn’t know what she was going to do now that Roger Sabo was filing a lawsuit against her.
If I were to begin a life of crime, I would not invite Anne to be my sidekick. She would confess quickly, to everyone, adding as many details as she could.
Stevie was unlikely to confess at any time, so I had chosen well. Also, she can cook, which is always a valuable skill in a partner.
From the living room, my nose followed the delicious siren song of smells. Coffee, plus something yeasty, along with the distinctive smells of rum and pineapple. In the kitchen, Stevie was perched on a stool at the counter, staring at her laptop screen, the tip of her glossy black braid in her mouth. When she looked up at me, she immediately pointed at the coffee machine.
My sister knows me very well.
I sat on the stool next to hers with my large cup of black coffee and discovered the source of the smell: Stevie had made a giant Caribbean Bundt cake, which sat on a rack on the counter. “Where are the plates?” I asked.
“It’s cooling.”
“Your so-called rules fill me with hilarity. I’ll only get the one plate then, for me.”
“Dru. Have some toast. Better for your digestion anyhow.”
I rolled my eyes. “What are you investigating with such single-minded determination?”
“This person who’s suing you for assault.”
“Don’t bother, Stevie. Nathaniel has people on it.” I looked through the counter window into the living room. Anne hadn’t budged. Even so, I lowered my voice. “And even if he doesn’t, certain other people in New York will see this goes away.”
It’s fun to act confident of events you have zero actual trust in.
Mentioning New York made Stevie inhale sharply, because she knew as well as I did what that meant. New York would take care of me. It did not take care of her.
There was a series of short raps on the front door of the house.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Eight.”
“Early for Gary.”
“Maybe he has to be on the set early today,” Stevie said.
“Or maybe he didn’t sleep.” Those days are always the most fun for us. He’s either a little manic or on the edge of a precipice, and one of us has to sit with him all the time. Since I don’t like leaving Stevie alone with anyone, let alone a male, that’s usually me.
My sister retrieved the giant pill box filled with pharmaceutical goodies from its usual storage place on the shelf above the tea cups. It was a wooden box with twenty-one separate containers in it, each with its own little wooden lid and tiny hinge. It was probably originally a jewelry box, but Stevie had repurposed it to sort Gary’s daily medicine intake. The three rows represented the time of day, the seven columns the day of the week. Gary had picked it up from a vendor in Old Town Warsaw while filming a fantasy movie there and then added it to the pile of tchotchkes he never looked at again. Stevie, an inveterate tidier, had pulled it out and made use of it. She popped open the box for Monday AM and tilted the drug cocktail into her hand.
“You haven’t been over there today?” I asked.
Stevie pointed to the clock. “It’s not time yet.”
Usually when Gary came to visit us, he let himself in, but perhaps after hearing my story last night of an interview gone very, very wrong, he’d decided to be a bit more cautious and respectful. Or perhaps Gary was having a down cycle in his moods and was afraid we didn’t like him anymore. Sir Gareth Macfadyen was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, trapped inside the body of a crazy man. However, he let us live on his estate rent free, so he was one of my most favorite people in the entire universe.
And if he was in a good mood, he’d enjoy a nice cup of tea with us. Plus, I was certain Stevie would let him slice up the Bundt cake if he asked nicely enough.
I opened the door, prepared to ask how he’d slept after last night’s dinner. I should have paid more attention to the fact that the shadow behind the door curtain was taller than I was, not shorter.
“Hi,” said Detective Samuel Gruen, still as tall and gorgeous as ever, wearing his usual sports coat, shirt, and tie. Work day, then. And he had to be looking good to pull off a plaid coat—muted and tan, but still plaid. His gaze checked me out quickly and clinically, starting at the cut at my hairline and going all the way down.
I was still in that powder blue set of sweatpants and a large t-shirt. At least I’d kept my dignity and wasn’t wearing the fuzzy slippers Stevie had left out for me.
My immediate response to seeing him was surprise. Delighted surprise, not the wary or guilty kinds. After all, I hadn’t seen him for two months. And a frisson of anticipation twitched in my stomach at seeing him after such a long time. We’d had a somewhat tumultuous start to our relationship: the detective had suspected I might have murdered my husband. I’d helpfully closed the case by being the killer’s next target. I’d had high hopes we’d work out our differences in the time-honored fashion of getting drinks and then perhaps doing a few other things together. He never did follow through, though.
Come to think of it, neither had I.
I leaned across the doorway, which had the double benefit of showing that I still had a figure under the loose-fitting clothes and denying him entrance. “Detective, to what do I owe the pleasure of this social call?”
In the kitchen, Stevie’s laptop clicked shut.
He put his foot in the doorway, as if I’d invited him in. “I heard what happened. You have a minute?”
“Ah. Well, as you can see over my shoulder, someone is sleeping on my sofa, and she may not appreciate the intrusion.”
He glanced past me and saw Anne, still spread-eagled and out like a light. His lips quirked but he avoided an outright smile. He brought a finger up to his lips. “I’ll be quiet.”
“Let’s go out here.” I used my fingertips on his upper arm to push him back onto the guest house’s front porch. The man had a body made out of solid muscle. If he’d chosen this moment to declare his overwhelming passion for me, he had terrible timing: I was in too much pain to reciprocate. At least, not to the degree I wanted to. I could be creative, but my mobility was limited for the time being.
I looked back at Stevie, who nodded. “This way.”
One edge of Gary’s property had a view of the Pacific Ocean, with a number of chaises and chairs set up for late evening viewing of yet another gorgeous California sunset. This spot on the property was undoubtedly what had sold him on the place. They aren’t making more scenery like this.
Gruen sat on the low stone wall. I took one of the padded chairs, facing the ocean and him. This early in the morning, the Pacific was still at low tide. I knew how many runners would be down there. There was no running for me for a couple of days, but soon enough I’d be back on the sands.
“Are you okay?” he asked me.
I shrugged. Telling him “I’ve been in worse fights” might not help the conversation any. Feeling warm and fuzzy and maybe a little sticky that he’d shown up out of nowhere to find out how I was doing wouldn’t help me, either. “It shook me up. No serious injuries, though.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Honestly.” I raised three fingers in the Girl Scout salute. I’d actually been a Girl Scout when I was in the fifth grade. For one meeting. Then they asked me to sell cookies.
“Tell me what happened,” Gruen said.
I tapped him on the knee in mock censure. “Detective. You know my lawyer’s name. You need to call him first.”
“Maybe you noticed I didn’t even call you before coming over.”
If I didn’t receive a phone call on any lines that could be
traced back to Detective Gruen, no one could prove we’d talked. “Is this what an off-duty police officer looks like?”
“What can I say. The badge says Detective. I’m a nosy guy.”
I put my feet up on the stone wall next to him. “What’s in it for me?”
He leaned forward. I honestly thought he might kiss me, which while unexpected would not be unwelcome. The first time I’d ever seen him, he was getting out of a car to come interview me about my husband’s murder, and my very first thought about him was how good-looking he was. The second was that he didn’t wear a wedding ring. The third was that the wife was the most likely suspect in homicides, and in the case of my husband’s murder, I was the wife, and Detective Gruen was the one looking for suspects. Our relationship started off on the wrong foot, but how else would we have ever met?
After Colin’s murderer was found, I should have done the polite thing and called Gruen for drinks. It had been two months. Anyone would consider me single at this point.
He didn’t kiss me. Instead, he said, “You owe me one.”
Well.
Already calling in his favor. Interesting.
I did, in fact, owe a very large debt to him. In the middle of trying to find Colin’s killer, I had run into a problem mostly unrelated to my husband’s death. A problem involving some other people who were looking for me, possibly in a homicidal sort of way. The detective obscured my trail. I had been hoping I could pay off my debt using inappropriate and intimate methods. And frankly, he turned me on so much that spotting him an extra favor was no hardship.
I adjusted my legs and pulled up the edge of the sweatpants. I have nice ankles. “How did you hear about yesterday’s frivolities?”
“John saw your name on the report, handed it to me. He thought it was interesting that it involved you and Anne.”
John Vilar was Gruen’s partner. “Does Robbery-Homicide usually have a lot of interest in assault cases?”
“We agreed it’s strange you and Anne are still buddies. You got to admit, it’s kind of weird.” He jutted his chin toward the guest house. “But it’s true. You two still spend a lot of time together.”
Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) Page 3