Unscrewed

by Lois Greiman

  He was probably telling the truth, but how the hell was I supposed to know for sure? Was his act a little pat? A little too well cued? The woman he had planned to marry had just died on his hardwood floor. Shouldn’t he be inconsolable?

  “Indeed, I loved her quite desperately.”

  “And she you?”

  He smiled mistily. “It is difficult to guess the heart of another, is it not?”

  It was a corny statement, and I would have liked to mock the sentiment, but he was right. I once had a boyfriend who convinced me of his undying adoration three days before sleeping with the stripper from his best friend’s bachelor party. His name was Karl. Hers was Tinsel. I might have been able to forgive him if she’d been a Martha or a Louise. But Tinsel? A girl’s got to have some pride.

  “Rivera…Gerald,” I corrected myself, “said she called him just before he drove to your house. She was nervous.”

  The senator drew a deep breath, seemed to be looking inward. “Salina was a complicated woman. Complicated, passionate.” He glanced out the window and cleared his throat. If he was acting, he should be in the movies. But he’d have to do it for love of the arts, because, from what Laney had said, he didn’t need the money. “Opinionated. We argued,” he admitted.

  “When? On Saturday?”

  “Every day,” he said, and turning back, he gave me a tremulous smile. His eyes were dark and soulful. “The truth is this, Ms. McMullen: Salina often threatened to leave me. As often as not I said she should go. Perhaps I harbored some…uncertainty…guilt even, regarding our age difference. Perhaps I tired of the confrontations. But she and Gerald…” He shook his head. “I had no fear on that account. No matter the feelings he still…” He scowled. “That is to say, they were not meant to be together.”

  I kept a lid on my emotions and my face expressionless. “But he saw it differently.”

  He shrugged and bravely hid away the worry. “For a time after his marriage failed, perhaps. But he and Salina were not compatible. He knew that as well as I.” He put a fist to his chest. “In his heart.”

  How about in his dick? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. That’s where the Ph.D. comes in. “And what about Salina?” I asked.

  “Your pardon?” he said.

  I breathed carefully. “How did Salina feel about…Gerald?”

  “That fire was long since extinguished.”

  “Who was the fireman?”

  He stared at me a moment, then laughed. For reasons I can’t quite explain, I considered hitting him. Like father, like son. But then he stroked my hand.

  “So…your feelings run deep. This knowledge warms my heart. My son will need a strong woman in his corner.”

  “Why would she call him?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “If Salina was no longer interested in him, why the phone call? Surely there was someone else she could have—”

  “Ahh, here we are,” he said as the car pulled to the curb. The driver exited, opened our door. Miguel got out, reached for my hand, drew me into the sunlight.

  Now, the truth is, I’ve been known to exit a vehicle without assistance, but I didn’t exactly despise the attention. Senator Rivera was tall and sophisticated, and smelled like…well, kind of a meld between smooth charm and old money.

  Once inside the restaurant, the maître d’ greeted us like we were demigods, nodding solemnly and motioning us toward the hushed interior.

  The lighting was dim, the upholstery plush, the menus as heavy as lead.

  We discussed luncheon options for a moment. The lasagna was good, the rigatoni mediocre, he said.

  The prices made free-range chicken look like a bargain. I’d have to sell my shoe collection to pay for a bread basket. But even designer footwear is overrated in the face of really first-rate focaccia.

  As it turned out, Rosata’s was good enough to convince me to go barefoot for the rest of my natural life. The wine was mouthwatering, the salad tossed tableside. I don’t even like salad. But one taste assured me I would have gladly given an ovary for it.

  I glanced up. Miguel Rivera was watching me. I stopped the wild masticating. He smiled.

  “It is refreshing to see a woman enjoying her food so.”

  Oh, shit. That meant I was eating like a starved porker. I stopped myself just short of apologizing.

  Instead, I cleared my throat, leaned back, dabbed at the corner of my mouth with a starched napkin, and refused to remark on the fact that it was real linen and I had missed breakfast.

  “I did not mean to make you self-conscious,” he said.

  And I didn’t mean to eat the tablecloth.

  “It’s quite good,” I admitted.

  “Yes. One of Salina’s favorites. She had excellent taste.”

  And probably didn’t drool on the menu.

  Our entrées arrived. If my waistband wasn’t already feeling tight I would have thought I had died and gone to heaven.

  My first incision into the cannelloni was careful, lest I swoon. I followed up with a little light conversation.

  “What do you think happened to Salina?” I asked. Okay, maybe not too light.

  The senator swirled his wine and gazed into the glass. “That I do not know.”

  “What are the police saying?”

  “Very little at this time. At least to me.”

  “Did she have enemies?”

  The whisper of a smile lightened his conquistador face. He’d barely touched his manicotti. Was that the sign of a murderer or simple derangement? “What beautiful woman does not?”

  “Who were they?”

  “Discounting my wife?”

  I stopped eating, glanced up.

  “Forgive me,” he said, and gave me a grim smile. “That was but a poor joke.”

  “Your wife knew Salina?”

  He sipped his wine, fingers long and tanned against the pale, sparkling beverage. “From the time she was a child,” he said, and shook his head. “In retrospect, I see that Rosita’s resentment is somewhat understandable.”

  No shit, Sherlock. “Resentment?”

  “Ms. McMullen,” he said, and lifted his hand the slightest degree. A waiter appeared like a pop-up in a children’s book. A motion of the fingers, and the senator’s plate was removed and we were alone once again. He leaned forward. “I have a confession to make.”

  Wouldn’t that be convenient?

  “I knew a good deal about you even before we met.”

  “I don’t always eat this fast,” I said. “I skipped breakfast.”

  He smiled.

  I didn’t say anything. In my world this kind of observation is usually followed by a farewell speech involving phrases like “see other people” and “someone younger.”

  “You are a unique woman,” he said, “interesting, amusing…and, if I may say, quite beautiful.”

  Hmmmm?

  “But those are the reasons my son is fascinated by you. I am interested for an entirely different purpose.”

  Beautiful?

  “You have wisdom.”

  Quite beautiful?

  “I know of your…encounter with Andrew Bomstad,” he said.

  My mind snapped back to business. “Oh?”

  “It was you who deduced the identity of his killer.”

  “I—”

  He raised a hand. No waiter popped up. I wondered how they discerned the difference between animated conversation and gastric demands.

  “My son is a fine police officer. But even with all the men and equipment at his disposal, he could not determine the culprit was actually your colleague.”

  I felt the blood leave my cheeks at the reminder. I liked to think I’d put the pieces of my past behind me. But some pieces were farther behind than others. “David showed up in my kitchen with a grudge and a butcher knife,” I said. “It made detection simpler.”

  “You are modest.”

  What I was was lucky to be was alive, and I damned well knew it. In fact, this little con
versation was serving as a reminder that I’d rather like to stay that way.

  “I also know of the threat to your secretary’s life,” he added.

  I felt a little sick to my stomach. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the entrée. I’d defend Rosata’s cannelloni to the death. “It’s been an interesting year.”

  “It was you who saved her and foiled the plot to steal her boyfriend’s invention.”

  Foiled? “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Senator.”

  “You are an intelligent woman, Ms. McMullen. Intelligent and well educated. But there is more to you than that. You have strength. In your head and in your heart.” I watched him. He watched me back. “You were a waitress once, were you not?”

  I shuffled in my seat. It would have been nice to deny my former occupation, since any connection with an establishment called the Warthog was unlikely to do my rarified reputation much good. But I figured he already knew the truth. “A cocktail waitress, actually.”

  He nodded. “So you have education and you have the smarts.”

  “I—”

  “They are entirely different, you know.”

  “Senator Rivera, I’m afraid—”

  “Police departments are not unlike marriages.”

  Huh? “I beg your pardon?”

  “They are filled with emotion. Trust and love, yes. But also disappointment, bitterness.” He made a fist and gritted his teeth. “Jealousy.”

  I stared at him.

  “Believe me, I know this to be true.”

  “I’ve never been married.”

  “My son is innocent,” he said. “Of this I have no doubt, but I am not certain how diligently his colleagues will attempt to clear his name.”

  “Why is that?”

  He paused, thinking, then, “Some years ago, Gerald had a young informant who was instrumental to an ongoing investigation. The young man was found dead in the San Gabriel River. Gerald was understandably upset and blamed his partner.”

  “His—”

  “Nathaniel Graystone.”

  I remembered the blocky, sharp-eyed detective who had questioned me outside of the senator’s house, but kept my cursing to myself. “Rivera thinks Graystone killed his informant?”

  “Not with a gun or a blade, but with words. Gerald believed the detective had leaked information about the boy. And as you know, my son is not one to keep his ideas to himself, no matter how far they might be fetched.”

  My mind was making little loops in my cranium.

  He leaned back in his chair, watching me, fingers still wrapped around the elegant stemware. “So you see, Ms. McMullen, there is reason to believe his contemporaries, some of them at least, may not wish to prove his innocence.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “I believe you have a deep understanding of people. Thus, I wish for you to tell me all you can.”

  “About what?”

  “My son.”

  “I don’t—”

  He smiled and held up his hand. “As you know, there is a rift between us. I hope to mend that rift, for he will be in need of a friend.”

  The meaning of his words sunk in slowly. “You think he’ll be found guilty?”

  He said nothing for a moment, then, “Tell me of my boy.”

  I felt breathless. “Listen, Senator, I appreciate the fact that you hope to reacquaint yourself with your son, but I assure you, I am hardly his confidan—”

  “I am certain you know more than you realize.”

  I had to think there wasn’t much evidence to substantiate that. “Such as?”

  “His dreams.” He shrugged. “His friends, his enemies.”

  The truth dawned on me with ferocious suddenness, or belated lethargy. “You think someone set him up.”

  “I do not know.” His eyes were hard, his gaze steady. “But I will learn what I can, and you will help me.”

  “I’m afraid—”

  “That is not what I have heard.”

  “What?”

  “I do not think you are easily frightened, Ms. McMullen.”

  He was wrong. I was about ready to pee in my pants and we hadn’t even ordered dessert. “Maybe you’ve gotten the wrong impression, Senator. I don’t believe I know your son nearly as well as you think. In fact, we only met—”

  “When he accused you of murdering the man who intended to disgrace you.”

  Disgrace? An old-world euphemism for a crime committed by cowards and perverts.

  “My son is not always tactful,” he said. “This I am certain you already know.”

  I didn’t agree. But I sure as hell didn’t disagree, either.

  “Who else has he insulted, I wonder?” he mused.

  Nearly everyone, I assumed. He was Rivera. “I have no way of knowing,” I said.

  “This Dr. Hawkins. He was a powerful man, was he not?”

  “David?” I still got a lump in my throat when I said his name. I had considered him one of my closest friends before he tried to kill me. Since then, there’s been some tension between us. “He’s in prison,” I said.

  “Because of, or partly because of, my son.”

  I let that information soak into my brain.

  “Perhaps he holds a grudge,” the senator said. “Perhaps he wants nothing more than to see Gerald incarcerated with him.”

  “If you’re looking at old cases, don’t you think there could be hundreds of possibilities?”

  “No,” he said, “I do not. If someone killed my Salina—”

  “If?”

  He shrugged. “There was no weapon found. No forced entry.”

  “I thought the police hadn’t told you anything.”

  He smiled. “Information is power, Christina. May I call you Christina?”

  I nodded numbly.

  “Hence, if someone killed her, he was extremely clever. He was able to breech my security, to get inside, to make it look as though my son was the culprit. I do not believe I know anyone so clever…or so devious.”

  Maybe that was because his son was the culprit. Or maybe the senator was lying through his teeth. I felt sick to my stomach. “Who knew your security code?”

  He smiled grimly. “We had not lived there long. I could barely remember it myself.”

  “So no friends knew?”

  “No.”

  “How about family?”

  He said nothing. I waited a beat and continued. “Did your ex-wife know the code?”

  “I am not so foolish as that, Christina.” He poured me more wine. “Indeed—”

  “What about your son?”

  The bottle clicked against my glass. His gaze met mine.

  “Did Rivera know the code?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, and motioned to the waiter, who appeared in a heartbeat with the dessert tray.

  “My guest would like one of your wonderful treats, I think,” he said.

  “I really shouldn’t,” I argued, but I would have been more convincing if I told them my head was made of cheese.

  He smiled. “You must try the tiramisu. It was Salina’s favorite.”

  “Are you having some?”

  “I have never been fond of sweets,” he said, “but please, be my guest.”

  Not fond of sweets? Did that make him a murderer, or just damned weird?

  I ordered the tiramisu and watched him as the waiter hurried away.

  “Did Salina have any health problems?” I asked.

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “And yet you believe she may have died of natural causes?” It seemed ludicrous.

  “As I said, I do not know what to believe, except that my son is innocent.”

  Yeah, I thought, he’d mentioned that, but I wasn’t about to tell him that methought he was protesting too much. At least not until I’d had my dessert.

  10

  Love may be blind, but lust is just damned stupid.
>
  —Megan Banfield, Peter McMullen’s second disenchanted wife

  I’M A NEW WOMAN. Too smart to get involved,” I said, and panted up Wildwood Hill. I was out for a bit of a jog with Elaine. Which is like saying “I’m doing a little biking with Lance.”

  “Are you sure you’re not already involved?” she asked. As far as I could tell she hadn’t started breathing yet that morning.

  “Absolutely.” I was wishing I hadn’t left Harlequin at home, ’cuz sometimes he sniffs things out and yanks me to a halt. There were only so many times I could stop to tie my shoes without Laney getting suspicious. “If Rivera had wanted me involved in his life he would have told me he was dating Salma Hayek. He would have said his father was currently sleeping with Salma Hayek and confessed that he was still infatuated with Salma Hayek.”

  “Are you trying to tell me Salina looked like Salma Hayek?”

  “Salma Hayek with brains, according to Rivera.”

  “Which is assuming two things. One, the real Salma doesn’t have brains…which, when I met her, didn’t seem to be true. And two, the lieutenant’s still infatuated with her, which certainly didn’t seem to be true.”

  “Well…” My respiratory system was threatening revolt and my stomach was starting to chime in. My lungs can collapse at the slightest provocation, but my gastronomic system has been given a five-star rating by the Belly Association. I can run five miles before my gut starts to act up. I wish like hell I hadn’t found it necessary to prove that. “I saw her,” I said.

  “And she looked like Salma Hayek?”

  “How’d you guess?” I was beginning to pant like a retriever.

  “I’m psychic. So Senator Rivera thinks his son is innocent?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Laney was quiet for a while. Still no breathing. Pretty soon I was going to tackle her and check for a pulse.

  “But you don’t believe him.”

  We rounded a corner. Two guys on skateboards stopped to watch us jog past. Their jaws were somewhere around their waistbands…which, in a bow to the fashion lords, was just about knee level.

  Laney was wearing a sports bra and shorts. I was wearing the same. I could have been wearing a Dutch oven and dancing the cancan. I doubt if they would have noticed.

  “Of course I do,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You don’t believe him,” she said, arms swinging rhythmically. Mine had lost the tempo about five million steps back.