Munch sifted through the work orders on Lou’s desk, balancing the phone against her ear. A lady who had gotten a new camshaft on her Caddy was complaining that her trunk light hadn’t worked since. Kind of like getting a new roof and blaming the contractor for a running toilet. "You still think Lisa will get out tomorrow?" she asked.
"Probably midmorning."
"Oh, joy." Munch noticed that Lou’s desk clock was an hour slow. While she watched, the second hand fell back one tick for every two. The collet had probably come loose. She pried off the glass cover and used her pocket screwdriver to cinch the brass clamp, then reset the mechanism to show the proper time. "Jill will be happy anyway. She’s missing her mom."
"You don't sound thrilled. I thought you wanted her free. You were pissed at me for taking her into custody. "
"Okay, I think you were right all along. Lisa is somehow involved with Charlotte’s disappearance. And given the fact that all Lisa touches turns to shit, I don't see any advantage to her being back on the street."
"I don’t have a good enough reason to hold her anymore."
Munch set the clock back down. "Ah, screw it. Maybe she’ll even make herself useful and lead us somewhere."
Munch rubbed her neck, feeling the strain of the last week. Her confrontation with Mrs. Frowein had left her feeling nauseated now that her adrenaline had drained. She needed to get active, to work it off.
"When am I going to see you again?" he asked.
She grinned into the phone. "Soon, real soon." The nausea had passed into a yearning. Another excellent way to relieve tension occurred to her. "Let’s get together later, but not at the police station."
"When you say get together . . ."
"I mean it in the biblical way. "
Too late she heard the creak at the door. Lou stood with his arms folded across his chest, shaking his head in mock disgust.
"You little hornball."
Munch covered the mouthpiece. "Do you mind?"
Lou held up his hands. "Not at all. I can see this is important business. I don’t mean to interfere with your social life. I’ll just go explain the situation to your customers."
Munch spoke back into the phone, "I’ve got to go. My boss is listening. Yes, I know there are laws against that, but what are you going to do?"
Lou stuck his tongue out at her.
"I don’t even want to tell you what he’s doing now."
"I’m holding you to your word," Rico said.
"Promises, promises."
Munch scooped the work orders off the desk and returned to work, doing her best to ignore Lou’s smirks. Hey she never claimed to be a nun.
The work continued to stream in. Asia and Jill were delivered before long, and Munch told them to amuse themselves in the office, where they could do their homework and watch television. In that order.
At five, Munch ordered them a pizza from the trattoria next door. It was dark by the time they arrived home to be greeted by an eager Jasper.
Munch took a hot bubble bath, scrubbing her hands until the water turned tepid. The kids took their turns next. By nine o’clock they were all in bed. Munch read less than a chapter of her book before her eyes grew too heavy to stay open. She rested the hardcover against her chest and closed her eyes. A minute later, she rolled over and turned off the light.
A rustling noise in her closet woke Munch from a deep sleep. Her heart sped, then she realized Jasper wasn’t beside her. He had developed a habit of using her second pillow. The clock next to her bed read 11:07. She swung her feet out of bed, thinking she’d check on the kids as long as she was up.
"I’ll be back," she said to the closet.
Jasper barked twice. Munch looked at the closet, feeling more surprised than scared. Jasper’s barks originated from outside the house. Rats?
There was a small reddish glow at the bottom of the closet door. Rats didn’t generally carry flashlights or use their hands to mute the light. She looked at the phone, then back at the closet. The chair she had used so ineffectively to keep Jasper out of the closet was standing by the door. She slid it under the knob just as the door pushed outward. The chair jammed it shut, but she didn’t know for how long.
She lifted the handset. No dial tone. She ran to the kids’ room. They were sound asleep. She put her face close to Asia and nudged her awake.
Asia blinked away her dreams. Her breath was warm on Munch's cheek. "Mom?"
"Listen to me," Munch whispered. "Someone's in the house. Take Ji1l and go out the window. I’ll be right behind you."
A loud cracking thump, followed by a man’s muffled curse, emanated from Munch’s bedroom. Jasper’s barking was furious now, punctuated by sharp yelps of distress. The back door rattled as the dog frantically scratched to get back inside.
Jill sat up, her eyes wide. "Are they here?"
Munch grabbed the kids’ tennis shoes and pushed them into their hands. "Let's go."
She pulled Asia’s dresser across the door, surprised at how light it seemed. Jill didn’t ask any more questions. She pulled on her shoes, grabbed her schoolbag, which she had hung on the bedpost, and headed for the window.
Munch raised the window sash and lifted Asia to the ground. She followed with Ji1l, then climbed out after them.
"Jasper," Munch called, "come on, boy."
Jasper came bounding around the side of the house. Munch guided the kids in front of her, toward the street. There was enough light from the streetlamps to help them avoid the various shrubs and flowers. Munch picked up a stone the size of a softball, then discarded it for a length of two-by-four left over from a gardening project, an arbor she had built to hold a wisteria vine. She was barefoot, dressed only in a T-shirt and panties. The kids were in pajamas. She guided them to the gate in the eight-foot chain link fence that separated the front and back yards. The gate was padlocked and she didn’t have the key. Asia clung to the hem of Munch’s T-shirt. Her eyes were wide and alert, the whites glowing in the mercury light coming from the street.
Jasper growled low in his throat. Munch grabbed his collar and pulled him close.
"Shh, boy. It’s okay Hush."
"He’s protecting us," Asia whispered. Munch looked down and noticed that Asia had an egg-size rock in her hand. Thats my girl, she thought. Jill still clutched her book bag. Munch wondered what she had in there that was so precious to her.
"I don’t want him hurt either," Munch said. "We’ll be okay We’ll go over to a neighbor’s house and use their phone."
"Let’s call Rico," Asia said. "He’ll get here really fast."
"You read my mind, honey."
Munch crouched low and led the kids to the pittosporum hedge lining the western property line. The guy who lived on the other side collected old Nash cars. He didn’t have a dog, but Munch wondered if he was the kind of guy who shot trespassers in the dark. She had a nodding acquaintance with him, but they’d never exchanged names. She regretted that now. She also regretted that she didn’t own a gun.
She’d learned on the street that owning a gun was a good way to get yourself shot. She had a girlfriend, Middy who carried a gun in her purse. One time at a bar, Middy dropped her bag, the gun went off, and the bullet ricocheted inside Middy’s guts. Munch would never forget kneeling beside the woman, Middy drunk and bleeding, not yet feeling any pain, and saying, "I seen it go in, but did any of y’all see it come back out?"
Actually, at the time, it had been kind of funny.
They heard a car start in the street and drive off.
"You think he’s gone?" Asia asked.
"Let’s not take any chances," Munch said.
Munch guided the kids to a low point in the fence. "Time to make like monkeys," she said.
Jil1 started scrambling with no further encouragement.
"What about Jasper?" Asia asked.
"We’re not leaving him behind. Go on." Munch lifted Asia and helped her turn around at the top. She followed. Jasper whined until Munch pried an openin
g for him underneath. He wedged himself through, and together they ran up the neighbor’s driveway. Munch knocked on the door.
"VVho is it?" a voice called from inside.
"Munch, from next door. I need to use your phone."
The guy with the Nashes opened his door and stared at
them. "What’s the matter?"
"There’s a burglar in our house," Asia said.
The guy, whose name turned out to be Ralph, brought them inside.
"Can I use your phone?" Munch asked. Asia was practically glued to her legs, her bare legs. Jill clung to Munch’s other side, holding her schoolbag in a death grip. "I’m gonna need one of my arms," she told the kids.
Asia laughed. That her daughter always got her humor was another in a long list of things Munch appreciated about Asia. Rico was at home.
"Someone broke into our house."
"Are you okay?" he asked. ·
"We climbed out the window and I think he left. I’m at the neighbor’s."
"Okay Sit tight. I'll be right over."
"I haven't called anyone else yet."
"I’ll take care of the rest. Can you see the street from where you are?"
Munch looked around her. Neighbor Ralph wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but he did have a window with a view of the street. "Yeah, I’ll watch for you."
"You want a beer?" Ralph asked, after she’d hung up the phone. He scooped dirty laundry off his couch and threw it in a corner.
"No, thanks."
Jill leaned over and whispered into Munch’s ear, "I have to go to the bathroom."
Munch hugged her. "Can we use your bathroom?"
"Sure, just a minute." He went through a door off his hallway and emerged a moment later, his arms full of towels and magazines. "Go ahead."
Munch took Jill’s book bag and gave her a little push.
With Jill gone, Munch glanced inside the bag. Videos, school supplies, a few books. Munch read the title of a well-thumbed tome: The Diary of Anne Frank. Munch wondered if Jill felt a special kinship with the young girl who had spent years in hiding. She had to know how poor Anne ended up.
Chapter 19
The first patrol car arrived five minutes later. The officers had been at a nearby coffee shop, they explained, when they got the call.
"Thank God for doughnuts," Munch said. Ralph had lent her a bathrobe, but she found herself shivering. It wasn’t that cold out. The chill she felt was internal.
The cops had her wait while they searched her house. She saw the beams from their flashlights bouncing off the walls. A moment later Rico arrived. Munch met him on the sidewalk, her small family in tow.
He put a hand on Munch's cheek. She wanted to step into his warmth.
"Is everyone all right?" he asked.
"A little shook up. But physically we’re all fine."
He bent down and picked up Asia, who rested her head on his shoulder. Munch wanted to cry There was no sweeter sight than a good man holding a child. He looked at Jill and extended his hand.
"Hi. You must be Jill. I’m Rico."
Asia lifted her head. "He's a policeman."
"I thought so," Jill said.
Rico and Munch exchanged smiles. After a moment, Rico set Asia down.
"This is Jasper," Asia said. "He wanted to bite the bad guy but we made him stay with us."
"Probably best," Rico said. "The guy probably would have given him indigestion."
Asia giggled.
Rico tweaked her nose. "l’m going to go talk with the other officers and see what's going on."
"We’ll be here," Munch said.
Rico huddled with the Santa Monica cops. They directed his attention to the junction box and shined their flashlights along the ground outside Munch’s windows. Rico did a lot of nodding.
After ten minutes or so, he returned. "You can go back in the house now. I’ll stay if you want me to."
Munch didn’t need to put it to a vote. "Thanks."
They got the kids back to bed. Rico showed her where the prowler had removed a front screen and climbed inside. They locked all the windows and doors. Munch noticed that the prowler had blocked Jasper’s dog door from the inside. She shuddered to think how long he’d been in the house, creeping through the rooms as they slept.
"Were the phone lines cut?" she asked.
"Yes."
"So, like the burglaries."
"Let’s do a walk-through and see if anything’s missing," he said.
The stereo was untouched as was the television in the front room.
"How about jewelry?" Rico asked.
Munch laughed. "I have about four pairs of earrings. I keep them in a box on my dresser. My gem collection is probably safe. What I don’t get is why the guy broke in at night. I mean, we’re gone all day. Wouldn’t it make more sense then?"
"Maybe the dog deterred him before. Experienced cat burglars hit at dinnertime, when alarms are off, purses left out, the family busy in the kitchen and making noise. Eight minutes is all they need. If they haven't found what they’re after by then, they go somewhere else."
"The guy was in my closet. I think he was looking for something specific."
"Let’s inventory your bedroom then."
"Yeah," she replied, still shivering a little, "let’s." She looked in on the kids one last time. They were sound asleep. Bless their hearts. She didn’t think she would sleep easily for a long time. Jasper was nestled between the children, a protective paw resting on Asia’s small back. She and Rico went into her bedroom. She noticed the gap in her entertainment unit immediately. "He took all my music videos."
"Who’d you have?"
"Janet Jackson, Sting, Motley Crue, Blondie, Michael Jackson."
Rico raised an eyebrow.
"Asia wanted that one."
"We’l1 come out tomorrow and try to lift some fingerprints. If this is the same crew who hit the other homes, we won’t find any. "
Munch took off Ralph’s bathrobe. Rico stopped talking.
"Come here." she said.
Twenty minutes later, Munch asked Rico if he wanted some water. The blankets were kicked to the bottom of the bed. Her head rested on his chest.
"I thought you girls liked foreplay" he said, wrapping his arms around her.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to make generalizations?"
Munch said a silent prayer of thanks to the god of big mouths. She had almost said, Didn’t your mother . . . ?
He ran his foot up her leg. "God, you feel good. Your skin is so soft."
She formed herself to his side. He kissed the top of her head.
"What do you think the expression the buck stops here means?" she asked.
"I don’t have a clue."
Her fingers ran along his scalp lightly scratching, rubbing. She got to his ears. The cartilage was supple, the skin warm. She would never have thought in a million years that someone’s ear could feel so good on her hand. She didn’t want anything to come between them again, ever.
She studied his face, memorizing the planes of his cheeks, the curl of his eyelashes. "When you found out Kathy wasn’t pregnant, how’d you feel?"
His eyes popped open. Studying the ceiling, he said, "It would have been worse if she miscarried. If there had really been a baby."
"Yeah, but were you disappointed?"
He sighed. "Can we go back to the buck thing?"
"It’s not a trick question. I promise. I just wondered how you felt about it all."
"A little disappointed, a little relieved. Pissed off."
"Were you hoping for a boy or a gir1?"
"It wasn’t all that long that we thought she was pregnant."
"Boy or girl?"
He sighed again. Surrendering. "A son would have been nice."
"I thought so." She wasn’t satisfied to be right. But people couldn’t let fear of the truth stop them from asking the important questions.
He lifted his head so that his face tilted toward hers. "Really
all you hope is that the kid is healthy. "
Maybe he thought he was redeeming himself. She felt her self shrink back into the loneliness of her own thoughts. As the poet Ogden Nash so aptly put it, "that cell of padded bone." As thirty loomed, she was just coming to terms with what her infertility meant to her emotionally. It wasn’t fair to expect Rico to know how it felt to be barren.
She had lied to him.
All questions between lovers were tricks.
She touched his forehead and he relaxed back onto the pillow.
"What do you think the motive was in Steve Koon’s murder?" she said.
"Does the term afterglow mean anything to you?"
"No, seriously. Why would someone kill him?"
Rico folded his arms behind his head. "The kid was trying to go straight. Maybe his co-conspirators wanted to keep him quiet. From blowing it for them."
"Probably that Mouseman asshole."
"Good possibility."
"How about in the car?"
"What car?"
She stroked his belly tracing the swath of hair that began at his navel and headed south. "The treasure trail," she and her friends had called it, when sex and dicks had been subjects they discussed frequently and openly. ln many ways, those were simpler times, when the most important thing was the act itself and damn the consequences.
"The car you found him in," she said.
"It was burnt, remember? There were some videos and cassettes melted beyond recognition. Papers we couldn’t identify. "
"Had he packed a bag?"
"Just a minute," Rico said. "I want to check something." He pushed her gently on her side so that her back was to him. She didn’t resist. She felt his tongue trace her spine and moaned as an orgasmic aftershock shook her. He brought his mouth to her ear. "Shh."
"I’m trying," she said into the pillow.
He bent her leg back and sucked on her toes. His fingers probed her. She lifted herself to meet him, feeling his breath on her neck. After that, she left the known universe. Time passed, maybe a few lifetimes, then they both had to surrender to the limits of heart and muscle. The sheets were soaked with their sweat.
"Wow," he said.
"I hear you," she said. She wondered if it was possible to find a way to make this work.
Unwilling Accomplice - Barbara Seranella Page 17