Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella

by Barbara Seranella

  In fact, it was surprising how slim the pickings were considering all the functions she went to where she was the only woman. Automotive seminars, NIASE exams, even the punishment class she had to attend for eight hours once when she wrongly issued a smog certificate to a car from the Bureau of Automotive Repair's undercover unit. The fuel evaporative canister had been removed and she hadn't noticed. They fined her and Lou one hundred and fifty dollars each. She got a black mark on her record and had to spend a Saturday being lectured to on smog control.

  Even on that day, surrounded by thirty men, the only guy who was worth a second look turned out to be married. He revealed his marital status over lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant, for which he paid anyway. They exchanged business cards and tips on spotting future undercover BAR cars over enchiladas.

  On their first, off-class date she and Garret went to a car exhibit at the Convention Center. Driving home, she had ventured a kiss or two. He had received them with reluctance. This had been new to her. This reticence. She had felt even more attracted to him, though now she wondered if maybe it had been the added challenge she enjoyed. By the time they got back to her house, he was offering no more resistance.

  She looked at him now, sitting on the edge of her bed unbuttoning his shirt with the absentminded nonchalance of habit. She missed the anticipation of a new lover—the excitement of discovery—the first-time jitters. Not that she wanted to risk all that went with the unknown. There were nasty diseases out there. Diseases with no cures. Herpes was bad enough. Somehow she had managed to dodge that bullet. But now there was this AIDS shit.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  "Nothing."

  "You have a weird look on your face."

  "Just thinking."

  "About what?"

  "How lucky I am."

  He draped his shirt over the chair and kicked off his loafers.

  "Lucky in what way?"

  "To be alive. To be sober. To have Asia. Not to have to worry where my next dime is coming from."

  "Oh," he said, looking dejected, "I thought you meant about us."

  "I've been thinking about that," she said.

  "Me, too." He undid his belt buckle and the top button of his pants, but then stopped undressing and sat down next to her on the bed. He took her hand in his.

  "Maybe I should go first," she said.

  "All right." He waited, his puppy dog eyes fixed on her.

  "I was thinking maybe we should back off a little," she said. "You know, take some time apart."

  He blinked.

  "What were you going to say?" she asked.

  "I was thinking we should move in together. " He laughed. "Boy talk about mixed signals."

  She smiled back at him, glad to see he was taking this so well. They might even still make love, which was never a bad thing between them.

  "I just think we've reached the point where—" she began.

  "Say no more," he said. "I know exactly what you mean. We need to grow or go. This is why I think it's time to take the next step." He hunched his shoulders forward and scooted closer to her. "Think about it a minute. What do we have together? Just this one-night-a-week thing. I don't even keep a toothbrush here. This place is nice, but there's only room enough here for you and Asia. Of course you feel like you need space. But it's not space away from me. At least I don't think it is. What our relationship needs, what you need, is more commitment, not less. I need a place with a garage. There's a house up the street with three bed-rooms, two baths, a two-car garage, and a laundry room. There's even an RV pad for the limo and a fenced backyard. We could have a dog."

  She listened to his pitch. The bit about the dog was a good closer. Asia wanted a puppy in the worst way.

  "Between the two of us," he said, "we could swing it."

  "And this house is available now?"

  "Almost. I'll show it to you next weekend."

  He kissed her then. His mouth tasted sweet with wine. With his lips still on hers, he unzipped her dress, and worked her breasts out of her bra. She succumbed to the sensations, groaning as he took one of her nipples in his mouth, a shiver shooting through her body. They giggled through the awkward process of untangling panty hose and briefs. When they were both naked, they joined.

  For long minutes, they coupled with a slow, delicious rhythm that had them both making small moans of pleasure. Then gradually the tempo increased. With only half an ear, she heard the bed frame pound the wall. She arched her back and cried out in orgasm, expecting him to follow. Instead, he flipped her over and dragged her to the edge of the bed, somehow finding the strength to stand there. Their bodies slapped together wetly, and still he wasn't finished. She grabbed fists of sheet, trembling with exhaustion.

  "I can't take any more," she gasped finally.

  He released, thrusting one last time and then collapsing on top of her. They lay panting for a long minute, and he rolled off her, letting out a long "Whew."

  "Man," she said, "what got into you?"

  He laughed. "How could you even think about breaking up when we've got this going for us?"

  She didn't answer. She drew her knees to her chest, and bunched the pillow to her cheek. Maybe this was going to work out. She'd just have to learn to be quieter when Asia was in the next room.

  Please, God, she prayed, make my life easy. Let me fall in love with him. As she dropped off to sleep, her last nagging thought was that he was a good guy. He deserved better than a grudging compromise.

  Chapter 3

  SUNDAY

  He fingered the button lightly realized he was holding his breath, and forced himself to exhale and inhale several times before he proceeded. This was not the last act of the plan, but certainly the most final one.

  He wondered again if he'd missed anything. The house, he knew, was clean. He'd even mailed her mail and brought in the Saturday paper.

  He looked at her lying there and thought she had never looked so beautiful. He was tempted to stroke her face. One last time. It would make no difference if he did. There was no turning back now. He wrapped the duct tape around her head, covering her eyes. It was true, he acknowledged in some detached part of his brain, what the cops always said. That when the murder victim's face was covered it meant that he or she was known to his or her murderer. He could only pray he wasn't giving himself away in any other small way.

  The bitch had brought him to this juncture, he reminded himself. He wasn't going down for her. Why should he?

  He inserted the plug into the special circular wall socket and twisted it into the locked position. His hands were awkward in the thick rubber mitts. The four-foot hank of cable and plug had once been attached to an industrial dryer. Earlier he had separated the three wires inside the cable and soldered copper spikes on the ends of the two hot leads. He capped each sharp point with cork, taking care they wouldn't touch inappropriately. Contacting only one lead at a time was safe enough. But to connect with both simultaneously could prove fatal.

  He used extreme caution as he scooted the insulation off the end of each of the rods and poised them at opposite ends of her body. He knew that there was no point in delaying, yet still he hesitated. A drop of sweat tickled as it rolled down his chest. He wiped his sleeve across his brow and with that gesture pushed away remaining doubts. Grunting slightly, he brought the tips of the rods down until they connected with her white, white skin. The world around them exploded in a bright, paralyzing flash of light followed instantaneously by a sharp crack. Her body arched, lifting off the floor. Muscles contracted, veins darkened. The skin over her chest bubbled and turned to chalky ash as the current arced across, singed, and then penetrated the resisting layers of epidermis and subcutaneous fat tissue. The charge soared through her body, muscles contracted in one last violent spasm. The smell of burnt flesh filled the room, bearing a curious resemblance to roast lamb.

  He stepped back, holding one of the two smoking rods high over his head. With his free hand he twisted the b
ulky 22o plug away from the outlet.

  "Well," he said, after a moment, still feeling awed at the force of the current. "That's that."

  Then he got busy The night's work was far from over.

  Chapter 4

  TUESDAY MORNING

  Munch was the first to see the blonde in her hot pink dress park her little three-series BMW near the hibiscus hedge at the far end of the lot. The BMW's door opened, and a long shapely leg wearing a red stiletto-heeled shoe emerged.

  Munch edged into a position where she could watch the show. Because the shop was in Brentwood, they catered to a variety of professional athletes, movie stars, and millionaires. There was also an excess of beautiful women. Actresses, models, trophy wives and their trophy daughters. The gas station's south driveway poured into a small cul-de-sac of merchants. Parking for those businesses was limited. The gas pump attendants weren't supposed to let non-customers park in the station's lot, but they were known to make exceptions. Lou, the owner, looked the other way in the interest of morale.

  Another long leg swung out the door of the BMW and then the as woman stood. Her dress was tight for all the right reasons, as Lou would say. This was going to be interesting.

  Munch always got a kick out of how these women would come to the station in sexy outfits and make their voices go all high and helpless. Didn't the guys realize there was no way these women were going to put out for a tune-up?

  Even Lou would tell them right to their faces, "I can't take it to the bank, honey" Two years ago Lou might have acted differently. He had been a much happier man then, working on cars instead of owning his own business. She looked at him now through the office window, bent over the morning's books. Business had been slow all month and nobody was happy about it. The mechanics worked strictly on commission, getting paid half of what the shop collected on labor, and nothing on parts except for tires and batteries, for which they received five bucks per unit. When there wasn't enough work to go around, it brought out the worst in everybody. Lou's face reminded her of one of those depression-era farmers in those old photos, looking out the window of a rusty pickup truck, a litter of kids in the back, the dust bowl in their wake.

  The blonde was halfway across the property now, acting oblivious to the rubbernecking of every man on the lot, from customer to pump jockey. Munch laughed out loud when one of the guys interrupted his windshield washing to gawk and dribbled soapy water on the crotch of his pants.

  She turned to go back into the lube room but stopped when she saw Mace St. John's department-issued Buick pulling into the driveway

  Her heart did one of those fluttery things it had been doing lately at the sight of him. In the old days, the sight of a cop had always been enough to release spiders in her stomach. Not that she had anything to fear now. But it was interesting what close cousins fear and excitement were, how the physical manifestations were identical. The dry mouth, the increased pulse. As with everything else, it was all a matter of how you interpreted your perceptions.

  Mace St. John was an LAPD homicide cop. Seven and a half years ago, February 1977, when they had first crossed paths, she had been a prime suspect in one of his murder cases. She'd been twenty-one and floundering. He'd been floundering, too. Each had saved the other: he, by giving her a chance; she, by showing him that not all offenders were necessarily lifetime assholes. That people could change. Seven years had passed before they met again, when different murders had brought them together. And through her help, the killer had been stopped, and a new phase of their friendship had begun.

  The sex dreams starring the detective had started only recently. In the dreams, they were more than just lovers, they were married. She always woke up just about the time she thought to ask, "Hey what happened to Caroline?"

  When he called yesterday and said he would be stopping by she figured it had something to do with his never-ending restoration work on the Bella Donna, his 1927 Pullman train car. St. John had bought the Santa Fe—designed green-and-gold business car twelve years earlier, in 1972, and had been working on it ever since, proving once again what willing slaves men were to their passions.

  If anybody noticed that Munch had worn a little makeup to work, mascara and blush, no one had said anything. Not that she was being obvious. And not that she ever in a million years would act on her private fantasy. She'd been through this situation before and knew that the solution to an inappropriate infatuation was just to wait it out silently.

  She figured this latest crush was some kind of phenomenon like the Stockholm Syndrome. Spend enough time with a pistol-packing guy who doesn't hurt or kill you and you start to wonder if he's "the one."

  The detective parked his car in front of the office.

  "Hey" she said, tucking in her uniform shirt and smiling. "You just missed seeing Asia off to school."

  "Yeah, I got a little delayed this morning." He brushed what looked like dog hair off his navy blue sports coat and grinned back. Mace St. John had one of those craggy faces that work so well on some men. He was a shade under six feet, with a boxer's trim physique. A touch of gray had crept into his temples and a thick gold wedding band shone at her from the ring finger on his left hand. She wanted to touch it.

  "You got a minute?" he asked.

  "Maybe even five if you're lucky. "

  Her ex-boyfriend Derek had once said to her, "You think you can have any man you want." She didn't remember what the argument had been about, only the exasperation in his tone, and her answer.

  "Yes," she had said, "I do." It wasn't that she thought she was so earth—shatteringly beautiful, but she knew she was cute. That her body was well proportioned. And when she took her shoulder-length hair out of its severe braid and applied a little makeup, she garnered a few second looks of her own. But all that aside, she also knew that all it really took was letting a guy know you were his for the asking. The art was in how you let him know. Men were always watching for the signs, and women learned from an early age how to exploit that. Another lesson courtesy of her late father, the unlamented Flower George, who had also taught her that exploitation was a two-way street.

  Behind St. John, the panting face of a mutt appeared in his driver's-side window. It was an appealing face, brown with white markings, ears fringed in black. The dog grinned at her with a look that seemed to say "I'm lucky and I know it."

  "Who's this?" Munch asked.

  "I don't know. I found her on the freeway. "

  Munch reached her hand in the semi-opened window and ruffled the pooch's shaggy ears. She didn't see a collar. There was an empty hamburger wrapper from Jack in the Box on the floor of the backseat. The dog's breath smelled of secret sauce.

  "What do you need?" she asked St. John, but she accompanied the question with no sly smile.

  "I wanted to borrow your air-conditioning tools," he said, gracing her with one of those grins that transformed his deeply lined face into a thing of beauty. That little cigar clamped in his teeth seemed appealing and manly even sexy.

  "Is this for the Bella Donna?" she asked.

  "I'm ready to add Freon."

  "Let me help you," she said. "I can swing by after I pick up Asia from school. How's five sound?"

  "Tonight?"

  "Is that a problem?"

  "How long will it take, you think?"

  She shrugged. "Hour, maybe."

  "Okay, let's do it. I've got a case I'm working, but an hour won't make or break it."

  "Hey, that reminds me," she said. "What was that all about yesterday morning?"

  "All what?"

  "By the Sunset off-ramp. Major cop activity I saw the coroner's wagon, too. What I didn't see was a fire engine or a tow truck or any kind of wreckage."

  "So you were just wondering," he said.

  "Can you tell me anything?"

  "Not much to tell, yet." Behind them, the dog barked once sharply as if to remind them not to ignore her. St. John stuck his hand in the window and stroked the animal's head. The dog closed her ey
es and soaked in the attention.

  "All the radio said was that a body had been found," Munch persisted, "that the police hadn't ruled out foul play. Is that your case?"

  "We're still working on identifying the deceased." St. John reached into his suit pocket with his free hand. He removed a Polaroid photograph but didn't show it to her immediately. "You always say it feels like the whole world passes through here."

  That was true. The office wall was filled with signed celebrity photographs, everyone from James Garner to Betty White. DeLorean stopped in for a fuse once in the middle of his trial. Munch had felt so sorry for him—how the cops had entrapped him—that she hadn't charged. o.J. Simpson and Magic Johnson regularly had their Ferraris waxed by Pauley the detail guy. Even presidential motorcades passed by occasionally.

  Munch held out her hand.

  He handed her the picture. "Did you know her?"

  Munch studied the photograph, feeling an odd dropping sensation in her stomach, knowing she was experiencing one of those moments that would always be etched in her memory. This was the way it always was when she learned that someone she knew and liked was dead.

  St. John watched her closely.

  "Yes," she said, staring in surprise at the lifeless face. "It's Mrs. Bergman. Diane. Diane Bergman."

  "Was she a friend?" His thin cigar had gone out. He tossed the butt in one of the shop's fifty-gallon-drum trash cans.

  "She's a customer. I mean, I liked her. But I knew her from work. In fact, I worked for her the other night. My limo was on standby for this party she gave in the Palisades."

  "When was this?"

  "Last Friday She was perfectly fine then." Oh that was brilliant, she thought. How many people got sick before they were murdered?

  "Does she live nearby?" he asked.

  "On Chenault."

  "With her husband?"

  "No, she was widowed about six months ago, around the middle of April. They both used to come in here. Then he got sick and stopped going out. I read about his death in the paper and sent a note." Why was that important to say? she asked herself. So you can impress him with what a good person you are? She tried to do three good deeds a day, but not tell anyone. It was a character-building exercise. Getting credit negated the whole point.