by Lois Greiman
How many times could I be wrong?
I shut my eyes, trying to block out the previous night, but a dead body with a hard-on pretty much etches itself into one’s memory. A noise distracted me and I rolled over, listening. My doorbell rang, making me wonder foggily if that was what had awakened me in the first place.
Questions rolled around in my head like BBs in a walnut shell but I fought off my bedsheets and staggered toward the door. It took me a minute to realize I was still wearing one shoe. It was a Ferragamo and matched my skirt. My jacket and blouse, however, were gone. I stopped dead in the middle of the floor. The doorbell rang again, drawing my gaze up from my not quite willowy body.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Police.”
A dozen thoughts garbled through me. Not one could be voiced in polite company.
“Just a minute,” I yelled and plucking off my shoe, staggered back to my bedroom for a shirt. But once there I merely gazed around in disjointed uncertainty. I’m tidy enough, but I don’t like to be obsessive about it. I’d thrown my robe over the foot rail of my bed and left my horoscope beside it before galloping off to work on Thursday morning. I was an Aquarius and yesterday was predicted to be my lucky day.
I dragged on the robe. Classy, it was not. Nor did it exactly match my rumpled skirt or the irritably discarded shoe that still dangled from my fingertips.
The doorbell screamed at me. I plowed toward it and looked through the peephole. Lieutenant Rivera stood on my porch, looking grim.
I braced myself and opened the door. He shouldered his way in. He wasn’t a huge man. Six foot maybe, only a few inches taller than myself, and not particularly broad, but every inch of him seemed to be devoid of fat. And this time I mean devoid.
He wore jeans that had seen some life and a charcoal-colored dress shirt. His hips were lean, his eyes steady, and his wrists dark and broad-boned where his sleeves were folded up from his workingman’s hands.
“Do you let just anyone in?”
I think I blinked at him. “What?”
“Your door,” he said. “Do you let everybody in who rings your bell?”
“I saw you through the peephole.”
“You didn’t even ask for my badge.”
The man was certifiable. Another candidate for the loony bin. Business was brisk.
“You thought I might forget you overnight?” I asked.
The almost-grin appeared, but Rivera turned, glancing around my foyer. It was really nothing more than a narrow entryway, but I liked to call it a vestibule.
“Nice place.”
Was he trying to be civil? I wondered numbly, and decided to take a chance. “Would you like some coffee?”
He turned back toward me as if just remembering my presence. “Did you prescribe the Viagra?”
“What?”
“Bomstad,” he said. “He’d taken a large dose of Viagra before visiting you. Did you prescribe it?”
I felt as if I’d lost a water ski and was now skidding across the surface of a lake on my face. “No, I’m—”
“Did you know he had a heart condition?”
“I’m a psychologist. I can’t prescribe drugs,” I said, still working on the last question.
“Even for a heart condition?”
“Not for anything.”
“Then you knew he had a weak heart.”
“No. I . . . No.”
“So you didn’t see any harm in trying to seduce him.”
I took a deep breath and counted to five. “I didn’t try to seduce anybody,” I said.
His gaze drifted down from my face. Mine followed, then I snapped the wayward robe together over the top of my bra. It was black and frayed and had cost me less than twelve dollars brand-new. Why spend $49.99 on a garment no one would ever see?
Rivera’s lips lifted.
“Why are you here?” I asked. My voice sounded angry. I hope. Maybe it was just a little bit breathless.
“I wanted to make sure you were all right. You seemed disoriented last night when I brought you home.”
“You brought—” The truth dawned a little slowly, but I was running on four hours of sleep and visions of a corpse with a woody. “What did you do with my blouse?”
“I was just trying to get you comfortable.”
I stared at him, then lifted my right hand. The single shoe dangled between us like rotten fruit. “You left the shoe but took the blouse?”
He shrugged and walked into my kitchen. It wasn’t a whole lot bigger than my vestibule. “Turns out it was a fruit stain. Cherry,” he said.
“You tested the stain?”
He shrugged again. His movements were Spartan, as if each one was calculated. His gaze traveled back to mine. “How long had you and Mr. Bomstad been seeing each other?”
“I told you . . .” His attention made me fidgety. I hated being fidgety. Fidgety is not classy. “I wasn’t seeing him.”
A brow flickered. “I meant professionally.”
“Oh. Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Three months. Maybe four.”
“And during that time how often did you have intercourse with him?”
He had taken a notebook from somewhere and flipped it open. I stared in disbelief. “I told you before, we didn’t have intercourse.”
“No. You told me before that you weren’t lovers.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it.
“You were going to say something?”
It’s not as though I have a temper, but sometimes, when I’m tired, it’s best not to push me. Or when I’m hungry. I can get cranky when I’m hungry. And there are certain times of the month when I’m just better off left alone. “We weren’t lovers,” I said, keeping my tone admirably even. I was tired and hungry, but at least I wasn’t menstruating. “Neither . . .”—I pronounced it with an elegant hard i sound and felt better for it.—“. . . did we have intercourse.”
“Oh.” He said it casually, as if it didn’t matter. I ground my teeth and reconsidered the spitting contest.
“Were you aware of his activities?”
“Activities?” I said.
He shrugged. “What he did. Who he was.”
“He was a tight end for the Lions,” I said. “If that’s what you’re referring to.”
“Did you know he was a Peeping Tom?”
“What?” The air had been squashed out of my lungs again.
“And an exhibitionist?”
“Andrew?”
“Do you address all your customers by their first names?”
“A Peeping Tom?”
“Howard Lepinski said you called him ‘Mr. Lepinski.’ ”
“You talked to Mr. Lepinski?”
“I guess that answers my question.”
“What the hell were you doing talking to my clients?” I asked, taking an involuntary step toward him. He didn’t exactly cower away. In fact, his lips twitched again. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of an imprint a Ferragamo would make on his damned sardonic expression.
“Did you know he was a flasher?”
“Lepinski?” The shoe dropped in my fingers.
“Bomstad.”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
His brows did rise that time. I squeezed the edges of my robe together and remembered my professional image. “You must be mistaken,” I said and lifted my chin in a haughty expression of pride. Start the bonfires, the martyr was back.
“I’m not mistaken,” he said. “And neither . . .”—He pronounced it with a hard, elongated i sound.—“. . . am I shittin’ you.”
I wandered into my living room and plopped down in my La-Z-Boy. It had once belonged to a man named Ron. Ron was long gone. The chair remained. Yet another way furniture is superior to men. “Bomstad?” I asked, and glanced up at Rivera. His eyes were deep set, like a sculpture’s, and his hair was too long to be stylish. It curled around his ears in dark waves. “Andrew Bomstad?”
“The Bomber,” he answered. “You’
re not the first woman he’s charmed the pants off of.”
“He didn’t—”
“Then why did you send him the wine?”
I just stared this time, numb as a cherry pit.
“The Spumante,” he said, and stared back at me. “Did you send it to him?”
I shook my head.
“Did you know he had a girlfriend?”
I nodded.
“That bother you?”
“I told you—”
“There were others, too. He liked them young, mostly. Teenagers. You’re not his usual type.”
“I didn’t—”
“Not that I’m faulting his choice, but how did he happen to hear about you?”
“I’m telling you—”
“I mean, I would think a guy like Andy the Bomber Bomstad might find a psychiatrist with more . . . notoriety. But then, I guess he didn’t pick you for your diploma. And maybe you didn’t know much about his background. His handler was top-notch at keeping his indiscretions out of the papers. But you’re going to have to come clean now. I’ll keep it quiet. Make sure it doesn’t affect your business. How long had you been sleeping with Bomstad?”
“I was not—”
“A month? Couple weeks?”
“Listen!” I growled and, shooting out of the “boy,” stepped up close enough so I had to lift my chin to glare into his face. “I didn’t sleep with him. I never slept with him. I haven’t slept with anyone for ye—”
He was standing absolutely still, staring down at me, an expression of near surprise on his face.
Lucidity settled in at a leisurely pace. I took a deep breath and backed off a step.
“I didn’t have intercourse with Mr. Bomstad,” I said.
If he so much as twitched I was going to spit in his eye.
“Ever?”
“Never.”
“Oh.” He nodded agreeably. “You have a boyfriend?”
“Not at the present time.”
He snapped his notebook shut and headed for the door, where he turned. “Years of celibacy,” he mused. “It’s bound to make a woman short-tempered.”
I considered throwing my shoe at him, but I’m a professional. And he was damned quick in the face of a loaded Ferragamo.
UNPLUGGED
A Dell Book / March 2006
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2006 by Lois Greiman
* * *
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
* * *
eISBN-13: 978-0-440-33585-6
eISBN-10: 0-440-33585-X
www.bantamdell.com
v1.0
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
About the Author
Also by Lois Greiman
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