by Diane Kelly
I glanced past him, into the apartment. A crumpled blanket and pillow lay on the couch, the Thomas the Tank Engine pillowcase telling me Toby had been sleeping there. On the coffee table sat an empty bag of potato chips, fast food and candy wrappers, and three crushed soda cans. How this guy could eat so much and stay so skinny was beyond me. Looked like he’d retained that warp-speed metabolism many boys were blessed with during their teenage years.
Strewn around the floor and on shelves on the far wall were an assortment of electronic accessories, some loose, some in boxes, and none of which I knew the function. Heck, I still had no idea what the Ethernet was. Sounded like some type of mystical fantasyworld to me, a place where we’d all ride around on winged unicorns and live in castles made of mist. What was he doing with all of this technology?
Ryan’s walls were adorned with framed posters of cartoon women in tight, low-cut clothing that showed off their disproportionately large cartoon breasts. I recognized the classic Wonder Woman in her red, white, and blue strapless leotard and knee-high red go-go boots. The thing I wondered most about Wonder Woman was how the hell she fought crime in an outfit like that. When she raised her hand over her head and twirled her golden lasso, how did she keep a boob from popping out? Next to the Wonder Woman poster was one of a female cheetah with generous human curves. Another featured a woman with platinum hair and icicles rising from her hands. I had no problem with people being into fantasy and superheroes, but did all of the female characters really have to be so busty? Then again, all of the males bore muscles on top of muscles, so maybe that evened the score a bit.
After I’d attempted to glean what I could about Ryan from the glimpse into his apartment, I returned my focus to him. “I’d like to discuss Adriana Valdez.”
“Adriana? What about her?” the guy asked in his kazoo voice. Not exactly the sexy timbre a woman would want whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Not unless she were Betty Boop.
Before I could respond to Ryan, the kid chimed in from below with a question of his own. “Who’s Adriana?”
Ryan glanced down at the boy. “Just some girl I used to see.”
“You never met her?” I asked.
Toby shook his head. “Can I pet your dog?”
“Sure,” I told him. “Brigit likes kids.” So long as they weren’t stepping on her toes or pulling her tail, that is.
Toby dropped to his knees in front of Brigit and began running his hand down the side of her neck. “She’s so soft!” He buried his face in her neck. “And she smells like peaches!”
“It’s her shampoo.” Between you and me, I used the same flea shampoo on my own hair. No product designed for human use had ever given my locks such a nice shine and scent. I looked back up at Ryan. “Can you tell me where you were approximately half an hour ago?”
“Sure.” A sly grin spread across his face as he leaned in closer to me as if to share a secret. When he spoke, his voice was low and sultry. “I was in my beachfront mansion making love to Eva Longoria while Gwen Stefani waited her turn.”
Another smartass. What a surprise. I encountered two or three on every shift. I fought the urge to ask whether he’d even yet hit puberty.
“What’s ‘making love?’” the kid asked, still petting Brigit.
Ryan glanced down at his nephew. “It means kissing and stuff.”
“Ew!” The boy made a face. “Yuck!”
Ryan chuckled and lifted his head, eyeing me intently. “You want to tell me why you’re asking where I’ve been?”
I arched a brow. “You want to tell me the truth?”
His brow furrowed in puzzlement. “I did.” He hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “Half an hour ago I was asleep. In my bed. Having a really nice dream.”
Could it be true? He’d showed little alarm when I’d mentioned Adriana’s name. Then again, some people were good at hiding their thoughts and emotions. I’d learned that the hard way when I’d inadvertently befriended a sociopath who’d planted bombs around the city.
“Uncle Ryan snores,” Toby said. “Really loud. Sometimes it wakes me up.”
I looked down at the boy. “Were you asleep when I knocked on the door?”
He continued to pet Brigit, not bothering to look up at me. “Mm-hm.”
“When did you go to sleep?” I asked him.
“Uncle Ryan said I could stay up until ten,” he said, “but I think I fell asleep before that.”
A wary expression on his face, Ryan lowered his arm and stood up straighter. “I went to my room around nine-thirty so I could watch TV in there. I told Toby he could stay up and watch kids’ shows out here as long as he was quiet and went to sleep by ten.” His eyes narrowed. “What’s with all the questions?”
Rather than answer his inquiry, I posed another of my own. “You’re babysitting?”
“Yeah.” His voice was impatient now. “For my older brother. I’ve got the day off tomorrow and offered to take the kid so he and his wife could have a night off.”
Would Ryan have taken the kid with him when he threw the brick through Adriana’s window? Or would he have left the kid home alone? If it were the latter, he might also be guilty of child neglect. A kid that young shouldn’t be left home alone, especially at night. Having the kid here at his apartment sure would make a nice alibi, though.
I addressed Toby again. “Did you hear or see your uncle leave the apartment a little while ago?”
The kid shook his head. “Nope.”
I wasn’t sure how much stock to place in the kid’s response. If Toby was anything like my three brothers had been when they were young, he’d sleep like the dead. Nothing short of a nuclear bomb would’ve woken them up. Ryan might have been able to slip out, throw the brick, and return without Toby even realizing his uncle had left the apartment.
“Told you I was here,” Ryan snapped. “You want to get to the point?”
I’ll get to the point when I’m good and ready. I returned my gaze to Ryan and angled my head to indicate the shoes on his porch. “I noticed you’ve got some muddy shoes out here.”
“What are you talking about?” He stepped outside and glanced around.
“Behind the chair,” I told him.
He walked over and exclaimed, “Hey! Never thought I’d see these again.”
When he bent over to pick up the shoes, I reached out a hand to stop him. “Don’t touch them.”
He stood, his eyes narrowing. “Why not?”
Ignoring his question, I asked one of my own. “What did you mean when you said you never thought you’d see those shoes again?”
“I left them at Adriana’s place before I broke up with her last month. I wasn’t about to go back to get them. I’m not a man with a death wish.”
Funny. Adriana said she had been the one to break up with him. Which one of them was telling me the truth? If Adriana had been the one to cut things off, could a cocky guy like Ryan take it? Or would his ego be too bruised to accept it without retaliating? “I take it things got ugly?”
He snorted. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Try me.”
He started to say something but stopped himself, looking over at the kid through the open doorway. “Toby, I’m going to close the door so I can talk to this police lady out here in private. I want you to lie down on the couch and go back to sleep, okay? If you do what I say I’ll take you for doughnuts in the morning on the way to day camp.”
“Doughnuts!” The boy leaped up from the floor, my fluffy partner forgotten in favor of sugar, sprinkles, and lard. “Yay!”
As the boy ran and dived back onto the couch, I motioned for Brigit to return to my side and Ryan closed the door behind her. Brigit plunked her hindquarters down on the concrete next to my right foot and issued a sigh. She’d been enjoying Toby’s attention. She’d probably also understood the word “doughnuts” and was wondering why nobody had given her one.
After shutting the door, Ryan stepped closer to me. Too close. I reflexively
took a step backward to put some distance between us. Not only had he invaded my personal space, but a law enforcement officer never wants a potential suspect within grabbing distance of her weapons.
He got right down to business. “You want the dirty details about my breakup with Adriana? I’ll give them to you. She’s the reason you’re here, right? She’s done something crazy again?”
Adriana? Crazy? What? My mind squirmed in confusion. But I knew that sometimes the best way to get the most information out of a person was to let them go ahead and spill the beans without any direction rather than for me to ask specific questions. Often, something a person offered voluntarily and spontaneously could lead to better tips than a purposeful interview. “Tell me what happened with you two.”
“Okay.” He inhaled a long breath as if taking time to organize his thoughts and scratched the crusty goop from his eyes before returning his focus to me. “Adriana and I dated for about three months. At first things were great. I mean, she’s pretty and in good shape, and she likes to cook and I like to eat so we seemed like a good match. But it wasn’t long before she started in on me. First it was about the junk food. She wanted me to give up red meat and fast food and only eat things she made for me. You know, skinless chicken and brown rice and steamed organic vegetables. Crap like that.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s a total health nut. She must’ve baked me a hundred loaves of zucchini bread. In the beginning I ate some of ’em ’cause I thought it was sweet, but then things got out of hand. She kept trying to get me to go to yoga or do Pilates with her. Do I look like the kind of guy who does Pilates?”
“No, you do not,” I said, keeping my eyes off his thin yet jiggly thighs. Hey, he can’t fault me for agreeing with him, can he?
He scowled. “She had a key made to my apartment one morning when I slept in. Didn’t even ask my permission first! Just took my keys down to the hardware store and had them make a duplicate. I didn’t know it until I came home from work and found all of the junk food missing from my fridge and pantry. She’d come over and thrown them out. She’d also cleaned and reorganized everything. My whole place smelled like bleach. Can you believe it?”
Yes, I could believe it. Adriana had struck me as a somewhat tightly wound person who liked things to be spotless, germfree, and orderly. Still, though Ryan had asked a question, I didn’t think he was really looking for an answer and, even if he was, I wasn’t inclined to give one. I was here to collect facts, not offer my own opinions. Luckily, after catching his breath, he launched right back into his tirade.
“She’d thrown out some of my clothes she didn’t like, too. She got rid of my T-shirts and jeans and replaced them with khakis and polo shirts. She was always asking me to fix things at her house, too. I didn’t mind taking care of her cable or Wi-Fi when it went out, but the plumbing and paint and stuff like that were her landlord’s job, not mine. She treated me like I was her life-size Ken doll or her husband, like I was just supposed to do everything she wanted me to do whether I liked it or not.”
Huh. Looked like Adriana had left out a few details about their relationship—assuming, of course, that what Ryan was telling me was true. After all, he could be the one lying. Something told me he wasn’t, though. He wasn’t pausing to come up with the story as he went along, and what he was saying wasn’t so over-the-top as to be incredible. Then again, he might have realized law enforcement could become involved and had decided to have a story ready, just in case. For all I knew, he’d practiced this little speech in front of the mirror.
“She brought a bunch of her stuff over here, too,” he continued. “Put some pillows on the couch and a bath mat by the tub and a bunch of her weird herbal teas and echinacea and gingko bilbo in the kitchen.”
I fought the urge to tell him that Bilbo was the first name of the title character in The Hobbit and that the dietary supplement he was referring to was actually called ginkgo biloba. But no sense derailing his train of thought. It was rolling full speed down the track toward Information Station and I wanted to see what all it was loaded with.
He snorted again. “Needless to say, that shit got old fast. I warned her that I wasn’t ready to get serious, and that I am who I am and I’m not going to change for anyone. I told her if she didn’t like me the way I was, then she should go find someone else. I mean, it was insulting, you know? Like I wasn’t good enough for her. Anyway, she started crying and said she was sorry and wouldn’t do it again, so I gave her a second chance. We carried on for another week or two, but then she was right back at it, coming over when I was at work and going through my things. She swears she didn’t do it, but my favorite pair of old shorts went missing and I know it was her. They might have had some holes in them, but they were really comfortable.”
I could relate. I had a pair of old jeans like that. The denim had worn thin, but they were soft and fit like a second skin. I’d keep them around until they disintegrated.
“About a month ago,” he said. “I decided I’d had enough. I changed my lock and went to her house to return her stuff and collect mine from her. I told her it was over. I tried to be as nice as I could about it. I gave her that old bullshit about it being me, not her. I said she deserved someone who would appreciate her and could make her happy and all that, but she just lost it.” His face softened, and he gave a slight shake of his head before speaking more softly. “She said I’d made her feel worthless. She threatened to end it all.”
“End it all?” I repeated.
“You know.” He ran his index finger across his throat but, seeming to realize that implied murder, put the index finger to his temple, hooked his thumb, and acted out shooting himself in the head.
“Suicide, you mean.”
“Yeah.” He exhaled a long, loud breath. “Anyway, who’d want to be responsible for someone doing that, you know? I can’t have something like that on my conscience. So I told her we could still be friends but that she should look for someone else if she wanted a romantic relationship. I left some flowers on her porch with notes suggesting places she might go to meet guys. You know, churches and those meet-up groups for singles, that kind of thing. She’s a total homebody and hasn’t dated much. Doesn’t seem to have any real friends, either. She’s awkward. You may have noticed.”
I had indeed noticed. Adriana wasn’t warm, and the lack of direct eye contact had been a little disconcerting. But I still wasn’t sure whether she’d been intentionally avoiding my gaze. There were all kinds of reasons why one person might not meet another’s eye. Besides a potential vision issue, the person might suffer from a social anxiety disorder or be on the autism spectrum and find direct eye contact to be stressful. She might have been fearful or distracted. Some people found authority figures intimidating. And the fact that she worked in a hospital environment could explain her seeming obsession with cleanliness.
“If she doesn’t get out much,” I said, “how did the two of you meet?”
“I went to her house to set up her cable and Internet service. She was pretty, so I figured, why not? She seemed shy, so I tried to pull her out of her shell.”
The picture he was painting of Adriana as an insecure, overly emotional social misfit didn’t quite jibe with the relatively controlled woman I’d met earlier. My expression must have revealed my skepticism, because the next thing Ryan did was ask, “She told you I’ve got a protective order against her, right?”
No, she hadn’t. My brows lifted of their own accord. “You do?”
He smirked, evidently buoyed by my surprise. “Hell, yeah, I do. She followed me to work one day last week and begged me again to take her back. I refused as nice as I could, but she starting screaming at me and slapped me. I told her not to touch me again but when I went to get back into my vehicle she grabbed my shirt and tried to pull me out. When that didn’t work she clawed at me like a rabid cat. Drew blood on my neck.” He angled his head and pointed to a spot below his ear. “You can probably still see the marks.”
I could. Unde
r his ear were three distinct pink lines of scarred flesh.
Huh.
Now I was more confused than ever. Here I’d thought Ryan might be lying to me, but now it was looking like Adriana could have been the one painting the misleading picture. Maybe she was like Picasso, distorting the image, putting things in unexpected places, mismatching facial features. Had her lack of eye contact been a sign of dishonesty rather than fear or discomfort?
“Did you call the police to report the attack?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “But there weren’t any witnesses around and once she saw that she’d drawn blood she knew she was in trouble. She jumped back into her car and got the hell out of there before the cops arrived.”
No witnesses. That seemed to be a theme with these two. “What day did this happen?”
“Wednesday.”
I made a mental note to look up the police report. “You got the protective order handy?”
“It’s in my place somewhere. Give me a minute. I’ll find it.”
He slipped back into the apartment, leaving me and Brigit on the porch to listen to the crickets chirp while we waited. When Ryan returned, he held the document out to me.
