Unscrewed

by Lois Greiman

  By the time he got in I had almost dragged myself upright. It was pretty dark in the car but I could still see his glare. Would probably see the damn thing in my dreams.

  I propped myself rigid against the seat. Pride may goeth before a fall, but it’s better than the alternative.

  I’m not sure how he got my key, but suddenly he was shoving it into the ignition. In a second we were tooling along while my stomach did a tango in my roiling gut. I opened my window, hoping for enough air to keep all my contents inside.

  Silence screamed around me. I kept my eyes drilled into the windshield. Dignity was mine. I wouldn’t obsess about what he had heard me say. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care what he thought. He was a cretin anyway. And maybe a murderer. Oddly enough, that last thought made me feel a little better. Yes, I was trapped in the car with a murderous cretin, but at least I didn’t care what the murderous cretin thought. I would go home, throw up, forget about him, move on. I raised my chin.

  “So what were you talking about?”

  “What?” I snapped my attention toward him. A little too fast. I took a steadying breath, remembering dignity, and that ralphing eats the lining of one’s esophagus. “I beg your pardon?”

  He stared at me. “What were you talking about?” he asked, but slower this time, as if he were waiting for my brain to get back from its sabbatical.

  I gave him a stare. I was trying to look dignified, but I’m afraid my pupils might have been staring in opposite directions.

  He gritted his teeth. “With Mama,” he explained.

  “Oh.” Well, I certainly hadn’t been talking about how hot he’d look in his underwear. That would have been wrong. And just damned weird. I was holding my breath. I let it out carefully, lest I forget to start up again. “Not much. She asked me to dine with her.” The air felt good against my arm and face.

  “Did she?”

  “Yes. She’s very gracious.” I turned back to stare through the windshield. Cars zipped by on the…whatever the hell road we were on. For all I knew we could be flying to the moon. “I have to admit I’m surprised.” I didn’t look to see if he was glaring at me. Odds were good. “Genetics,” I muttered. “Go figure.”

  “You saying I’m not gracious?”

  I gave him a smile. I’m pretty sure half of my mouth was still functioning. “Yes, Lieutenant, that’s exactly what I’m thaying.” Damn it! “Saying.”

  He smiled back. He looked like a Doberman guarding a hot dog. But maybe that was just the Chablis talking…or the champagne…or the tequila. Holy crap.

  “So you were just two girls getting together to shoot the breeze?” he surmised.

  “And eat.”

  “Ah-huh.” He concentrated on the road ahead. Vehicles were zipping past, leaving red streaks of light in their wake.

  “She’s an excellent cook.”

  “Always has been.”

  “And I like her house. It’s homey and—”

  “God damn it!” he swore, and jerked the Saturn onto the left shoulder. A sixteen-wheeler whizzed by, missing my elbow by an inch.

  “Hey,” I shrieked, and yanked my arm inside.

  He was already leaning toward me, eyes glowing like a wolf’s in the surreal lights cast by an oncoming SUV. “What did she tell you?”

  I huddled against the door. “What?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong damned tree, McMullen,” he warned, and grabbed my wrist.

  “I’m not barking at all.” I’m afraid my voice may have squeaked, but I didn’t bark, so I was pretty damned happy about that.

  “What did you think she’d tell you?” He seemed to calm a little, but his body was tense, his eyes smoking. Really, I think they were. “That I’d been jealous of my old man all my life? That I killed Salina in a fit of passion?”

  “Passion?” I was pressed against the passenger door like lunch meat gone bad. “No. You’re not a passionate kind of guy. Never rash or…or…violent?” The last word kind of sounded like a weak-assed question.

  He stared at me, almost laughed, eased off a few inches. Shook his head. But suddenly his eyes struck me again.

  “God damn it,” he said, but his voice had lost all emotion and in the stillness between rushing cars, I was pretty sure he’d gone beyond the purgatory depth of anger and sunk lower. “God damn it, McMullen. She’s my mother.”

  I swallowed, not following, shaking my head.

  “You want a coldhearted killer? Is that what you want?”

  I shook my head harder, but he wasn’t really listening.

  “Then try the old man.”

  I stopped in mid-shake. “What did you find out?”

  “She was baking cookies,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Salina. She was baking. Like she didn’t have a care in the world. Dishes half-washed. Water in the sink. The crime photos…” He drew a breath, carefully controlled.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to be investigating the case.”

  “Yeah?” His eyes snapped. There was something untamed and desperate in his eyes. “Well, she wasn’t supposed to die, was she?”

  “Listen, Rivera, I know you cared about her. Maybe you even feel responsible, but—”

  “Cut the shrink crap!” he snapped. “And stay the hell away from Mama.”

  “She asked me to—”

  “She’s got nothing to do with this. Do you hear me?” He tightened his grip on my biceps. “Nothing.”

  “I didn’t say she…” I began, but just then a rogue thought shambled groggily into my brain. “Is that why you went to her house? To check her alibi?”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. He leaned closer. “She doesn’t need a damned alibi.”

  “Because she’s your mother?”

  “Because she’s innocent.”

  I jerked my arm away. “Then why the hell do you think you have to protect her?”

  He glared at me, silent for a second.

  I was breathing hard. “Christ, Rivera, you’re acting like a moron.”

  Something traveled like lightning across his face, but he shut it down.

  I watched him, mind grinding rustily. “Worse. You’re acting like she’s guilty.”

  The car went silent. My mind was sweating, and at that moment I realized that a functioning brain might have come in really handy about then.

  “What’d she tell you?” His voice was a monotone.

  I gave up trying to analyze him and glanced toward the highway, wondering if I could make it across without getting squashed by a passing motorist. I knew my odds weren’t good, but at that precise moment, it didn’t really matter, because the truth was, I would rather have taken my chances with a speed-happy commuter than admit we’d been discussing how he’d look in his underwear. Crap. I’d rather tell him she confessed. “She said men are idiots.”

  He glared at me a moment, then leaned back, rubbed his eyes, and chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Well…” He blew out a breath, watched the traffic stream by. “She’d know, wouldn’t she?”

  I drew my first clear breath since I’d seen him standing in his mother’s doorway. “How are things at work?”

  “Work?” He snorted, then shrugged. “They’re great. Just dandy.”

  There was sarcasm in his voice. And fatigue. And possibly the suggestion that he’d like to toss me out of the car and put tire tracks over my head.

  “I was afraid you’d get in trouble.” I watched his face. He hadn’t shaved that day. Either that or he was part wolf, which I’d kind of always suspected. He was wearing a blue, western-style shirt with snaps. It was rumpled. As were his blue jeans. I gave a mental scowl. “You know…after last night.”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. A red Maserati zipped by at about five hundred miles an hour. I wondered if the cop in him wanted to slap on a blue light and chase it down the road or if he was too busy working on the tire tread fantasy.

  “Someone called nine-one-one,” he said, a
nd glanced at me from the corner of his feral eyes. “Any idea who that might have been, McMullen?”

  I swallowed, shrugged, and refrained from saying anything that would get me eaten. “There were a lot of people there. Could have been anyone.”

  He nodded, but something about his stillness suggested he wasn’t buying it.

  “People were scared,” I said.

  “Yeah? How about you? Were you worried about me?”

  “He had…I heard he had a gun,” I said, not wanting him to know that I’d been there, that I’d seen them fighting, that, in fact, I had been afraid for him.

  But maybe he was better at analyzing people than an inebriated cocktail waitress from Schaumburg, because his face softened the slightest degree. “I can take care of myself, McMullen.”

  “So did the captain put you on the case?”

  His face was devoid of emotion. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I’m on the case.”

  “What’d you find out? Are there clues? Was there DNA?”

  “You taking up forensics between clients, McMullen?” he asked. His smile was sardonic, his tone dismissive.

  I raised my nose toward the Saturn’s ceiling. I’d always liked my high horse. “I think I have something of a stake in this.”

  “Leave it alone,” he warned.

  But I was on a roll. “Your mom said Salina—”

  He jerked his gaze toward me.

  Maybe I was drunker than I’d realized. I kind of hope so. The alternative is that I was dumber than a box of rocks.

  “What exactly did my mother say about Salina?”

  “She said that…” I paused. He had that hungry wolf look in his eye again. “She said she was a beautiful woman.”

  He stared at me a moment, then laughed and scrubbed his hand across his face. “God, McMullen, you are one piss-poor liar.”

  I was surprisingly offended by his opinion, which may have said something about the state of my sobriety. “Am not.”

  He shook his head and rested it on the cushion behind him. “Mama hated Salina from the moment she laid eyes on her.”

  “Oh?” I tried to sound innocent. It’s not my best act. “Why is that?”

  “Sali could pull in the men,” he said. “But women…” He sighed. His eyes looked tired. I wondered if he hadn’t been sleeping again. I wondered if he’d always called her “Sali,” with that soft, wistful voice that made him seem strangely vulnerable, strangely young. “Women generally wanted to kill her.”

  “Did one?”

  “What?”

  “I mean…not your mother, of course.” I tried a chuckle. Whoa, Nellie. “She’s a saint. But do you think a woman might have actually killed her?”

  “Damned if I know. Coroner’s looking at a couple dozen possibilities. None of ’em make sense. He’s not even sure yet if it was murder.” He seemed a million miles away suddenly. “Neighbors saw squat. Not a car, not a visitor. Nothing suspicious. But if I could get another look at the crime…” He snapped his gaze up. “Fuck me,” he said. Snorting at himself, he put the Saturn in drive and pulled back out into traffic. “Half a lifetime on the force and I’m singing to a nosy shrink like a fuckin’ choir boy.”

  “I’m just curious,” I said, all innocence.

  “And I’m Batman,” he countered, and laughed at me.

  “The hell you are,” I grumbled. I don’t like to be accused of murder, and I don’t like to be shut out. But being laughed at makes me mad as hell.

  He glanced my way.

  “Bruce Wayne had a soul,” I said.

  He raised one brow. “You think I don’t have a soul, McMullen?”

  I thought it might have been wise to keep my mouth shut. But maybe I should have thought of that before guzzling ten gallons of tequila.

  I gave an eloquent shrug. See, eloquent, I was sobering nicely…and thinking. If there were no problems at work, and he was officially on the case now, why couldn’t he get a look at the crime scene? And why the hell did he seem so haunted? Yeah, a young woman he’d cared about was dead, but he was a doer, a shaker. If he could do and shake, why did he look like last year’s corpse? “Question is, what does Captain Kindred think?” I asked.

  “He thinks you should keep your nose out of it.” He skimmed me with his eyes. Heat seared me. “Along with your pretty ass.”

  He said “ass,” but I resisted giggling. Maybe I was still a little bit drunk. “You’ve still got your badge, then?” I pressed.

  “In my pants pocket. Wanna see?”

  “I’m drunk, not stupid,” I said.

  He laughed. “They’re generally one and the same, sweetheart.”

  “Not this time.”

  He grinned.

  My hackles rose. “Worse luck for you, Rivera.”

  He wheeled right onto Opus Street. I tipped wildly toward him, falling facefirst into his lap.

  “Looks like my luck’s improving.”

  I scrambled to right myself. “Pervert.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and pulling up to my curb, threw the Saturn into park before catching my gaze. “But you still lust for me.”

  “I do not—” I began, but at that moment I remembered my exact words to his mother, and I knew he had heard them.

  I felt the blood drain from my body, felt my feet go numb. Maybe I tried to think of some pithy put-down. Maybe I struggled for a denial, but in the meantime my fingers were fumbling for the handle. The door popped open. I half fell, half leapt onto the sidewalk. I heard him call out after me, but I was racing along my crumbled concrete.

  The car door slammed, his footfalls sounded on the walkway behind me. But I was inside my house and locking the door in record time.

  “Open up, McMullen,” he said. I leaned my forehead against the door and prayed for divine intervention. I heard him jiggle the doorknob. “Let me in,” he said.

  I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. “Go away.”

  I thought I heard him chuckle. “If you let me in, I promise not to talk about how you’ve got the hots for me.

  “Or the fact that it’s been…” I heard him rest a shoulder against the far side of the door. “How long has it been for you, McMullen? Ten years?”

  My stomach cramped. I bent double and stumbled toward the bathroom. Four seconds later I was paying homage to the porcelain god. Ten minutes after that I was passed out on my bed, drunker than a freshman and blessedly dead to the world.

  17

  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but tequila makes it so she don’t give a shit if she’s fond of you or not.

  —James McMullen, who is really only astute in comparison to his brothers

  HOW WAS—” Elaine stopped mid-sentence when she glanced over the desk at me. “Holy cow, Mac, are you all right?”

  “Shh.” I tried to hold my head on while I said it.

  She rounded the reception desk. Her progress sounded like a charging herd of rabid rhinos. “What happened?”

  “Tequila.” I was pressing on my right eyeball with the heel of my hand. It might have looked strange, but I was pretty sure the damned orb was going to pop out, and no one wanted that first thing in the morning.

  “Tequila?”

  “Chablis.”

  “Sit down.”

  I eased into the proffered chair. “And I think…” It hurt to wince…or live, and thinking made me ache down to my personal aura. “I think there might have been some grog.”

  “I thought grog went out with the thirteenth century.”

  “Well, it’s back.”

  “Impressive.”

  I opened an eye carefully, lest it take that opportunity to hop out. “I’m dying, Laney.”

  She laughed. Sometimes I forget how nasty she can be. And loud. Like a blow horn on steroids. “What’d you find out?”

  “That I hate grog. I’m not all that wild about myself right now, either.”

  “What about Salina?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You have to hold your
eyeballs in and you didn’t even learn anything?”

  “No.” I propped myself up straight in the chair. “That’s not true.” There was a small but mighty demon pounding on my cranium. “I did learn something.” The alcohol was solidifying in my system, galvanizing my inebriated resolve. “I did learn something.”

  Maybe I said it with a fair amount of drama, because Laney was staring at me, brows well into her hairline. “Tell me of your newfound knowledge, Sensei.”

  I ignored her facetious tone. “I learned to mind my own business.”

  “A valuable and difficult lesson.”

  “Yes.” I stood up, resolute. The demon cracked me a good one right between the eyes. I sank slowly back into my chair.

  “Maybe I should cancel your first client.”

  “No.” I rolled one eyeball in her direction. The other one was busy keeping tabs on the demon. “Who is it?”

  “Emily Trudeau.”

  Emily was a Baptist minister’s wife. “Oh God,” I said.

  Laney helped me to my feet. “Maybe you should have started praying before you drank your weight in fermented fodder.” We were making our way toward my office. “You must have learned something helpful.”

  I stopped in my doorway, looking at her through a red veil of veins. “Look at me, Laney. Do I look like last night was helpful in any regard?”

  “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  “Including alcohol poisoning?”

  “I can only assume.”

  “No.” I shook my head…carefully. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right,” I said. “This has made me stronger. Stronger and smarter.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “I’m through with Rivera.”

  “That’s great.”

  “No more snooping about where I’m not wanted.”

  “Thatta girl.”

  “I’ve got better things to do.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s not like I’m some tuba-playing, drink-toting kid with—” The demon struck. I winced. “I’m a psychologist,” I finished weakly. “Too good for an overbearing, macho, overbearing—”