Rafe knew that Annie Graceland, the nice young lady who rescued one lucky guy, Franco Fennedy, knew a little more than Annie Piccolino, the baker in the Fuller homicide, had let on. This would be an interesting conversation.
When Kyle ran into the room. “I confirmed with the police on the scene. Annie Rose Graceland’s the good sam that rescued the drowning guy. I’m going over there right now and put the pressure on. Hard and firm, if you know what I mean. No need for the both of us to go. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Rafe sighed. “I’m going with you.”
Annie entered her apartment, dying for peace, quiet and a long shower or tub bath with mineral salts and a pound of penicillin for good measure. She carried the 8 X 10 envelope that she and Derrick had retrieved from the desk drawer in Franco’s apartment after they left the hospital.
She’d already checked out the envelope’s contents. More disturbing photos, this time of Derrick with Franco. As creepy as Derrick was, she didn’t pin him for an incestuous type. She therefore surmised most of the photos were altered. Which raised more questions, especially about the Mike and Derrick photos.
Teddy sat on her couch. Two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne rested on top of him. His blue eyes were completely crossed, a sure sign of major cat irritation. The smell of weed wafted through the air. The smoke was so thick that when Annie squinted she could almost see pot plants hanging upside down in the air. Two water goblets with drops of champagne in their bottoms sat on the kitchen-living room divider countertop. She slipped Franco’s envelope under hers and Sienna’s and covered them with a stack of unpaid bills. She turned on the oven. Pulled a tray of cookie dough dollops out of the fridge, plopped it on the counter and pulled off the sheet of saran wrap that covered it.
Loud giggles emanated from her bathroom. Julia and Grady. High and drunk again. They’d soon be raiding her kitchen for munchies. “Hey,” Annie said. “What’s the occasion?” They probably didn’t have one, but it was good to enter with a positive question, not negative commentary like “I love you like family, but stop using my apartment as your druggie crash pad.” She slipped the tray of cookies in the oven.
More giggles from the bathroom. “Guess what?” Grady slurred.
“What?” Annie asked, grabbed the champagne bottles and lifted them off Teddy, who still looked pissed.
“We’re celllllllebratinggggg!” Julia said.
Dear God, they were both tanked. At least her special wedding anniversary libations had gone to good use, entertaining her best buddies.
“I got Bill Gable a deal. First offense, no prior, upstanding citizen, distraught father, blah, blah. A year in minimum security, including time served,” Julia bragged.
Annie dumped the empty champagne bottles in the small plastic recycling bin on the kitchen floor.
“That’s great, Julia!”
Suddenly Madonna’s Vogue rang out from her speakers at club jam volume.
“Turn that down, now,” Annie said. “Might piss off my new neighbors.”
Madonna wailed and crooned through the speakers, “Vogue, vogue, vogue, vogue, vogue – Let your body groove to the music.”
Grady flew out of the bathroom. He was naked except for his tightie whities, which were pulled up and squeezed between his butt cheeks, to resemble a thong. “My script, Diary of a Dead Guy, got accepted into the United Filmmakers’ Program. I’m going to the show!” He clutched a hairbrush as a mic and sang along as best his drugged self could to the Madonna song. “Look at me! I’m the oh-so-popular Dr. Derrick Fuller!” he said and did two pelvic thrusts to the right and a hip thrust to the left. His arms undulated overhead.
“That’s awesome, Grade,” Annie said. She picked up her stack of mail and sorted through it. Tossed the crap, kept the pink notices.
“This doesn’t thrill me. No mention of a feature with my name attached,” Derrick said.
“I don’t think they care.” Annie noticed her electric bill had deepened from pink to fuchsia. The gas bill had a note on it that read, “No, really. It’s time to open this.”
Her phone rang in the kitchen. Her answering machine picked up. “Annie Rose, pick up your phone. It’s your mother. Remember me?”
She grabbed the phone. “Hey, Mom.”
“Are you having a party? Do you think that’s prudent so soon after your operation?”
“Separation, Mom. Mike and I are separated.” Sometimes her mom was scary prophetic in her choice of malapropisms. Because her split with Mike felt like several very bloody operations. A lobotomy. A heart excision. All four wisdom teeth pulled without any anesthesia by a really bad dentist who looked like Dr. Putter. But, officially… “It’s a marital separation, Mom.”
“Go Der-rick! Go Der-rick!” Julia shrieked. She jumped out of the bathroom doorway wearing a too-tight purple lacy corseted teddy showcasing her ample cleavage. Garter belts held up the hose on her curvy legs and she strutted in Annie’s Irena Dragoslava CFMPs. Unlike Annie, Julia could totally maneuver in high heels. “Guess whose I am, Annie? Guess whose I am!”
“Uh, Derrick Fuller?”
“No, silly. Think…” Julia dropped to one knee, gazed at the ceiling and swept her hands dramatically in a semicircle from the ceiling toward the floor and back again. “Go ahead, guess again. Guess!”
“That’s brilliant, Julia!” Grady said and stumbled backwards, his mostly naked behind headed south toward the couch aimed at Teddy, who at the last second vaulted off. Teddy missed almost certain death by a drunken human behind. But cats had nine lives. That was his third.
“I guess that you’re… Tawny ‘Sunshine’ Fuller,” Annie said.
Julia screeched. “Yes! You’re the greatest! I love you!” Julia smooched her on the cheek, then turned and tackled Grady, who was seated, eyes half closed and listing forty-five degrees sideways on the couch. Julia grabbed the hairbrush mic and wrestled it away from Grady who squeaked before he collapsed flat out and drooled. Julia then jumped back up and mimed not only Madonna’s vocals with the hairbrush-mic, but implied her own version of possible sexual acts appropriate to the song’s lyrics.
“Ah. Memories. Sounds just like yesterday,” Nancy said over the phone. “I get nostalgic. Whole milk from Grutztaminer’s Dairy delivered to our front door step. Freshly baked cannollis dropped off by a tall guy with a nappy boot—”
“Snappy suit, Mom.”
“Snappy suit, driving a Lincoln Towne Car all the way from Chicago, from Vito’s Bakery. Oh, those cannollis. Don’t get me started. And Julia: drunk, high, slutty and acting out. Still at it some twenty years later. Nothing’s changed since high school, eh? That girl should have skipped law school and just become an actress showing her boobies in grade B movies.”
A neighbor knocked on a wall adjoining Annie’s apartment. “Turn it down!”
“Absolutely!” Annie hollered back, then lowered her voice. “Julia, shush! Mom said you were talented even in high school and should have been an actress.”
“That’s sweet. All these years I never thought she liked me.”
Annie turned and whispered into the phone. “I’m kind of busy right now, Mom. Talk to you, later.”
“Do you want me to call Julia’s mother? I heard she had her tires redone and currently lives in Seizure World in The Goon’s Peach. Ask me, sounds like a possible Mob retirement community. Maybe that’s where Julia gets her movie money.”
“Lavonnia, Julia’s mother retired and lives in Leisure World in Laguna Beach, California.”
“Lavonnia would never move from Oklahoma to California.”
“Lavonnia moved to southern California when her fifth husband, Wayne Allright of Allrighty Tires in Tulsa, Oklahoma, passed on to that big air pump in the sky. I love you, Mom. I have to go. Now.” Annie tried to put the phone down. But she couldn’t because suddenly it felt hot-glued to her hand and possessed by her mother’s insistent voice.
“Wait! I’ve got a message for you from….”
&nbs
p; “Honestly, every time someone has a message for me, my life turns to shit. Love you, Mom. Bye bye.” Her hand shook as she dropped the phone back into its cradle.
There was a knock on the door. Oh, how Annie loved unwanted and unexpected knocks on her door. They were always so inviting. Relaxing. Stroke producing. She leaned her head back and yelled, “I turned it down. I’m dealing with fools, idiots and family. What more do you want from me?”
Outside of Annie’s front door, Detectives Rafe Campillio and Kyle Pardue looked at each other. Pardue combed his hair, unbuttoned the top button on his shirt, popped an Altoid into his mouth and knocked on the door, again. Rafe wondered why Kyle didn’t just unzip his pants, pull out his pendejo and knock it on the door as well. “Hey, Annie. It’s Detective Rafe Campillio. Is this a good time to talk?”
“Since when did you get all girly and ask if it’s a good time to talk to a suspect?” Kyle asked.
“Since when have you cared what I do?” Rafe said.
Kyle pointed both index fingers at Rafe. “Ka-Ching! Got me,” he said.
“Hello, Ms. Graceland. It’s Detective Kyle Pardue. I so enjoyed our conversation the other night on the Bollywood Two set. Did you get my card?”
Annie involuntarily gagged when she heard Kyle’s voice. She looked at Julia and Grady and whispered, “The cops! I told you to turn down the volume. I’d lay money they know you’re naked and high. I heard the pokey’s not a pretty place for drunkety nude artists.”
Julia and Grady freaked, grabbed their purse and backpack respectively and raced out the tangerine back door.
Derrick smiled. “Serves them right. Slackers. Thieves. Opportunists.”
“Familiar territory?” Annie said as she shut the tangerine door. “Hey, Detective Rafe. It’s more an… iffy time. One second.” She spritzed lavender spray multiple times through her teensy apartment.
She waited a couple of moments and opened her front door. “Hi, Rafe. Detective Pardue. Maybe you gentleman could call before you stopped by? I’ve been baking,” Annie said and walked toward her kitchen, head high.
Kyle looked at Rafe. “Oh, I’m “Detective”, and you’re just Rafe?” They walked inside and, at the exact same moment, sniffed. Repeatedly.
Okay, thought Annie. What smelled like pot that could she pretend was a culinary experiment gone wrong?
Derrick came to the rescue. He pointed to Grady’s clothes heaped in the corner. He pinched his nose with his fingers. She walked over, picked them up and sniffed. Perfect! His socks stunk like weed. She held them high over her head so Rafe and Kyle had to see them. “Can you believe it? My friend’s training for a marathon, got a blister, had to take off his socks and left them here. I’m sorry, they smell funny.” She placed the socks in her recycling bin and shoved it out her back door.
“Hey, I’ve got some fresh butter cookies in the oven,” Annie said.
Rafe and Kyle both stared as she bent over and pulled a tray of fresh cookies out of the oven. Rafe kept a poker face and hid his irritation. Kyle’s voice lowered. “Butter cookies in the oven. Come on, Rafe. She seemed pretty comfortable on the porn set.” He raised his voice to normal speaking level. “So, Ms. Graceland, you and Sienna Saffron long time friends?” He poked the couch’s creases and flipped its cushions, probably looking for pot buds or drug paraphernalia.
“No.” Annie frowned. “Recent.” She put the cookie tray on a cooling rack.
“What did you and Ms. Saffron have in common? Besides wanting Dr. Fuller dead?” asked Kyle. “Hey, those cookies taste as good as they smell?”
“Too bad you’ll never know.”
Rafe glared at Kyle.
“Annie, we understand you rescued a young man today who was attacked at the Yogi Meditation Shrine,” Kyle said. “His name’s Franco Fennedy.”
“Right. I already talked to the officers on scene about that. But I was freaked out and didn’t catch his full name,” she answered. Just managed Franco’s address, the identity of his biological parents, and the nasty 8 X 10 photos previously hidden in his desk drawer that now sat in her kitchen hidden in the pile of bills.
Kyle picked up a fuzzy cat toy shaped like a mouse under a couch cushion. He held it gingerly with his left hand and eyed it for anything incriminating. “Did you know, Annie, that Franco Fennedy listed Clarissa Driver as his emergency contact person?”
“I’d know that, how?”
Kyle frowned and pulled out a pocketknife from his pocket. He held it to the cat toy, ready to gut it and search for drugs.
Teddy raced across the room, power leaped, grabbed the toy and bumped Kyle’s hand. He landed on the floor and bolted with the toy in his mouth. “Shit!” Kyle screamed and dropped his knife.
Annie watched Teddy wriggle under the sofa. Saw Kyle reach for his gun. She vaulted from her kitchen, dove and landed on the floor in front of the sofa.
Kyle drew his gun and aimed it at Teddy. Unfortunately, through Annie’s chest.
Rafe’s eyes widened. “Kyle. Put the gun down.”
“Crazy insane fleabag,” Kyle said. “I probably have tetanus or rabies or worms. God, I hate animals.”
“Put the gun down. Let me look at your hand,” Rafe said. “You know I’m an EMT. Paramedic training.”
“No, I’ll shoot that giant fuzzball. They can test it for diseases when it’s autopsied at the lab.”
“No!” Annie hollered. Kyle held his gun on Annie, who held her hand under the couch preventing Teddy from fleeing and getting shot.
Her next-door neighbor knocked on the wall again. “Lady, for the love of God. First the Madonna tribute. Turn down the Law & Order episode, please?”
“Just let me see your hand, buddy,” Rafe said.
Detective Kyle Pardue held out his trembling left hand.
Rafe held and examined it. Palm up. Palm down. Fingers spread. He performed range of motion on all the joints. Everything moved normally. “Upon inspection, I see no bite or claw marks, no punctures or blood. All your joints appear to have full range of motion. Close call, Detective. Put a little ice on that hand tonight in case you strained something. You’re good to go.”
Kyle slowly lowered his gun.
Annie grabbed Teddy by the scruff of his neck, dragged him out from under the couch and ran off with him in her arms. “Theodore, how many times have we had this discussion? Don’t play with creepy strangers,” she said, threw him into the bathroom and slammed the door. “I’ll get the butter cookies, guys. I mean, Detectives. Then you can fill me in on why you’re really here.”
Detective Kyle Pardue paused at Annie’s front door carrying a goodie bag filled with butter cookies, a few brownies and some porn DVDs that Sienna Saffron had given Julia, who left them behind in her hasty departure.
“So nice to see you again, Detective Pardue. My apologies for the cat drama.”
Kyle mumbled something and munched a butter cookie. He turned back and looked at Rafe, who sat on Annie’s couch. “I expect a full update tomorrow,” Kyle said.
“Yeah. And I want a complete synopsis of those DVDs.”
Kyle turned and left.
Annie released Teddy from his bathroom prison. He wandered into the living room, tail twitching.
Rafe chuckled. “I can’t believe you threw yourself on the floor in front of your couch to protect your cat.”
“Teddy’s sweet and makes me laugh every day. Laughter is healing. Sorry. But I have to take a quick shower before I discover toads on my body parts. I was in some fairly deep shit, I mean water, today.”
“I’ll start a fire outside,” he said.
Annie wore fresh sweats, and toweled off her hair next to the fire pit. She cracked open a Corona and took a long sip.
“Sorry about Detective Pardue,” Rafe said.
“He’s creepy.”
“That’s a universal opinion. I think you already know the connection between Franco Fennedy and Dr. Fuller. Now’s the time to tell me.”
Derrick looked
at Annie. “I don’t know. Rafe seems like a good cop,” Derrick said. “But maybe we should wait until we talk to Lewis, my attorney. Your call. Don’t forget, the cops still think you’re a suspect in my demise.”
“My call,” Annie said.
Rafe looked confused. “No, not your call. Besides, after tonight’s near gunshot incident, I could make the LAPD look really stupid and beat it out of you.”
She giggled. Probably from too much adrenaline after saving her cat from Detective Pervy-Dudee. “No way. You’d have to deal with the subsequent investigation.”
“My pleasure.” A corner of his mouth turned up.
He didn’t realize he was sexy, Annie thought. “Wishful thinking,” she said.
“Maybe on your part.” He said took her hand. “Your secrets are making you tired. Why don’t you just tell me?”
Her hand sizzled under his touch. Damn this man had great hands and a strong grip. She looked up at him. She was on the edge. Almost ready to spill her secrets: Derrick, Franco, how often she waxed her eyebrows, whatever.
It seemed completely natural that Rafe pulled her to him with his strong hand, put his other hand on the back of her head, dragged his fingers firmly but slowly through her hair and kissed her insistently on her lips. She resisted at first, damn Mike and his possibly incriminating cheating photos, but her mouth yielded to Rafe’s persistent invitation to let go, unwind and simply be. He trailed his fingers down her neck, slipped underneath her sweatshirt, tugged on the fabric of her little yoga top and…
Oh God, it had been so long.
She opened her eyes and looked into Rafe’s. She still gripped his hand. Gripped it so tight that his hand was white.
Oh shit. She imagined everything but the handshake. Or was it another empathic hit. She pulled away from him and shook her hands to feel grounded, not all ethereal, not empathic, just normal. Please God, she just wanted to feel normal.
Rafe smiled at her.
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